All That I know

Send SMS from your PC or write your own program in Java, .NET, PHP etc to do it

2010-07-21T00:09:00.000-07:00

Came across this link today with detailed info on a whole bunch of programs and SDKs that will help you to send and receive SMS from your PC using a connected mobile phone:
http://www.developershome.com/sms/freeLibForSMS.asp

I have personally used Skype to send out SMS from Java although setting it with a Windows Service was not easy.

Some other solutions are listed below:

http://devprogram.simplewire.com
http://www.ozekisms.com/index.php?owpn=581
http://www.fjsoft.at/en/downloads.php
http://www.smscaster.com/

Use JSP to get list of running processes or tasklist

2010-04-08T04:49:00.000-07:00

I have spent more than 3 hours on this and know there will be more out there experiencing the same problem. There are various pages on the net outlining how to get the tasklist on Windows in Java using the Runtime and Process classes and executing "cmd /c tasklist".

The above mentioned code runs perfectly when executed as a Java app via a main method but when executed through JSP or servlet, it fails to execute.

Here is the problem. When you run a commandline program using JSP, the PATH environment
variable is not the same as when you execute a regular Java app or batch
file. So when you call "cmd /c tasklist" using Runtime.getRuntime().exec it executes with the PATH variable as empty, which means that dll files needed by tasklist are not found.

Long story short, want to get a list of running processes in JSP, use the following code:

Runtime runtime = Runtime.getRuntime();
Process proc = runtime.exec("cmd /c set PATH=C:\\WINDOWS\\system32;C:\\WINDOWS;C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\Wbem& tasklist");
InputStream inputstream = proc.getInputStream();
InputStreamReader inputstreamreader = new InputStreamReader(inputstream);
BufferedReader bufferedreader = new BufferedReader(inputstreamreader);

String line;
while ((line = bufferedreader.readLine()) != null) {
out.print( line.toLowerCase() + "
" );
}

bufferedreader.close();

You will have to modify the PATH to match your own environment.

If you are having problems executing other commandline programs using JSP or Servlets, chances are that you are experiencing the same problem.

PHP Development on Windows for Beginners

2009-12-07T03:47:00.000-08:00

First thing is to set up a Development Environment fast. Download XAMPP from:
http://www.apachefriends.org/

Download the PHP Manual in CHM format from:
http://www.php.net/get/php_manual_en.chm/from/a/mirror

For writing code, there are loads of editors:
PDT (download this for easy installation)
PHP Eclipse (download this for easy installation)
Notepad++ (basic editor, what I use)
Dreamweaver (Commercial, but good to use if you already use it)
NetBeans

Install XAMPP on the root of any of your drives, e.g. C:\ or D:\
This will prevent most of the problems that we come across during development.
Make sure Port 80 is free (e.g. stop IIS) and you do not have MySQL installed or running from before.

Once extracted, go to the folder and double click "xampp-control.exe". Start Apache and MySQL and then go to http://localhost/xampp

To start developing, create your files/sub-folders in the folder C:\xampp\htdocs (assuming you installed on C: root)

The PHP Manual CHM file is probably the best resource I have come across when starting with PHP development. It has loads of tutorials and examples.

History of Operating Systems GUIs

2009-08-02T03:41:00.000-07:00

Came across this awesome list of operating system GUIs today. Just had to share it on my blog. It shows the evolution of GUI design.

Business Intelligence for the Layman

2009-05-25T00:52:00.000-07:00

I came across a very simple explanation of what a Business Intelligence solution does for the end user that other existing solutions cannot do. Read it here.

How to Evaluate / Audit someone else's source code

2009-05-12T05:59:00.000-07:00

Its very normal in a developer's life to be handed over someone else's source code and asked to work on it. The first thing you notice is the fact that the previous developer(s) have not put enough (or any) comments in the code. Then you realize there is no documentation left by the developer(s) regarding the code. You sit there thinking "Where do I start??"

Being faced with this dilemma yet once again I realized that the best thing to do would be to convert the code to UML diagrams so I can get an eye view of the mess.. uh, I mean the code.

I cam across a nice list of UML tools on Wikipedia where I found BOUML.

Its a free UML tool that can reverse engineer C++, Java and PHP (plus some others) code to UML diagrams.

Even if you are not a coder, you could use it to Audit the code. If the diagrams that are generated do not make sense to you, chances are that they will not make any sense to another developer either.

Of course there are many other metrics for evaluation of code quality and performance. But this is where I would start if I had no documentation at all for the code in front of me.

Joomla 1.5 has XML-RPC built-in

2009-04-13T04:21:00.000-07:00

Working on a new site using Joomla 1.5 today under the Plugin Manager I found out that it has plugins for XML-RPC built right into its core. What does this mean?? Creating third party software to integrate with Joomla CMS is now going to be a piece of cake.

There are already a lot of 3rd party programs that support XML-RPC. An example is ScribeFire (which I am using to write this blog article). You could use any of these off the shelf tools to easily add articles to Joomla or edit/delete an existing article.

Something I am going to make in the near future is an iPhone app + a J2ME app that will use XML-RPC to easily add new articles to a Joomla site.

JSF and AJAX - Still no Good

2009-03-30T23:39:00.001-07:00

AJAX is the way of life for web developers. If you are a Java Enterprise developer, more specifically a JSF developer, you will find loads of AJAX/JSF libraries. But if you decide to use one of them, you will not be able to use components from any of the other libraries (in most cases). In other words your application will be locked into the library you choose to use.

I found a good article today on JDJ "JavaServer Faces: The Importance of Components" by Jim Cook. The following paragraph was interesting:

AJAX fits in with the JSF framework very naturally. However, the early JSF specifications (1.0, 1.1, and 1.2) don't address AJAX. One of the consequences is that each vendor of JSF components has built its own AJAX engine and the various engines aren't always compatible. Although this issue is being addressed in the upcoming 2.0 specification, for the time being, component users are basically forced to choose components from only one vendor if they want to use AJAX.

According to this, until the 2.0 JSF specification has been implemented by all the major JSF libraries, its probably better to stay away from them if you want to prevent a lock-in. Look at it this way. If you do use one these AJAX/JSF libraries today, tomorrow when they come up with the new JSF 2.0 compatible version of their library, your application will not be able to use it.

So what can Java developers who need AJAX do today?

You can use a pure Javascript based AJAX library like Dojo or YUI along with Spring and Hibernate. At least you know that tomorrow when Dojo and YUI come out with their new versions, your application can make use of them. Yes, your application will be locked into YUI or Dojo. Life is not perfect.

Which Java Techs are HOT today?

2009-03-18T00:55:00.001-07:00

I have been working recently with some SEO experts and was amazed at how they search for information on the net using various analytics and statistics tools. It made me think, why not search the net to get some REAL facts on which Java technologies are hot today. The goal is to help outsourcing companies and developers to focus more towards technologies that are in more use in the industry.

I started with regular Google Insights and Adwords Keyword Tool searches. But when Google Insights showed me that majority of these searches have been performed in India, I realized that these results signify what developers are searching for. But my goal is to find what customers are searching for.

Then it came to me. If I search Jobs websites in the markets that are best known for outsourcing IT projects, using Java specific keywords, that should give me a good idea of which technologies are more in use in those markets. I chose to search monster.com for USA and itjobswatch.co.uk for UK. Following are my findings.

	Jobs on Monster.com	Jobs on ITJobsWatch (avg last 3 months)
Application Server Platforms
Websphere	825	463
WebLogic	664	303
JBoss	474	86
Backend GLUE Frameworks
Spring	546	434
Struts	527	173
Seam	15	4
Other Backend Frameworks
Hibernate	551	334
EJB	372	143
DWR	13	3
Client-side Frameworks
JSF	882	45
RichFaces	7	No Data
IceFaces	9	No Data
ADF	2	1

Now this is by no means a very extensive list of technologies but I searched the most common ones I knew of. Technologies like JUnit, XML, Webservices etc. do not have to be researched. Everyone knows that its a must to know them just like HTML, Javascript CSS etc.

I was hoping to find something more conclusive for the client-side frameworks. I do know JSF is the choice for Java Programmers but which ONE JSF library is most widely being used??

Make your Java run 2X faster than C/C++ - without any coding for FREE

2009-02-11T01:42:00.001-08:00

Looking around for Java and C/C++ comparisons I came across the Java Server runtime. I guess this has been around for a while now but just missed it for some reason. When running your Java apps, if you use the -server argument, your app runs and performs almost twice as fast as C/C++ applications of the same nature.

The server argument does take up a lot more RAM then the default client argument, but the performance boost is huge. I would not mind having all my Java apps set to run in server mode by default on newer Core2 with 4 GB machines.

The original article for C++ can be found here. The C benchmark is in Word doc format and can be downloaded here.

Market Statistics for Software Outsourcing Companies and Developers

2009-02-09T02:51:00.001-08:00

The IT Jobs Watch website gives very detailed statistics on jobs in the UK with average salaries, No. of job postings, comparisons to last year's stats, various graphs etc. Although it does not represent the whole world, it can help outsourcing companies and developers to evaluate the current requirements in the software development market and thus develop their skill sets accordingly.

