Sunday, December 4, 2011

Trello: Simple and effective webapp

I tried many tools to manage my tasks and projects but nothing is as simple as this webapp. The resemblance of the tool to SCRUM wall makes it very intuitive. Hope my search for a to-do management tool will come to an end with this tool.
 Checkout Trello

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Dr. JP makes out a case for strengthening CBI and ...

Lok Satta News: Dr. JP makes out a case for strengthening CBI and ...: Lok Satta Party President Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan today placed startling facts before the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Lokpal Bill a...

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Nitro-Hydrogen economy

Will Ammonia beat petroleum an established form of fuel and budding alternative fuel technologies like hydrogen etc.. Unlike petroleum ammonia burns cleanly and produces nitrogen and water (no green house gas). Also storing and transporting Ammonia is much cheaper and easier compared to Hydrogen. Silver Eagles Energy claims that they developed system which can replace the current petroleum based economy. Hope this Nitro-Hydrogen economy will put an end to the current fuel crisis.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Google acquires Motorola

I think Google is left with no other option to strengthen its patent portfolio in the mobile domain immediately to counter Apple and Microsoft's attack on Android for patent violations.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/supercharging-android-google-to-acquire.html

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Hacking blogger template to create stand-alone archive page.

After knowing about the Blogger's "standalone page" feature I wanted to add archive page for my blog. To start with I explored blogger gadgets, there is no way for adding the gadget to display only in one page and hide it in rest of the pages without editing the blogger template (I wish blogger will add this feature soon). Later I explored all the hacks on the internet but none seem to give the results what I wanted. After some trail and error I devised a method to add the archive page. I tried this hack and added an archive page for this blog and my photo-blog.
At a very high-level my approach is
- Add default blogger archive gadget.
- Edit the blogger template to hide the gadget using CSS.
- Create a page with javascript to parse the hidden archive gadget DOM and display the data in the required format.

More detailed steps below.
  •  Log in to your blogger account select Design link of the blog which you want to modify
  • Select Page Elements tab and click on Add a Gadget and select blogger-archive gadget
  • Now configure the blog-archive gadget with below options
    - style: choose
    - Options: check  
    - Archive Frequency: choose monthly
  • After adding the archive gadget navigate to Edit HTML tab and take backup of your template by clicking Download Full Template. This backup will help you if you want to revert to old template.
  • Click on Expand Full Template and  add the following CSS snippet in the tab section of the template and the save it.

  • #BlogArchive1 {  display:none; }                           

  • Navigate to Posting -> Edit Pages -> NewPage in the page editor switch to Edit HTML modeand copy the following javascript and publish the page.

  • <div id="myArch" style="float: left;">
    <script type="text/javascript">
    var archContent = document.getElementById("ArchiveList").innerHTML;
    var linkIdx=archContent.indexOf('post-count-link');
    var pCL= archContent.slice(linkIdx);
    var year;
    var yrOrMon;
    do{
    yrOrMon = /post-count-link.*?>(.*?)<\/a>/i.exec(pCL); // ';
    if (isNaN(yrOrMon[1])){
    var sIndx = pCL.search(/<ul class="?posts"?>/i);
    var eIndx = pCL.indexOf('<\/ul>',sIndx);
    document.write('<b>'+yrOrMon[1]+' '+year+'<\/b><br \/>');
    document.write(pCL.slice(sIndx, eIndx)+'<\/ul>');
    }else{
    year = yrOrMon[1];
    }
    linkIdx=pCL.indexOf('post-count-link', 15);
    pCL= pCL.slice(linkIdx);
    } while( linkIdx > 0);
    </script></div>

 You may need to change the script if you want to change the format or look and feel of the archive page.

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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Graffiti on computer screen

I am a fan of graffiti. I never imagined that the most interesting part of the graffiti, the motion can be captured using a markup language. GML (Graffiti Markup Language) is a universal, XML-based, open file format designed to store graffiti motion data (x coordinates, y coordinates and time) thanks to EvanRoth and team.
Mozilla hosted a website(www.markup.mozilla.org) dedicated for this new markup language.You can create and share your graffiti markups here.
Graffiti created by me on the mozilla's markup site you can play the motion of this graffiti here.
This site uses canvas HTML5 element and javascript to capture the graffiti motion and create a GML file.
Note: I am not sure whether this website works in browsers other than FireFox.

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Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Switching Firefox update channels

After Mozilla's announcement of switching to an accelerated development process, Firefox on mozilla-central will be forked to aurora channel. Going ahead Firefox builds will be available on nightly, aurora, beta and release channels. There is no straight forward way to switch the update channel in the current nightly builds, but you can achieve this by editing about:config on the latest nightly builds.

Steps to enable channel switching option in Firefox:
  •  In address bar type in about:config and hit enter.
  • Right-click the parameter listing and select New > String from the options
  • Enter app.update.desiredChannel and give the new parameter the value release, beta or aurora.
  • open the Help > About Minefield menu. you will see the option to change the channel

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Mozilla's revamped development process

Inspired by the success of Google Chrome's success Mozilla drafted a new development process (schedule-driven) for its Firefox browser. As per the draft Firefox we will see frequent releases with lesser features.

More details here http://people.mozilla.com/~sayrer/2011/temp/process.html

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Flying Maruti

 India's favorite car Maruti 800 is back in news after MUL decided to stop its production last year. A.K. Vishwanath inventor from Bangalore gave a new life to the hatchback by giving it wings to fly, he extended the car with rotor blades.


http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/indian-inventor-claims-to-have-made-flying-car/articleshow/7492471.cms
http://www.mid-day.com/lifestyle/2011/feb/150211-Indian-flying-car-that-looks-back-to-the-future.htm

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Firefox 2011 roadmap

Mozilla planning to ship 4 releases this year (2011 Firefox Roadmap here). Looks like Mozilla is feeling the pressure from Google Chrome's smaller release cycles. One of the Firefox's greatest strengths is its firefox add-on (extension) community. Every major release of Firefox calls for an upgrade of the firefox release version in the add-on's manifest file(which is a new version of the add-on), shorter release cycles calls for regular add-on update which is an overhead to add-on developers and AMO reviewers. I am very eager to see how Mozilla will be handling this.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Beyond numbers

This video Power of ten gives a very good pictorial explanation of what each unit of length angstrom, micron, meter....etc mean. This video has changed my perception of the length.


Friday, January 7, 2011

Google Maps: Mass Animal Deaths

While browsing public maps on Google maps service I came across "Mass Animal Deaths map" created by an anonymous user. I appreciate the effort, hope this will become a tool for tracking the culprits  responsible for the mass animal deaths.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011