First pipesCamp unconference

yahoo! pipes is one the most truly innovative applications that have provided a platform for application developers and end-users alike. And ever since their launch, several reviews later, it has grown well beyond being just a "An interactive feed aggregator and manipulator" . Be it a toolkit on Wall Street , a utility on a box or iphone hacks.

I'm one of the organizers of the first ever pipesCamp, which will be held in Chennai,India on December 23rd, 2007 . It 'll be interesting to bring the community together and just see can be hacked up, track work being done , and generally see how yahoo! pipes could churn out some amazing hacks and brilliant applications for bloggers, developers and end-users - at the same.

what
unconference for yahoo! pipes hackers and hobbyists. sessions, workshops and a "hackday" for showcasing pipes.

why
why not ! building a community around the yahoo! pipes enthusiasts, share ways to maximize the power of the utility itself, learn how your favourite pipes are built, show off neat tricks of your own , and spread some "pipes" love to the community.

when
December 23rd, 2007 ( Sunday)
10 am - 5 pm IST

where
Chennai , India
( Check wiki for venue details )


what next ?!
Check out pipesCamp right now,or on upcoming! Add a talk of your own , register by adding your name to the participants list, and get hacking !

hover.in , the product/company i've co-founded with Arun ( of trak.in fame ) , will be one of the sponsors of the event, and we're looking to meet the yahoo! pipes enthusiasts out there, and have loads of fun while at it. For more about the event as well as sponsorship info, buzz me at +91 988 4545 944 , or send a mail over to kode at hover dot in .

site : http://pipesCamp.pbwiki.com
upcoming : http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/388488
y! group : http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/pipesCamp/
y! pipe : http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=e56c09bb5c8843ea700638e8ac1ee78d


Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode

Technorati Tags: unconference, pipesCamp, yahoo, pipes, chennai, event

Squeak, Erlang and Startups @ chennai.rb meet

I was pleasantly surprised when the word 'erlang' sprung up in a discussion at ilugc threads courtesy one of Vamsee 's posts. I was naturally excited and looked forward to the talk scheduled at the local ruby user group chennai.rb on the same Saturday. Weekends usually begin at the beach at 5.30am to sweat it out in a awesome non-contact rugbie like sport called ultimate frisbee. Check out the yahoo group which has a 60 members and growing , and include most of the 20-30 odd people who turn up before sunrise on weekends despite the ballistic rains!

Speaking of rains, i guess the rubyists in chennai did think twice before venturing out yesterday . The venue was also changed last minute, but i had no problem of having a meet with just 5-6 people. And i'm glad i did go ! There was John - from Tachyon whose innovative work i've had real appreciation for earlier,(they've made quilpad and rediff even invested in them some time ago)

John's talk was interestingly on squeak -an avtar of smalltalk in which he demo'ed the tightly integrated concept of user and system generated object , scriptable etoys, several ways in which programming could be tackled by children in a more user-friendly and 'just works' manner . It's a real treat to have someone like him around who understands the intricacies of so many languages and core computer science concepts. I've attached the mind map exported jpegs (cmaps)of both talks ,and you access my cmaps of the talks here.

Vamsee's talk on erlang started with the history and introduction of the language , neatly swapping between code showing the assignment,basic operations and arithmetic, strings handling, tuples atoms and lists, and indeed was a nice opportunity to throw open the discussion comparing with the same in other languages.

Gapp , was there as well and he talked about his upcoming project that involves capturing one moment in the lives of chennai' ites, more specifically - November 3rd 2007 by aggregating pictures into a flickr pool with snapshots of wherever u are in chennai at that point of time . check out the details at the official 311pm website.

Overall, i think with the talks especially of the one on erlang, the stage is set to work on yaws , and take the startup to the next step indeed 8 ) Railsfactory and reviewsaurus apart from a 360 degree employee turned up. It was a little funny when they realised that i was aka Bosky since I've grown a real thick beard. I usually always introduce myself as Bhasker. Nice to know that ur known in some circles ! 8 ) .

After the talk, we talked about what all of us were upto. Very exhilarating to know that each and everyone who turned up were involved in either a 2-10 strong startup or some project creative project . Vamsee talking about the good,bad and the ugly facets of working on google knockoffs . Challening all the same ! I might even think of taking two seats in their office as well for working on my venture . Left around 7-8, Gapp tells me that they even continued with beer and more talk till 11. Shoot,missed out on that 8 ) !

Vamsee also suggested that i, or anyone for that matter have a shot at the next speaking session which would continue to be at his neat office of his company Viamentis. Clearly the ruby user group definitely stands out because we did'nt even have a formal session on ruby itself ,although we did compare other languages and compare notes with the nice projector (coutesy sayid of TKF) Perhaps i would have a go at the functional nature of javascript ,or perhaps hopefully even erlang. I'm sure PVS would have loved to be at the meet, especially since he's the one who encouraged me to venture into the abyss that is erlang by his experiments with ejabbered and take concurrent programming . Moreover, The apache Vs yaws debate seems one-sided enough to convince me to get my own testing environment setup on my lappy. As with most languages, the best way i feel to learn a language is indeed porting x from language A to language B. Looking forward to a little unlearning , more such meets ,more frisbee on weekends ,and a lot of addictive hacking ahead 8 )

Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode

Technorati Tags: chennairb, ruby, squeak, tachyon, vamsee, erlang, mindmap, gapp, bosky101

"The AJAX Experience" sites are cool. But Why Is It In Flash?