Developers confused about which new tech to get into next can search
for their own specific fields and see whats in demand in the market. Viewing the details of "Senior Java Architect", I noticed that J2EE, Spring, Hibernate, AJAX, JBoss and Eclipse have been mentioned by name in the job requirements. I am already working on a new project using Spring, Hibernate, AJAX and Eclipse so it seems I am on the right path. I might just add in JBoss to it.

2 Must Read articles for ALL smartphone developers

2009-01-21T12:29:00.001-08:00

I came across 2 really awesome articles today regarding development for smartphones:

The first article covers ALL the development platforms currently available for application development for smartphones, e.g. iPhone, RIM, Symbian. The second one covers an alternative to native and interpreted applications, using Web Apps. Both are a must read.

Run your application on a 100+ servers simultaneously using Terracotta

2009-01-20T00:11:00.001-08:00

Imagine running a server application which has to be used by thousands of users simultaneously. Now imagine having a database with millions of records which when accessed by even 1 single user ends up killing your server. Now imagine having both these situations together. This will be called the mother of all software implementations. But this is what servers in the field E-Government (think NADRA), Banking and pretty much all big Multi-National companies go through on a daily basis.

To deal with this problem companies invest in expensive solutions in the form Application Clustering, Server Clustering and Database Clustering where multiple servers work together to get the job done. The solution providers charge on the basis of number of servers/applications/databases being used. The cost runs into hundreds and thousands of dollars. Needless to say, this is not everyone's cup of tea.

But if your application was made using Java, you can use Terracotta to cluster your application for FREE. Taken from their site:

Terracotta is open source infrastructure software that makes it
inexpensive and easy to scale a Java application to as many computers
as needed, without the usual custom application code and databases used
to share data in a cluster.
Terracotta manages mission critical data using Network-Attached
Memory (NAM) technology. NAM enables Terracotta to cluster Java Virtual
Machines (JVMs) directly underneath applications, and is a proven
runtime approach to providing Java applications both high availability
and scalability.

Just another reason why beating Java in the Enterprise world can only be a dream for other technologies.

OpenID - One login to rule them all

2009-01-19T03:40:00.001-08:00

Imagine logging to your GMail and then browsing to your Facebook, Hotmail, MySpace, Wordpress, personal Blog etc. without needing to login at all. We are not there yet but the OpenID technology will be getting us there hopefully by the end of 2009.

No longer will you have to remember multiple usernames/passwords. You will have the freedom to use any 1 website to actually have your 1 username/password. Other sites will merely ask that 1 site to authenticate you. Lets say you really don't want to trust the likes of Google to have your username/password. No problem, you can run your own OpenID server by just installing a simple Php script (or this) and have Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo etc. ask YOUR server for authenticating you.

Already big names like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM are on board. But they still have to integrate OpenID into their own websites.

Similar solutions like Microsoft Passport and Single Sign-On solutions from various vendors like IBM, Oracle and Sun did not pick up any momentum due to their propriety and single vendor only nature.

For web developers, you will have to allow users to register and login themselves to your sites using OpenID. Since OpenID also allows for the server to send you profile information once the user registers on your site, this will also mean that your website registration will be a 1-click action. This equates to more users for your site.

Run your Application/Database server from a CD/DVD

2009-01-15T04:11:00.001-08:00

If you are into selling server based software and you have had to give demos to clients, you know how difficult it is to set up the environment perfectly so you do not end up looking stupid in front of the client. Most companies have laptops specifically kept for demos so nothing is messed up at the time of a demo. DWebPro allows you to set up your whole server on a CD or DVD which can be run directly on any running Windows PC.

It supports:

PHP
Perl
Python
Ruby
Rebol
Delphi Web Script II
ASP 3.0
ASP.NET 1.1 / 2.0 and Embedded
JSP/Servlet
Zope
Railo (CFML Engine)
ColdFusion
EXE/CGI/ISAPI

MySQL
SQlite
Microsoft Access
HSQLDB
Firebird *
PostgreSQL **
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 / 2005 / Compact Edition
Oracle XE

If you have a binary version of your application code, you could even give a time-limited version of the demo to your client on CD/DVD.

Free Educational Software for Kids

2009-01-15T01:41:00.001-08:00

Being a father of 3 I am always looking for good educational software for my kids to learn new things. I came across the Educational Freeware website today which has a long list of FREE educational software for kids. Games for toddlers, learning to type, Math, reading but my personal favorite Programming.

There is also Babysmash which is "a free keyboard banger game for very young kids." Use it to let your newborn beat the crap out of your keyboard and see colourful symbols appear on the screen.

I already have my kids using Linux (Edubuntu) and GCompris. My 6 year old is using the free Lego Digital Designer to create 3D models himself.

Choosing an AJAX Platform

2009-01-02T02:13:00.001-08:00

When looking around for a good AJAX platform to use for development of a new application I am working on, I came across many platforms each with its own strengths and weaknesses. I would categorize them as follows:

Coding is done using a server side XML which in turn generates Flash or XHTML files (Open Laszlo)
Coding is done using server-side Javascript which in turn generates client side Javascript based AJAX interface (Jaxer)
Coding done using a server-side language (Java, PHP, ASP.NET) which in turn generates client-side Javascript based AJAX interface (ZK, MS AJAX, YUI.NET)
Pure client-side Javascript AJAX libraries which can further be categorized into:
1. libraries only providing multi-browser javascripting capabilities along with basic animations (prototype, jquery)
2. libraries providing a complete set of user-interface widgets along with multi-browser scripting and animations (Dojo, YUI, Ext)

The cons of each method in the same order are as follows:

Single vendor only, capabilities limited by what has been implemented leaving very little room for customization
Single vendor only, capabilities limited by what has been implemented leaving very little room for customization
Client-side Javascript coding limited by what has been implemented leaving very little room for customization
For client-side libraries:
1. User-interface widgets not available; the source code will be split into 2 languages, 1 on the server-side and 1 on the client-side
2. The source code will be split into 2 languages, 1 on the server-side and 1 on the client-side

I like the last option the best as it gives me the most opportunity for customization of the user interface and also provides the most needed widgets out of the box. Yes I will have to work with both Javascript and a server-side language but then web development has always involved knowledge of more than one language.

There is also the question of the licensing cost of the platform you choose. Although almost all of the platforms I have mentioned above are open-source, some of them may cost you if you decide to develop a commercial product (ZK and Ext).

So I came down to deciding between Dojo and YUI. Dojo has a huge community supporting it and provides a lot of opportunity for customization but unfortunately its documentation is not that complete. YUI on the other hand has loads of documentation right out of the box to get a first time AJAX developer up and running in no time.

For my current project I have chosen to go with YUI but definitely in the future I will user Dojo.

Make your own Enterprise Software - NO Coding - for FREE

2008-12-23T03:49:00.000-08:00

Rapid Application Development platforms like MS Access and FileMaker Pro have allowed non-programmers to create simple database driven applications with drag and drop editors for ages now but there were always limitations to what you could do. The biggest limitation was I feel their inability to handle a multi-user environment. With the popularity of the internet and companies looking into having web-based client/server applications, these tools feel short.

A couple of weeks back I talked about Oracle Application Express which allows you to create web-based applications without any coding using an Oracle XE database for free with the only limitation being that the database size can be a maximum of 4 GB. You are restricted to the Oracle XE database and the options available for creating your web application are very minimalistic.

This week I came across the free WaveMaker Visual Ajax Studio. Now this is a complete Drag Drop development environment which allows non-programmers to visually design and create a web application:

with AJAX capabilities (uses Dojo)
using any database (Postgres, MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server etc.)
based on Enterprise Java capabilities (uses Spring, Hibernate, Web services)
deployable to any Java based server
that works on all major browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari)
which is secure (using LDAP, Active Directory, POJOs etc.)

[Wavemake IDE running on Safari]

Since its based on open source technologies and is open source itself, you never have to worry about the product to go out of existence or costing you an arm and a leg in the future. Similar commercial products in the past have been dumped by their companies leaving the customers who have based their software on the platform in the lurch. This cannot happen with open source software.

Since its based on Java and can be deployed to any Java server, it can take advantage of Java Enterprise features. It can also make use of Grid and Cloud technologies.

Definitely consider using it for your next Enterprise ready software development project.

Run Multiple Operating Systems and Servers on a Single Machine - For FREE

2008-12-22T03:13:00.000-08:00

Virtualization allows you to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single physical machine. This can allow you to use a software that was meant for UNIX on Windows. It can allow you to test that operating system you have been hearing about (e.g. run Linux or Mac OSX on top of your Windows). You can also use it to run multiple servers (Linux, Mac OSX, UNIX, Windows) simultaneously on the same machine. Today's hardware is powerful enough to achieve this.

VMware has been selling hardware virtualization software for over a decade now. They are currently giving away their VMware Server and VMware Player products for free. The Server can be used to create and run multiple operating systems. The Player can be used to only run an existing VMware image. They also have a huge repository of free ready-to-use servers and operating systems called the Virtual Appliance Marketplace where you can download any server you like and run it using the Player or Server product.

[Windows running inside Linux]

[Windows running inside Mac OSX]

There are various other free alternatives available (e.g. Qemu, Virtual Box) but I like VMware for its products' maturity. Non-free software like Parallels (Mac only) and MS Virtual PC (Windows only) do not come close to VMware's performance and available options.

