Regmee

TwankeTweet beta - iPhone 3.0 Application for Tweeeeeters !!

Cocoa wasn’t an unknown territory (Cocoa Touch was ….. So, I decided to jump into iPhone-app development. Got a MacBook Pro for 1.5 G’z (hates GST more than anything).

Here’s TwankeTweet, a simple iPhone App that helps me:

• Post a Twitter Status.
• See my friends tweets.
• Save Configuration Details.

Enough for a writeup… I thought , and Voila !!!

Still testing out on the Simulator. Need more confidence, before I could shoot for the ADC license (hope Apple wouldn’t reject).

Zillion thanks to Matt Legend Gemmell for MGTwitterEngine. Twitter API interaction thro’ iPhone 3.0 SDK was a cake walk with his code.

To be done:

• Many other things to be done before anyone will download if TwankeTweet hits the App Store (if at all that is):P

ScreenShots:

Mailomee - A five-hour Facebook application.

Had been trying to write a facebook application, .. quite for a while … and finally it’s up here. Just a dry try… expect no gem

“Mailomee” is what it would be called. This name came up from a pet name, I used to be known as … and to the users of Mailomee, you can use this application to get your friend’s pet names known to others … thought it would be fun to poke people ; and get them embarrassed  … haha

Just pull your Facebook friend’s name from the dropdown, and choose a name, and submit.

Don’t panic if someone has really put you into shit, with a weird pet name you din’t want your friends to know…. I can remove it, for a beer

For those who missed the link…. Here it is … click me.

Have fun.

-regmee

Be smart with Gmail (not Google) search

Do you have hundreds of e-mail accounts and zillions of Gmail e-mails from those sources ?
Here are few tips on how to handle such huge volume emails in Gmail ;

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1. after:08/02/04 before:08/02/11
2. from:Ben has:attachment
3. forward slash key on your keyboard to pop a Quick Find box
4. label:inbox is:unread
5. from:Name_Of_Boss filename:pdf after:2007/07/01 [yyyy/mm/dd]
6. from:Paypal in:anywhere
7. is:unread after:2007/09/03 to:your.email@address.com
8. from:Ryan has:attachment [Select all and then delete]
9. label:trash Name_Of_Your_Colleague
10. filename:.zip before:2007/08/15 wordpress
11. in:chat from:veronica flickr.com
12. from:Boss_Name subject:(Urgent OR Important)
13. from:Peter King -Junior

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Reference:
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/09/find-any-email-in-gmail-with-simple.html

JabbWitter ( for Jabber/GoogleTalk and Twitter )

Innovations in Social Media

by: Deep Sherchan, InRev

What does it take for you to set up one complete social media package? Let me guess, it will take you at least days to collect the entire required social media site, then understand how they work and then finally participate on it. It’s quite a time consuming task and requires lot of patience. So it’s obvious you need help. Wouldn’t it be easy to hire someone to setup all the required details and you finally use them. No! Its not being lazy, it’s being productive.  Here is a place where you can get those services. These are few innovations in the service and product regarding social media.

These days, people do not only use only one particular social media tool, but whole gamut of it. So how do you manage them? Yes, this is the very question which is putting innovators at work. One of the most widely appreciated and used tool in social media is Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck allows you to manage your friend list, group them and track each status updates and reply to them. This is really a useful tool for any marketers or people who have lots of friends in their network. There are many other applications which cater to such needs of people.

In similar ways, another major operation that people do in the social media is updating their status. Now, isn’t it difficult to track your all social media site and update on them. Well, there are tools and apps build to provide you ways of updating your status at once. Wow, now that is what innovation means – creating a ways to solve human needs. One of the examples I can give is MySkwitter, the recent app for updating the Twitter status as your Skype mood text.

Now the innovations I have talked is related to making your operations in social media easy. Well, the next innovation allows you to grow in the network. Now this is something you need to use as regularly as brushing your teeth. Why? Because growth is a steady process, and requires patience to attain it. There is no short cut; there is only a way which you HAVE to take. In twitter your growth signifies your presence in the network. Now there are many ways and techniques to grow. The next application called BUZZOM is just the tool you need to help you out. It helps you to reciprocate people who are following you and also give you a list of people whom you can follow and they will follow you for sure.

