Silicon Technology

Inviting all Techies, Entrepreneurs, Students from all over for PHPCamp 2010

2010-01-06T11:29:00.007+05:30

Last year, PHPCamp 08 was seen as India's Biggest unconference. This year, it promises to be even bigger, better. Pune has PHPCamp 2010 this weekend (9th Jan, Saturday @ SCDL, Model Colony, Pune). This also happens to be the first event of the year.

There have been many questions asked on Facebook, Twitter, PHPCamp blogs on why you should be attending PHPCamp, who can be a part of it, what's so special this year? Thought of spending a minute with this blog entry, and clearing these doubts.

What is PHP?

PHP is a general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages.

What is PHPCamp?

It's a Barcamp, with a focus towards PHP Technology.

So, will it just be PHP?

No, anything and everything that's related to PHP, it could be as simple as "Building a website in 30 mins with Joomla (CMS)" or "Integrating PHP with Adobe Flex or Microsoft Silverlight (UI technologies)" to "Opensource Application Platform like Shindig / Opensocial" . You can always browse through what interests people at PHPCamp

Do I need to know PHP or can i survive with the bare minimum of knowledge i have on this topic?

Students with minimum programming experience, should start dabbling with PHP asap, try setting up with server, running hello world scripts, understanding the notion of web-development, and reading lots of "How to" article on the net (PHPCamp.net is a very good resource that caters to everyone, no matter if he/she is an expert/novice/beginner).

For people with prior experience, i suppose just the basics should suffice or follow the Getting Started Manual.

I am a student, understand PHP, what type of question's should i ask?

Ask the right question to get the right answer as each talk is scheduled for just 40 mins. Contact the speaker after his/her session get's over, clear all your doubts. Don't be shy on asking questions, don't compromise on them, who knows many in the audience might be having the same doubt.

What can i expect out of PHPCamp?

Come with an attitude that helps you to become an expert, 8 hours of knowledge from the expert's could really do wonder's. As a student, you might just get an internship offer, decide which technology to be a master in, lot of "Getting started with examples". You could sound as an expert in your friend circle, by discussing various technologies you pick up here.

For professionals clear your doubts with questions that always bother you, "How can i achieve this?", "Where can i get some pointers on this topic?", "What's the best way to tackle a business problem?", "How can i design an application, considering the 3 layers (service, view, backend)?", "Have a startup idea and want to discuss with the experts?" You will find people from all corner's. As Navin says, "Humans are better than Google". We have experts from Adobe, Microsoft, Xento (Our Diamond Sponsors)

The most important, why not suggest a topic that you would want to present/discuss at PHPCamp, a great source of "Gyan" and be a part of "Share & Learn" process.

How can i do my bit for PHPCamp?

We need friends to help us un-organize PHPCamp. Join us at the volunteer's meet on 8th Jan(3.30PM) at SICSR. Looking forward to meet you all here.

If you can't meet us on this day, Blog/Facebooking/Twittering/Digg/Scrap(Orkut) about it and send us a DM on Twitter, we will include your blog entry in our mediasection.

I want to attend PHPCamp, Can I get all the details?

Date: 9th Jan 2010
Venue: SCDL(Symbiosis Center for Distance Learning), Pune
Time: 9AM -6PM ( come 15 mins. prior to the start)
Map to the venue
Register ( Just join us if you see the event is a sellout, we have already extended 300 ticket, as per the current status even that is almost a sellout yet again )

This blog entry was very much inspired from Navin's article on Why students should bunk classes to attend BarcampPune: projects, internships, recosBarcamp?. Thanks Navin.

Woohoo!! I am now a Adobe Community Champion

2009-08-24T09:01:00.003+05:30

Last week i received a mail from Adobe Team, the subject line read "Welcome Priyank Kapadia to the India Community Champions group", Woohoo!! All elated to be part of this.

Thanks to John Koch and Adobe for considering me. It is really a great honor to be a part of Adobe Community Champions.

“Community champions receive community recognition, access to Flex product pre-release information, speaking opportunities in some Adobe sponsored events, access to Adobe resources (i.e., presentation slides, champion web portal, champion forums, etc.) and some funding available for approved events”.

To know more about this program please follow this link

We are Back with a Bang!! - BlogCamp Pune

2009-06-10T22:12:00.004+05:30

Yes, Yes, Yes!!! The makers of BlogCamp Pune are back with a bang. With rain, comes two awesome events that Pune was always waiting for - BlogCamp & BarCamp (date yet to be announced). The discussion thread for BlogCamp reached 150+ mails with around 20 bloggers including everyone from a beginner to a Pro from the Blogging world. I personally have been out of action for quite some time, with BlogCamp i see an opportunity to meet the bloggers, and just share some views/thoughts about Blogging - What's ethical and what's not?

Things that have been discussed at Blogger's meet,
1. Plagiarism - No one likes that.
2. SEO - this is the most talked about topic( seen @ Mumbai BlogCamp )
3. Do you blog to earn? - This is again quite debatable.
4. Basics of Blogging? - Always nice to have a "starter pack"
5. Google Ranks, Analytics and how to assist yourself track your visitors.
6. WordPress blogs vs. Blogspot ??

And the list is endless ... You just don't wanna miss this.. "NEW" Edition of Blog
Camp Pune (BlogCamp Pune 2)! Bigger, Better, Action Packed !!!

Follow us on Twitter (@blogcamppune), we tag all our tweets with #blogcamppune2 hashtag!!

Venue

SICSR(Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies & Research)
Model Colony, Pune
India

Google Maps

View Larger Map

Flex Boot Camp in Pune

2009-03-01T12:05:00.001+05:30

Its been my pleasure to announce Pune Boot Camp 2009 (Sponsored by Adobe), going to held up in Maharashtra Institute of Technology, Kothrud on 13 & 14th MArch 2009.

Be geared up for all kind of FLASHy.. FLEXy… presentations which
gonna rock Pune AIR. :)

Its and Adobe event and all key evangelists are expected to join us. So be a part of this huge success. Raghunath Rao, Adobe Technical Evangelist has confirmed about his visit today. Sujit Reddy, Adobe Technical Evangelist is also expected to visit.

Venue:
Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT)
S.No.124, Paud Road, Kothrud,
Pune 411038
Maharashtra INDIA

Maps:

View Larger Map
Note: We need active volunteers for this event.

Pune Boot Camp is free and community-run event for everyone interested in the Adobe Technologies. No matter you’re just a newbie with Flex/Flash AIR or you’re a scholar ,Boot Camp assures something to learn.

There are some of the most experienced Gurus who will share their knowledge on everything related to RIA space including, Flash Catalyst, AIR, FLex and OpenSource development.

Dont miss this opportunity to hear from the leaders. I will update more soon on this. .

Speakers:

* Raghunath Rao (Adobe Technical Evangelist)
* Sujit Reddy G. (Adobe Technical Evangelist)
* and many more…

Pune, the Silcon Valley of India

2009-02-05T09:51:00.003+05:30

I am back to blogging it's been quite sometime that I haven't blogged on anything although was an active micro-blogger, but nothing on my blog.

Pune is the "Geek Town" of India, I certainly believe that Pune is becoming the most active city in India. I recently moved out of Pune (a post on that later).

Post PHPCamp, which was declared to be the biggest un-conference, which saw people across different platform talk about PHP and related technologies gave birth to PHPCamp.net, fabulous initiative taken by Amit Singh. Must visit.

With this, we also saw a rise in # of people talk about "Open Social" platform and how to build application on these using the OpenSocial API. It all got culminated with a semi unconference which was named OpenSocial Developer Garage.

How can we miss the DrupalCamp? Saw around 300+ people turning up for the 2nd DrupalCamp conference in India.

I must say "Geek Town" is indeed buzzing big time.By the way you can follow me on twitter @whereispriyank

Open Social Developer Garage, Hit!

2008-12-21T20:06:00.010+05:30

The most awaited semi-barcamp conference "Open Social Developer Garage", and the first of its kind in India was very well appreciated.

Quick recap!

