Google Friend Connect on Blogger Hack

My Friend Connect account got approved a few weeks back but I was not able to use it until today because of the busy work and holiday schedules. So the first thing I wanted to do was add this to my Blogger blog but it seems Google left some cryptic hints on how to actually do this especially how to upload the two (2) required files for Friend Connect.

I immediately searched for a hack and found a very simple one, you don’t need to upload those two files for Blogger. Just proceed with the verification and it should find those files already included in your blog.

You can now then create a widget and add it via the Layout > Page Element page as an HTML/Javascript gadget.

Feel free to join this blog using the Friend Connect widget on the right navigation panel.

MegaMobile with IPVG Party

Some shots during the IPVG year-end assembly held last December 10, 2008 -- and this will be the first time in history I'm letting anyone take a pic of me wearing coat and tie. Hehe.

  
Right: Mark, aka Xrelay, our top secret weapon.

 
Left: Aris our CTO. Fooled you didn’t he? He is a master Jedi -- “Clouded the force must be…”.

Right: Claire, our muse -- “Claire bear! Save the cheerleader, save the world…”.

 
A wacky pose with my fiancée Kristy.

Goodbye Crunchyroll.com

Crunchyroll, a video sharing site devoted to anime has announced it will no longer be accepting fan subs uploaded by users after closing an exclusive deal with TV publishers.

Although there is no definite answer yet from the site’s managers and some think its a hoax; most of the CR community is already saying its farewell.

 
Image credit to serpentura.

As for me, I’m leaving CR because I feel it has became less than interesting compared before and the pre-video ads are driving me nuts. Anyway most of the anime posted there are also available at ZOMGAnime.

Visit the goodbye CR thread for more.

Beware: Phishing attack against J.P. Morgan commenced.

I just received this phishing email targeting JP Morgan clients, as we all know JP Morgan has risen to be the #1 US amidst economic meltdown.

The original email less my email address and mail server if is located here: http://theweb4godie.googlepages.com/jpmorganphising.txt

As to can see in the original email, the link actually goes to access.jpmorgan.com.dir017.cz.

I have already flagged this emails as Phising in Gmail.

Send Free SMS from your email to Globe, Smart and Sun* Mobile phones

I have received an emailed press release today regarding yet another FREE SMS service offering from MegaMobile Inc. The letter reads:

Dear Family and Friends,

We've just come out with a simple and easy to use messaging service that allows anyone with an email to send FREE SMS text messages to any Globe, Smart and Sun* mobile subscriber. This is especially useful and, more importantly, cost-saving for our Kababayans abroad who need to get in touch with friends and family this Holiday Season. So, forward this email to your egroups and mailing lists.

*in the works, service on Sun coming soon!

How to send SMS from your email:
1) Type in the recipients' (To:, cc:, bcc:) mobile in this format <cellphone number>@m2m.ph (example: 09178889999@m2m.ph)
2) Write your SMS message as you would an email.
3) Send!

Note: Don't forget to save your recipients' mobile "email" address in your contacts list so it will be easier for you to send and compose future sms emails. I've attached a screenshot of how this might look like.
Conversely, you may also send SMS from your mobile phones to any email address. How to do it:

1) Compose an SMS message in this format: M2M <recipient email address> <Your Message>
Example: M2M steve@apple.com When are you coming up with a better Iphone?!
2) Send to 2948

Try it out yourselves and tell your friends about it.
Enjoy the holidays!

Anjo

We'll there is no more excuse not being able to greet everyone a Merry Christmas this year!

The most cursed programming language

Shit!

That’s the word you’ll probably hear snapping out from my corner every time I encounter a  stupid design flaw on a project I’m reviewing or when my machine crashes – a I dispense them generously too. However, did you know that the leading cause of developers swearing is due to the idiocy of the programming language itself.

Here is the top 10 according to GitHub stats as of this post:

 

• 10th place goes to Python with 29 projects where developers immortalized their frustration in Python code. Chris Hagner gave a talk why Python sucks during the PyCon 2008 held last March 14, 2008 in Chicago. The biggest downfall Chris spoke of in using Python was speed -- but hey Google use it so it can’t be that bad!
  
• The 9th place goes to HTML with 41 projects  where developers immortalized their frustration in HTML tags. I was actually surprised at that less developers curse HTML, for me writing HTML tags is already HELL! Well maybe, because there are less people who manually write HTML tags these days so that would account for the low rank.
  