Personally I only use virtualization to test and learn to use new operating systems and software. I am against the use of server virtualization due to its overhead and performance issues. It might make sense to use it:

for people stuck with using legacy software
for software QA and testing (use a clean machine everytime you test)
if you want to run a server on a Cloud or Grid where your server does not have the capability to use the Cloud's/Grid's power but the host operating system does.

Free Oracle Development Tools

2008-12-04T11:59:00.000-08:00

When you hear of Oracle, software with high price tags come to mind but in the last couple of years Oracle has been distributing some of their software out for free with no strings attached.

You can use the famous Oracle database engine for free, called Oracle XE (download here). Whats the catch? It only allows you a maximum of 4GB for your database size, which is ok for most small and medium sized business' applications.

Oracle also gives you their Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX) for free (download here). It allows a non-developer to automatically create a small/simple web-based application that can have data entry forms, reports, charts etc. It can only use Oracle databases though but you can use the Oracle XE database.

Another good ~~free~~ (please read below) tool is Oracle JDeveloper aimed at Java developers (download here).

A couple of years ago the above tools would cost you an arm and a leg. Due to immense competition from Open Source products and free offerings from companies like IBM, Microsoft etc., Oracle has also chosen to give out some of its applications out for free.

But do note that each one of their free software is designed to work with their own propriety technologies. This means that if in the future you needed more than 4GB for your database you will have to buy a license for a standard or enterprise version of Oracle database. The JDeveloper tools also rely heavily on Oracle based technologies like Oracle ADF. Chances are that you will have to buy a license for the Oracle Server when the time comes to deploy your application.

They are still trying to tie you into their products and make you dependant on Oracle. I do still recommend the use of Oracle Application Express for small businesses. It will make their lives easy as it allows them to create small applications themselves.

Edited 23 Jan 2009: Although JDeveloper is free to download and use, its license is not meant for commercial use of an application built using JDeveloper. You will need to get commercial licenses from Oracle to distibute or sell commercial software.

RJ-45-sized Linux server

2008-11-13T17:12:00.000-08:00

This might not be a full blown PC/Server but it runs Linux and can be used by Electrical engineers to control their boards over a network (both Ethernet and Wifi) without too much work. I came across this a couple of years ago.

Imagine creating your own Centralized Traffic Light Control system. Any electrical engineer can design a board that will turn the lights red, yellow and green. Imagine adding the above shown Wifi or ethernet version of this device and then being able to control and monitor all the lights in your city from your Office room (there is a huge demand for this nowadays).

I am just hoping for a WiMax version of this connector. Here in Karachi we have a very good WiMax wireless network set up by Wateen. Being able to control remote devices over WiMax and GPRS is much easier to do than ethernet here.

Photoshop On Web Revisited

2008-11-13T15:48:00.000-08:00

A lot of new Flash based image editing programs usable directly from your web browser have popped up since I last posted about Fauxto. I came across Pixlr recently which is way faster than anything I have tried before.

Fauxto has been renamed to Splashup. Its much more powerful than before.

Adobe has released its own version called Photoshop Express. It gives you web space for hosting your images and also allows you to post your final edited images to photo sites like Flickr.

So what good are these applications? They give you powerful image editing capabilities without having anything installed on your PC (except Flash).

These applications are also a living proof of the fact that full blown powerful and usable applications can indeed be developed using the web paradigm. AJAX and Flash have proven it. So don't be shocked one day to find out that all your applications run through your browser.

Technologies like Mozilla Prism will allow these web technologies based applications to also install on your PC so you can run them when you are not online. The face of desktop application development is being redefined.

Problems with BPM Platforms

2008-11-11T16:16:00.000-08:00

A Business Process Management (BPM) platform allows businessmen to create flow charts of their business processes and translates them automatically into a running program. They come with visual designers that allows them to specify users of a process, design forms to be filled, choose the database and tables where the data should be saved, design reports etc. I have looked at a couple of BPM solutions like the uEngine, ProcessMaker and jBPM from jBoss.

I found their process designers to be wonderful. But the one thing I feel they have it wrong is the deployment aspect of their software. Each one them first gives an option to its user to initiate a "process" from a long list of available processes, displaying the path of the process to every user who has to do their part in it.

In the world of software development we know that majority of the users get confused by terms and options that they are not used to or do not understand. So we try to hide the things that might confuse them so that they may concentrate on what they are needed to do. Take the above screenshot for example which covers Order and Shipping of a product. Its currently waiting for a user to review the order. What do you think will go through the user's mind when he/she sees the above user interface (especially the options for Suspend this process instance).

I think he/she will be confused out of his/her mind. All the user wants to do is review the order. I think BPM solutions should give developers more control over the screens displayed to the end users or at least have some defaults which will not confuse the end users.

World's Smallest Projector ($511 only)

2008-11-10T15:23:00.000-08:00

A projector that fits right in your pocket, for only $511, same size as an iPod. A resolution of 480 x 320 pixel means that the text on your presentations might show up a little fuzzy but for presentations with more graphics and big text, this is definitely going to work. And then there is also the WOW factor. Look here for details.

Statistics for Developers

2008-10-23T02:02:00.000-07:00

I have seen a lot of software developers not keeping up with whats happening around the world, unaware of the deployment landscape thus using development methodologies which will in the end make their software unusable by the end user. For example, I still meet a lot of web developers who test their websites only on the default IE installed, do not care about mobile browser display resolutions.

I came across some very good statistics websites which I want to share with the rest of the developer community. These statistics can also be of use to clients who need to get software developed but don't know what they should be asking for in terms of technical requirements.

Statistics for popular programming languages being used today. Look here and here. Java and C seem to be very popular but you need to keep in mind that these stats do not take into account the type of software being developed. For example you would not use C to make a website. But if you were to create a fast, native application for a mobile platform like Symbian or iPhone, you will have to use C or C++.
The most common browsers being used today can be seen here. Firefox has a huge user base. Safari and Chrome are also picking up.
Display resolutions statistics can be seen here. 1024x768 still rules but 38% of screens now use a much higher resolution. This list shows that some details of what kind of high resolutions are in use today.
Operating System statistics can be seen here. Some more OS stats can be seen here. Windows XP of course rules the desktop. But I am surprised to see that the Mac has a significant share of 5% to 8%. Just goes on to show that developers should spend some time testing their web applications on Safari as well. It also tells desktop application developers that they should invest time in learning cross-platform development technologies like Java, C++ or C.
I could not find a good statistics page showing whats going on in the Mobile Browser world at the moment. Its no secret that Opera Mini has a good market share. Webkit based browsers come built-in on most Nokia phones. iPhone's Safari browser is also Webkit based. I read that Blackberry's new mobiles will also use a Webkit based browser. If you want to target the mobile internet users' market, you should test your website using a Webkit based browser like Safari and at the same time use available emulators from Nokia, Apple etc. as the mobile versions have a cut down version of Javascript and CSS.

Want to learn AJAX?

2008-10-16T23:29:00.001-07:00

Just found a really awesome post "50 Excellent AJAX Tutorials". It covers AJAX examples for Pure Javascript, PHP, Java, ASP.NET etc. I need to use AJAX on my next upcoming assignment. Thought I would make note of this link.

For those who do not know what AJAX is, to the layman AJAX allows websites to look and feel like traditional software. Take Facebook for example, the site uses AJAX heavily. All those popups, dialog boxes, chat, photo upload, drag and drop etc. are done using AJAX.

A Petabyte sized database

2008-10-16T04:46:00.001-07:00

Came across a very good article today about the Greenplum Database. Its an open source database which supports databases as big as a Petabyte or more (thats 1024 terabytes). All for free.

Who needs something like this? Its currently being geared towards data warehouses and Business Intelligence (BI) solutions. I might use it someday for the implementation of a BI solution as those database tend to get huge. For those unaware of what a BI solution does, suppose you have a company with multiple applications being used each with its own database, no integration. Now you want to make some analysis or generate some reports which require data to be read from these different databases, a BI solution can help you bring together all the data from each database, co-relate them, and then let you generate your report.

A BI solution actually ends up creating a database of its own which tends to get bigger as you try to integrate more and more databases together. Greenplum can help your BI solution save this newly acquired data.

A good open source BI solution is from Pentaho.

Inversion of Control (IoC) and Dependency Injection (DI) paradigms

2008-10-16T04:24:00.001-07:00

Came across this very good explanation of Inversion of Control (IoC) and Dependency Injection (DI) paradigms. Thought I would make a note of it:
(click here for the complete article on Java Dev Journal)

The analogy people most often make when talking about IoC is called the Hollywood principle: "Don't call me, I'll call you." What this means is that you don't call the framework code, but the framework calls certain methods on your components. This isn't something new, for instance, when you look at the servlet interface, you can see that you must implement the init and destroy methods. These methods are called from the servlet container on startup and shutdown of your servlet. This concept is also used in Spring, among other things, for specifying which methods to call on construction and destruction of your POJO.