All the volunteers and unorganizers reached the awesome venue(Thoughtworks Pune) at around 8.30AM, everyone having their own plans ready to make this event a huge hit. We quickly got things set up (Registration, Code Lab, Venue), and by 9.30 we had already seen 40+ turning up to "Gain" or "Share" what Open Social is all about?

Even before the campers, most of the Speakers were at the venue raring to talk about different aspects of Open Social .

We started the event at 10.30AM with the same old BarCamp style of introducing yourself in 3 words, as it began we had everyone twittering live about ODGPune specially Pune Tech Live and DevGarage.

As a token of appreciation, the unorganizers decided to give out "Bamboo Shoots" to all the speakers, and finally three cheers (HIP HIP HURRAY!!!) to ODGPune, it was indeed an awesome event, we have whole bunch of things in pipeline and look forward to implement them in the coming years. Just to keep everyone updated, we will start planning for ODGPune 09 very soon, Suggest everyone to join our Google Group where all the action begins.

How can we make it better?

1. Sadly most of the unorgnanizers and volunteers were really busy with their schedule and we were fighting with time to get this concept out and popularize it "BIG TIME", so i believe Better Planning.
2. Make it Open For All
3. Community Driven, not just restricted to 4-5 folks in the city, we would want everyone to join us and take this to a newer level. With a good community for Open Social, we can have the community drive this event.

Where can i see the action?

We will have the pics uploaded on Flickr. All pics for Open Social Developer Garage have been tagged by "odgpune".

Already have people blogging about Open Social Developer Garage, Pune

Aparana Kumar from Sun writes "Social networks in India have gained a new high since early 2007. The culture of the region, diversity, affinity for communities & a nation wide culture where businesses thrive on connections/references/word-of-mouth, very neatly align with what social networks have to offer."

Who all were behind it?

1. Rohan Dighe
2. Amit Singh
3. Vishal Gadkari
4. Pravin Nirmal

and obviously Priyank Kapadia

Now the "BIG" folks who helped us a lot

1. Bhavya
2. Vipul
3. Tara
4. Abhishek Nagar
5. Aman

More to follow in another post? The Making of Open Social Developer Garage ....

Open Social Developer at Thoughtworks on 20th December

2008-12-19T09:30:00.003+05:30

Yes, the wait for the most awaited conference is over. Open Social Developer Garage will start tomorrow( 20th December 2008) morning, and things have already been finalized. Speaker, volunteers, un-organizers all rearing to go, and the aura is nothing less than fantabulous. ODGPune is what everyone is talking about? For many, including me this arena( Open Social App) is completely new.

For all those newbies in Open Social, why not just scan through this Frequently Asked Questions about Open Social.

Some more FAQ's

1. What is Open Social Developer Garage?
2. We are twittering!
3. How Do I register for the event?

No on the spot registration accepted, it's an invite only event. If you still haven't registered and are interested, either twit us or send us a mail.

First Open Social Coffee Meet in Pune

2008-09-27T22:35:00.005+05:30

On Saturday, 27th September 2008 we had the first ever Open Social Coffee meet at ICC Level 9. There were around 10 of us for the meet and the agenda was to discuss what's next after PHPCamp?

The MOM,

1. We are having a Open Social Developer Garage'08 conference in Pune on 20th September, it is "invite only" conference.
2. CMS Day followed this, somewhere in February.
3. A surprise for all Joomla guys followed that in April.

Met Rohan Dighe, Amit Karpe, Prasoon Kumar, Shardul Mohite, Rakshit, Pravin, Amit Kumar Singh, Vishal Gadkari ,and i am missing out on few names here. The plan of this meet was to discuss some of key points of Open Social Developer Garage'08, how will it be organized and what all things need to be targeted?

How can you be a part of this conference? Help us out with unorganizing/unvolunteering or be a speaker or a contributor to the Open Social Developer Garage. Some of the things that we are having for this conference are

1. CodeLabs, Open Social Geeks develop a prototype.
2. Expect 'Top Notch' speakers from the Open Social community.

PHPCamp is India's Biggest Un-conference

2008-09-24T09:27:00.003+05:30

21st September 2008, the weather prediction where, "Heavy rains" expected and so was the crowd at the first in its kind, PHPCamp. With over 700+ Campers, 4 Un-Organizers, and Over 200+ volunteers, PHPCamp was proud to say that "PHPCamp, the biggest un-conference in India". Can anyone debate on that?

The only sad thing that could have happened is one of the unorganizers missing out on PHPCamp, and I was the unlucky one to miss out.

How it all Started?

12th July (Saturday), I was with Amit Singh. We said let's do something in Pune, as we had not announced BarCamp Pune 5 then. Amit says, "BarCamp Pune has always seen a rise in no of speakers on Java related technologies, there is hardly anything with respect to PHP", and that was it. Both of us simultaneously said, " Let's do a PHPCamp, unconference targeting PHP geeks in India"

1 week later

We have PHPCamp created, and we start announcing the date for PHPCamp.

We were looking out for a venue, what better than Persistent, I told Vinod Kulkarni (Associate Vice-President from Persistent) about PHPCamp, and he found this idea interesting ( so did many in our circle). We had our venue decided, it was Persistent Systems

Early days, the camper's count was somewhere around 40. We were expecting around 300 camper's to be at the PHPCamp. But future of PHPCamp was decided the moment it was announced.

Within few days of announcing PHPCamp, we got our first Sponsor, Cogent Technologies, and followed that we gotPune IT Labs, and 01Synergy . Even DirectI was keen on sponsoring PHPCamp, by then it was too late. At DirectI the concept of Un-conference is liked by everyone.

First signs of Success

Thanks to Mr.Devidas Deshpande from Pune Mirror, he wrote a news article ("Camping to Connect"), which was purely targeting PHP and the concept behind PHPCamp. Those were the days when the count was somewhere around 350- 400.

2 Weeks before the D-Day

The Camper's count shoots to 600+. Volunteers Count shoots to 130+, PHPCamp, creating ripples across the country and abroad. Everyone had something to share on the PHPCamp Google Group. Everyone was excited about PHPCamp, thanks to the blogger's community in India, everyone had the "I am attending PHPCamp" tag on their blog.

D-Day

Camper's Count was 1170 (Expecting 50% turn out as this was un-conference and not a conference). We had 8 volunteers from Symbiosis (SICSR), Varun Arora, Tarun, Nishant, Rashmi, Smriti, and 3 others. I was not in Pune, I had some Training to attend. With so many people gathering, Tarun Chandel and Rohit Srivastava started the camp in their own style ("Tashan Mein"), they introduced everyone to the concept of what un-conference is like and nitty-gritty of it. We always wanted everyone to enjoy every bit of PHPCamp. I call Amit Singh at around 3 PM, and first thing he has to say, "Man you are missing out on the fun, we have broken all the records".

What Happened at the Camp?

Sadly, I had missed the show, you can get updates from the following blogs ( there are around 140+ people blogging about PHPCamp).

Amit Singh
Tarun Chandel

Next year it would be even bigger and the noise would be unbearable, let's say "PHPCamp Rocked".

Glimpse of Swype

2008-09-11T08:47:00.003+05:30

50 Words a min on Touch Screen, it's amazing! That's Swype for you!
Swype, is quite simple to use, although beneath the user interface there's a lot going on.

"Swype works with an on-screen QWERTY keyboard like you have on the tablet version of Windows and on the iPhone. But instead of tapping letters out, you press your finger or stylus on the first letter, then, without lifting it, move it to the remaining letters in the word. When the word is done, then you lift."

Even on tiny smartphone keyboards, it is intuitive and fast.A built-in 65,000-word dictionary corrects obvious and even creative spelling errors.

I do agree with Kushler (Inventor of T9, Swype) that his technology would improve the iPhone experience. Enjoy this demonstration from Kushler. I want this badly, it's awesome!