• The 8th place goes to PHP with 52 projects where in developers immortalized their frustration in PHP both in CamelCase and Hungarian notation.
  
• The lucky 7th place goes to JavaScript with 61 Github projects where in developers immortalized their frustration in DOM and they need to write in different versions too, one for each browser.
  
• The 6th place (tie) goes to Java with 76 projects where in developers immortalized their frustration on explaining to users why they have to include the huge Java SDK on every installation even if Java in a multi-platform language.
  
• The 5th place (tie) goes to C++ with 76 projects where in developers immortalized their frustration why code reuse can actually creates more bloat.
  
• The 4th place goes to Perl with 81 projects where in developers immortalized their frustration why Perl Regular Expressions forces the use slashes and single characters rather a human readable one.
  
• The 3rd place goes to Text only with 89 projects. Why where else it can we freely communicate out feelings of frustration than on the documentation!
  
• The 2nd place goes to C with 290 projects, it can’t be help since the Linux kernel swear words contributed much to this.
  
  
  

Finally, the most cursed programming language according to GitHub is Ruby with 336 projects! It’s not really surprising once you read this entry from Wikipedia; Ruby was conceived on February 24, 1993 by Yukihiro Matsumoto who wished to create a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming. According to Matsumoto he "wanted a scripting language that was more powerful than Perl, and more object-oriented than Python. That's why I decided to design my own language” – inadvertently he also inherited twice the headache because of this combination.

Gmail Themes brings out the inner me

I always wanted a themed Gmail and I use to do it via Gmail Skins plug-in for Firefox but now Gmail has themes!

You can select a theme from the initial 30 pre-configured themes.

Some themes change depending of your location too (see lower left of image), I’ve set mine to Graffiti to bring-out my inner gansta persona ^_^

Track search.twitter.com in your IM

Today i decided to release jRSS2IM which is a java implementation of RSS to IM; it basically monitor an RSS feed then send the updates to your IM. Warning, this is not for the faint of heart; this is an uber-techie’s/developer’s tool!

Its practical use is for tracking search.twitter.com results via RSS, by doing so you can track your @replies or #tag and send it to your IM.

Finally this compliments Ping.fm where your can post twitter updates via IM – now receive replies via IM too!

You can get the source at http://code.google.com/p/jrss2im/, yes you need to compile this yourselves! This release is not intended for the end-user.

Please use the issue tracker to report bugs and request. Make sure to read the Wiki for the build and configuration guide.

If you want to join the project, please leave a comment, IM me or email (you must be Java developer and have a Gmail account).

Enjoy!

Gmail Launches Voice and Video Chat

Gmail adds video chat into its IM making it one step clear competitor to Yahoo Messenger. The great thing about this new feature is its web-enabled, that means every Gmail web users out there has access to this feature without need to install a separate application. To access this new feature, make sure to enable chat on Gmail and install the plug-in then click options on the chat window to reveal a menu to activate it.

 
Photo source from official press release email.

To learn more, you can visit the official Google KB site for voice and video chat.

This is clearly an awesome advantage to other IMs, but what makes me very excited about this feature is its inevitable API! Yes, imagine streaming videos not just for personal communication but for content broadcast itself and all powered freely by Google’s infrastructure!

Finally the only lame part to this new feature is the required installation of the plug-in; which is currently only supported in Windows and Mac; instead of using purely flash based video and voice technology like OpenFire’s Spark Web.

Fallout 3

Just wanted to share my Fallout 3 “Family” picture taken at my Tenpenny Tower Suite. From the left I have Charon who is a Ghoul from Underworld; in the middle is my female character wearing the T-51b Power Armor which I recently stole from Fort Constantine (and launched the ICBM while there). Lastly the hovering bot is Godfrey, my butler!

Anyway if you’re like me who has grown fond of a companion and would hate to see them die (cause of the limited way to control them), below are some cheat codes!

Press ~ (tilde) then enter: SetEssential <code> 1

Codes:

Jericho – a71
Charon – 156f6
Clover – 156a2
RL3 – 9426e
Dogmeat – 6a772

To end this post I leave you this little “ahem” token :D

Godie on Google DevFest Lightning talk

Thanks to the generous guys from team APAC DevFest who gave a 9-something-hour long talk last November 7, 2008 at UP Diliman. Really it was from 1PM to around 10PM! Yay.

I did my part by sharing the project we did during the 2008 Google Summer of Code which did a kick-ass implementation of Google Gadget and Facebook Apps on Drupal.