Besides IoC, another important concept to understand is Dependency Injection (DI). This term was coined by Martin Fowler and describes a pattern of how to perform wiring between beans. This means that any dependencies your POJO might have are injected into your component, instead of you having to retrieve them. In J2EE (at least until 1.5) when you required a resource (a data source, another bean, etc.) you had to use JNDI to pull that resource in. With DI you don't have to do that anymore. With DI your container will make sure you have the dependency pushed into your POJO using getters and setters. In the new J2EE specs much of the same concepts are used.

The problems with Eclipse and why Netbeans will win in the long run

2008-10-09T04:42:00.001-07:00

In the world of free (and open source) Java IDEs only 2 names come to mind, Eclipse and Netbeans. Eclipse was open sourced by IBM back in 2002 and spread like wild fire throughout the Java developer community. Thousands of plugins have been created for it and applications created using it as a base. Netbeans on the other hand is still relatively new and has a very small number of plugins compared to Eclipse.

But even with the thousands of plugins available, Eclipse has always been a very difficult environment to set up. A lot of the plugins have long been deserted by their developers and given the way Eclipse is designed, the old plugins do not work on the new versions of Eclipse. In the past I would find a plugin that I really thought could help me improve my coding. I would try to install it and then eclipse would attempt to install all dependencies for it only to fail. Most of the times the dependencies have not been updated for the Eclipse version I was using.

This is not to put down the commercial versions of Eclipse like MyEclipse or Websphere. They are very well built and work great out of the box.

The problem is that going through all the Java websites, journals, magazines, RSS feeds, blogs etc. the Java Developer community feels that they are not able to keep up with the speed with which Java is progressing. A couple of years ago when JSP and Servlets were new, we all spent time and learnt it only to find out that EJBs were the new thing. EJB was then replaced by Struts and Hibernate and all new jobs required that the developer should know them. Now there is a lot of noise about Spring and JSF. (I think I have gone off on a tangent here but I will end this trail by saying that the Java folk should upgrade current in-use frameworks rather than creating something new every 2 years; Its driving us developers crazy).

Coming back to my Eclipse plugins problem. So there is a hell of a lot that we need to learn and fast. Paying money for something I am not sure I will make any money out of is not what Developers normally do. We look for the freeware or the open source stuff. Eclipse has really depressed developers from using open source plugins.

I came across the EasyEclipse distro that has multiple bundles based on Eclipse available for free download for Web Dev, Desktop Dev etc. It does take out the headache of installing plugins yourself.

Yoxos is also a good service but to use it you will need to be familiar with the plugins you need to perform your task.

But if you want to learn to develop like a real PRO using the Eclipse platform, your best bet is to go for MyEclipse. At $30 this is the cheapest you can go.

Coming back to Netbeans, its good right out of the box and has awesome editors and does most of what you actually need to do in the real world. But when that new framework comes out which you really need to use, don't expect a plugin for Netbeans to be ready anytime soon. But hey things are changing.

For now, I plan to create my next app using Netbeans as I need a good GUI designer, Hibernate support, some database tools and UML designer. And all these come built right into Netbeans by default. I do wish there was some support for GCJ but not found that yet.

PostGIS, Geoserver and OpenLayers for a complete GIS solution

2008-10-05T03:52:00.001-07:00

Open source GIS solutions have come a long way in the last couple of years. It is no secret that Google Earth put GIS into the hands of millions and created a huge market for GIS users. Now that people are familiar with GIS systems and are willing to use a GIS, what do you really need to make a GIS system.

What you need is a GIS database with all your geotagged information in it. The data is then served through a GIS server to a GIS client. If you wish to target web clients, you can create your own complete GIS solution using PostGIS as the GIS database, Geoserver as the GIS server and OpenLayers as an interactive web-based client.

GCJ, MingW and GNU Classpath

2008-09-30T02:48:00.000-07:00

GCJ is an open source compiler for Java, part of the GCC compiler set. Whats special about it is that it can also compile Java code into a native executable file which does not require a JRE to be installed to run. This method also speeds up the application. Look here for a complete explanation.

The last time I checked out GCJ was back in 2003. Last month I decided to look it up again as I have a small project that I wanted to develop in Java. Now the application is supposed to be a small utility which will inetract with a Project Management software via websrvices. One of the main requirements is that the utility should load up fast as 40% of the PCs it will be run on are running on Pentium 3. A regular Java app takes ages to load on Pentium 3. GCJ gave me some hope that I might be able to use Java for the app.

I downloaded the latest version of MingW, installed the required iconv binary and compiled a "Hello World" on System.out example. Worked perfect. I moved on to a "Hello World" using a simple Swing frame with label. It compiled successfully, but when I ran the exe file I got an error "AWT Toolkit not found". After a lot of research I found out that although the GCJ developers claim to have merged their code with that of GNU Classpath, since GCJ is part of GCC, they have stayed clear of all GUI code from the codebase. In short GCJ will not allow me to run Swing or AWT apps.

Next I tried to use the regular rt.jar file distributed with Sun JDK to compile the executable as GCJ has an option for choosing the base classes jar file path. The compiler started giving a "... zero-length 'gnu.gcj.gcj-compiled' attribute ..." error. I then understood how GCJ actually works. The GCJ developers have already compiled all their Java base classes into a native library. When creating the exe the compiler links this library to your exe. If I try to use a jar file like the one provided with the Sun JDK or if I recompile GNU Classpath and use it with GCJ, the compiler will first need to compile that jar file into a native library. Although this seems plausible, I really did not have time to try this out.

I also looked into using other Java GUI toolkits. First I went with Thinlet and lwvcl but then I realized that they are based on AWT and thus will not work. Then I looked into using SWT which is not based on AWT and I came across this page. Here you can download a complete MingW, GCJ and SWT environment that allows you to compile native executables with GUI support for Swing. It uses the SwingWT package which allows you to write Swing code to use SWT. The SwingWT package is not production ready though.

Another possibility is to write the app's GUI in pure SWT. I still have to run some more testing on this. I have successfully compiled a "Hello World" example but am still unable to execute it. I found very good and detailed directions here. Will probably try it again next week.

Awesome list of Free Photoshop Tutorials

2008-09-27T03:05:00.001-07:00

I just came across this really awesome list of photoshop tutorials and just thought I would spend the word:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/09/25/38-photoshop-tutorials-on-rain-showers-and-water-drops/

Some of the samples are given below:

Water Effect:

Water Effect:

Free University eLearning from MIT

2008-09-24T02:41:00.000-07:00

I just came across MIT Open Courseware which gives away free video, audio lectures to most of the courses that are actually being taught at MIT. They are also giving away course syllabus, handouts and lecture notes as PDF files. All free, under the Commons Public License.

So why should you be interested?? Have you ever been interested in attending the MIT "Introduction to Algorithms" course but could afford it. Now you can attend the course for free, from anywhere in the world. Of course you cannot ask the professor any questions but you can have him repeat the lecture over and over again.

This material is also beneficial for universities who can adapt their curriculum to that of MIT.

The material is not only limited to Computers. They have material from all their departments:

Definitely a good source for those stuck in their working lives not able to attend a university to learn something new.

Transferring posts from Blogsome to Blogger

2008-09-22T00:05:00.000-07:00

I was successfully able to transfer all my posts from Blogsome to Blogger using ScribeFire. I will still have to transfer the images. ScribeFire also helped me set the dates of the posts to their original post dates.

Maybe in the future someone can use the scribefire code to automatically transfer posts from one blog site to another painlessly.

All I had to do was Add both my blogs to ScribeFire. Then I would select a post from oldBlog so it would load inside ScribeFire. Then I would select newBlog in the Blogs tab and then click the Publish button. I would select "Publish as new ..." in the popup.

Ok, so it was a manual work but it cut down on at least 3 steps. One thing to note is that the names of both my old and new blog was the same (just in case if someone wanted to use the same procedure).

My New Blog

2008-09-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

After spending ages blogging on blogsome, I realized that using Wordpress was not that essential to me anymore. I will attempt to transfer my blogs from blogsome to blogspot hopefully in the next 1 week and hope to make weekly posts here and keep this blog alive.

Windows Customization

2008-04-24T23:20:00.000-07:00

Every once a year I tend to return to see whats going on in the world of Windows GUI customization. This week when that time came I was surprised to see all the free tools and applications now available which were previously only available commercially. I also saw the evolution of all the free software that has been around for a while.

One new tool on the market is RocketDock. In the words of their developers "RocketDock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization.".

The litestep project has also come a long way. The new themes people have created are awesome and the number of themes available is huge. I am having a hard time deciding on what to install and use.

Text Editors on Steroids

2007-09-14T23:20:00.000-07:00

I have been working with text editors since the days of DOS. When I was introduced to UNIX and later Linux, text editors was the choice of development especially for web development. Of course a lot has changed since then but for programmers for a lot of tasks using a heavy development IDE is not the first choice.

I have been using Scite for a while now on Windows. Once I showed it to a friend of mine and his words were "this is like a Notepad for geeks". Today I came across a long list of powerful text editors available which I wanted to share with the rest of the world as well.

So why does a programmer use a text editor. A text editor is faster than an IDE, more responsive and the ones like Scite (window opens up within a second) are able to deal with multiple languages at the same time which is the norm in the world of web development. Of course its not able to give all the features that once gets in an IDE but then for tasks where only a small change is to be done in the code, waiting 20-30 seconds for the whole IDE to load can be cumbersome.