"Hopefully someday - good friend of mine" Mike Arrington ; ) started this awesome series on techcrunch . I'm so glad this came up - i've been itching to tell it to as many people as possible ...

Google’s SearchMash Adds Snap Shot Previews. But Why Is It In Flash?

Check Out The New Windows Home Server Demo. But Why Is It In Flash?

So My Contribution to the series...

The AJAX Experience Conference sites are cool. But Why Is It In Flash? : )

the only javascript/ajax on this site is probably to detect the flash version...shame! Know of any more unknown anomalies ,join in the fun by tagging your post butWhyIsItInFlash ! ; )

Note : I still have great respect for your work, Ben & Dion. 8 )

Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode

Technorati Tags: butWhyIsItInFlash, ajaxian, flash, techcrunch,mike Arrington, microsoft, google

Shared OPML, and dektop rss reader productivity

Off late i've been adding a lot more blogs from media/ blogosphere (techcrunch 'ish blogs, company blogs , and so on ) apart from the developer blogs that i cherish the most . One of the categories that i have been having a close watch and building on are indian developers who are being there and doing that ; ) You'll most of the individuals mentioned in my post about indian hacker's in the opml file as well . Ofcourse, most of the list are people I would personally know or like to know but as a technology / web geek i think that sharing this list would really help introduce you to a lot of really good blogs.

I'm also surprised why there is'nt any viral site for sharing rss reader opml files ?!(or is it just my ignorance!). So i'm going to upload my opml files once a quarter so that it might be useful to other hackers, entrepreneurs and technology watchers like me .

And here's for an awesome tip . Sure it wont be easy reading up on 1000+ , i'd prefer to take my time and read most of them . (especially if u skip a day or two ! ) SO what i've done is what i think a more leisurely way to read my favourite blogs without the clutter and time constraints .

Here's what i did two days back :
I installed a desktop rss reader on my laptop. I imported my google reader opml . Once a day i go online and let it autoupdate . Finito ! now i can take my time, change the themes ,font's ,add rating ,see my reading statistics, custom tags, searches ,bookmarks, even blog from it, and more importantly - take my time to read all the 1000+ feed items ,as and when i want.

step 1: exported my google opml file.
im guessing that you are familiar with rss readers, and blogs and rss . If you use a bloglines or a google reader there should be a export subscription /export feeds / export as opml option somewhere. save the file on your system. Here are my google reader opml files.

step 2: downloaded a desktop rss reader
I expected a little more from google readers offline operation that used google gears. sadly though it just did'nt work . Moving on, i looked around for a couple of desktop rss readers. ended up on just installin one though called blogbridge . FYI : a nice link that higlights 9 reasons to use desktop readers, and here's another one that tells you how to make your own desktop rss reader. i then imported the opml file, and can choose as to when it should update (either on program startup or when i say to get updates )


i still like to still to maintain / add feeds ,etc to my online rss reader(google reader) since i can access them when im not on either my machine or the laptop. another hassle is that after reading posts from the desktop reader- they wont be 'marked as read' ,but i still think that the move has let me catch up with the 'posts that i always wanted to take time to read' and the 'blogs i never had time to read and so on' ,and all this offline . I think it's worth it thinking /trying it out.

Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode

Technorati Tags: opml, rss, , reader,, google, , desktop, , feeds,, bosky

Thoughts on Returnable, and Contextual search and advertising platforms

I was pleasantly surprised with this post by Robert Scoble up on podtech...

The best part of being a startup is that you are forced to tackling specific problems.

It was a few months after i started the Returnable Project in March,2007 that i heard about the 11$mn odd funding that israeli startup kontera had received. Returnable , was pretty similiar - i said to myself but with a more developer and architectural perspective . It started off, and continues to be a small pet project i maintain with PVS - that deals with content delivery for end-user programmers ,but more catered to developers and the software engineering spectrum. It was to let ordinary end-users to concentrate on what to bring in in-text, instead of the how. Another entrepreneur buddy was also discussing ways to invoke returnable within their product. And so it is with a sense of pride and excitement that i assess that for a open source project I think it has served as a testing bed for things to come. I definitely am glad to see the buzz "contextual delivery" , apart from the the continued voids and irregularities that are still persistently haunting adopters of in-text content and ad delivery.

There are already a lot of players in the advertising space who offer in-text advertisements, and so on. There's Kontera, Miva , snapshot (that does a good job with the screenshots), addThis (fo social bookmarks) and so on. Can companies like Proximic or for that matter Kontera afford to give competitors another five years before building “contextual content delivery” and “in-text advertising” expertise ?

I honestly don’t think so 8 )

Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode

Technorati Tags: scobleizer, podtech, in-text, contextual, intext, content, delivery, bhaskervk

where are the indian hacker's ? : Bosky's reply

I was reading this thread on ycombinator news, that went :"Where are the Indian hackers? "

About indian hackers... ohh they're out there all right... they're out there.

indian cities like chennai ,bangalore,bombay ,pune and delhi have really making the most of the unconference,hacker & silicon valley culture that's slowly building up.

There have always been examples of startups with a combination of design and development teams across india and us can do . take zimbra, riya , slingshot ,et cetera, or the bigger and more established zoho and slideshare . but for the smaller ones, you need to keep your eyes glued to unconferences .