You can get the not so long slide presentation here.

You can view all the pictures as well as Pamela Fox do the dance and rap during the event from Aileen’s blog here!

First look at Microsoft’s Azure: Epic fail!

I was very excited coz I finally got my account approved for Azure but after logging in I never felt confused like this in my entire life! What the fuck is this?!!

The management page and the documentation page seem got stuck together then totally explodes into series of links from one domain to another as authentication tokens get passed over the URL. Currently I have access to 4 services which has 4 different management page with 4 different documentation page for a total of 8 different sites.

As far as i can remember I created 2 projects but after re-login in I'm am totally lost how to access them again.

So… Azure… are you really fucking sure what you’re doing?

Anyway Azure mostly supports .Net with a couple of Java and Ruby libraries to boast its support for open standards but a quick check on its web services schema says otherwise with whole new sets of conventions.

Oh well if MS is throwing this for free, then why not – good enough for some hobby site but I wouldn’t bet a dime on this service!

Job: Web Developer and Flex Developer

iPay Philippines is looking for 1 Web Developer and 1 Flex Developer

Web Developer:

• at least 1 year work experience as a Web Developer.
• good in graphics design and layout.
• create output HTML and CSS.
• willing to work at Makati.
• Silverlight knowledge has advantage
• 35-45K pesos starting salary with increase yearly, regular benefits, 13th month and milestone bonuses. No bonds.
• for permanent position only

Flex Developer:

• at least 1 years experience in C#.
• must understand OOP, Data Objects and MVC.
• must understand web services.
• at least 1 year experience in Flex.
• willing to work at Makati.
• Silverlight knowledge has advantage.
• 35-50K pesos starting salary with increase yearly, regular benefits, 13th month and milestone bonuses. No bonds.
• for permanent position only.

iPay Philippines is located near Dela Costa cor Leviste street, Makati (behind BDO Makati Ave)
Email your resume to

Yahoo! Pipes

Today I manage to take a break from the usual and try something new so I decided to take on Yahoo Pipes for the first time. I know its been existing for sometime now but I haven't heard anything great about it yet... so maybe it's time to make something GREAT out of it.

My first impression after trying it out for the first 2 minutes is... How do I hell do that? Clearly its not for a programmer persona, accomplishing simple task takes so much steps. Anyway I decided to push through knowing that using UI for programming may actually dull my brain X_X

I decided I wanted to make an automated related search for every blog post I make. For example after I post this article about Yahoo! Pipes, it will make a search regarding the Title then take the keyword related to the article and dynamically replace all the words of the search result preview that matches the keyword into a link back to this post.

Sounds complicated? We'll in simple terms I'm making a blog-to-search-splog-PR-poisoning! :D

So click-and-click I go while cursing how can a simple 3-level nested loops can take so much steps to Yahoo Tubes but in the end here is the result:

I also found out Google Chrome is the best browser to create Yahoo Pipes (ironic) because when pipes starts to become complicated it takes a much more JavaScript processing to edit it.

If you want to take a look at the result then go to Related Links pipe page or subscribe to the Related Links RSS to see the keywords automatically gets replaced by a link to my blog posts.

So now what? Well I'm actually creating something more dangerous, a self-splogging splog by letting Yahoo Pipes post the related search result to a blog, automatically change keywords to links then letting the blog's RSS be taken-in as Yahoo Pipe's source and the cycle will never stop :D The key here is Yahoo Pipe's Term Extractor which tell's us what are the web-search keyword related to a phrase and the search engine's continuous change in search result even for the same keyword (coz the index gets updated continually).

Google said don't be evil but Yahoo Pipes like these will eventually poison the search results easily if abused... to the point that it could triple the amount of redundant web data in no time (aw, really?) X_X

Ubiquity from Mozilla Labs

Still copy pasting links to send via Email? Upgrade your Firefox with Ubiquity now and experience the full power of Web 2.0!

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Some of my favorite features:

• Post to Twitter. You can also post the URL of the current page you are browsing.
• Send embedded Google Maps using Gmail.
• Dictionary, spell check and thesaurus.
• Search Wikipedia, IMDB, Google and Yahoo as you type the word.
• Translate only portion of text on a foreign site without reloading (my must have when playing Korean based MMORPGs).

Learn more and try it out at http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/

Finally a word of caution this is a very alpha-release, sometimes it still breaks especially when interacting with 3rd-party APIs.

