If you are an Internet junkie like me, here is a list of the 2009 Webware winners.
 http://www.cnet.com/html/ww/100/2009/winners.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1 .
You will recognize a lot of the names and might also discover some new cool sites.
Web
Google knows that I am Indian..
I logged into Gmail today and noticed this small icon on the left hand side of the rich editing option, a small icon showing the letter “a” in my native tounge (Telugu).. Me being the curious kind, clicked on it and found out that I can now compose e-mails in multiple Indian languages (Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu & Malyalam) by typing in English. Something that Google calls “transliteration“. Here are some screenshots of me using the feature
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Screenshot of Gmail showing multiple language options..
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Screenshot of Telugu in Gmail
Pretty cool.. but scary too 🙂 that Google guessed I am Indian.
HOW TO : Redirect default home page on Jboss
If you want to redirect the default home page on Jboss (which has links to the Jboss site and also the JMX Console), you can do it by editing the index.html file in
$JBOSS_HOME/server/$INSTANCE/deploy/jboss-web.deployer/ROOT.war.
The $INSTANCE is the mode you are running Jboss in (default, all, messaging etc).
HOW TO : Setup SOCKS proxy using SSH/Putty and configure Pidgin to use SOCKS proxy
I ran into a challenge recently, when I tried to connect to my IM services (Yahoo, MSN, AOL, GTalk) using Pidgin in a secured network. For some reason, the network administrator thought that he/she should make life hell for people trying to log into IM. I will have a whole new rant about companies trying to lock down networks thinking they are making the employees productive..
Here’s what I did to connect to my IM services.
- Configure Putty/SSH to act as a SOCKS proxy.
- Most people might not be aware, but a typical SSH client can act as a SOCKS proxy. So I decided to leverage this functionality.
- You will need access to a SSH server and Putty (Opensource Windows SSH client)
- Launch Putty
- Setup a new server connection profile. I used FREE_MY_IP as the profile name in this screen shot, but you can name it anything you want
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- Expand the SSH option in the left column and click on Tunnels
- Choose any port higher than 1024 as source port (unless you are running some kind of server software on your workstation, it is safe to use any port above 8000) and enter the SSH server in the Destination field. Then choose the “Dynamic” option and click on Add.. the screen shot below shows the options I used
- The tunnel will show up as below
- Click on Open and establish the SSH tunnel
- Configure Pidgin (open source IM client) to use the SOCKS proxy
- Launch Pidgin
- Click on Tools -> Preferences in the menu
- Click on the network tab
- Choose SOCKS4 as the proxy type and enter localhost in the host field. In the port field enter the port you selected when setting up the tunnel in Putty.
- Connect to your IM services.. chat away and be unproductive 🙂
Lessons of the Trade : Simple way to deter web scrapers
If your website is a target of web scrapers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_scraping), here’s a simple way to keep them on their toes..
Every few days (or weeks) make a small change to the web page format. The trick is to make the change in such a way so that your users do not notice it or are not annoyed by the change. Most of the simple scrapers use, screen scraping and this would confuse the hell out of them 🙂 and usually deters the most abusive ones. The smart ones would have approached you in the first place, requesting permission to scrape or get authorized for an interface.
HOW TO : Spice up your digital pictures..
- Go to http://www.befunky.com
- Upload, grab a picture
- Play with different options
- Save, Print, Enjoy 🙂 Â (you can print the manipulated pictures on mugs, t-shirts, keychains, magnets etc..).
Here’s an example
ORIGINAL
AFTER PLAYING AROUND IN BEFUNKY
Tools of the trade : Postfix Configuration
Good link with information on configuring a custom transport link in Postfix. A transport link in a SMTP server is a way to define a communiction/delivery channel with particular settings. Example, you want all e-mails for a particular domain to be sent to a particular server at a particular time.
http://linuxnet.ca/postfix/dedicated_transport.html
In this particular link, the author shows the steps to configure a transport link for sending e-mails to servers/domains with high latency.
Visual outlook of Kudithipudi.org
I ran across an interesting app called Wordle, that the BBC news service, used to show a visual representation of all the words president Bush used in his state of Union speeches (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7813432.stm).
Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/) take text or a URL as input and automatically generates a visual representation of the text based on the number of times a term appears. Very cool application of Web 2.0Â technology.
Here’s how this website looks after wordle analyzed it.
Wordle is a “toy” created by Jonathan Feinberg. Here is a good interview with him regdarding Wordle and how he created it (http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research.nsf/pages/d.compsci.can_i_have_a_wordle_with_you.html).
Support WikiPedia
It is the season of giving.. And who else can be more eligible than the WikiPedia Foundation. For those that use the Internet regularly, you know that WikiPedia has become an indispensable resource. This is collaboration and sharing in it’s purest sense. How many of your arguments end now with.. “I checked WikiPedia and I am correct” :).
I know that times are tough for many people, but if you do have the opportunity..take a minute to donate to the WikiPedia foundation. Click on the this link to go to the donation page .. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/Now/en
They are aiming to raise $6MM and are up to $3.8MM now.
I am in the Guinness book of records.
And so are 8 million other people!! :). Here’s a picture of the official certificate from Firefox showing that I was part of the world record for the most downloaded software in a 24 hour period.