If you're flying down to india, you might want to subscribe to http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/3556/ for the upcoming unconferences .

Its run by gud friend - and pythonista siddhi govindraj who for instance runs a one man project management s/w called silver stripe. Hey i think i might even talk more about the best hacker's in india i've had the privilege of ...uhmm adding to their feed subscriber list 8 )

ravi mohan, who just happened to port all of google director peter norvig's AI book code to java - is a one-man hacker working on nothing but the best of AI related work for the past few years.

swaroop ch , whose python hackery got him into adobe's flex team in india ,has written a book on python .he's one of the inventors of the ipod charger called ion.

gopal v , heads the open source project dotGNU,apart from contributions to native php code from yahoo's bangalore office is one of the most talented native code hacker's out there when it comes to the open source stack.

sriram krishnan, who 's story and 'curve to geekdom' is possibly the most enchanting, is a great example of a hacker getting noticed in the blogosphere, and all the way to microsoft.he nows works in the popfly team at redmond.

sidu ponnappa, is very 'agile' hacker with very diverse skill sets working in thoughtworks bangalore, apart from a very interesting mobile sideline project with a few friends called inactiv .

abdul qabiz , macromedia/adobe/yahoo/ and now hacker at Nanocasts r&d (called Mixercast ) is a hacker in the flash/flash space.

pvsundarram, who's addiction for designing scalable apps from native mvc to jabber & erlang ,to javascript hackery has taken this hacker to be invited for a number of startups in bangalore,bombay and chennai. he now works at zoomin ,and was my colleague at tutorvista where we worked on the whiteboard & chat collaboration product.

balakumar muthu - along time java based hacker, ganesh app for robotics and c++, labsji for smart gadgets, anantha narasimhan ,Seshu Karthick for web2.0 , the brilliant bunch of hackers at tachyon , antano solar john for AI , vipin from au-kbc for networking , .... i could go on . (maybe u can suggest more ?)

Heck, even i' ve quit and now finally taken time off to hack up a few open source projects, apart from bootstrapping for the startup i'm co-founding . (Note: this is where i hint that ppl interested in joined me can ping me ;) )

one thing about all of them is that they're all got a very diverese skillset,and can express themselves verry well.i could go on with more people i know..hmm wish i could export my google opml .... The day of reckoning will however be when the first ycombinator with indian hacker's . Grab a couple of the names from above and make a team - now that my friends will be history in the making 8 )

But anyways - in the end we've can't say that we don't have the hacker's right now . i think it's the "getting it to market" ability that we are still perfecting. and part of that has to do with the eco-system for startups and entrepreneurs...

The good news is that that's exactly what is fortunately getting better ... in fact when i read "icon : steve jobs" a few quarters ago - i could'nt help but notice how lucky i was to be in india right now. Very much reminiscent of the hacker culture from the 1980's ...

Can't wait to get started 8 )

Keep Clicking,

Bhasker V Kode
Hacker, and proud to be indian... 8 )

PS: i wish someone updated the nice compilation of indian startups logo's

UPDATE1: hey I just heard about Yahoo 's HackDay India . well that might not be too bad a place to find 200 odd hackers assemble together 8 )

Technorati Tags: hackers, hack,hackdayIndia, india, indian, startups, bhasker, bosky

Updates from Indian Independence Day ,2007

Updates

1. Revamped my personal web site over at "Bhaskervk.com"
   
2. Added a new comic series : Screenshots, by Bosky (thnx sagaro for the trackback)
3. Reading up on a few interesting mailing lists over at flex_india google group, hdiidc , and barcamp_Bangalore (both yahoo groups) .
   
4. Reading up on a lot of interesting indian techie's blogs. (speaking of which , it would be great to be able to have a sumup of indian geek's blog posts)
5. Contemplating on lot of ideas on, ways to improve the Returnable project, reading up the parse trees while i'm half way through compiling x to y , whats next for startups, learning and the idea of higher education abroad, and the future... hmmm
   

Amidst some domain renewal and hosting provider hassles, ended up continuing with square brothers . They happen to host the university results, and have not problems with them personally. Just got pissed when bhaskervk.com showed up with the default taken sort of mesage, since i delayed my payment by a day since they icici bank could'nt confirm them as a payee. Most of the times, you should'nt have any problems , but now and then you do have certain glitches and usability problems. Like long periods of 'wait while we update' lasting days for even stuff like changing numbers, or that it should probably enter the 'hall of shame' for not supporting firefox most of the time and promptly proposing ie. Not that i have against ie, but as india's biggest private bank, lack of support for atlllleast A-grade browsers is an absolute show-stopper.

I also added a little comic strip called 'screenshots', for all the vetti time that i have on my hands. Plus its a great outlet for some artisitc creativity. check it out some time. The image you see at the top of this post ,is the independence day special (#5) .


Having just completed working on a vector-graphic product myself, i found the thread on the flex india user group about 2d,3d advancements in flex particularly interesting. Check out thus awesome demo of second-life like capabilities within flex by a company called outsmart and you'll know what i'm talking about.

If you find this interesting, you will definitely find the stuff over at Aviary, compelling - though it does a little over ambitious.More than 14 online tools of varying complexity: an image editor, color swatch generator, pattern generator, vector-based editor, 3D modeler, audio editor, music generator, video editor, desktop publishing tool, word processor, painting simulator, custom image product creator, photo analyzer, and file system to store it all on. phew ! Check out their well updated and informative blog as well.