I'm Godie, the Jack-Of-All-Trades

I seldom post my personal thoughts here these days but here goes...

When I was a child I use to watch MacGyver, a TV series that featured a laid back secret agent that uses ingenious solutions to get out of sticky-situations. The thing that fascinates me about the show is the scientific explanations behind those solutions and the protagonist carries a Swiss Army Knife that aids him in all situation. That's when I decided to be just like that.

No.No.. Not be MacGyver... be the Swiss Army Knife! :D

Since then I strived not be an expert at one thing but be the best on everything, a Jack-Of-All-Trades; after all most of time you wont need an in-depth understanding of how things work. Some times its more important how it affects other things that's what you're after. For example right now we don't really know how gravitational force is created. only theories, but we all know it's effects and how to use them to our advantage.

Which brings me to this in front of me:

1 Asterisk on CentOs, 1 Win2003 Servers, 6 SPA3102, 4 Trunklines, 1 Cisco Switch, 2 SonicWall Router, 1 LinkSys Wifi, 1 Juniper Firewall... Yup, I'm busy X_X

So for the past month I've been monkey-ing around every aspects of security, software and network designs. Then implementing it -- I did all the cables, racks, power load balancing, and writing new applications to automate and manage them. Now only if I did study carpentry then I could say I did it all. Well I guess that's what I must do to start my 3rd company. I think its doing everything from ground up that entices me to start-ups and knowing for years to come a lot of people will need to rely on things I've done now that if it goes well then I did a great today -- 3rd's a charm I guess. So watch out for us soon because were gonna be kicking asses :D

BTW, regarding the title; its complete form is "Jack of all trades, master of none, though often better than a master of one" which is used by us hackers to describe ourselves and mock those so-called experts :D

TxtTayo! - A Facebook FREE SMS Messenger

First of all... It's been a long time since I announced a new service but it's not my fault! Blame it to my boss who wants to keep everything under wraps. Hehe. Anyway I have off the web-sphere for a long time for that matter and I want to celebrate my return with something new to offer, so here goes...

Introducing MegaMobile's TxtTayo FREE SMS Messenger for Facebook.

TxtTayo is is Facebook application on the web, it means you have to be a Facebook user to use this.

So what makes it different from Chikka or Sun iMessenger? TxtTayo allow you to send free SMS messages to your Facebook friends even if you don't know their phone number! Just think of the benefits using TxtTayo:

• Keep your number anonymous, never have to worry about stalkers again.
• Connect with friends abroad, let them send you messages from Facebook for free and you can reply back to straight from your phone.
• Share with friends, invite your friends on Facebook to use TxtTayo so they can send you SMS for free!
• Keep in control, allow only your true friends to send you messages not some fakester.
• No keywords to memorize, it works like your second phone number.
• No downloads required, most IM clients needs Internet anyway then why do you need to download it? Or why do you need another web site different from what you already use? Just login to your Facebook account!
• No connection problem, TxtTayo is powered by Facebook so we don't have connection problems and will work with firewalls with zero configuration.
• It's FREE, you're free to send via Facebook and Php2.50 to reply optionally via mobile for Globe and Smart. Php2.00 for Sun.

There you have it! Of course those are for regular folks, there are other ways to use TxtTayo. For example, you can create a Company Profile and let customers send you inquiries for free or send all of them updates of your new products for free!

Now are you excited to try TxtTayo? Click here to visit the TxtTayo Facebook application page to add it in your Facebook profile and start texting friends from free!

What's in the future? TxtTayo is going to evolve from being just an SMS messenger, as a matter of fact were evolving it beyond text messages and beyond anything that has been offered before. So watch out because "The Big Bad Godie is Back to Rock Your World!".

I Have Too Many Web 2.0 Widgets

If you have just visited my site then crashed your browser then its not your fault. No thanks to me, I have around 43 (I lost count) Web 2.0 widgets enabled on this site and arranging them is no longer an easy task on Blogger's customize layout.

 

The good thing about it is, this site serves as a test page for bloggers to find out about new widgets and which widget works so -- so I get lots of inquiries where to get and how to install them.

So do you think I have too much widgets already? I do think so.

So I'm going to stop adding new ones? Not a chance! Hehe. I am a widget lover and I even developed widgets to like the TwitSnap widget for Twitter users. I have also co-mentored a Google Summer of Code project under Drupal that allows even more widgets which has concluded recently. If you're a Drupal user then you can get the embed widgets module here.