Video 1: Swype Demonstation Video

Using Adobe Flex with Netbeans 6.1

2008-09-05T16:20:00.002+05:30

A Netbeans' plugin is released to support Flex SDK. Look at Sourceforge (FlexBean) . It was noted at NetBeans day that NetBeans 6.1 IDE will be more oriented to AJAX and Web 2.0 application development. To see the list of features, NetBeans 6.1 IDE

PHPCamp featured on Pune Mirror

2008-09-04T11:35:00.004+05:30

Amazing day it was! For the first ever PHPCamp in India, we getting appreciated by everyone, but the most important thing needs to be mentioned is, people are excited about PHPCamp and the quality is on the rise. Great news for PHP folks ( I am not a PHP guy, but loving it post Joomla 1.5, and Moodle).

Here is that article that got featured on Pune Mirror on 3rd September'08, Thursday

BarCamp Pune is back

2008-08-31T22:10:00.001+05:30

Barcamp Pune is back with the 5th Edition of Barcamp in Pune.
Date: 25th October 2008 (Saturday)

Keep an eye on our wiki while we set the preparations in motion.

You can follow us on Twitter too and FriendFeed

iPhone 3G Launched in India

2008-08-22T12:23:00.001+05:30

A great mobile internet
device—probably the best ever made—and it’s a pity that
it’s debuted in the country before 3G networks are up and running.

The pity, of course, is that the two Indian operators whom Apple has
chosen—Airtel and Vodafone—have both decided not to subsidise the
handset as AT&T , for instance, does in the US, where it retails at $200
(approx Rs 8,600) with a compulsory extra charge by the operator for a two-year
usage plan. At a whopping Rs 36,100 for the 16GB (which comes in black and white
rear panels) and Rs 31,000 for the 8GB model. The phones are being given on first come
first serve basis.

Had it been priced between 20-25K, the number's would speak for itself, knowing that Apple is targetting the Indian SmartPhone market.

Recent Survey done by TimesOfIndia on Who would want to purchase an iPhone priced at 31K?, the result are even more whooping. 90% Say No, 7% Say they would still buy it, Remaining are still unsure.

In short 93% of the public won't be interesting in buying iPhone? I would place myself in the unsure category. You can get HTC Diamond for a cheaper price than iPhone.

Building ASDoc with Maven-Flex Plugin

2008-08-19T16:25:00.001+05:30

Problem: Building ASDoc with Maven

Solution: Paste the following <plugin> information under the <plugins> </plugins> section of your pom.xml

<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>generate-asdoc</id>
<phase>package</phase>
<configuration>
<tasks>
<echo>Generating asDoc documentation</echo>
<mkdir dir="${basedir}/target/apiDocs" />
<property file="${basedir}/src/main/asDoc/asdoc.properties" />
<exec executable="${flex.home}/bin/asdoc.exe" failonerror="false" >
<arg line="-doc-sources '${srcdoc}'" />
<arg line="-library-path+='${flex.home}/frameworks/libs'"/>
<arg line="-main-title '${main.title}'" />
<arg line="-window-title '${window.title}'" />
<arg line="-output '${output.dir}'" />
<arg line="-footer ${footer}" />
<arg line="-left-frameset-width ${leftFramesetWidth}" />
<arg line="-source-path '${srcdoc}'" />


</exec>
</tasks>
</configuration>
<goals>
<goal>run</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>

It took me 20 mins to get this done, for you it should take 2 mins. If this helps you let me know.

AsDoc.properties file contains the following

srcdoc ='${basedir}/src'
main.title = Priyank Examples
window.title = Priyank Examples
output.dir ='${basedir}/target/apiDocs'
footer ="© 2008 Priyank Examples"
leftFramesetWidth="200"
flexlib="${basedir}/src/main/swc/flexlib.swc"
cairngorm="${basedir}/src/main/swc/cairngorm.swc"

Building a swc using a net.israfil.mojo plugin with resource bundle

2008-08-11T09:37:00.001+05:30

This one was pending for long now. Many of my friends has this issue prop up everytime they had resource bundle in their project.

Problem Statement: Get 'Error: resource bundle not found <resoucebundlename>.<properties>' when doing a build with the pom.xml. Building a swc using a net.israfil.mojo plugin.

Solution: Just copy paste the following xml into your pom. Ensure that you have useNetwork=false set as at times it does not refer to local file system if you don't have this attribute set to false.

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.priyank.samples.mx.ascomponent</groupId>
<artifactId>ascomponent</artifactId>
<version>1.0</version>
<name>ascomponent</name>
<packaging>swc</packaging>
<properties>
<flex.home>${env.FLEX_HOME}</flex.home>
<flex.compiler.source>src</flex.compiler.source>
<flex.priyank.locale>en_US</flex.priyank.locale>
</properties>
<build>
<finalName>ascomponent</finalName>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>net.israfil.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-flex2-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.0</version>
<extensions>true</extensions>
<configuration>
<flexHome>${flex.home}</flexHome>
<useNetwork>false</useNetwork>
<extraParameters>
<parameter>
<name>source-path+=${basedir}/src/main/locale/$
{flex.priyank.locale}</name>
</parameter>
</extraParameters>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
<outputDirectory>build</outputDirectory>
</build>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.adobe</groupId>
<artifactId>cairngorm</artifactId>
<version>2.2.1</version>
<type>swc</type>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</project>

This should generate an SWC artifact under the target directory. The typical developer shrug, "It works on my machine" is not applicable here.

Adobe Flex 3 vs. Silverlight

2008-07-31T16:12:00.001+05:30

I wanted to do a comparison of the features in Flex 3 vs. those in Silverlight, came across a wonderful article by Serge Jesper.

For those who just need the summary

Silverlight has support for playing with the HTML DOM and JavaScript, one Good part of it.

Bad and ugly you might have to read his article.

Microsoft running their apps on Flash and not SilverLight

2008-07-31T10:56:00.001+05:30

"Mojave Experiment". I have read blogs that complain a whole about Vista. I believe that Linux is still gung-ho in terms of performance. The only thing i see with vista is not many people are using it and still writing about it. I personally haven't touched vista yet, would love to get a licensed copy some day and start working on it.

Microsoft has come up with a new OS called Windows Mojave? Is it? Really?Not Again? Find it out

Microsoft Surface, It's all Hands On.

2008-07-30T17:12:00.001+05:30

Microsoft Surface (Codename: Milan), is a Multi-touch product from Microsoft which is developed as a software and hardware combination technology that allows a user, or multiple users, to manipulate digital content by the use of natural motions, hand gestures, or physical objects.

YouTube video shows its potential. Is this where Microsoft is thinking of making a shift? Probably they want to be ahead in the Race of UI. Microsoft calls this biggest shift in computing.

Play in the water without getting wet! Hmmm.

A small demo of the application and where it is actually being used. If you are shocked, please share your comments here.

Google to buy Digg

2008-07-24T15:47:00.001+05:30

Search giant Google is close to acquiring US-based social news aggregator Digg for around US$200 million, according to a report on US technology blog TechCrunch.

"The companies are now in final negotiations according to our sources,
although it could be a couple of weeks before it closes," the site wrote this morning,
adding Digg would be brought into the search giant under its Google
News property. However, the deal could still fall through, or another
party — such as Microsoft — could step in.

Digg was launched in November 2004 by a number of youthful
entrepreneurs in the US, with the most high-profile of those being
Kevin Rose and Digg's current chief executive Jay Adelson.

The site is one of the best-known internet content and social news
aggregators, and has a number of competitors such as Slashdot and
Reddit. It has a substantial advertising deal with Microsoft and a
loyal user community who contribute heavily to the site.

Adobe Flex Gumbo Language Reference Released

2008-07-24T10:37:00.001+05:30

The next version of Flex, code name Gumbo, is now in active development.

Design in Mind: provide a framework meant for continuous collaboration between designer and developer.
Developer Productivity: improve compiler performance and add productivity enhancements to language features like data binding
Framework Evolution: take advantage of new Flash Player capabilities and add features required by common use-cases

Click here for the Language Reference

Take the Quiz and Recieve a Free Book from Adobe

2008-07-24T10:34:00.001+05:30

Adobe recently released an article, the first 100 who solve this quiz and score 5/5 gets a Flex 3 Book delivered to their respective address. And for those who miss out on this opportunity, get to download the free e-book. I managed to download the e-book. Go ahead and have a shot at this quiz, it's the most easiest one on this earth.

