Web2.0

Here is an nice article regarding web2.0 :
The term Web 2.0 shows up a lot in the on-line and in-print press when discussing some of the new web sites on the Internet. Places like Flickr, Blogspot, Wikipedia, 37Signals, and AjAXWrite are just a few web sites that embody the Web 2?0 paradigm.
Read More>> SciTech Watch - Web 2.0

Update:

Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.

Another good explanatory article What is Web 2.0? Really.

March 30, 2006 | Filed Under web2.0 | 1 Comment 

Why Ruby on Rails Will Ultimately Dominate Software Development

The new 1.1 version of Ruby on Rails almost seems to drive the final nail into the coffin of .NET and J2EE. Enterprises will take their time but everyone else will start turning out great software. Includes rare video interview with Rails creator and detailed overview of Rails 1.1.

read more | digg story

March 29, 2006 | Filed Under programming | Leave a Comment 

Life without mouse

For those who think that life without a mouse reminds you of the 80’s or MS Dos, I’ve got a message for you, it really isn’t that bad. Infact whatever you do with the mouse you can do without it and you can easily learn to use some really great keyboard shortcuts to make your work fast even with a mouse later.
via Lifehacker

Life Without Mouse >> Tips & Tricks [Chrono Tron]

March 28, 2006 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

Taking Free Software to the Farmers and Fields of India

FLOSS is behind an Indian Web site that brings together farmers and agricultural experts to exchange ideas and information.

Thanks to work done by the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-Bombay) and its partners, IT-savvy and knowledge-hungry people across rural India now can find relevant, demand-driven farming knowledge on the aAqua.org Web site. So far, the site has been a great way to bring together people such as Prasad Kaledhonkar, who has a clue about what the white patterns emerging on tomato plant leaves are; farmer’s daughter Niyatee Nilesh, who wants advice on buying agricultural land; and Shirish, from rural Maharashtra, who wants to learn about using waste water from the school kitchen to irrigate gardens and crops. Read More>>

March 27, 2006 | Filed Under india, tech | 1 Comment 

Little tweaks with javascript : Bookmarklets.

A bookmarklet is a snippet of Javascript that can be bookmarked (or saved as a favorite) inside your web browser. Bookmarklets can enhance web pages, add special functionality using javascript which is supported by most browsers today and make your browsing experience a lot more efficient by offering one-click access. I will first start with basics.
Consider a simple javascript :

When you type this in browsers location bar then it will show a message box with “you clicked on the page” message. Now change this slightly :

Now this will repeatedly pop-up the message box in every 1-sec interval. Though this is of no use i’m just telling this to explain basics of javascript.

Now filling form with javascript :

Now this javascript will fill the value “someText” in field login_username of form in html page.
And lets try to take some user-input :

Now this javascript will first check if some text is selected on page. If no text is selected it will prompt user for text else will show an message box with selected text. Now we can put this script to some good use : like

Now this will search the selected text on my blog or if text is not selected than prompt user for text.

An equivalent script for searching on wikipedia is :

Now you can bookmark this script in toolbar so every tim you click on button in toolbar it will execute javascript. For example Drag this to your firefox bookmark toolbar :

Search Wikipedia

Some more bookmarklets :
Scale Images

Sort Table

Transpose Table

Show Password

So in a way they are different from bookmarks and provides extra functionality through power of javascript. Here are some more javascript bookmarklet
You can view source for each bookmarklet by viewing page source .
You can find more bookmarklets at : http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/

See this helpful screencast on bookmarklets.

Some More Example at Wisdombay

Updated : For changing documenet backgrounds :
Change to Red
Change to green
Change to blue
This may not work with pages using css

March 23, 2006 | Filed Under programming | 6 Comments 

Rubiks Cube Timer

This is a javascript timer made by me as i needed it some timer application on linux specific to Cubing. It also calculates average of your timings. Will try to add more features.
http://www.aburad.com/cubing/timer.html

here is an screenshot:

Now Google gadget for cubing timer : Read about it.

Also Download Adobe AIR Desktop application: RubikTimer.air for cubing timer: Read about it

Happy Cubing !!

March 21, 2006 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

Splash image in GRUB

The splash image is the image shown in the background when GRUB (the GRand Unified Bootloader) is displaying the list of operating systems you can boot.

Creating image

  1. Start the GIMP.
  2. Click on File->New or type Ctrl+N
  3. In the new image dialog, change Width to 640 pixels and Height to 480 pixels. (The image should be of size 640×480 pixels.) Now click OK.
  4. Create the image which you would like to be the splash image. It’s quite fun to experiment with the various tools of the GIMP!
  5. After you have finished creating the image, hit Alt+i or right click on the image and click on Image->Mode->Indexed…
  6. In the Indexed Color Conversion dialog that appears, click on the radio button “Generate optimal Palette” and in “# of colors” enter 14. Click OK.(The image should be of only 14 colors)
  7. Now right-click on the image and click on File->Save As…Save the file as ImageName.xpm in a directory of your choice.

You can also pickup an image and convert to required format by ImageMagik: 

convert -resize 640x480 -colors 14 picture.jpg ImageName.xpm

Installing the Image

In the /boot/grub/grub.conf you have to point splashimage to newly created image i.e

# Splash Image
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/ImageName.xpm.gz

Now you just need to reboot !!

Here is my boot splash screen: I just added my name and Gentoo logo :

This is converted to jpeg. As blogger doesn’t support xpm images.

And some others :Some splash images

UPdated
For LILO you can refer to Lilo Boot splash

March 20, 2006 | Filed Under linux, tutorial | Leave a Comment 

Web2.0 Applications

Here are some useful web2.0 applications :

Update (10 dec 2007)
My Office 2.0 Setup (Good collection of online office apps)

March 18, 2006 | Filed Under web2.0 | 3 Comments 

How to write a Makefile

“make is a utility that automates the process of converting files from one form to another, doing dependency tracking and invoking external programs to do additional work as needed. Its dependency tracking is very simple and centers on using the modification time of the input files.”

read more

March 18, 2006 | Filed Under tutorial | Leave a Comment 

Poster of History of Programming Languages

Poster of history of programming languages of 1954-2004.

read more | digg story

March 14, 2006 | Filed Under programming | Leave a Comment 

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