So if your browser crashed while visiting this site then it's my fault really X_X.

BTW, I have installed 3 new widgets from Wowzio, so check them out!

Wuala is the new P2P, long live the warez!

I was recently invited to try out Wuala by AJ, it poses as a file backup, sharing and social network service but upon further inspection its basically a P2P application. The great thing about it is that files are distributed on the cloud and users can 'sell' their idle hard disks space to other users.

You can find a step by step installation guide for Wuala at AJ's blog.

First thing I did after installing and sign-up is find warez; and without fail... I found ThePirateBay!

Wuala, thank you. Long live the warez!

If you need invites, please leave a comment.

Musicovery: Rediscovery music

I've recently stumbled on the site Musicovery.com which is an online flash based music player.

Unlike other music streaming sites like Dizzler. Musicovery allows the user to set the Year range, popularity, genre, mood and beat filters only; it then searches all the related music randomly and plays it. The nice thing about it is it shows the generated play list in visual mode and shows the relation from one to the other as lines similar to Yahoo pipes.

An added advantage for me is that it only eats up 10-20kbps of my bandwidth which is low enough so I can just freejack on open Wifi APs without being noticed! 

Note: As you can see in the attached screen shot, I'm rediscovering the 80's!

VIP pass to FHM's 100 Sexiest Women In The World 2008

I got a VIP pass! Does this include back rubs? ^_^

July 17, 2008 @ the Hall A World Trade Center Metro Manila.

UZZAP Hack

I have received a MMS blast from Smart announcing its new service Uzzap -- although I have opted out already many times to these alerts!

It's time to teach these folks some lesson.

I downloaded the app and registered then my firewall alerted me that its trying to connect to an IP at port 5222.

Bingo it must be a Jabber server. I finished the registration and waited for the confirmation SMS and keyed in the PIN, at first the SMS didn't arrive so I have to click Resend PIN.

The UI is very mediocre so I fired up WireShark and started to sniff the Jabber packets. I need to do this to find out my JID -- WireShark didn't fail me and confirmed that its a Jabber server; it also found my complete JID.

It seems Smart bought another toy, this time from Kolipri. Why? Maybe because they wanted to kick out Chikka for the longest time already or they got envy because Globe has such an epic failure with IMEVRYWHR before that they had to top that too.

Anyway, whatever their reason is I don't really care but its time for some experiments.

I then added my JID to Trillian (you can use any other Jabber client) as a Jabber account and used the same password during registration and it works flawlessly.

Here is the settings for use with any Jabber client:

Jabber ID (JID): your_registered_username@demo.kolipri.com
Host: 125.5.109.121
Port: 5222

After login in using Trillian, Uzzap automatically gets disconnected. It seems there is an enforced single login rule in placed. That's Ok since I don't need the ugly Uzzap client anymore!

Lesson learned? Don't spam me with ads. Haha.

UPDATE:
Here is a screen shot of my Trillian Preferences showing that this hack works!

First True Mobile P2P Solution Developed in Philippines

MegaMobile Inc, a company of IPVG; announced it has developed the first true mobile P2P application running on Ericsson phones. It is called the Mobster and it has a motto -- "Share the love".

Before we dive into the app, let's first define what "true mobile P2P" means.

It simply means the P2P connection goes through the Telecom's standard 3G network and NOT via IRDA, WIFI or Bluetooth which is what other mobile P2P application. It is also fully implement the tracker server solution that P2P is well known with. Tracker servers allow users to publish and seed their shared content to the entire mobile P2P network without needing a server to actually host the files unlike to the file upload then file download transfer solution which is expensive to setup and difficult to maintain.

Mobile P2P gives users the power which content to share, whom to share and when to share and as mobile and Internet converges; this also means that every mobile user can also seed and share contents to Internet users and vice-versa.

Lastly, business-wise; this dramatically affects content VAS providers as it challenge existing business models on how mobile contents are licensed, distributed and monetized.

Now for the fun part. Check out the following demo video of the Mobster application in action.

 

This video shows the Mobster P2P application capability to publish list of shared content to the tracker server, allow a downloading client to search the tracker server for shared files and download it without intervention from the seeding user. Additionally it also implements P2P messaging just like most PC based P2P client -- it's always nice to have a way to send a thank you note to someone for sharing his/her stuff to us.

 

This second video demonstrate Ericsson's WeShare technology which allows user to exchange files while on a call. 