Cloud Computing with Amazon Web Services

2008-07-23T16:25:00.001+05:30

IBM DeveloperWorks has published the first article in a five part series on Cloud Computing with Amazon Web Services. It's a great document to have in your kitty.

It's here. Get lost in the Cloud.

Cool Firefox Plugins

2008-07-23T10:05:00.001+05:30

Just installed two cool plugins that makes my life easier.

1. ScribeFire, is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser
that integrates with your browser to let you easily post to your blog: you can drag and drop formatted
text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.
2. Yoono, that keeps me in touch with my Friends on Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger, AOL.

Go ahead and install these plugins. They are an asset.

Call for PHP Speakers

2008-07-22T12:09:00.002+05:30

We are looking for passionate PHP speakers for PHPCamp which is being organized by fellow PHP enthusiast, on 20th September 2008 in Pune, India.

This is an ad-hoc gathering of passionate developers and newbies, with one common interest. We all want to talk and listen about PHP based development. We want to learn new things, we want to know what our fellow developers are upto. What is the hottest thing they have done.

So if you have anything to talk on PHP, CMS, frameworks, coding standard’s, development tools, OOPS, PEAR,PECL, MySQL, design, anything and everything that can help a PHP developer and help you become thought leader, propose your session now.

This event is 100% free to attend and hence speakers will have to make their own arrangements for travel. Even then this will be a great place to speak and get recognition among the peers instantly.

Get More information here. Go to the Speakers section if you have a topic in mind.

Pune Flex Meet 3 at Sansui Software Pvt. Ltd

2008-07-17T13:09:00.002+05:30

Pune Flex users group meet is on19th July. Here are the details.

Venue: SANSUI SOFTWARE PVT. LTD.
Fourth Floor, Nyati Millennium, Viman Nagar,
Nagar Road, Pune - 411 014, India

Date: 19th July 2008
Time:11- 12.30PM

Wiki : http://punefug.wikidot.com/
Discussion forum wiki & Flex CookBook wiki: http://punefug.wikidot.com/forum/start
Google Discussion forum: http://www.punefug.org/

Please add your name there if you are coming to the meet. Feel free to
edit that page and add your name if you want to be a speaker.

Sadly, I won't be there as I have loads of pending task that need to be finished by the weekends, but the show must go on. I will miss out on the fun that we developers have at these meets.

Moodle- Free, Open Source Course Mgmt System for E-learning

2008-06-20T22:05:00.002+05:30

With Joomla ruling the roost for CMS, there is something big happening for the E-learning domain. Moodle is a software package for producing internet-based courses and web sites. It's an ongoing development project designed to support a social constructionist framework of education.

"The word Moodle was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, which is mostly useful to programmers and education theorists. It's also a verb that describes the process of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. As such it applies both to the way Moodle was developed, and to the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an online course. Anyone who uses Moodle is a Moodler." Moodle Docs

Moodle can be installed on any computer that can run PHP, and can support a SQL type database (for example MySQL). It can be run on Windows and Mac operating systems and many flavors of linux (for example Red Hat or Debian GNU).

It' time to Moodle

Pune Flex Users Group Meet at NetScout

2008-06-09T10:03:00.005+05:30

Amidst all the rain that Pune had yesterday (Sunday 8th June), some great RIA enthusiast came in for the Flex Users Group Meet organized by Netscout Systems India Ltd..

Here are the minutes of the meet

1. As usual all the Netscout guys (including me) were playing TT(Table Tennis), as we saw our first participant, Sudharshan Apte from Cognizant come in. As we were waiting for other speakers to turn up. We continued playing TT with Sudharshan for some time.
2. At 5.30PM, Aasim and others came in, we then decided to just kick off the meet. Some of the geeks from Netscout were present there.
3. We had a small "Intro Session" to start of the proceedings. A good mix of designer + developer. Nice to see that.
4. Aasim started with how to get Adobe Flex Certified. He gave some good tips and some add-ons from Anand were nice. But the debate took off when Sarat Chandra from Netscout asked the group "Why do this certification?", Yash Mody said "It gives us the confidence while speaking on the technology", and Aasim came in saying "You stand apart from others".

I have a different say on this. Most of the Flex Geeks are not certified, I feel its more experience than Certification that makes you more comfortable with a particular technology. But said that, if one wants to give it go ahead.

5. Megha came in at around 5.30PM, and soon after Anand vardhan joined the meet. He took a session on Cairngorm Microarchitecture.

6. It was 6.45PM! Nice to see some great RIA enthusiast coming in with their viewpoints, Rajesh Moorjani was quite thrilled with how RIA applications were built with Flex.

We then had some Snacks, and that was it guys! For Pune Flex Users Group to have something more in their kitty, everyone needs to contribute with something. More active participation would mean more knowledge sharing. We had some good inputs from Rajesh, and others that which we will follow in the next meet. No one leaves the meet saying "I did not understand a single bit of what was going there"

Pune Bloggers Lunch at Green Park

2008-06-07T18:53:00.003+05:30

Folks

We (BarCamp Community) got its first of many to follow, Pune Bloggers Meet. The response to this event was awesome, we (rohit, aditya, atul, me, tarun) just had some conversation. Green Park had some great arrangements. So here is what happened there at Pune Bloggers Meet

1. Bloggers came around 1 PM

2. We started off with an Intro session, where everyone shared what they were blogging on? We had Metu (Movie Reviews Blogger) movie buff( anyone out there contact her ), NGO community( Bhavya, Jaslene), Tarun ( Blogging on daily activities, and an avid Camp organizer, whenever he comes to pune gets it going). Pramila (ITVidya) and obviously Rohit ( organizer of commonwealth, and a blogger ).

3. Once the intro session was over, we got some drinks (Soft drinks and not Hard)and everyone was having a mini discussion on "Should we accept a negative feedback on our blogs?".. Everyone had their views, mostly everyone accepted that, and made a point saying "Abusive language should not be posted as a feedback, blogging ethics"

4. Bhavya, Jaslene both (NGO) doing wonderful thing by giving something to the community. I got a chance to speak with them at the end of the meet. Would love to do something of that sort. Amazing stuff, good going!

5. How can i forget Amit Singh, Hardcore PHP developer (Pune IT Labs), we are thinking of starting a small PHP users group meet. Look forward to this. Nice way to get into PHP and related technologies

It was a great start to the Pune Bloggers Meet. In the near future more (food + people) is expected, as we(BarCamp guys) never run short of energy.

Will be discussing about 101 Camp with Tarun and look forward to that in about 2 months time.

We are organizing "Bloggers Lunch", You are Invited

2008-06-05T10:09:00.003+05:30

All the campers/bloggers out there

we are planning to have a bloggers/campers lunch on Saturday, 7th June. The venue is still undecided, but we are constantly updating our barcamppune.org wiki. Just add your name there if you are coming. Everyone's invited.

Let's have a chat there. Don't forget to blog if you are coming.

Flex Users Group Meet this weekend

2008-06-05T10:07:00.002+05:30

A reminder for those who have forgotten, there is a Flex Users Group Meet in Pune, India on 8th June.

Find other details at http://punefug.wikidot.com

Looking forward to meet all the Flex geeks out there.

I am on Adobe Feeds

2008-06-05T09:45:00.004+05:30

My blog has been added on the Adobe Feeds

http://feeds.adobe.com (just search for Silicon Technology)

You can find more information on the Adobe Feeds at:
http://feeds.adobe.com/About.cfm

Adobe Feeds has support for weblog pings which allows you to notify Adobe Feeds when you have made a new post to your weblog. This ensures that your content gets out to readers as soon as you post it.

Flex Users Group Meet on 8th June

2008-06-01T12:32:00.001+05:30

Pune Flex users group meet is on 8th June. Here are the details.

