September 22, 2007

A peep into Yahoo Mash!

I just claimed profile on Yahoo’s new social network, Yahoo Mash! The site began with "invitation only" preview, and got my invitation from my friend Vishnu. Yahoo already have a social network site called Yahoo 360. But this is mostly ignored! So Yahoo is about to launch a whole new social network site to complete with orkut, facebook and others? but first lets have peep into Mash.

Like any other social networking services available Mash also goes with the terminology of profile, friends but with a catch. Users can edit each othe
r’s profiles, redecorating, changing information, and adding features. New features are presented in the form of modules which can be added and moved around in the profile. There are lots of modules that can be added to the profile like RSS readers,Mash pets, Guest book, Asteroids etc..

Mash have differnet type for menu, you can view your profile's and friends latest action in "Pulse". This is somthing orkut have started recently. In orkut after the UI revamp, we can see latest activites in our neighbourhood, a similar concept is "Pulse". The "Friends" menu is simple for now with no search functionality and limited grouping. You can gourp your friends to best friends, Just friends and Family only. You can invite as many friends and even import your mailing address book from Yahoo, Gmail and MSN.

So for now Yahoo Mash is infant now. There are more functionality to come for sure!

September 16, 2007

BPL Mobile announces new theft protection for mobiles.

BPL Mobiles have a new solution to mobile theft in the form of Ultimate Mobile Tracker (UMT).BPL Mobile is one of India's premier mobile phone service provider and has come up with this new solution powered by Sitare.

UMT is a software application that claims to help you track and even r
ecover your lost mobile phone. The application has to be installed in your mobile with twoalternate mobile numbers for being notified in case your phone is stolen. The application will always be active in the background and will not be visible yo user to disable or uninstall the tracker software.

Explaining how the application works, this is what BPL Mobile says:


In case your phone is stolen and the application detects any change of SIM card, 2 SMS will be immediately fired to the two alternate recipient nos. which had been entered during the setup. These messages will be sent by the O.S. directly through the kernel, without any notification on the mobile screen. The thief will be unaware that he is being tracked!

The messages will be sent periodically every 60 minutes making sure to the owner that the phone is active and helping him to trace the thief. The application, in short, will not lock or damage the phone making it unusable to the thief. If the phone becomes unusable, the thief might damage it or discard it and the phone will never be recovered back. In order to prevent this, the application will smartly allow the thief to use the phone and at the same time will discreetly keep tracking him to the owner. The application icon will be hidden and the thief will be unaware of existence of any such application! He will not be able to disable or uninstall it either.

The UMT is available for Rs. 149 one time fee. It is built to work on all SYMBIAN O.S. phones. A similar technology was introduced by Samsung for some of their mobiles, but UMT covers a wide range of mobiles. I still doubt how effective this solution will be in India as security has always been a issue when compared to western countries. But if UMT serves its purpose, its going to be a major step in the security of mobile phones.

September 15, 2007

Come back for Ubuntu!

After 9 months Ubuntu is back to my life. Today my friends and I decided to ditch Microsoft and turn back to Linux at our home system. So from now on we will be using Ubuntu to browse, listen music and orkut! he he.

Installing Ubuntu was as simple as ever. I have used it till I came to Bangalore. Everything went fine on my friends system and once the broadband configurations was done.. we were connected!! But just being connected was not we needed, Our next move was to update the software and install them.. as I type this entry, A big list of installation is going on!

Another problem is accessing the NTFS partitions.. By default we are not able to access the NTFS. I am installing ntfs-3g for it now. You will find enough help regarding this matter in Ubuntu forums itself. So, I am on the Linux again!

Happy Blogging :)

Should Java developers look at ColdFusion?

Adobe has been on heights with their products for the last one year. Adobe ColdFusion 8 was released this july.It's an application server and software development framework used for the development of computer software in general, and dynamic web sites. Question is, should java web developers look into these technologies? Lets see why and why not choose ColdFusion.