Imagine your in a middle of a business call and you need to share a document to your partner. Using Mobster WeShare mobile app, you don't have to separately send that document after the call. Just use the call time wisely and send the file so that when you are done talking on the phone, you also sent your partner the document he needed.

Finally, MegaMobile Inc is already developing an alternative server solution to Ericsson's WeShare. This allows the company an option deploy the solution independently of the Telecom operators which provides supreme flexibility and huge advantage compared to other mobile content VAS operators.

Is Ping.fm Trying to Snatch IM feature from Twitter?

Twitter IM feature is still down for... almost eternity already and this might just give Ping.fm enough time to snatch that vital feature from Twitter.

Interestingly enough, it also allows status update, blog and micro-blog post via IM (XMPP) to 15 other popular web 2.0 sites -- Bebo, Blogger, brightkite, Facebook, hi5, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse,  Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr and Xanga.

Xoopit Teaches Google How To Make Gmail Right

Xoopit is a companion Firefox plug-in that turn Gmail in a social-sharing network. Xoopit scans your Inbox for Images, Videos and Files regardless if its an actual attachment of a link. The plug-in provides a additional views to view shared media and files in a gallery format without leaving Gmail. It also automatically shows all related media in respect to the current thread being read and the sender.

Check-out the screen shot of my Xoopit enhanced Gmail!

Dare to Code Jam with Google?

You might be asking right now what is Code Jam?

In Google Code Jam you will be given a problem, a set of inputs and a few minutes to come up with the output using programming or just plainly explain how you came to get the solution.

To give you a clearer view of what to expect; its like this scene from the movie Swordfish:



Fun ain't it?

Join now at http://code.google.com/codejam/

Apple WWDC: Steve Job's Keynote in 60 seconds

He saved the best for last :D

Twitter Achitecture

This is my two cents on improving Twitter Architecture:

I work for a mobile service provider in PH and a bill payment company in AU. I feel empathy towards twitter because I've been on the situation before since I also work on a high-availability and high-traffic systems as well.

Although most of these suggestion is based on  my work for on  machine-to-machine messaging, I think the following suggestion would work for Twitter.

DB Sharding: Current twits (1-4 weeks old) has higher probability to be access via web/API than older twits. Use Sharding by date (eg:monthly) so it is possible to allocate old twits to a lesser priority (less likely to take up memory as DB index). The project HSCALE has an excellent presentation slide explaining how sharding is implemented.

Decentralize: Twitter is a little bit like blogs but a lot simple, however its like a messaging system too. Therefore proposed solutions that treats Twitter as a messaging system will not completely solve the problem. Like a patient in a hospital, assuming that all symptoms observed are related to a single disease are often fatal.

Twitter is unlike IMs which basically has a 1-to-1 or many relation in terms of message delivery and that the largest group of recipient will always be finite. Twitter on the other hand suffers from 1-to-infinite relation! Because of this it is crucial that all data reads must be decentralized, which is the same way how blogging system works.

API on reading data for public accounts should be done via RSS only such that it can be redistributed evenly by aggregators likew FeedBurner. Of course there is a sacrifice, the system will lose its just-in-time message delivery.

Anyway, even Google can't crawl the net and display changes to search results that fast; why should twitter even try?

Lastly, Data localization: Take advantage of emerging technology such are Googe Gears which allows data persistent to be localized on the user's computer. This greatly reduces the need to transfer data, lessen impact caused by DB reads and boost usability by improving UI responsiveness.

My Twitter Fave: Fun with TwitSnap

The following are my favorite Twitter users I'm following:

introducing @mkeduardo, @aileenapolo, @digitalfilipino, @chattee, @eclair, @ajbatac, @jerryc (the insomiac :D), and @kuting (pinoytwitters.com)

TwitSnap

UPDATE: TwitSnap beta testing is now open to the public, go to http://www.twitsnap.com to register!

Today I'm releasing a beta-test of TwitSnap!

TwitSnap is a FREE widget that automatically provides Twitter status preview of a user like this: @godie

Notice that I'm using the conventional reply-to prefix for Twitter and nothing else! The widget will automatically parse your page and look for the pattern, convert it into a link to user's profile on Twitter and then provides a preview of the user's most current status via a pop-up Dhtml box.

TwitSnap is built using Google Apps Engine (Python runtime), some really wicked Regular Expressions (REGEX), insane DHTML JavaScripts and of course using the Twitter API.