Scite has options for DOS batch files, ini files, conf files, Java, javascript, HTML, XML, C, C++, PHP, C#, vbscript, VB.NET, VB6 .... and the list goes on and on and on. The place I have found it to be the most handy is when I am parsing data or fixing data.

I have just read that Notepad++ also has a feature to save macros. Imagine a repetitive text editing routine all saved into a macro. So the next time you have to repeat that task, just run the macro.

Open Office - The Open Source Office Suite

2007-08-26T23:20:00.000-07:00

OpenOffice.org is a free open source replacement for Microsoft Office. For companies paying thousands of dollars for MS Office licenses it can prove to be a huge cost saver. It has a replacement for Word (Writer), Excel (Calc), Powerpoint (Impress) and Access (Base). It also comes with a basic drawing application (Draw).

One problem I have faced since the beginning of Open Office was that it comes with very few templates, especially for presentations. So instead of downloading Open Office you can download OxygenOffice Professional which is free a beefed up version of Open Office. You can also find a repository of free Macros for it at OOoMacros.org. A very good article I found about making your Open Office installation even more powerful can be found here.

Various studies have been made by companies about the feasibility of shifting their workforce from MS Office to Open Office.
Results are mixed. No doubt it will be a relearning experience for the user which will require some training on the company's part. Then there is also the fact that the 2 are not 100% the same in terms of usability or in the way they save data. Although Open Office can read and write MS Office files, from experience I know that this process is not 100%. For example, sometimes images would not show up correctly or some formatting will be lost. Open Office's built in support for generating PDF files from any of its formats is a good workaround when you need to give a report to your client as there are no formatting issues there.

What it comes down to is to look at the company's goals in the long run.

Project Management Software

2007-08-07T22:20:00.000-07:00

In December 2006 I went through training for Project Management Professional (PMP). It opened up my mind and made me see the possibilities of how a project should be managed. Now when I look back at the previous projects I have managed, I see how much better it would have been if I had known the techniques earlier. A couple of weeks ago I was doing some research on Project Management Software and came across a very good article on wikipedia. What I liked best was the section talking about the criticisms regarding using software for managing projects in certain scenerios where just a pen and paper would have sufficed.

OpenBravo - Open Source ERP

2007-07-31T22:20:00.000-07:00

I came across a very good open source ERP solution called OpenBravo. Its built using J2EE which is the same technology used by SAP, Oracle, IBM, BEA etc. The software seems to be mature and has all the features that are being currently provided by mySAP with the difference being that its free to use.

Of course once cannot claim that OpenBravo is a drop in replacement for mySAP. But then its also a fact that not all the features available in mySAP are used by all of SAP's customers. OpenBravo could probably be sufficient for more than 40% of mySAP users.

The fact that it is open source also means that anyone can change its source code to better reflect how things work in their organization.

Great Java Resource For Coders

2007-07-20T22:20:00.000-07:00

Came across this really awesome website today:
http://www.java-source.net/

It has categorized Open Source Java based frameworks and ready to use components like PDF libraries, Mail clients, XML GUI toolkits, blogs, network servers etc. What I like about this website is its ease of use, nice clean design and good categorization.

Your Website On A Mobile

2007-06-03T22:20:00.000-07:00

I came across a very interesting website today. It has a Java applet based emulator that shows you what your website will look like when seen on a mobile. It is no secret that more and more people are browsing the internet using mobiles. It is getting important that developers make sure that their website is properly viewable on a mobile. Check out the site here.

Open Source For Enterprise Development

2007-05-21T23:20:00.000-07:00

I came across a very good article for Java developers targeting the enterprise highlighting ten open source projects. Here is the link.

Free Voice Calls

2007-05-03T23:20:00.000-07:00

I had written a short blog about SIP earlier as to free software available for setting up SIP servers and free SIP clients for almost any internet connected device you can think of.

I came across 2 new things today. SJ Labs is the creator of a couple of free SIP based voice call programs for Windows, Linux, Mac and Windows CE.

I also came across the Free World Dialup website which gives access to free SIP servers. This means that you can connect to these servers using any SIP client program and can talk to other SIP clients online for free.

Some may ask "Why not just use Skype?". I guess at the end of the day it all depends on is hoe many users will be using SIP and how many will end up using Skype. Since SIP is an open voice call format, there are far more programs available for it on almost any device you can think of than what Skype can ever dream of supporting.

Database made using Pure PHP

2007-03-20T23:20:00.000-07:00

I came across this a while ago but completely forgot about it. phpDatabase.net is an open source pure php database script which means that if you need to use a database in your PHP application but there is no database running on the server, using this script you will have no need for MySql, MS SQL or Oracle etc.

Below are its features (taken from the webpage):

creating and dropping database
creating, changing and dropping tables and sequences
selecting, inserting, updating and deleting data from tables
automatic locking of files, so simultanous changing the data is possible.
transaction processing, commiting or rolling back of made changes
default auto commiting mode

This is definitely pretty darn good.

Networking Tools

2007-03-04T22:20:00.001-08:00

Came across a very good list of networking tools which includes packet sniffers, port scanners and network monitors. Its hosted at spywarewarrior.com

A more detailed list is available here.

Do check it out.

SAP Code Gallery

2007-03-04T22:20:00.000-08:00

SAP has recently started a code gallery for programmers for the Netweaver Platform which is based on Java Enterprise Edition. SAP is one of the most widely used software in the Enterprise arena and is one of the most expensive software, owned by Siemens. You can access the code gallery here.

PHP XML Tutorial

2007-03-01T22:20:00.000-08:00

I found a very good PHP XML Tutorial today. Its made for PHP5. I recommend it for everyone who is programming in PHP. XML is everywhere and there is very little anyone to move into areas where it has still not reached. This tutorial will get you started with the basics of working with XML using PHP.

VoIP - The Internet Telephone Era

2007-01-25T22:20:00.000-08:00

I have been looking at VoIP (Voice over IP) for more than a year now. First came the open-sourcing of the Asterisk VoIP server (which uses the SIP protocol) then a boom started that has now taken over the world. Mobile handsets that use Wifi to connect to a SIP server, PDAs connecting to SIP servers, Mobile phones with WiFi (or Edge technology in the USA) and of course softphones on regular Windows/Mac/Linux PCs.

What does all this mean to the layman?? Cheaper international phone calls over an internet connection. A lot of us have good broadband internet connections at home and/or at the office. Using SIP devices/software, people can call you or you can call them at a very small price or in some cases for free. SIP gives you a local telephone number in the USA or UK which your clients/family can use to call you up. To them it will seem as if you are sitting in that country but you could be anywhere in the world, but of course near a broadband internet connection.

Its good for business, making the client feel that you are available locally.

What does all this require?? You need to get a SIP account on a server running in the country where you want to have a local number. Your SIP device/software will connect to that server over the internet. When your client/family dials the local number, they are actually dialing to the server in their local country. The server connects the call to your SIP device/software.

You will get charged for both incoming and outgoing calls in this scenerio to your country of choice but the rates are much much lower than the regular telephone rates. The same technology is being used by some mobile companies here in Pakistan at the moment.

A good Windows based program that can be used as a softphone is XTen. It is available as a free download on a lot of freeware websites although not on the company's website anymore. Just search for XTen SIP phone

This is a link on the CNet website with info about different VoIP servcies being offered.

The Future Of Mobility Is Now

2007-01-07T22:20:00.000-08:00

Heard about Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPC) yet? I first heard about them at the start of 2006 but I thought that they were just a concept and at most companies have just made prototypes, no real production. So last week while shopping around Dubai I find the Sony VAIO UX.

It blew my mind. It was like a dream. 4.5" screen, fingerprint recognition, eye motion detection, 550 grams and the best part of all it was running a complete Windows XP Professional; no cut down versions of operating systems anymore, run any software you want priced at 7000 UAE Dirhams. I have been using Palm OS since 1999 and have recently moved to Symbian OS on a Nokia Mobile. All this time whenever I wanted to something on my mobile device I would have to search the internet looking for a software which was available for Windows easily and most of the time for free.

So I come back from Dubai and I find out there are a whole bunch of UMPCs in production today. Two sites with the best info I found were:

Why do I say that this is the future of mobility? If you use your Laptop / Notebook to only check email, use an Office Package, browse the net or use software with little RAM/CPU requirements (ie. no 3D animation/modeling or 3D Gaming), a UMPC can do all thet for the same price as any high-end laptop, with less weight and a much much higher COOL factor. So what if the screen size is smaller. You can get a UMPC with a complete 1024*600 screen size with a zoom in and zoom out feature. The Sony VAIO UX also comes with a docking bay that has a regular video output that can connect to a monitor or projector. The ASUS R2H comes with built in GPS.

The top Windows XP based UMPCs as I see it are as follows:

ASUS R2H Samsung Q1-SSD

But of course the best of the breed I think is still the Sony VAIO UX I got to play with in Dubai. But then it was a 4.5" screen whereas the above two are 7" screens. hmm....

Also found the following good comparison of a couple of UMPCs:

Photoshop On Web

2006-12-25T22:20:00.000-08:00

Fauxto is a web application created using Flash that mimics the early versions of Photoshop. Options for layers, layer effects and filters will let photoshop users feel right at home. You can also open files from your PC and save files.