ColdFusion is a similar product to Microsoft's ASP.NET or Java Enterprise Edition. The first version of ColdFusion was released in 1995 by Allaire. In 2001 Allaire was acquired by Macromedia, which was in turn acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005.Interesting part of history is, Microsoft was once interested in acquiring Allaire but,Allaire showed a lack of interest! Initially ColdFusion was completly written in C++ until 2002. The entire application server was rewritten in Java that has resulted in recent Java-based versions being labelled with the "MX" suffix.But in the latest version, this "MX" has been dropped.

Enough of history.. Lets see its features and get into our topics! ColdFusion is available for on Linux, UNIX, Windows, and Mac OS X. But the application server is not a freeware from Abode. You can download a free developer edition and use it. The primary feature of ColdFusion is its associated scripting language, ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML), which resembles HTML in syntax. Other than CFML, ColdFusion supports programming languages such as server-side Actionscript and embedded scripts that can be written in a JavaScript-like language, known as CFScript.

Another great feature is increased productivity using ColdFusion. Like many dynamically typed scripting languages, there is no need to build, deploy, or restart your application server.You simply modify the code and refresh your browser to view your latest changes.What happends behind the scene is that server compiles .cfm pages into Java servlets.However, compilation is done in memory and not to disk.

Next major feature is something which java developers really will like. Developers can make seamless calls to all the built-in Java libraries, as well as those bundled with ColdFusion and any custom APIs of your own.Using CFScript developers to wrap java code and feel home! Integration with other technologies such as CORBA, web services, and COM is quite simple. Developers can also make calls to native methods on Linu,Unix or Windows using CFXes (ColdFusion Extension Tags). Due to these facilities there is no need to import another third-party library. So at the same time, ColdFusion is a big library!

So with these advantages, should Java developers turn and have a look at this technology? According to me, Java and JSP will still stay more powerful and flexible. Even though ColdFusion has productivity, does it give the high performance and reliability? For those who have never (Including me) tried ColdFusion before, its time we try it!

September 14, 2007

QNX "Opens" Neutrino!

QNX Software Systems, leading provider of superior realtime operating system (RTOS) software and services for embedded design announced its move revolutionizes software development practices by combining the best of the open source and commercial software domains.

Neutrino, the realtime operating system from QNX will be open sourced under a new hybrid software licensing arrangement. Neutrino is ward-winning, microkernel-based OS released in 2001. Now, the source code will be available for non-commercial use and anybody can access it! According to press release the first source release includes the code to the QNX Neutrino microkernel, the base C library, and a variety of board support packages (BSPs) for popular embedded and computing hardware.

The new hybrid model will allow free access to code but, but commercial deployments of QNX Neutrino runtime components still require royalties, and commercial developers will continue to pay for QNX Momentics development seats. So, what is QNX targeting at? Is it that they want to open up just for innovation and improving Neutrino and sell it off through their commercial license? We have seen many company follow this type of hybrid software model to take advantage of open source developer community!

September 13, 2007

Techno Paper gets a new look!

Thanks to Dan S, who built the Gray Press theme from PressRow. I just took the Gray Press theme and modified it suite my need. So, if you ask what's new in this mutated template.. I have a list!

My major advancement is that I learned how a blogger template is built from scratch. Initially I tired to come up with my own template. But, I find less time to spend on these stuff after my daily work. So finally, I listed out what I need in my new template. This was my list :
  • Menu in header
  • Better profile display
  • Search box other than Google custom search
  • Tag Cloud
  • Contact Me page
  • Peek-a-boo view of articles
  • Customized 3 column template
  • Better template (run away from my present template! )


The menu was part of PressRow and Gray Press had a image header. I re-introduced the menu into this template, and has the original look and feel. My new search box now makes use of the defaulf blogger search rather than the Google custom search or other tools.

Another important feature is "Contact Me" page. You can access it from my menu. The contact form is from jotform. To integrate it with this template I had to make use of some javascript. Peek-a-boo feature was obtained from the normal blogger hack blogs found around!, And thank to those who developed it.

So here is the new template for my blog after sacrificing my blogging time build a template!
Happy blogging!