These all innovations are only the tip of an ice-berg; the innovations have only started to begin. Like Winston Churchill said: “It’s not the end neither the beginning, but the end of the beginning.” So let’s all innovate.

Renewable Energy (Solar) for Ontario, Cheers to millions.

Up until now, all I knew was that the US Senate has passed a hefty multi-billion dollar budget focused on Renewable Energy with Obama’s promise on providing alternative energy to help reduce global warming, simultaneously creating a lot of job prospects in this dwindling economy.

A CEO friend, from ArcSolar tells me he has a multi-million dollar solar farm which I could visit sometime soon.

Here goes the curious me. Digs in to explore some juicy facts.

* Solar PV panels have become very much affordable for a rooftop installation.
* We are(or will be) using Solar Energy indirectly, through the supply from solar-grids, from a solar farm.
* Ontario receives more sunlight than Germany, sad enough, Germany is one of the largest producers of solar power whereas Canada ranks amongst the top ones, when reversed
* Germany produces several thousands of MegaWatts from Solar, USA produces in hundreds and Canada almost negligible.

Planned: “Feed In Tariffs”

Ontario plans to provide a higher Feed In Tariffs (read next paragraph for the definition). Not so sure, if the plans have been introduced already, but with it, one could install solar panels and sell each kilowatt-hour of solar power for 80.2 cents. This sold power goes to the solar-grid which then sells off the collected power with 10 times lower cost. So, according to www.wecanadians.com, if you install solar panels to meet just 3% of your electricity consumption, you could, potentially, save 30% of your electricity costs.

This principle of selling and buying of solar-power, introduced a long time ago in Germany, is called “Feed In Tariffs”. It is the primary reason behind Europe’s renewable energy boom. How successful this will be for Ontarians, is yet to be seen. But, fine-tuning the tariff structure appropriately is bound to make this plan a grand success.

Along with Green Energy Act, other factors including NGJF, Universal healthcare, a market close to US and cheaper workforce compared to the U.S. etc. will definitely add to the program’s success. With the shrinking budget to invest, even Asian and European markets have become eager to expand their business in North America.

As an Ontarion, one has every reason to be a part of this massive campaign, and contribute to the usage of renewable energy, which in return would preserve our planet from the perils that most of us are aware of.

references:

http://www.wecanadians.com
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/04/solar-incentives-could-ontario-be-the-next-germany
http://www.pollina.com/publications/Articles/IncentNA.pdf
http://www.allbusiness.com/transportation-communications-electric-gas/4229821-1.html

EasyPHP 2.0.0.0 in Vista “Apache cannot be runned. Another web server is using …” Error

Three Quick steps (Vista):

a) Check if some process is listening on port 80.
Command: (As an Admin) netstat -a -n
(be horrified if you find 0.0.0.0:80 in the list of LISTENING rows)
b) Most probably IIS is running by default in your Vista
Command: http://localhost
(be terrified if you find “bienvenue IIS” )

cure:
-> Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Turn Windows features on or off. Uncheck the box for Internet Information Services.
-> restart

c) May be some P2P client is using port 80 (includes Skype). This will be visible through a) above.
Uncheck  Tools -> Advanced Options -> Connection: Use Port 80 and 443 as alternatives

If you could fix with this help, gr8, if not keep scratching your head until you figure it out and post a comment if you find a different solution.

Thanks,
-regmee

MySkwitter ….. for Skype and Twitter users.

(sorry , Skwitter was taken … had to rename the app.)

To those folks, who Skype as frequently as they Twitter, here’s  good news. MySkwitter, updates the Skype Mood Text with the latest Twitter,  so that your contacts on Skype can see what you have twittered  ….

Here’s the free downloadable MySkwitter (Skype-Extra), based on .NET 2.0 framework. It makes use of Yedda Twitter library .

When run for the first time, the application asks for inputs, to connect to the Twitter account, and saves the configuration parameters to %userprofile%\TweetConfig.txt

One needs to delete TweetConfig.txt file to re-configure the settings.