Venue: Netscout Systems India Ltd (www.netscout.com)
Amar Caliber, Off BMCC College Road.

Directions: Those Coming from FC: Opposite Roopali Restaurant there is
a small lane, take that lane and come straight (on your left you will
see Amar Caliber)

Date: 8th June 2008
Time: 5 - 6.30PM

Wiki : http://punefug.wikidot.com/
Discussion forum wiki & Flex CookBook wiki: http://punefug.wikidot.com/forum/start
Google Discussion forum: http://www.punefug.org/

Please add your name there if you are coming to the meet. Feel free to
edit that page and add your name if you want to be a speaker.

Yippy! Pune Flex Users Group Wiki up

2008-06-01T11:27:00.006+05:30

Good news for Pune Flex and Flash Developers, successfully created our Pune Flex Users Group Wiki and a Cook Book so that developers in India can post their recipes on our flex cookbook wiki

Here are the details

Wiki

Forum + CookBook

Cairngorm vs Penne( New Framework for Flex 3.0)

2008-05-19T11:08:00.004+05:30

Here is how Cairngorm works!

* Business - Contains the various services for Remote Object calls, Web Service calls, etc
* Command - Handles the formation of the Request/Response of these service calls.
* Control - Here lives the one and only Cairngorm controller class. This is where you map your events to command classes.
* Event - When a user interacts with your super cool app, events are fired off that cause other layout changes based on the user request.
* Model - Holds the data and states for the app.
* View - All datagrids, etc, that make up the user interface.
* Vo - Stores other objects similar to domain that organize data for easy use in the view.

With Penne Framework, you have this!

Get started with Penne

Cairngorm vs. Penne (Comparative Study)

Social NewsPaper.. From Adobe

2008-05-16T15:36:00.003+05:30

A feed is a file format for sharing news, blog posts or other web content across websites. The site that makes its content available as a source of information is said to publish a feed, while the tools and sites that use that content are said to consume the feed.

myFeedz is both a feed consumer because it reads news and blogs from all over the internet and also a feed publisher because it provides feeds for all the lists displayed.

What is an RSS feed?
RSS is an XML format used to export and import feeds across the Internet.
What is an Atom feed?
Atom is a slightly different format that does pretty much the same things as RSS, only better.
What is an OPML file?
OPML is an XML file format used to store a
list of feeds. Most feed aggregators allow you to export and import your OPML file.

After all the gyan above: Let's have a look at something even cooler from Adobe
myFeedz

Google Maps for Flash

2008-05-16T15:34:00.002+05:30

Google has just announced the Google Maps API for Flash. This AS3 library will allow you to natively put Google Maps into your Flex or Flash apps without having to do any hacky-hack iFrame/div methods. You can read the announcement on Google’s blog.

Go ahead and experiment with Google Maps
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/flash/

Enabling gzip compression for data services

2008-05-16T14:43:00.000+05:30

Brian Deitte on the Flex team wrote up a quick set of classes that can be used to compress your network traffic for all 3 data services (RemoteObject using AMF, HTTPService, and WebService). Dan Schaffer on the QA team then did a number of performance tests to see what kind of improvements we could get.

http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mchotin/archives/data_management/index.html

Adobe Introduces Flash Player 10

2008-05-16T14:42:00.001+05:30

"Adobe® Flash® Player 10, code-named "Astro," introduces new expressive features and visual performance improvements that allow interactive designers and developers to build the richest and most immersive Web experiences. These new capabilities also empower the community to extend Flash Player and to take creativity and interactivity to a new level."

More details http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

Watch some cool demos

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/demos/#videos

I am on VerveEarth, are you?

2008-05-15T09:31:00.004+05:30

Folks

Recently I came across an Invitation to join on VerveEarth. Looks pretty promising, hope many Indians join on their list of bloggers in India. What is VerveEarth and the technology surround it?

"VerveEarth is a Google Maps mashup that provides a unique place for bloggers all over the world to share content and connect. It's convenient because bloggers can explore the site based on location, and narrow results even further by using the tools at the top of the screen to search content by topics of interest to them."

Join www.verveearth.com!

Enjoy blogging.

Flex Users Group Meet "Tashan" Mein

2008-05-07T21:34:00.006+05:30

This is an update from the meet that we had today, 7th May.

Firstly the reason we had on weekdays as Raghu (Adobe Evangelist) was in pune, we thought it was a good time to just cache in..

MOM:

1. We will be having a meet very soon
2. The event would cater to everyone
3. Start with basics of Flex, that all flex newbies would love
4. 30 Mins of developer related topics
5. 30 Mins of Flash related topics

Overall a package that would not upset anyone, and we will build on this as we go ahead.

Thanks to Raghu once again, he was at his best. After so much of traveling him, hats off Raghu.

Speakers
1. Raghunath Rao - Flex Starter with how easy it is to come from Java/.net/Rails in Flex. And for flash people from CS3 to Flex, showed some examples of Skins. He showed a demo for how to create Data visualization, typically Flex Charts

I will be having a public wiki up and running soon. Read over this soon.

In the next meetings we will follow the developer/flash/newbies pattern. We have started working on the next meet. Yes, we will try to have it on weekends

The first Flex Users Group Team with Raghu, me, Anand. Pics are ausumn

For those who are still not part of the Flex Users group, Please join www.punefug.org

Pune Flex Users Group Meeting on 7th May

2008-05-06T12:46:00.003+05:30

Hi folks

We have finally managed to have a flex users group meet. Look forward to meet everyone.
Without adding more words to this post! Believe me, this is the 1st of many to follow.

The details are as follows.

Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research,
4th Floor (Room no:407), Atur Centre, Gokhale Cross Road
Model Colony, Pune - 411016.

Time: 5.45 PM - 7.45 PM (we will extend if the need arises, it should!)

We will be there for sure? Start blogging on this, so that we can spread the word around in and around Pune. Will have a wiki created for this so that we can track the no of people coming to this Meeting.

Testing Cairngorm Application with DpUint

2008-05-06T09:53:00.003+05:30

Hi folks

Recently we were doing lots of Unit testing for our application, we were working on a Cairngorm application. Testing with FlexUnit was not that comfortable (said that, it is a huge asset to have, refer to perter martin's article on Flex Unit).

I have made life easier to the newbies and experts by having a slideshare for Testing cairngorm application with DpUint. I have a TestClass, TestSuite, TestRunner samples. This should get everyone started with DpUnit Testing from Digital Primates. Those guys are really putting some great effort.

So here are the slideshare notes for the above. Do comment/criticize, I don't mind both. Check out the comments text area at the bottom of this page (that's from Disqus).

| View | Upload your own

Blog with Disqus

2008-05-05T20:54:00.002+05:30

A great way to start blogging with Disqus

Certain things to look forward for are:

1. Blocking unverified users from posting to your blog.
2. You can block the person through the IP address, email, username etc. cool isn't it
3. You get your community to work with. I created mine at techchacha.disqus.com.

Guys try this out, let me know how you find the integration. It's something new! Why not just try it.,

Would like to know your feedback on this? And what all you did with it. Did you block anyone? Used filters?

Maven with Flex

2008-05-04T11:29:00.003+05:30

This one was pending for few days, the objective is to create an auto build process for our flex application. I have put the slides on the slideshare, do comment on that.

Maven is an ausumn tool for Project Management and while Ant is a modular way (Like C) of doing things, Maven can be taken in as an Object oriented way of doing the build process. A detailed explanation in the next post.

| View | Upload your own

The thing about social networking

2008-05-04T09:32:00.004+05:30

1.If you are twittering keep twittering with firefox extension for Twitter,go ahead and install it. It's a cool tool to have in your kitty. Download it from http://www.naan.net/trac/wiki/TwitterFox
2. Have you tried out the Social Networking Browser, if not try www.flock.com. It gives you widgets to work with Facebook, MySpace etc.

If you guys know of such cool tools just put a comment. So that everyone comes to know about it. Help spread the word. After all it's "Social Networking".