There are still some few things needed to be ironed out:

• Google Apps Engine where the app is hosted has a bandwidth limit; dear Google, care to donate more bandwidth to me? :D


• Twitter limits the number of requests per IP; I'm still trying to contact them on having the service get increased limit.


• I'm just piggybacking on my neighbors' WIFI; Ok this isn't really a good reason but I wish to thank her for sharing the Interner access which allowed me to work at at.

Note: TwitSnap is not related to Twitter.com, this is work in progress. Use at your own risk! we do not guarantee that anything will work. It may even break your site rendering so use with caution.

TwitSnap has been tested on only FireFox, Opera and IE.

Blog.Gears Standalone

Im a fan of Google since most of their services truly enhances the way we live in this technological era. A few months back i was looking for a Blogger client and most preferably with an offline and sync capabilities. However there is none available for windows and some costs a lot without even fully supporting Blogger.

Then I stumbled into Blog.Gears which is an offline Blogger tool, unfortunately this tool was only developed to demonstrate the capability of Google Gears. I also found out that it doesn't run as a standalone desktop application. But since i really wanted to be able to blog offline I ripped the sample app from the Google site and hosted it in my local web server. This for sometime has been my source of blogging joy and I wish to share this to all Blogger users also. However, the main problem is the requirement to install a web server such as IIS or Apache which makes it cumbersome or even technically difficult for some.



So I made some research for the lightest HTTP server that will run on windows and found sHttpd. Finally I made a batch file launcher and edited the application a bit to include some information on how to effectively use the app.

Now you can download Blog.Gears Standalone Edition and enjoy offline blogging.

Note: The archive is in Zip format and the password is corruptedpartition.blogspot.com

Smart to offer I-Mode

Smart Telecoms has announced that it will be offering I-Mode service to its customers.

This isn't really a new news to me thats why I never bothered to blog about it until today. NTT-Docomo has an office at the Smart Bldg and it has been there for a long time. It seemed Smart has prevented NTT-Docomo to roll-out I-mode until it fully saturated its GSM network.

The funny thing about this is; in Japan, telecoms has started to roll-out GSM/CDMA. Technically I-Mode technology is not superior to GSM, it has its own cravats and more. The protocol itself has been a subject of nightmarish integration problems because I-Mode is a proprietary protocol.

Finally, I haven't brushed-up on reading on the new capabilities of I-Mode but historically only I-Mode supported sites can be viewed through it thus saying good-bye to those websites that you can normally view via mobile browsers (eg: m.gmail.com or m.facebook.com).

However there is a work around using OperaMini to view websites in its full glory.

You can read a summary of what really I-Mode is at NTRG; there might be newer capabilities with the new I-Mode (3G-I-Mode) for fix the old problems but since it still uses the PDC-P packet switching, I'm not going to hold my hopes up.

IPVG to acquire 70% of MegaMobile

There's not much news on the PH mobile space lately except for something to do with Globe and Ericsson that we cannot disclose (NDA), this news however hits closer at home, MegaMobile will join the IPVG group of companies. The negotiations took months and its mostly about the shares and how much of the company will be acquired but the fate was already sealed for MegaMobile, its time to beef up its financial and political backbone. There's not much I can tell about the plans but with MegaMobile's reputation of always being on the cutting-edge of mobile technology, surely with its newly acquired allies it will become a force to reckon.

Looking for Tech Support To Fix a Malfunctioning Mouse

We reinstalled the drivers but the mouse is still malfunctioning, please help!




Thanks to Mark for the Video :D

High-tech Job

TechBiz Philippines Inc (Banking) is looking for:

• Two (2) MS C#.Net Developer
• 2 Years work experience as developer (any).
• Experience with Flex has advantage
• Fresh graduates may apply with recommendation from college dean or instructor.
• Full-time / Permanent
• P25,000-50,000 / mo basic salary (negotiable)
• Has opportunity to travel abroad.
• Flexible time
• All interested applicants must submit a one (1) page CV to
  

• One (1) Technical Writer
• 1 Year work experience
• or has a technical blog
• must be familiar with MS technology / .Net
• Full-time / Parmanent or Freelance
• P30,000 / mo basic salary (negotiable)
• All interested applicants must submit a one (1) page CV to
• If you have blog please indicate the URL
  

Having Problems with Globe?

More complaints are posted online by Globe users where users cant send sms but can receive them, cant load prepaid, some even claims having able to call for free -- I don't know why they complain about free calls tho :D

So what's happening?