MySkwitter will be updated ……………….. sooner !!!

Enjoy !!!

++++++++++++++++++++ Updates Version 1.0 +++++++++++++++

*  Turns out that “Reload Extra on Skype startup” only works when the Skype application is closed from the tray with “Quit”. MySkwitter does not reload with Skype with a simple logoff and a re-login, without a  “Quit”.

*  The Extra has been published by Skype officially.  Get it from here.

++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++

++++++++++++++++++++ Updates Version 2.0 +++++++++++++++

*  Version 2.0 release, with Tweet capabilities from Skype, Hyperlink without slashes, and other improvements.

*  MySkwitter 2.0 (Gwitter).  Download from here.

++++++++++++++++++++ Updates  Version 2.2 +++++++++++++++

*  Corrected Unicode Display.

*  Corrected missing double quoted text.

*  MySkwitter 2.2 (Gwitter).  Download from here.

++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++

An encounter with an Intruder. (Hacker ??)

I have had my Ubuntu box for over a year now. It wasn’t my favorite place to hang out. I must have broken millions of retinal cells, and drank a gallon or more of coffee, while using it during the stressful semester projects. One fine evening, I was by its side while gazing at yet another tablet screen. I noticed the mouse cursor move, and a gnome-terminal open. Semi-conscious mind tells me it could have been some screensaver that I had unknowingly installed. Then a “wget” line of text appears on the terminal. This rang my bell. By the time I tried to distract the intruder, he had already downloaded some binary and run it. Blistering barnacles !! … My heart beat faster. I couldn’t think about anything safer, other than to switch my system off immediately.

I started contemplating. It could have been the remote desktop connection client that I had used while playing around with my Virtual Operating Systems. I grew more suspicious, looked at the login authentication (/var/auth.log) only to discover thousands of login attempts via ssh2.

I thought of removing ssh2, but for some reason, din’t do it. Now, every login to my Ubuntu box would alert me somehow and I’d kill “sshd” immediately. Days passed, weeks passed and I felt more secure. But I was alert always.

The legend of sleepy hollow returns. Close to midnight, We were discussing about our application design. Someone breaks in again. This time I won’t allow him to run anything at all. Instead, I opened a text editor and wrote “what do u want”. This started off a strange conversation that lasted for 2 hours. Haha, never had imagined.

Mr. intruder (according to him) was from Europe and was in the intrusion business for the last 10 years. Motive ?? was to install as many BOTS (what ?) as possible. His revenue would depend on the number of BOTS he installed. I could not fully comprehend, but he (somehow) fakes credit card information from multiple accessible computers and (somehow) makes money.

I am still not sure if he had done something terrible. But, it was interesting to know, he wasn’t the same guy who had broken in earlier. He said “I know Rogers (my ISP) is from Canada, and I got your IP from there”. I have no clue on when and how.

I took no time to first password protect, then to uninstall remote login from my system .. (double protection … :P)  . I weren’t the only victim. There are thousand others who keep default login or no-password login in the RealVNC client. I have good wishes to all of them.

btw, I got convinced that he would do me no harm. Guess what… he’s on my Skype now !!!

Bhanubhakta meets modern day grass cutter (Ghaasi)

Bhanubhakta (BB) was impressed to learn Ghaasi’s motive behind his grass cutting. He wanted to build a “well” so that people could remember him after death. How thoughtful. How noble.

One fine day, BB came down to see if he could find somebody similar. Lot of hard work, but no luck. Eventually, He came to the city and got into a cyber cafe. While writing about the unsuccessful search, he noticed a guy next to him fully focused on to his screen and deep in thoughts. BB asked him what he was doing with so much of concentration. The guy replied, “I want people to remember me after my death.”

BB was astonished, and thought the search was over. BB was curious and asked what the guy wanted to do to get to his goal. The guy replied, “I am writing a B.L.O.G.”

*********

It makes me wonder if I am one of the modern day grass cutters. I have had a blog in 2005, which I had forgotten. Surprisingly, I could find it up and running strong. Had I forgotten it for good, people would still read it as MY blog for years and years.