Google, btw has been talking about a special gift for india, celebrating it's i-day. wonder if it has anything to do with a mapping /google earth related.

Coming to Returnable, i've seen a couple of similiar prototpes springing up . First i saw a israeli startup called koncara getting its second round of funding with in-text advertising. Returnable can do this, but now just ads but also in-text content on tooltips at different events .Secondly, the purple -include library profiled by ajaxian. While they have used src,and dont have support for events, returnable supports the three events : onhover,onclick and onload. Moreover, Returnable uses the href (forward compatible for all elements in the next version of xhtml5) and users can get the content either in-text OR as a tooltip ! PVS, my c0-developer at Returnable, even managed to get a returnable element tooltip inside the title of a blogger post !




I'm glad the Returnable Project, has taken a lead in this pioneering end-user programming methodology ,in using their inherent knowledge of URL's to expose a simnple HTML api to spawn intuitive behaviour on the web. Check out more on The Returnable Project , and the project site for more information.

So many things to read & write about , so little time ! btw, does anyone know of any good blogs to get lil tidbits like what ive posted above ? I'd love to check them out ! 8 )

Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V K

Technorati Tags: bhasker, bosky, screenshots, flex_india, independence, purple-include, returnable, vector, graphics

WebRunner Vs Adobe AIR shootout : My views

I have been keeping a causal watch of what Mark Finkle has been upto with WebRunner. And this post is in reference to the the debate between the warring camps, mark finkle from mozilla,working on WebRunner and Ryan Stewart with Adobe, talking about Adobe AIR. They have been exchanging some thoughts, I thought i would as well.

Here it is ...

webrunner

adobe air

having site specific browsers seemed like a gud idea. I dont want to open stuff in new tabs . How about having a different desktop Firefox Instance (FYI:i dint say 'process') for every SSB. no "virtual machine"ish sort of setup, but simply is Firefox-tweaked and called WebRunner as the run-time for apps target users: people who like a seperate webrunner for each site upside : (yet to find any !) downside & what i would have liked to see : why on earth would i want something that gives absolutely no value to me as a developer !!! if webrunner concentrated on building a class library with decent system access documentation(sorry to say,i still dont find the mozilla docs on these half as useful or readable compared to say flex docs). forget even building your own, atleast i shud have interfaces in webrunner for all possible classes and then plug'n'play with js libraries like jquery /dojo or hell make a new project on mozilla just to create just the plug'n'play interfaces for webrunner first,and maybe a decent js api for creating,accessing SVG. It really pisses me off every time webrunner is compared to adobe air. its beyond comparison, mozilla and webrunner cannot be sit back on the laurels of firefox for the success of webrunner. instead it shud actually code a class library that can be shipped with webrunners or ssb's or whatever 'schemes' Mark Finkle has on his mind. Coz personally webrunner does'nt even seem like an app worth talking just because it's stripping off the firefox browser. The first Webrunner was prototyped in 06, and not one new feature that was'nt courtesy of firefox! That's sad even compared to the progress made by silverlight - a late entrant! Webrunner, needs to innovate as well, and quick - if it wants to really play with in the big league !

having flash apps work for the desktop seems like a gud idea. I don't want to open a browser for every flash app. How about having a single desktop run-time for all adobe air apps "Virtual Machine"ish Adobe AIR is the run-time for my apps target users: people who like a seperate webrunner for each site downside: another process clobbering with my cpu memory if it becomes popular ! upside : adobe has effectively solved a major porting problem by allowing flash developers to write in a language they prefer, and access the beautiful and growing class libraries for everything from system ,to math,to vector graphics. what i would have liked to see : just keep it going ... and don't bloat the runtime size too quickly!

By the way,i'm not biased towards any one side (or the third - silverlight 8 ) ), but have always respected both mozilla, firefox and everyone involved ; as well as the phenomenal innovation shown by adobe with flex and apollo.

Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode

Export excel sheet data to wiki's and html - Introducing ExcelKoder

The Evening of Junly 16th,2007

Guess ,i could'nt wait for the hackernight/compilers & interpreters collective at barcamp Bangalore happening in a few weeks

Here's a small utility i wrote one evening,while figuring out how to share plans for scheduling of barcamp bangalore. Geeky part, is that everything from css,to js and html written in this demo was done in good ol' notepad 8 )

Here's the link to the ExcelKoder demo. Might even host it up as a google project .hmmm.

Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode

Technorati Tags: javascript, bcb4, barcampbangalore, hack, excel, wiki, export,

Indian Independent music is ALIVE and kicking !!

When i first saw sites like radioverve and gigpad for indian independent music spring up , I wondered who would be creating this kind of music from india . Well, today as a music lover and self-taught guitarist , i'm more than convinced at the amazing changes and advances happening in the indian independent music scene.