More AJAX

2006-12-24T22:20:00.000-08:00

I subscribe to the Java Developer's Journal weekly email and lately I have been seeing them pushing the idea of AJAX replacing all client-side development in the near future. I feel that this is just a hype. I still find that the performance AJAX toolkits when it comes to animations is poor. Animations and transitions work very slow. I was reading the article by Coach Wei where he is proposing that a presentation on AJAX vs Java (client-side) be created to compare the two. He also wrote another article named AJAX to overtake Flash.

I have tested some AJAX toolkits in the past. Coach talks about a few more I had not tried out earlier:

When Flash was first introduced, it caught the attention of millions only due to its ability to show very good and clean animations requiring very little download for its runtime. Flash's awesome animations cannot be compared to the current state of AJAX animations.

I still stand by my previous comment that AJAX performance depends on the browser's capability of rendering the animations. Until Firefox, IE and others do not fix their slow animations rendering, AJAX will not be seen as a replacement for Flash or client-side Java.

My New Favourite Desktop

2006-11-13T22:20:00.000-08:00

I have written about Litestep before, its an alternate shell for Windows. Makes Windows work and feel completely different. A lot of gamers like to feel that they are playing a game when they are using Windows, thus you find quite an aweful lot of Litestep themes that are catered to gamers. I had stopped using Litestep a while back due it it crashing a lot but now it seems pretty stable. Then I came across the following theme and I knew this is what I want on my desktop. Check it out...

Now how awesome is that...

My Favourite Firefox Extensions

2006-11-06T22:20:00.001-08:00

Following are the latest list of Firefox Extensions I am using:

Adblock 0.5.3.043
Adblock Filterset.G Updater 0.3.0.4
Auto-blocks most adverts on common websites using an online database of adverts on those webpages. E.g. I see no adverts on hotmail when I log in.
Add N Edit Cookies 0.2.1.0 - Mess around with website cookies. Web Dev tool
Clone Window 0.2.6 - Create a copy of a window or tab
Codetch 0.4.0.20061026 - Web dev tool
ColorZilla 0.8.3.1 - Great tool to play with colors on a webpage
Data Analytics 0.1.8 - Analyze data on any webpage which is in a table, like in MS Excel
DejaClick by AlertSite 0.8.0.1 - Creates a recording of actions performed in the browser. Can be used as macros (e.g. logging into hotmail automatically) or to create web browsing tutorials.
Delete Selection 0.1 - Delete anything on a webpage, especially comes in handy when you want to print a webpage but would rather delete something on it first.
deskCut 0.5.0.5 - Create a desktop shortcut for the current page
Download Manager Tweak 0.7.1 - Extra options for Firefox downloading
DownThemAll! 0.9.9.7 - Internal Firefox Download Manager
dutchblock 0.33 - Another advert blocking extension
Firefox Extension Backup Extension (FEBE) 4.0 - Backs up ALL my extensions along with ALL settings. Can backup complete Firefox profile. I take the profile home and install it on my home PC as well.
Firefoxit 0.1.2 - Widgets engine built on Firefox, still in development but promising.
FireFTP 0.94.6 - Really awesome FTP client within Firefox
Flashblock 1.5.2 - Allows me to block Flash files and also gives options for download.
FlashGot 0.5.97.01 - Forwards download requests to your local download manager.
Force Content-Type 1.2.1 - Web dev tool, to fix problems with webserver config for certain mime types.
ghostfox 0.1.4 - Really awesome extension. Made for those who would like to hide that fact that they are browsing making others think that they are actually working. Embeds the Firefox window into any program, e.g. you are supposed to be working in Excel, Firefox will disappear from the taskbar and will appear within the Excel window. So a passerby will think you are using Excel. If you move your mouse out of the Firefox region, Firefox will completely disappear. It will reappear when you move your mouse from the left side of the screen to the right end and back to the left (like waving a magic wand). Concept based on the Ghostzilla browser.
Gmail Space 0.5.1 - Shows your 1 GB space on your Gmail account as a FTP window so you can save your files there.
Greasemonkey 0.6.6.20061017.0 - A lot of scripts are available on their website to do cool stuff with specific websites.
hideBad 1.3.2
httProxy 0.9.1 - If a website is being blocked by your ISP, e.g. Pakistan Gov blocks the blogspot website, use this to access that webpage.
IE Tab 1.1.1.4 - Open up a webpage in Internet Explorer within Firefox.
JSView 1.2.1 - Web Dev tool, view external javascript and css files
Live HTTP Headers 0.11 - web dev tool, view the communication going on between your browser and other servers as you browse a webpage.
Menu Editor 1.2.3 - Edit all the menus and context menu of Firefox according to your wishes.
MR Tech Local Install 5.3.1.1 - The most important tool for managing Firefox extensions.
Password Hasher 0.9.5 - Generate and save hashed passwords
PDF Download 0.7.6 - Make firefox ask you what to do with a PDF everytime, e.g. open in Acrobat, open within firefox or save to disk
Performancing 1.3 - Blogging extension, being used right now
RankQuest SEO Toolbar 3.2 - Great tools for finding out info about page you are browsing
Remove It Permanently 1.0.6.1 - Mark an object on a webpage for deletion permanently, like an annoying logo or an advert.
Resurrect Pages 1.0.4 - Locates a webpage on different webpage archives which might not be in existence anymore. I was able to find my first website that I created back in 1995.
SaveWithUrl 0.2.2 - Saves the url of a page you are saving as a metatag within the html. Helps if you save a lot of webpages on your hard drive and don't remember where you found that page.
SEOpen 0.8 - Great tools for finding out info about page you are browsing
SessionSaver .2 0.2.1.030.4 - Saves your previous Firefox session, all open tabs, windows etc. so you can continue right where you left
Shazou 1.1 - Shows the location of the server of the website you are looking at on a map using Google maps
ShowIP 0.8.05 - Shows the IP address of the website you are looking at along with some shortcuts to find out its Whois record
SourceEditor 0.1 - Edit the source code of a website
superT 0.7.9.1 - Extra options for tab browsing
Tab Catalog 1.1.2006110601 - Shows screenshots of all open tabs
Tab To Window 1.2.6
Table2Clipboard 0.0.2.1 - Copies a table to clipboard in a format that can be pasted properly within MS Office
Talkback 1.5.0.7
Tamper Data 9.8.1 - Mess around with the communication going on between your browser and a website's server. You can see exactly what info is being sent by firefox and mess with the info as well. You can also save a session's communication for record, and even play it back again later.
TAW3 en un clic 0.9.5 - Check if the webpage you are viewing is using proper web dev standards
User Agent Switcher 0.6.9 - Make a webserver think you are using some other browser, e.g. Internet Explorer. Comes in handy on some websites.
View Dependencies 0.3.2.0
ViewSourceWith 0.0.8.39 - View source code with a different editor
Web Developer 1.0.2 - Some powerful tools to examine a webpage's design. Comes in very handy when trying to find problems with HTML.
wmlbrowser 0.7.8 - Open WAP websites using firefox, e.g. wap.getjars.com
XPather 1.1 - XPath tool for firefox
Ñandú 0.6 - Fast webpage editor within Firefix

Find your old webpages

2006-11-06T22:20:00.000-08:00

I came across the Internet Archive Wayback Machine today. It allowed me to find a webpage I had created back in 1995 when I was in Chicago studying at IIT. I was also able to find some of my friends' webpages. It brought back a lot of memories. I never thought I would be able to see those webpages again. I had never backed up my webpage. Although none of the pictures were there anymore, just seeing the text itself brought back quite a bit of memories.

I guess its a good website to look for data that you had maybe once published on the net and forgot to backup and lost. See what you can find.

AJAX - The New Web Concept

2006-10-20T23:20:00.000-07:00

A lot of web developers have been reading about how AJAX is going to transform the way people use websites. In short AJAX enables developers to create Web Applications that look, work and feel like a regular desktop application. It adds the extra functionality that is missing in common web technologies, e.g. Flash and HTML do not have any components for pop-up dialogs or tabs. AJAX also concentrates on providing a more animated interface.

OpenLaszlo is an AJAX toolkit that allows you to write your web application in technology-independant code and then publish the application as either Flash, XHTML and soon Java for Mobiles. Currently only the Flash version is usable, heavy work is going on the XHTML version and development on the Java for Mobiles version has just started with Sun Microsystem's help. I like the Flash version but the XHTML version still needs quite a bit of work.

I have also been looking at the ZK Web Framework which is a XHTML based AJAX framework. The last time I checked there were quite a few bugs with the Firefox version.

My personal opinion is that an XHTML AJAX toolkit will always have problems mainly due to cross-browser compatibility issues. Anyone who has ever tried to use advanced javascript on their webpages knows this. Then there issues in webpage rendering from one browser to another. Since AJAX tries to introduce animated features to the interface, I have found a lot of bugs especially in browser rendering.

For XHTML based AJAX toolkits to really take off browsers will also need to be updated especially their rendering engines. Historically HTML content of webpages has been mostly static thus web browsers have a low refresh rate for it. But in order for AJAX to be a true desktop application replacement, browser makers will have to increase their HTML content refresh rates so actions like dragging a component seems more natural.