From Photoshop to RIA

2008-05-01T10:42:00.003+05:30

Guys Adobe is coming out with their new product called Thermo soon

"Thermo" is an upcoming Adobe product that makes it easy for designers to create rich Internet application UIs. Thermo allows designers to build on familiar workflows to visually create working applications that easily flow into production and development.
Features

* Use drawing tools to create original graphics, wireframe an application design, or manipulate artwork imported from Adobe Creative Suite tools.
* Turn artwork from Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fireworks directly into functional components that use the original artwork as a “skin”.
* Define and wire up interactive behavior, such as what to do when a user clicks on something, without having to write code.
* Easily design UIs that work with dynamic data, such as a list of contacts or product information, without having access to the actual data source. Design-time sample data can be used as a realistic placeholder when laying out an application, testing interactivity, and choreographing motion.

Applications created in Thermo are Flex applications that can be loaded directly into Flex Builder, providing a great roundtrip workflow for designers collaborating with developers. The designer's work can be incorporated directly into the production application with no loss of fidelity, and designers can continue to refine the design throughout the iterative development process.

Read more about this on labs.adobe.com

Adobe gives Meaning to Web Development

2008-05-01T10:05:00.004+05:30

Hi folks

Yesterday, 30th April, 2008 I was in the Adobe workshop for RIA. The focus was on "Delivering the next generation customer focused UI". It was sure hit. We reached the venue, Deccan Rendezvous( Ausumn place) at 10, got registered.

Before the session started, We got a chance to speak with Raghunath Rao (Adobe Evangelist), it was just "hi hello" kind of stuff.

Sessions started at 10.20AM.

Raghu Started the session with discussing how the Java guys and Flash Guys find difficult doing both the things simultaneously. Java people from the Swing/awt background don't focus much on the UI part, while the flash people are cool UI guys.

He then started discussing the Reachability of RIA and how RIA evolved from mainframes to static web pages to AJAX and then RIA( WEB 2.0). Google is the champion , holding 53% internet market. Adobe seems to have given web a new dimension, with so many products which not only helpsboth the Java as well as Flash Developers. It's fabulous!

Two things that Raghu discussed ( important to understand)
1. Movement has meaning - when to have a drap and drop functionality. Your UI should not have moving things on a click of a button if it is not required. Balancing the look and feel with the functionality. Great example of "Movement has meaning" is the Adobe Media Player. Sliding of windows is done with some elegance there. I have started using Adobe Media Player.

2. Content is the king - Huge Data that is shown neatly with Flex.

Glimpse of other things at Adobe RIA event:
1. Mobile Apps using Flash Lite( only supports AS 2.0, you cannot run flash application on Flash Lite as of now). They are working on reducing the size of the VM and other things so that it can fit in nicely.
2. Flash Cast - Backend for mobile Applications
3. Cold Fusion Component- Encourages Rapid Development, Check out how easy it is to create a web service there as compared to Java/.NET and other technologies (ROR etc)
4. Acrobat Connect - Web conferencing, check this out guys it looks promising
5. For UI design patterns check out xd.adobe.com ( Adobe guys have come up with UI design patterns that helps us in deciding what kind of UI is required for the data that we get from the Backend)

Lunch Time: Lunch was nothing less than fantabulous. Amazing time, met lots of flex developer. Anand Vardhan, the manager of Pune Flex User Groups.

Post Lunch, it was even more interesting Vyshak Venugopalan from Adobe Started discussing about Flex in 30 Minutes, it was a funny session with every one clapping on a "Hello World" Application that was created in seconds.

He then illustrated things like
1. Adobe Illustrator CS 3 - Skinning of vector drawing
2. Adobe Photoshop
3. Adobe Fireworks CS 3 - RIA designing and layout and an example was shown with Fireworks

After the Tea break, it was Raghu on Song with how to create web applications with Flex. He showed us a demo using the Google Image mash which uses JSON and how it was integrated with flex application.

By the time this application got over, it was 6PM. I then caught up with Raghu and Vyshak had a technical discussion with them. Raghu and Anand are on work for Flex Users group meeting in Pune. This community is increasing exponentially thanks to Anand Vardhan. Next week I will meet Raghu at BEA Flex Conference, "SOA with Flex"

Guys, I can only tell that Flex HackDay is coming soon, we will be pushing that forward. Just check this space for more updates on the HackDay.

Thanks to Raghu, Vyshak for spreading the word around on Flex and How cool it is for flash, java developers to develop a smashing application.

Adobe RIA workshop in Pune

2008-04-25T10:47:00.002+05:30

Hi

I have not been blogging for long now. But this blog is special as Adobe is conducting a workshop on RIA at Pune. This is an event, that puneities wished & finally got it. So, just read on and C ya at the Event. Let's See if I can make it, although its on Wednesday, but would give in anything for this.

Adobe is conducting a workshop on RIA in Pune next week. Here are the details about the event?

"Rich Internet Applications produce eye-popping results because they stand tall against the swarm of ordinary Internet applications.

Adobe's innovative tools like Flex, Adobe AIR™ and Flash and more enable you to combine rich motion, video, imaging, and sound creating the rich experience. And that's not all; Adobe makes sure that your Rich Internet Applications run smoothly on millions of PC's and Internet devices. The Adobe® Flash® Player runtime reaches 98% of Internet-enabled computers and more than 450 million devices, offering you greater reach than with any other client technology available. "

Details about the event:

Location: Deccan Rendezvous, Pune
Date: 30th April
Time: 10AM - 6PM

To Register:
Send your Name, Mobile number, Company Designation, Official Email-ID to flex@endtoend.in

For further details refer the attached "html" document with this mail

Don't forget to "BLOG" about this event?

Flex and Data service

2008-03-21T12:22:00.003+05:30

Hi

lot of "hype" surrounding data services and flex. Issues resolving using blazeds with Jboss. Here is a "quick notes" on BlazeDS and what it does, with configuration details for tomcat and jboss. If you are thinking of securing your RIA application which uses BlazeDS, check the xml files and select the server as jboss and not tomcat( which is set by default)

| View | Upload your own

Moving Ahead

2008-03-17T11:55:00.002+05:30

Post Barcamp, life's been a bit hectic. It was simply fabulous! Thanks to Thoughtworks.

Yes moving ahead, Yet another topic to start a thread on. A series of presentations that would just showcase loads of things. To start off with I have Hibernate, also known as H8. The concept is fairly old. What is ORM? Apart from the fact that Objects can be mapped to tables. But there is more to it. How do you configure it? Is it database dependent?

In Short Visualize ORM as

Class Names = Table Name in your databse
Instance Members in your POJO = Columns in the table
Every object your create = Record in a table

To know more about this, let's look at H8 and how it simplifies things for us.
In this series, the concepts are being put forward. As we move on, we shall dive into the code and configuration.

| View | Upload your own

AJAX + PHP workshop at Gnunify 08

2008-02-09T22:38:00.001+05:30

Hello Friends,

This needs a mention, On 9th Feb we witnessed the passion for PHP + AJAX workshop at Gnunify 08. Over 100 Delegates attended the workshop in the drive to learn the best of the technology. Me & Hussain put up a show which certainly paid out dividends. I have uploaded the slides on Slideshare. Over the two days at Gnunify more than 1700 delegates turned up and the Gnunify Team needs to be congratulated for putting up a show which everyone shall remember for ages.

I attended Atul Kahate's talk on "Open Source", which was nothing less than fantabulous.

| View | Upload your own

Metro.. Web service stack

2007-11-17T21:28:00.001+05:30

Friends,

This has been pending for long now, Metro is yet another web service stack, this time from Sun, and widely contributed by the Glassfish Community. Just like Axis running on Apache Tomcat, we have Metro which runs on GlassFish, and it also support .NET

| View | Upload your own

Integrating Flex and Servlets

2007-11-13T12:09:00.001+05:30

We will create an application that will read names and profession from a database and display them to the user.