Take for instance - my good friend ,Prakash Hariharan has been playing the mandolin for 10 odd years. Sometime in college few years back, he got himself a new acoustic guitar ,and an electric one . And started playing amazing leads on both that led to him drifting towards fusion and little jazz. He and other friends from college like Raghu (Bass,vocals, composition) ,Karthik(vocals,guitar)& Deepak (drums) all from SVCE , have been making demos and jingles and performing at a semi-professional level for some time now .My gf was judged best singer at an inter-college event,and sings for the college band , and i know how she really enjoyed every practice session they had, and admits - its all hard work and patience. She should know - she's been learning classical indian music for the past 15 years ,Prakash for 10 odd years on the mandolin started off classical himself. Some like the pianist junior ,have even made it big in the band called Oxygen. Great to see them win gigs ,be it a fusion at iit,iim or the other events in south india. Hey ,incidently I had a great time myself playing the guitar for while in the western music band. I still do enjoy each minute i spend everyday with my custom made spanish guitar 8 )

Whats new though , is that unlike anyone else i know or anytime before ... Prakash has put away a nice job at a software company to pursue his dream . He joined a radio station to learn production , while spinning his own compositions in his home studio . recording and jamming with other buddies . He's been showing his demo's to people ,even to Guitar Prasanna and hopes to one day join the Berkely school of music . Really awesome to see people passionate and pursuing what they love 8 )

On the same lines, I was really stunned when i heard the awesome potential in indian inde music 8 ) ( songs from red cube, indus creed especially ) .Lot of indian independent music happening ....

Check out

1. http://www.split-magazine.com/downloads
2. http://split-magazine.com/radio
3. radioverve
4. gigPad
   

Prakash puts some of his music over at his blog and runs his own podcasts with his music , and I'll ask him to update news on his new band in bangalore .

Here's a demo of Red Cube's single called "some where in the corner".

Cheers to the music,guitars and the free world ! 8 )

Update : Also on similiar lines, is tempostand.com . And here's cheers to Oritus, for their awesome song and now my personal fav indian inde ballad - 'Many a Mile' - by Oriitus.
Keep Clicking,
Bhasker

Technorati Tags: indian, indie, music, pkharry, radioverve, redcube, split,tempostand, oritus,svce, gigpad,bosky101

Top 5 MUST READ Javascript Resources

Some MUST READ javascript links that I thought i'd share.

Excellent Code style tutorial , with easily undertandable code snippets ( Bad Vs Ok examples)
=>From Mozilla, http://wiki.mozilla.org/JavaScript:SpiderMonkey:Coding_Style

Best example of well documented code
=> The YUI Javascript library, start off with reading http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/docs/YAHOO.js.html

Excellent Javascript beginner tutorials
=> from Javascript Guru- Douglas Crockford's stable
===> http://javascript.crockford.com/survey.html
===> http://javascript.crockford.com/code.html

Best ever Advanced javascript & Optimization tutorial
=> from Opera, and probably the most understated article on javascript to date. http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/efficient-javascript/?page=all

Excellent Advanced javascript tutorials
=> http://www.quirksmode.org/js/contents.html

Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode

Technorati Tags: javascript, js, programming, tutorials, bosky101, kode

Introducing toXmlString : Javascript XML DOM to String Conversion

I was surprised to find no function to convert a javascript xml dom object to a string. I did find an upcoming feature added in Javascript 1.6 by the cool folks at Mozilla, but it really did not cater to xml dom objects already created /accessable by javascript.

I've seen PHP's PEAR ,and XML_Parser classes and often like to take part of the xml to resend/reuse later in my application. So since I could'nt find one , I wrote one 8 ) !

toXmlString(xmlObj) : string

/**
* @author Bhasker V Kode
* @name toXmlString
* @description Functional Style Method to Generate XML String from any xml DOMobject .
* @param s (String ) [optional for usage]
* @language Javascript
* @date 25th May ,2007
*/

1. function toXmlString(xy,s){
2. var str = (s==undefined)?'' : s;
   
3. if(xy.nodeValue==undefined){
4. //ur a big moma
5. var multiStr=[],temp='';
6. for(var i=0;i <>
7. // each repeasted node
   
8. if(xy.childNodes[i].nodeName.toString().indexOf('#')<0){
9. var nodeNameStart ='<'+xy.childNodes[i].nodeName;
10. var nodeNameEnd ='';
11. var attsStr=' ',atts = xy.childNodes[i].attributes;
12. if(atts!=undefined){
    
13. for(var j=0;j<>
14. attsStr+=atts[j].nodeName+'="'+ atts[j].firstChild.nodeValue+'"';
15. }
16. }
17. temp = nodeNameStart + ((attsStr==' ')?'':attsStr ) +'>'+toXmlString(xy.childNodes[i],str) + nodeNameEnd;
18. multiStr.push(temp);
19. str = temp;
20. }else{
21. //node Value
    
22. str = toXmlString(xy.childNodes[i],str);
23. multiStr.push(str);
24. }
25. }
26. //end of for loop,time to untangle our results in order of appearance
    
27. str = multiStr.join('');
28. }else{
29. return xy.nodeValue;
30. }
31. return str;
32. }
    

Usage

var str = toXmlString(xmlDomObj) ;

Demo - http://bhaskervk.com/libraries/reusable/demos/xml.php

You might find the functional style of programming familiar from my earlier posts ,where I created a XML writer class where I created an xml string from scratch . So it was only a matter of time before i approached the situation where I might need to create xml from existing objects.