The inside scoop is the southern network fiber optics cable of Globe was cut thus isolating most of Visayas network, especially the Cebu Globe data center. I already knew about this since Monday but we kept our mouth shut while quick remedies are being made.

Unfortunately the remedies seemed to have caused more problems than the original so more users started noticing the problem by mid-week and it also started to affect Globelines (Internet ISP) users as well -- I bet its due to the re-routing to mitigate the fiber optics problem.

I have not receive further information on the status of the problem since Monday which might mean its going to gets even bad before it gets better again.

Finally the cause of the incident is still undisclosed but theories between underwater earthquake severing the lines, sabotage by terrorists with submarines and the relation to Cloverfield monster is being discussed at the moment.

My secret life blog

I have been pondering for a long time if I should put up a life blog, exposing my life to the public ain't my cup of tea -- I hate personal publicity. This is basically the same reason I don't use my real first name. Strangers and friends alike calls me by my pen name: "Godie".

However last night I finally made up my mind, time to write about my life and the stuff that i really do; but there is one problem. My personal life revolves around the complicated world of secrecy, there are things i do that i cannot disclose for legal reasons. I must have signed already a couple dozen of NDAs and non-compete papers by the age 25; both on and off my day job.

So i made a blog that allows me to share my daily experiences as well as cast a cloud of obscurity to to things i must keep silent with while not totally taking them out of the story.

Please check out Musings of Cigarette Smoking Man and find out for yourself.

Predictions for 2007 and beyond: Revisited

It's a new year again and just like i promised on my Year 2007 predictions post, lets recap which came true and which didn't.

Last year I predicted:

1. Banking 2.0 - 60% came true.
There were a lot of new stuff in banking on 2007 such as Western Union Debt card, the Union Bank Eon card with Paypal support and banks have been heavily investing on EPS as well.

2. Content is King - 90% came true.
Tv-links.co.uk was shutdown for allegations of distributing pirated contents which is totally untrue since most of its contents were from video hosting sites such as YouTube, Tudou, and Dailymotion. Although Tv-links do not host them, they were the number 1 destination of users looking for the newest movies and TV-series episodes because they we categorized properly and very accessible. It simply shows being king in content also mean people can access them easily.

3. The rise of the mashables - 100% true.
Facebook and OpenSocial two names that moved and proved this predictions. Do I need to say more?

4. The Gaming Word: "Massive" - 80% true.
Halo 3 and Wii is the best example for this category, Halo has not just enticed a lot of gamers to MMOG but spurred a lot of entrepreneurs such as providers of Halo gaming tutorials. Wii has brought MMOG from virtual to the real world, now friends can meet and play together which in gatherings called a Wii-party. Some MMORG has also initiated virtual advertising billboards like in RAN.

5. Philippine BPO Boom - 70% true.
More BPOs are now shifting to SEO since Pinoys are very good with word play and the adoption of blogging has been booming. Companies are now outsourcing bloggers to blog about their products.

Well in summary, 80% of my predictions in average have came true in some form which means there is still a lot of potential left to be explored for those who are looking for the next big thing.

Anyway be sure to visit back and check out my Predictions for 2008 and beyond which will be released soon!

Pushing Boundaries: Twit2948 MMS

Happy New Year!

Sorry for the long absence from the blogosphere, I have been busy at work before the holidays and spent most of my time doing stuff. Fun and exciting stuff that pushes the boundaries of Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0

Announcing the beta version of Twit2948 MMS! Now you can post your photos from your mobile phone and link them to your Twitter post!

How to upload photos and post twits at the same time:

1. Create a new MMS message.
2. Attach an image.
3. Write on the body:
   TWIT [your message]
4. Send it to 2948

Standard VAS charges applies.

Note: The service is currently on beta, there are no confirmation messages when posting MMS at the moment. Use at your own risk.

This service is now pushing the boundary on innovation, why? MMS uploading is not entirely new but check out this sample twit and follow the links: http://twitter.com/godie/statuses/563037932

Notice anything weird? The twit has a TinyUrl link to a site hosted at Googlepages and the images are stored at ImageShack all for free!

While ImageShack uploading and TinyUrl has and API, making Googlepages run dynamic contents is a hack I made (there is no Googlepages API at the moment).

This is just the beginning, as APIs become main stream and OpenSocial gains wide adoption there will be a shift of business model. No single domain will be able to claim dominance and their web identities will be merged, there will no them.com or they.com or that.com but a you.com -- It means the web experience becomes a whole rather than disjointed websites.