1. Create a Servlet, name it ReadData, and paste the following code under the doGet/ doPost method. Create a DSN for your table (Employee) using ODBC (Control panel => Administrative Tools)

========================================================================

response.setContentType("text/xml;charset=UTF-8");
PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
String driver ="sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver";
String url = "jdbc:odbc:Priyank";
String username = "";
String password = "";
try {
// Load database driver if not already loaded.
Class.forName(driver);
// Establish network connection to database.
Connection connection = DriverManager.getConnection(url,password, username);

String query = "SELECT empid,ename FROM Employee";
String xml = "";
Statement stmt = connection.createStatement();
ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery(query);
while(rs.next())
{
xml = xml + "" + rs.getString("empid") + "" + rs.getString("ename") + "";
}
xml = xml + "";
rs.close();
stmt.close();
out.println(xml);
}catch(Exception e)
{
out.println(e);
}
finally {
out.close();
}
2. Start Abode Flex Builder 2.0. Create a new Project and add an MXML application.
I have kept the code in my code bin(repository for your code) Code
follow the link.

If you guys need any explanation with the code, ping me

What is WSDL?

2007-11-13T11:41:00.001+05:30

I would like to introduce you to the concepts of WSDL

1.WSDL => Web service Description Language.
2.Written In XML and validated against XML Schema
3.Used to describe a web service (Equivalent to Java interface definition)
4.Used to locate a web service(uniform resource locator for the web service)

WSDL files includes three set of elements that define a web service

- Import => Optional section that integrates contents from other WSDL file
- Logical(types, message, portType, operation)
- Physical (binding,service,port) which specifies the marshalling format and transport protocol content

Lets delve more into logical/physical elements:

Operations may be message oriented (one-way) or RPC oriented(request-response)
Physical elements: binding, describes how is the data encoded and interpreted?
-service,port describe transport and endpoint location.
Note: transports only send/receive byte streams.

This is just an overview, do check out the next blog on how to create a simple web service.

Going the RIA way

2007-11-13T11:31:00.001+05:30

Some people are calling this “Web 2.0”, but it is really the transition from a page based browsing experience to one that more closely resembles desktop applications. A variety of technologies can be used to deliver this experience… AJAX is currently one of the more popular sets of technologies, mainly because it can be easily adapted into existing web based applications.

For more robust experience with your application, I'll introduce you to Adobe based RIA (Rich Internet Application) using FLEX.

Flex is made up largely of two parts. The first is an IDE built on the open source Eclipse platform. That tool is called Flex Builder 2.0, and is available for free download to students.

Adobe Flex Enterprise Services. Create a http web service, Read a POJO Remotely and list is endless.

To get you started:

Download Adobe Flex Builder 2.0 (Stable Version) form Adobe Labs
Download the Plugin (Eclipse) or the installer which is built on Eclipse.

And more on this in a while...

Back to blogging

2007-11-13T11:26:00.000+05:30

It's a funny story with these passwords! I forgot my password, and guess what i couldn't even remember the question that i had answered to get my password.

Anyways, technology behaves awk. at times. I am back with a bang, and all those techno savvy people get your feeds for Share & Learn, coz you all gonna love the topics.

Video on Dojo Using JSON

2007-08-29T10:20:00.001+05:30

Friends

The time is UP! The video is out and people have been downloading the live demo of 'Dojo using JSON' from various website.

You can also enjoy the demo. You can download all the 4 parts of the video. Please follow the link below:

The link above shows part 4.

Enjoy, and don't forget to blog on this video.

New YouTube API Released into the Wild!

2007-08-29T10:12:00.000+05:30

Friends

The New API ensure Scalability and reliability. So what's in store exactly?

You'll be able to do all the things you could with the old API (search through videos, get user information, and list playlists). On top of that, they have added more flexibility with filtering, querying, and alternative outputs (e.g. if you want output in JSON). Brand new feeds include video responses, full comments list, and related videos.

For further information you can google it or check the http://apiblog.youtube.com/ link for details regarding this cool API

Dojo using JSON

2007-08-28T11:24:00.001+05:30

Friends,

Recently, I had given a talk at SkillsCamp, this is the video of 'Ajax Appication built using DOJO and json'. The standard approach to AJAX has been returning XML from the server side to the client side, and using the Javascript code to manipulate the XML data, now with JSON in limelight, the javascript code remains the same across different scenarios and only the business Logic changes ( such as a POJO being returned in a Eval()able format)

Zend framework - New thing in PHP

2007-07-10T09:59:00.001+05:30

Trying to understand how to use PHP at enterprise level development.
Zend Framework has been released thats Good News .

PHP Frameworks for Web 2.0
- code igniter
- joomla
- cakephp
- symfony
- zend framework

Thanks to amit, who shared his thought about web 2.0 and php at enterprise level... I will certainly post on this very soon... this one is going to hang around for a while.

Amit started off with some geek talk on web 2.0 and the nitty-gritty of it. It was a good discussion session, everyone of the same interest trying to prove that yes PHP and Web 2.0 is still there.

Give some light on Sajax, create ajax application using the sajax api in PHP

BarCamp 3 was a class apart

2007-07-10T09:41:00.000+05:30

Busy with some stuff nowadays,

Well how can i forget the weekend at Persistent, simply fabulous, the food, the talks and everything about it was great!

SilverLight looks to go down the barrel as it still needs lots of installation, but the guys who use them just say its a 4.2mb installation.. you have to install visual studio 2005, and some small packages for Canvas and etc..

Facebook and Ruby on Rails by Abhijit was a nice talk. (Facebook is a social utility that connects

you with the people around you).

Hussain gave a talk on Mobile visualization, very few GPS system in india, although satGuide has started GPS system in india, but the concept of mobile visualization and the concept of orientation was something unique.

All in all this years BarCamp was rocking. Thanks to Persistent and three cheers for the organizers...

BarCamp Pune 3

2007-07-06T10:26:00.000+05:30

Hey friends

Guess Wat! We have BarCamp tommorrow (Saturday, 7th July). I am one of the volunteers there.. and let's hope i can give a talk on something... something on JRuby.. If i get things done on time...

Topics to look forward for
Hussain - Mobile Navigation
Ketan - Plugin development
Rohit Srivastva - System administration
and lot many more ....

Let's have a techy meet tommorrow at Persistent.

Its going to be a rocking weekend

The Code snippet for MySQL using JRuby

2007-06-22T10:43:00.000+05:30

require 'java'

module JavaLang
include_package "java.lang"
end

module JavaSql
include_package 'java.sql'
end

begin
JavaLang::Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance
conn = JavaSql::DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://127.0.0.1:3306/?user=");
stmt = conn.createStatement
rs = stmt.executeQuery("select name from user")
while (rs.next) do
puts rs.getString("name")
end
rs.close
stmt.close
conn.close()
rescue JavaLang::ClassNotFoundException
puts "ClassNotFoundException"
rescue JavaSql::SQLException
puts "SQLException"
end

Ruby and Java, the new theme for our generation

2007-06-22T10:19:00.000+05:30

JRuby is a 100% pure-Java implementation of the Ruby programming language that runs in the JVM.

Lets exhibit this use of JRuby by establishing a type 4 connectivity using mysql database ( mysql db is popular from yahoo to NASA).

1. Create a database user in mysql
Download type 4 pure JDBC driver (http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/Connector-J/mysql-connector-java-3.1.10.zip/from/pick)
Unzip JDBC driver to C:/default folder.
copy the file mysql-connector-java-3.1.10-bin.jar to the lib folder of your Java installation.
add this .jar file location to your Classpath

2. Create a table under the user in mysql
3. Just fire some insert queries on that table.
4. Connect to MySQL using JRuby ( Using the concepts of modules)
There can be name clashes between Java class names and Ruby class names. To resolve this name clash, a ruby module which holds the java class.

I will be posting my code in the my next post ( Be sure to check that out

So what's the fuss about these technologies

2007-06-21T11:02:00.002+05:30

NAND (which stands for "Not and") is a type of flash memory technology that excels at reading, writing and erasing data from flash memory. NOR (short for "Not or") is the other type of flash-based storage and is better suited for retrieving data from smaller devices like cell phones. NAND's strengths make it ideally suited for larger-storage drives.