Technorati Tags: kode, ,functional, ,, programming, ,, helper, ,class, ,, toXmlString, ,, bhasker,, xml

Introducing : The Returnable Project

Whats your return type...?
Hi,

I just wanted to share with everyone a new project that i'm launching today .Returnable Project is architecture for using the url as a bridge for chaining 3 traits of the web : content ,their behaviour and its delivery its a personal project but quite a bit of javascript ,php ,url rewrite ,regex and css hacking spread over a few months of research and prototypes . It comes from a few motives:

• tooltips not being able to support html
• existing tooltip implementations catching every mousemove event (while this uses the concept of idempotent events - knowing when to not accept events)
• no simple API for synchronising the delivery of content with its behaviour and content. In other words - allowing the normal user to create intuitive widgets and consume API's easily inside blogs and web pages.

The alpha is live over at returnable.org ,while the project will be otherwise hosted at http://sourceforge.net/projects/returnable/ .

This may appeal to web developers and bloggers . It's a framework to add simple event driven programming for those who dont want to type code. But powerful all the same because of the DSL and API.

For bloggers who are looking for an easy way to have tooltips (in javascript enabled blogs) ,this could be a great utility. You can go through the site to see demos on how to create intuitive tooltips (and more apps coming soon) with just one line of code (apart from the script node to be added initially )

Here's how to add Returnable elements into your blog:

1. Step1 : Add the script element
   
   This preferably need to be done only once (at the template of the blog/site /header,etc )
   
   
2. Step 2 : Add the Returnable elements
   <span><returnable href="http://onhover.returnable.org/tooltip.text/hello">Hover over this for some widgety magic</returnable></span>
   
   
3. Step 3 : Done !
   Thats all there is ,load up you blog/ page .
   

I finally have the working prototypes ,and the project website website on sourceforge,as well as the official website (returnable.org) running since then. I plan to add support for storage of tooltips on the server , new returnable types like widgets, maps , and so on which will be much easier now that the main architecture is working across browsers 8 )

Keep Clicking,

Bhasker V Kode

Technorati Tags: returnable, opensource, javascript, tooltip, returntype, india, widgets, bloggers

IE JS hack :Catching the Maximise / Minimise event

Here's a little hack to find out whether the user has maximised or minimised the window .This can then be used to trigger other useful chain of events of your choice .

Explanation:
The screenX, and screenY properties of the event corresponds to the the x and y coordinates of the mouse pointer's position relative to the user's screen respectively .

Now comes the juicy part ....

IE forces a mouse move whenever you change the focus of the window .So the interesting point to note is that - a mousemove event is forced even though the mouse co-ordinates dont actaully move ! So if you are able to track the previous mouse co-ords and catch the point where a mouse move is called - but at the same time the values dont change - bingo ! 8 )

var logs ,x=-1, y=-1 ,ctr = 2;
document.onmousemove = catchmaxmin;

function catchmaxmin(ev){
logs = document.getElementById('logs');
var e = (ev!=undefined)?ev:event;
if(e["screenX"]==x && e["screenY"]==y && ctr%2==0 ){
logs.innerHTML+= '
maximized /minimized ! ';
}
ctr++;
x = e["screenX"];
y = e["screenY"];
}

I've been looking for a similiar hack in firefox ,but i guess this useful bug has'nt been introduced into the Mozilla camp . 8 ) Here's a working demo ( tested on ie6 , ie7 ) of the 10 odd lines of code needed .

Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode

Technorati Tags: javascript, event, maxmin, ie, window, bosky101, bhasker, kode, hack

CS / IT MUST READ : "Google summer of code"

The "Google summer of code" deadline is approaching, and basically is an attempt to inspire projects from students across the world ,by organisations(> 130) suggesting project ideas which they will then mentor.

This is perfect for doing your final year project . Guys who are into coding, dont miss out on this chance - get a group of like minded friends and register , read through the norms,and the whole process of applying, and working on open source projects is an experience in itself . Last year, Google funded over 600 students in 93 countries to work with 100 open source groups.


About the Google SOC 2007
The accepted Google SOC 2007 mentors list is now complete at the Summer of Code website — 131 projects could use your help. Student applications are open and the end date is March 26. Google has an application guide in the Summer of Code Announce discussion group that provides more information on the application process.


Advice for students applying:
http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/AdviceforStudents

Application guide :
http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-announce/web/guide-to-the-gsoc-web-app-for-student-applicants

Home page:
http://code.google.com/soc


Who's eligible to participate as a student in Google Summer of Code?
in order to participate in the program, you must be a student. (colleges, universities, masters programs, PhD programs ). You should be prepared, upon request, to provide Google with transcripts from your accredited institution as proof of enrollment or admission status. Computer Science does not need to be your field of study in order to participate in the program.

If you however miss the dates,its still an experience to spend the summer hols doing a project in your area of interest ,and build up for your final project.

Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode
(FYI : SVCE 2002-2006 IT Dept )

Technorati Tags: svce, it, cs, finalyear, project, btech, india, google, soc, bosky101, kode

Introducing tvHtmlHelper and TagCreator

I just saw this helper class called pQuery on ajaxian today .written by vikas from delhi ,that offers a very modest way of generating your html code with the necessary attributes for the html elements ,etc .

The good news is that its nice to see someone featured on ajaxian . (both vikas and myself are 23 btw...cheers to that ! ). The bad news ,i knew he could do better .