For example, when trying out the ZK Component Demo in Firefox, using the slider component you will notice a slight delay when dragging the slider. Also when using any of the pop-up dialogs and dragging them, when you drag the window beyond the right or lower edge of the browser window (causing the scrollbars to resize) a very unnatural effect takes place that a user will never see in a desktop application.

I forsee open-source browsers like Firefox to become more AJAX friendly, but I am almost sure that MS Internet Explorer will probably never do that. AJAX is seen as a threat to Microsoft's Windows desktop development platform which locks in users to using only Windows. If AJAX achieves its goals, it will shift a lot of users away from dependancy on using Windows.

Java Rules The Enterprise

2006-03-20T22:20:00.001-08:00

Java has rocked the world of Enterprise Software Development. Almost all major Enterprise Software is being developed using Java based technologies, at least when it comes to the server side development. BEA, SAP, IBM, Oracle ... and the list goes on.

But what difference does it make to an end user? The end user who uses the system at the end of the day to make Account Entries or manage inventory does not care and does not know the difference between whether he is using a system developed using Java or PHP or C++, especially with the new fast CPUs. What does make a difference is whether the software is well designed and whether all different operations of the company are well-integrated or not.

SAP has been providing a robust, integrated software solution to enterprises to manage their everyday tasks. Their R3 software integrates financial functions, inventory management, accounts, sales and distribution. It also allows additions to the system with customized programming. They have the most mature software in the enterprise software market. Even they jumped on the Java bandwagon.

So why is it that companies are moving to Java based technologies? Why has PHP not been able to penetrate into the enterprise as well? And what was wrong with the old way of doing things with C and C++?

To understand this you first have to understand the requirements of an enterprise, exactly why does it need such over-priced software.

I will continue this in another post ...

Automated Computer Inventory

2006-03-20T22:20:00.000-08:00

Recently I came across an open-source project that automatically creates and maintains a very detailed inventory of ALL the computers on your network. The project is called OCS Inventory. Its website states that it "... is an application designed to help a network or system administrator keep track of the computer configuration and software installed on the network..." Actually its does much more than that.

It allows the admin to retrieve any registry key from the client computer, a highly detailed list of hardware installed (even details of the attached devices like monitors), a web interface to search the inventory etc.

There have been some problems that I have been trying to tackle for a long time on my 100 PC network. Number 1 on the list was to disable all USBs so that our propriety data could not be copied onto USB flash disks and carried out of the office by employees; or employees do not bring in and execute software on their PCs (associated problems are with virus contaminated software) which might cause havoc on my network. Using the inventory I was able to clearly identify which PCs on the network had their USBs still active. I also found 2 PCs on my network using ancient 10 MBps network cards.

It has helped me map out an upgrade plan for both software and hardware. I would recommend any network admin to give it a try. Setup is very simple, the server runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS, UNIX etc.

The Problem With Java Client Development

2005-12-20T22:20:00.000-08:00

I love Java as a language and as a platform. It is a very clear language to understand and there is a plathora of code available on the web for you to put together a relatively complex application together in no time. It has the support of far too many companies to mention here and it also has the seal of approval from Open Software and Free Software developers.

I recently looked up into decompilers for Java programs and I was horrified to see the results. A Java program can be decompiled back into its original source code with very little work. There are many free and commercial decompilers available. I decompiled one of my older programs that I made for a client (who never paid up) and it was converted back into its original source code within seconds.

This prompted me to look up into how I could make sure that my Java programs would be safer from decompilation. There are 3 techniques to do so:

Obfuscation: This is the process of changing the class / method / variable names so that they are not easy to interpret once decompiled. It does not stop decompilation though, just makes it slightly more irritating for the one who is trying to decompile your code. But keep in mind that it does not change the names of the core Java API packages/methods etc. So your algorithms are pretty much given away to the one hacking your code.

Compilation to Native Code: You can compile your Java code to Windows or Linux native code like for a C/C++ program which can be decompiled but not easy to make sense of the decompiled code. A person like me will not be able to do it. Two programs used by programmers are the commercial Excelsior JET and the open source GCJ. Excelsior JET has licenced the J2SE code from Sun Microsystems so your code will not break at all. GCJ still lacks a lot of J2SE packages and classes (e.g. there still no AWT implementation). So your code will break a lot.

Light-Weight Clients: This is a client / server approach for applications where the actual bulk of the program logic resides on a server and the client is mainly used for display purposes. So if the end user decides to decompile the Java client the most he will get out of it is the code for displaying. He will not be able to alter how the logic of the program actually works. This might be perfect for enterprises that will deploying the application in an intranet environment but it is not sufficient for standalone everyday use applications like editors, mail clients etc.

Come to think of it all those free applets out there can be easily decompiled, code changed, your company logo added and then served on your own webpage without anyone ever finding out.

I think Sun Microsystems should provide a free compile to native code compiler with their SDK for people who want to keep their source code safe from hacking attempts.

VB6 May Live If...

2005-10-15T23:20:00.000-07:00

I have just completed 2 projects recently using VB6. I know that using .NET is the IN thing but the client's required it. A programmer's best friend is Google, to search the net looking for an explanation for why a bug is occuring or trying to find out how to implement a certain feature or maybe find free code lying around on the net to directly embed into their own.

When working on these VB6 projects I realized that a lot of VB6 code is now available for free on the net compared to what was out there just a year back. So many sites are giving away complete VB6 code, its just plain crazy. Work that used to take me months can now be done within days as the code for most of the features that you can think of is available for free downloads.

Maybe I did not notice this because I was lost in the world of Java for a while now. But I believe that there are people out there who are trying to keep VB6 alive. Free code for it being available on so many sites definitely means that there is a demand for it.

I feel that if a company were to invest into creating a VB6 clone, it would definitely sell. Better yet, if it could be made to be cross-platform compatible, it would sell like hotcakes. Cross-platform compatibility would mean that old VB6 programs cannot be compiled for other platforms, but it would mean that VB6 programmers can use their coding skills to develop for other platforms. One Open Source project to note is GAMBAS which is "... a free development environment based on a Basic interpreter with object extensions, like Visual Basic™ (but it is NOT a clone !) ..."

I am not trying to ditch VB.NET. I use it and its a great language. But consider the VB6 programmers all around the world who are being forced to let go of their beloved language to move to a COMPLETELY NEW language. I was able to cope because of my strong background in OOP from Java.

Think about all the programmers who could not update their knowledge to VB.NET and lost their jobs. I can hear the smart remarks of some programmers "that means more money for us". I would simply like to say to them "your time will come as well".

Make Windows look like MacOS X

2005-05-12T23:20:00.000-07:00

I have been using Windows XP on a laptop with 256 MB RAM for a while now and have always thought to myself "Windows XP is killing my RAM, I wish I could have the base OS use less of it". Uptill now I was tweaking XP by minimizing processes running in the system tray and shutting down unwanted services, but the base OS would take upto 170 MB. This was mostly due to Windows Explorer.

Last week I came across LiteStep, an alternative to Explorer that takes far less resources and can do wonders with the way your desktop looks. I have also installed a bunch of other utilities on my laptop and now when my laptop is booting it shows up a Mac OS X logo during the boot up process, the logon screen has been replaced by a nice Firefox logon screen and the desktop looks almost exactly like that of the Mac OS X. When I showed it to a friend, he thought I had installed MacOS X on my laptop. This is the by far one of the geekiest things I have done on Windows.

Best of all I was able to do all this using free and Open-source software, no need to pay for it.

To change your desktop to act like Mac OS X get the following:
1) LiteStep installer (works with both Win 2k and Win XP)
2) MacOS X theme for LiteStep
Browse on ls-universe and WinCustomize.com for other LiteStep themes.

LiteStep changes the desktop but it does not change the window decoration, ie. the window title, minimize, maximize buttons. To set the window decoration to look like Mac OS X get the following:
1) UXTheme Multi-Patcher (Neowin Edition) 2.0.exe
2) Macintosh Theme for Win XP (you can use this without the need for LiteStep)
Browse on belchfire.net for other Win XP Window Styles.

To change the boot screen and logon screen you will need:
1) LogonUI Boot Randomizer
2) Boot file showing Mac OS X
3) Logon screen with Firefox (I have not found a screen to mimic Mac OS X yet)
Browse on belchfire.net for other Boot and Logon screens.

This is not meantto be a tutorial. I am merely providing direct links to the files needed. When you install, most of it will be straighforward. There are some directions also given within the files. Details of installation can be found at belchfire.net and ls-universe.

Death of Visual Basic 6

2005-04-06T23:20:00.000-07:00

With the arrival of the new Visual Studio, Visual Basic 6, the programming language loved and used by programmers all around the world especially in the Finance Industry, will come to its end. Microsoft will no longer have support for the language in their Software Development IDE Visual Studio. Visual Basic was one of the easiest languages to get used to and allowed its users to build a fairly complex application up and running in no time.

I myself started real programming using ASP which is VB for web development and love dit right away. It was simple to learn and all the tools needed were right there free with my Windows 2000 installation, except for the Visual Studio IDE. Then I moved to application development with VB6 and then also did a whole bunch of VBA work. I have created numerous small utilities using VB6 and MS Office in my time to make repetitive tasks easier for people working on my network.