In early 2006, Samsung Corp. announced the development of a 32 GB Nand Drive that it touted as a "hard-drive" killer, and both Samsung and Sony Corp.

Recent reports have indicated that solid-state hard drives are being built with data throughput capacity of up to 62 mb/sec This is close to 100 times faster than conventional hard drives.

The downside of NAND drives is that these tiny drives cost upwards of $500 or $600.

So what's the fuss about these technologies

2007-06-21T11:02:00.001+05:30

The Top Five Technologies You Need to Know About in '07

2007-06-21T10:48:00.000+05:30

Folks

From next-gen CPU architectures to high-powered personal-area networks, we name the five hottest trends in developing technology.

Five Hot Technologies for 2007

1. Ruby on Rails
Faster, easier Web development

2. NAND drives
Bye-bye, HDD?

3. Ultra-Wideband
200x personal-area networking

4. Hosted hardware
Supercomputing for the masses

5. Advanced CPU architectures
Penryn, Fusion and more

To read more regarding all these technologies: http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9011969
please follow this link

"Must Specify STARTTLS Command First" error while using JavaMail API

2007-06-04T09:39:00.001+05:30

Friends

I tried the JavaMail API (v1.4) , and let me tell you guys when you send the mail through browser you have to specify the SSL provider, and the older method of using the SSL provider class, does not work.

So guys here is the actual code that you should actually implement in your code:
The error that Java generally throws is "Must Specify STARTTLS Command first"

props.put("mail.smtp.starttls.enable","true");
props.put("mail.smtp.socketFactory.port", SMTP_PORT);
props.put("mail.smtp.socketFactory.class", "javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory");
props.put("mail.smtp.socketFactory.fallback", "false");

paste this code before using the Authenticator.

I had a torrid time, rectifying the error. So friends, here is that code snippet that could make your life a bit easier

Cheers

BarCamp 3 (Where Geeks Speak)

2007-06-01T14:30:00.000+05:30

hello friends

BarCamp 2 was a roaring success, it was held at SICSR (Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research), we had topics such as Agile Developement, mash-ups , Nanocast, and not to forget I was one of the speakers, i spoke on Agile Development using Rails.

BarCamp 3 is scheduled to be on 7th and 8th June( unless rain ruins it). Let's assemble and discuss technology and get to the nitty-gritty. The venue is not yet decided. If you want to be a speaker, volunteer, or blogging for barcamp, please check out the following link

http://barcamp.org/BarCampPune3

Let's have some fun.

Cheers

Web 2.0 through Persistent

2007-02-07T21:55:00.000+05:30

Hello everyone

As a student of Symbiosis, i am glad that we are an active bunch of students who contribute to our Guest Lecture heavily. Our aim to "Make impossible seem possible" are paying dividends.

Today, 7th Feb we had a Guest Lecture on Web 2.0, and it was a roaring success as we had Mr. Vinod Kulkarni ( Associate Vice President) from Persistent Pvt. Ltd.

Let me just give you all a brief synopsis of his talk:

Rich Internet Application techniques, through Ajax-based, CSS 2.0?
Syndication and aggregation of data in RSS ( I am more interested towards Atom)
Clean and meaningful URL
Concept of Tagging and Ranking through users ( Flickr, YouTube, WikiMap )
Use of public wiki software
Blogging
Mashups (A mashup is a website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience. It is sometimes created as a critique or commentary on an existing work or product.
XML webservices and API (XmlHttpRequest)

All in all, a great Guest Lecture that could virtually spring the thought process of all our classmates

Thanking Mr. Vinod Kulkarni for sharing his thoughts about Web 2.0 - hip not hype

Rich Internet Applications using RICO

2007-02-05T14:36:00.000+05:30

Ajax is the term that describes a set of web development techniques for creating interactive web applications. One of the key ingredients is the JavaScript object XmlHttpRequest. Rico provides a very simple interface for registering Ajax request handlers as well as HTML elements or JavaScript objects as Ajax response objects. Multiple elements and/or objects may be updated as the result of one Ajax request.

You can find the prototype.js and rico.js (javascript files) on http://openrico.org/

Thoughtworks Geek Nights

2007-01-30T09:44:00.000+05:30

Hello folks

Some of us are interested in FOSS activities, and like to interact with tech folks. Thoughtwork GeekNights sessions at Thoughtworks Pune, welcomes all the developers and enthusiast.
For further queries join the active group:
http://groups.google.com/group/ThoughtWorks-Bangalore-Geek-Nights

Thoughtworkers ROCK !!

Riding Rails : Rails 1.2 released

2007-01-21T22:07:00.000+05:30

Hello friends

Its an Open Source season, and although Gnunify and Linux Asia is coming up on the 27th and 1st week of feb respectively, there is some talk going around regarding Rails 1.2 . For all those who are interested in reading the article on Rails 1.2 : http://weblog.rubyonrails.com/2007/1/19/rails-1-2-rest-admiration-http-lovefest-and-utf-8-celebrations

Enjoy

Dedicated Team

2007-01-18T21:52:00.000+05:30

Hi everyone

Let me just tell you about our GNUnify team, we are a firm believer in Open Source Technologies, some of our team members are working on upcoming technologies such as Ruby on Rails, LAMP, Hobo ( the new generation rails) and the list is ever expanding. There are students who are working towards building a CRM application. In short, we are techno-savy people.

"We believe in what we say, and we say in what we believe"

Please visit our website : http://gnunify.symbiosiscomputers.com
Our public wiki address: http://gnunify.pbwiki.com
Join our mailing and share some thoughts on Open Source : http://groups.google.com/group/gnuunify07

Advocating Open Source through Gnunify

2007-01-18T10:37:00.000+05:30

Hello everyone

It's been long since I have blogged, Gnunify is the 3rd top notch FOSS event of the year after Linux Asia, FOSS.in. GNUnify is an annual technical extravaganza organized by the students of the Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR) to provide a platform for exchange of ideas and information among the industry professionals, students and academia.

Look forward to meet you all there

Windows 2k3 & IIS Problem

2006-10-20T23:03:00.000+05:30

I hope this image should help you all work out the problem much faster

happy coding, and debugging

Problem associated with Win2k3 server and IIS

2006-10-20T22:56:00.000+05:30

There is a solution to every problem in this world, and here is one!

If you are using a third party tool for uploading/downloading documens through ASP, it does not work since win 2k3 server has a high level security on all its folders ( for Linux people Directories )

Here is the solution:

Run -> inetmgr
Double Click on Default Web Stie
Right Click on Default Web site -> properties
Select the Directory Security tab
Click on Edit -> make sure you select the administrator,
Click on "Basic Authentication"

You can contact me, if the problem still persists!

Share & Learn

2006-10-15T09:47:00.000+05:30

HAML( HTML Abstraction markup Language), could this be the new way of creating dynamic pages??

HAML is a new templating engine for ROR. HAML encourages on view/controller seperation while rendering perfectly formatted. This engine ensures one common standard that we can adopt for writing Javascript ( prototype, RJS).

HAML is an abstraction of XHTML with CSS.

For those interested in learning refer the link
http://dev.hamptoncatlin.com/haml/wiki/IntroTutorial

E-commerce Framework

2006-09-30T11:41:00.000+05:30

Ecommerce means buying and selling of goods and services online over the internet. The E-business gains stategice advantage in highly competitive, global marketplace. E-commerce is taking off as one of the premier uses of the internet. ECommerce framework is another upcoming solution to fast sales.We are a group of students from symbiosis working on this framework trying to achieve the following objectives:
Payment Integration (Authorize.net)
Shipping Integration (FedEX)
Quickbook Integration

Share & Learn

2006-09-30T00:16:00.000+05:30

Share & Learn

What is this?

2006-09-29T10:23:00.000+05:30

My blog "Share & learn" should tell everyone what are my intention. I am a firm believer in sharing the knowledge a person acquires. So what are you waiting for, Let's BLOG!!