The API needed a little bit more extensibility and scalability . And thats how i got on a hacking marathon to show how to integrate this class ive made to make ...say a tag creator .Here is vika's code usage :

PHP implementation of pQuery:

1. =$pquery->form_remote_tag(array('url'=>'index.php?task=ajax','update'=>'#idtoupdate'));?>
2. Field : "field"
3. < type = "submit">

   
   

My first comments ? Very shabby !

Here my custom built html helper , i write - that would not only go with jQuery ,but heck i use it for spitting out everything from body tags with onload 's , to hr tags , and tables -tr's running in reccursive loops .

Demo of tvhtmlHelper.php:

/**
* @description - A simple Tag creator written in php that uses tvHTMLHelper
* @author Bhasker V Kode
* @date Feb23,2007
* @copyright Some Rights Reserved
*/
class TagCreator extends tvHTMLHelper{
public function addTag($type=NULL , $tag=NULL){
switch($type){
case 'technorati':
/*OUTPUT :will output the html for a tag .
return $this->insert('a','start',array("href"=> "http://www.technorati.com/tags/$tag" ,"rel"=>"tag")) . $tag . $this->insert('a','end') ;
break;
/*
case 'youtubeVideoLink':
// follow similiar style to embed a youtube video , or so on for other widgets of your choice .
*/
}
}

$myInstant = new TagCreator;
echo $myInstant->addTag('html','start');
echo $myInstant->addTag('body','start',array("onload"=>"init();" , "class"="bC");
echo $myInstant->addTag('technorati','tvhtmlhelper');
echo $myInstant->addTag('technorati','bosky101');
echo $myInstant->addTag('technorati','php');
echo $myInstant->addTag('body','end');
echo $myInstant->addTag('html','end');

Notice the following design differences pQuery and tvHTMLHelper:

1. Inheritance is good for you !
   Primary usage pattern would be to extend this class where you deal with html a lot.
2. To echo or not to echo !
   If youve noticed ,in pQuery it prints instead of returning . Mine does not echo on its own .but return the html string instead ! .This can be used when you need to generate html to be used later ,like writing concatenating to a string /or sending mail /etc . Being generic never does any harm in helper classes. This i feel is a big pitfall in pQuery .
   
3. Clear cut definition boundaries of beginning and ending .
   The API has a startEnd for obvious reasons. This might be a major fallout in pQuery . If you do attempt to seperate presentation from logic , then why make it half way ? do it well or its better off not to do it at all .
   
4. Scalability.
   Now tvHtmlHelper does not limit you to jQuery but basically every web page . Heck ,i even use it for a custom build stringToXML class ive written where i could use the API in loops like this :
• $myInstant->insert('channels','start',array("length"=>1,"foo"=>"bar") );
• OR links
• $myInstant->insert('a','start',array("href"=>$link1,"id"=>"foo","class"=>"fadeClass") );
5. Useful across file types : xml ,html , tagging ,and link generation !
   You could even extend tvHtmlHelper to replace the < > symbols with custom ones or words .like ,what ever you pass through the API will come out as a technorati tag !
   

Ive put a demo page ,which you can check out . Ive ported tvHTMLHelper to both php4 as well as php5 . Have a look at the sourcecode ( rar file) !

I'd love to get any feedback on this ,or places where you might be able to use this .

Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode

Technorati Tags: php, pQuery, ajaxian, tvHTMLHelper, bhaskervk, bosky101, code, tags, technorati, youtube, code

Adding Idempotent Event Handling to your Javascript Toolkit

Idempotent transactions are ones which may be repeated without affecting anything. You may have heard of this term when it comes to online banking ,where idempotent transactions are required ,and basically care needs to be taken to rollback , and not accidently charge twice for the same purchase .

So im trying to extend this to a javascript scenario ,where clicking on a button twice in quick succession will be ignored . This may well be used in a registration / payment / complex timed ui / or any other critical operation . Or basically to add a bit of fun to anything event driven !

Explanation

Let us assume that you dynamically add an event to an object . Now with Reusable.DeferredEvent , it throws a similiar api , gives you an option to specify your existing addEvent code -.Popular version of which are :

• quirksmode 's John Resig /Scott Andrew version of addEvent
  
• the Yahoo.Event
• script.aculo.us /Prototype's Event.observe .

So basically what i have is a plug'n play support for handling idempotent events , using your existing javascript toolkits corresponding dynamic event handling capabilities . In the demo page , I have shown how to integrate with these frameworks by uncommenting the suitable line of code as needed.

Which means for configure listenEvent event for every listenTill seconds , for any listenObj object .


In the demos , you will find two scenarios :

• Only unique button click's on Button1 in the range of 1 seconds will be recognised !
• Only unique mouseouts on Button2 in the range of 3 second will be be recognised.

//@param name of instance
//instantName = new Reusable.IdempotentEvent(instantName);
// Step 1 : Instantiation
responsive = new Reusable.IdempotentEvent('responsive');


//@param listenObj - DOM listenTillelement or element id
//@param listenEvent string - Event name (as per your toolkit nomenclature )
//@param listenTill int / string - how frequency to accept event triggers
//@param callBack string - What function to callback eventually

// Step 2 : Exeuction
//responsive.register( listenObj , listenEvent , listenTill , callBack );
responsive.register( btn1, 'click' , btn1.getAttribute('onclickwhen'), 'clicked' );
responsive.register( btn1, 'mouseout' , 1000, 'hovered' );

Demo and Code here .