Microsoft claims that their migration tools can convert old VB6 source code to VB.NET code flawlessly, but if you search the web for what people have to say about that, you will find that its not as simple as Microsoft would like you to think it is. I came accross this article "Microsoft MVPs Say They Want Old VB Back" today and though I would put it up here. Its about a team of companies who are not happy about the death of VB6. They claim that their applications could not be translated to VB.NET using the migration tools that Microsoft has provided and are asking Microsoft to extend their support of VB6.

While I was in London in 2003 I found out from some fellow programmers who were working in the Financial industry that VB6 was very hot. Everyone was using it for financial analysis, reporting, mostly using Excel and VBA. But at that time I also noticed a lot of Java jobs opening up in the Financial sector. There seemed to be a huge move by them towards J2EE solutions.

I guess a lesson to learn from this for me is that when an enterprise decides to develop software for their internal use that they know will become a crucial part of how their business runs, they should make it a point to choose technologies that are universal and ones that will not lock them into a single vendor.

Like in the case of VB6, now that Microsoft has decided to kill it, all enterprises that are dependant on software that has been developed using VB6 are doomed. Their software cannot be updated for future versions of Windows or processors. There are rumours that with the new version of Windows, programs that have been compiled for previous versions of windows might not run at all. This has happened in the past. When Microsoft moved from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, a lot of software broke down.

What is an Application Server?

2005-03-07T22:20:00.000-08:00

A friend recently asked me about the difference between an Application Server and a regular server program that is created using sockets in Java or C/C++. I explained to him that when a developer creates a regular server that locks on to a port listening to client requests, he is in charge of everything that the server program does. This sounds good at first since the developer is free to do whatever he wishes, but when creating an advanced and sophisticated piece of software that has requirements for clustering support, database connection pooling, web services, standards compliance, cross-platform deployment, database abstraction, webpage serving etc., the developer would go crazy trying to implement all of them on his own.

But one could also argue that all these advanced features can also be implemented using bits and pieces from different libraries/packages developed by different vendors and open-source projects. A C/C++ developer could use the Beowulf libraries for clustering, DBStep for database abstraction and so on. A Java developer can use JDBC for database abstraction, use elemenope for scalability and client/server messaging, Apache Axis for web services, Apache Tomcat for serving dynamic webpages etc.

Now using these different libraries does solve the purpose but they create new problems. There is no integration between these various libraries therefore each library has to be managed seperately. If tomorrow Apache Axis decides to make an update to their software and the developer wants to use the updated version as part of his software, the new version might interfere with a part of the elemenope code.

An integrated environment is one where all the sub-parts have been designed specifically to work together and not to interfere with each other's work. An application server gives you just that; an integrated set of libraries that work together to give developers a platform that provides all the functionality they need to create an advanced application.

But what about all the different Application servers out there, for Java, XML, PHP etc. Whats the difference there or why should a developer use one over the other. And why should a company opt for an expensive commercial application server when he can use an open-source alternative. I came across this article on the SYS-CON website which has the highlights of just such a discussion.

Java Open Source Projects List

2005-02-24T22:20:00.000-08:00

I came across a very good article highlightling a lot of mature and major Open Source Java projects that are being used in companies around the globe, and I thought I would share it on my blog. Go to "Opening Up Java Projects to Open Source" and read all about it.

The existence of so many Open Source projects based on Java is also a proof for it being a Mature language that can and should be used to develop applications.

Open Source Java App Servers

2005-01-25T22:20:00.000-08:00

The world of Java Application servers has been very confusing, so many to choose from. Now more and more open-source versions are popping up. Most of them are based on efforts by the Apache Foundation who have worked hard on creating the base components required by a Java Application and Web server. They started with Tomcat which served as the official Reference Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies. Based on Tomcat a whole plathora of servers were born.

JBoss is probably the most widely used and J2EE compliant Java server around. Its core is based on Tomcat.

A while ago I saw Jetty which is 100% java and is a FAST JSP and Servlet server, 350 kb is size.

Today I found Gluecode JOE, which has an open-source version as well as a FREE Standard version which has clustering support. It also relies heavily on Apache-based open-source software. The Apache Geronimo application server is its core, it uses Jetty as the web/servlet server, uses the Apache Pluto portal framework and Apache Derby as the default database. With the Standard edition you get an Enhanced Management console and optional clustering support.

Apache Geronimo is the J2EE server project of the Apache Software Foundation. Its currently passes Sun's TCK for J2EE 1.4. More on this later.

Snooping on other computers

2005-01-17T22:20:00.000-08:00

I just found out about how packet sniffing is done and found some really good packet sniffing software. First of all what it is:

In a shared Ethernet environment, all hosts are connected to the same bus and compete with one another for bandwidth. In such an environment packets meant for one machine are received by all the other machines. Thus when a machine Venus wants to talk to Cupid in such an environment, it sends a packet on the network with the destination MAC address of Cupid along with its own source MAC address. All the computers on the shared ethernet compare frame's destination MAC address with their own. If the two don't match, the frame is quietly discarded. A machine running a sniffer breaks this rule and accepts all frames. Such a macine is said to have been put into promiscous mode and can effectively listen to all the traffic on the network. Sniffing in a Shared Ethernet environment is totally passive and hence extremely difficult to detect.

Taken from Sumit Dhar's Page.

What this means is that anyone on your network has the power to see what you are watching. I wanted to test this so I looked around for programs for Windows and found a good list on Tech FAQ here.

I then downloaded Ethereal and found out that I could read complete images and html files being sent by other users on our network by scanning our Proxy server and our router and even by targeting individual computers. I could see whole html docs. Ethereal also allowed me to save files being downloaded. I tried saving a JPG file and I was able to save it to my desktop and open it.

I always used to think that snooping on other PCs was an art for only very experienced hackers, but now looking at this program it seems like any Tom, Dick and Harry can virtually steal any of my passwords being sent in plain text over the network. This can happen when you sending login info on a webpage not using SSL, or when starting ftp/telnet sessions etc. I did a test run when logging into this blog and Ethereal was able to show me the login and password my browser sent to the Blogsome server as an HTML POST request.

I did notice though that since we are using Smart Switches on our network, and my PC is connected to one of the smaller slave switches on the network, I am not able to recieve all network traffic. But if my PC was connected on one of our Master switches or even better the switch where the ADSL router and proxy server are connected, I could really mess around with other people's data. hmmmm.......

Java Development directly from a CD

2005-01-10T22:20:00.000-08:00

I came across the best thing for Java developers while surfing the net last week. A Live CD with Java development tools on it, Pollix. Just boot your computer using this CD and you have J2SDK 1.4.2 + Eclipse + Netbeans + BlueJ + a whole lot of other dev tools with a complete Linux GUI OS.

Plus it already has Java servers like Tomcat and JBoss installed and ready to run as well. No more installation nightmares for newbees who just want to learn.

Who would want to use this. Well if you are a student and:

you want to have the best Java dev tools all on one CD

you need to show off your Java work in a presentation using someone else's PC

your netwrok admin has allowed people to boot PCs from a CD, you can have your whole development environment on a CD and can start working using any PC; you will not care about what is preinstalled on the PC itself.

This is also a great tool for Java teachers to recommend to their students. I have come across a lot of Java newbies who have trouble even setting up environment variables. I think this is a very good resource for teachers and students alike.

I have seen very often that in universities and schools the sysadmin installs Windows on all machines and students do not get a chance to see Linux at all. I think Live CDs is about to change all that. Its all about spreading the word.

Full Linux OS without Installation

2005-01-09T22:20:00.000-08:00

Linux Live CDs have been around for a while now, still I meet so many people who have never heard of them. I just met a friend who has been working on cross-platform C/C++ development for over a year now and is the Linux guru at his office but he had never heard of them.

In short, a Live CD is a bootable CD that brings up a full working operating system without installing anything on the PC’s hard drive. A good list of Live CDs is given here. For me it started with Knoppix which is full Linux OS with the KDE GUI desktop, OpenOffice, plus loads of software all running directly from the CD.

Knoppix is the parent of a lot of other Live CDs, so on a lot of LiveCD websites you will find the words “Knoppix spin-off”. You see what Knoppix achieved over other Live CD distros was its awesome ability to detect hardware automatically without bothering its user. It works great with even laptops. It also has 3GB worth of software compressed into one CD. If you are new to LiveCDs, please start with Knoppix.

So one might ask, why a LiveCD? I have seen different answers to this question on the net. I actually like the idea of carrying around my whole operating system with me on a CD and a USB disk to save my work. I am also a sysadmin. I know how often PCs go down. Norton Ghost has saved my life millions of times, where the same OS image file could be installed on various similar systems without any problems; configure once, install everywhere. With Live CDs I can configure once, run anywhere … without installation.

My intranet PDC server went down last week, filesystem got corrupt. I had my user/group/password, Samba, cups scripts all backed up. I just put in a live STUX Linux CD, booted into the OS, kept the scripts and files in their relative places and viola .. the server was back up again in 10 minutes. A reinstallation would have taken hours.

I plan to post more of my findings in LiveCDs as time goes on. So keep coming back for more …