Pune, the Silcon Valley of India

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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}'" />
<!-- If you are using any external libraries such as Cairngorm.swc or flexlibs.swc then you need to specify them in this manner -->
<!-- <arg line="-external-library-path '${flexlib}'" />
<arg line="-external-library-path+='${cairngorm}'" /> -->
</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

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

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

"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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.