Technorati Tags: javascript, events, idempotent, code, bhasker, kode, bosky101,

A Profile of TechEnclave

So, I've also always wondered if the portal a handful of '20-something year old' geeks and myself have built over the years totally in our spare time - would figure as being part of the Indian web innovation revolution .

It's called TechEnclave , famed for its forums ... ( http://www.techenclave.com/forums ) Being a moderator for the forum , we're all excited that the member base that Team TechEnclave have been really building the community from 2002-03 onwards with experience gained from a temporary hosted forums ,to other experiements through '04, - 05 and finally fixed on the TechEnclave brand ,and have stuck to it ever since the end of 2005 .

The reason why i 'm talking about it now - is also to highlight the transition we've seen with the web 2.0 revolution hitting the indian plains . Sure , we did implement ajax based forum search options before it became cool , and we do have some forum regulars like a calendar that the 10k displaying birthdays ,user meets ,and so on . We've even had our TE user meets where we get to interact with the members dating to early 2005 . And with over 25- 30 of them across the country over the years - its not really tough to see why the unconferencing theme dint take too long to pick up in India. Today TechEnclave has over 25 forum sections covering hardware overclocking to gaming , portable devices and Tech News from across the world .If TechEnclave as become what it is today , it has been off the strength ,quality and relevence of its Forums - be it for the tech noobie , geek gurus or the persistent troubleshooter .

---

Some other statistics TechEnclave as of Nov 3 , 2006
Members: 13,500 +
Threads: 27,229
Posts: 292,544,
Most users ever online was 1,363, 28 Nov 05 2005 at 01:18 PM.

So ...coming back to how TechEnclave fits in as a interesting collage of user-feedback inspired product innovation built inhouse...

1 ) TE Spy
an inhouse clone of digg spy ,developed in ajaxian ishtyle , and shows in real time when new posts made at techenclave ... currently for premium members only . But the amount of content we throughout the day ensure that the TE spy functions like a charm . If you are registering at TechEnclave , we'll be happy to upgrade you to a premium membership .Just let me know your user id ,and then you can check out TE Spy for yourself .









2 ) TechEnclave Addons & Initiatives
The TechEnclave ToolBar , A nifty little addon for Firefox helps our users search and naviagate across the site better . We also have an exclusive download manager apart from the recently added hardware benchmarking software located at http://www.techenclave.com/forums/superprime/ as well as numerous other nifty utilities like bookmarklets , feed aggregator widgets ,newletters , rss feeds , and so on .


3 ) TE Rig Gallery
TERig was an idea that we at techenclave had for a long time. We wanted to give , the tech enthusiast a medium to showcase your rig to the world. From our feedback on the forums ,we understood that the true potential of your rig can only be shown when your rig details are presented in a well formatted manner and with the all important pictures of your rig. So our admins Safin and QuickFire , went about hacking just that . Not only will you be able to put your rig specs in a well formatted manner, but also will be able to view where your rig stands vis-a-vis other's. Till date ,we are the first forum to have such a versatile system ...check it out at http://www.techenclave.com/forums/RigGallery.html
transcending the role of a forum .

---

4 ) TE iTrader ( Market )
A custom built environment that provides a better showcase of the product that users put up for sale .










5 ) TE Price Guide
Based on feedback over the years ,we even felt the need for a comprehensive and updated price guide for hardware ,whatever be the city you are in india. So welcome another custom built app . the TE Price Guide located at http://www.techenclave.com/forums/hardware-prices.html which has now attained a sort of lengendary status of sorts over at the "Build Your Own Rig" followers in India . We even have a seperate Market Section where users can swap their new and old stuff .This initiative has gathered a lot of traction for genuine buyers and sellers especially ,for reaching users in the the non metros .


The TE Family
Apart from helping troubleshooting across 20 odd forum sections ,being part of the Techenclave , has helped bridge distance for the indian techie and transcend geekdom !
TechEnclave 's depth of quality in its reviews and experienced members helped it become a source to present demos at hardware branding and launch expos . Infact ,name any piece of hardware or software ,and you can be sure that theres someone from techenclave whos' got it first or swears by their favourite utility . Also of note is the sister forum that we've created called FunEnclave over at www.funenclave.com

The people behind TechEnclave ( http://www.techenclave.com/forums/staff.html ) are dedicated enthusiasts who came together because of their expertise and being identified as uber geeks and experts by their peers ,combined with a blend of effective management , marketing and creative abilities - to make things happen . We take pride in building one of India's Biggest Technology Forums from scratch without any commercial backing or investment by putting back all ad generate revenue back into getting better servers , bandwidth and so on .( You can see a brief history and evolution of techenclave over at http://www.techenclave.com/forums/techenclave-history-and-evolution-720.html ) And we hope to keep the quality and members right up there ,to take TechEnclave to greater heights ! 8 )


If TechEnclave does not fit into the realm of indian innovations - we will understand . But If you think that this community has evolved ,then do let us know ,and drop in at the forums and find out for yourself . See you there...


Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode ,

PS : If you do want to explore advertising options ,feel free to go through the page at http://www.techenclave.com/forums/advertisewithus.html .

This is a post meant to act as Profile of TechEnclave . So while it very well would be in the public domain,i'd appreciate the linkback .

Technorati Tags: techenclave, bosky101, india, tech, geeks, forums, portal