Thursday 19 December 2013

Searching for love , Facebook application to help people find their love interest


This app lists out all the eligible friends , allowing you to select your love interest ;

In case your love interest also does the same , an in-app message will reveal your mutual love interest.


do check out searchheart

Sunday 20 October 2013

Western Shootout

A new Multiplayer game where you shoot to kill your opponent with 6 bullets in your colt revolver.

Will you be fast enough ?


player 1 control : W for up,S for down and Q to shoot

player2 control : I for up,K for down and P to shoot


play here


Saturday 19 October 2013

Html5 and javascript , Games on Canvas



Started working on browser based game development , my first game  looks pretty lame but uses some amazing physics to keep the game running.






Use A and D to move the paddle left and right respectively

Friday 11 October 2013

Windows workspace switcher

This Windows app allows you to switch workspace , inspired by workspace switchers from ubuntu and its variant.

The app allows you to define workspace in your desktop and switches these workspace by hiding irrelevant files/folders and bringing workspace related files/folders to focus.


1.Add a workspace by clicking Add

2.Give a name to your workspace
3.Select workspace and click Open to add items


4.Manage items in your workspace, Add or Delete existing items


5.Add files from desktop to your workspace, you can also add folders !



Desktop before launching workspace



Select workspace and click Launch, Viola your workspace is now active and remainder content from your desktop is automatically hidden. You can get them clicking desktop.



Free Download link

Browser for slow speed internet

Cache Browser , A browser custom developed for usage in slow internet connection .

The browser lets you view web pages in their text only form, also these web pages are accessed from Google cache for faster access .




Browse pages with multimedia content in "Normal" mode



Browse text only pages  in "Cache" mode





Note: Google caches only popular pages. So you may not be able to view obscure pages in cache mode.


Free download link

Saturday 5 October 2013

User inactivity monitoring windows app

IdleTimer Allows you to set a interval , it continually monitors your inactivity duration , if it finds you inactive for the specified duration , it plays your favourite  music.,To wake you up !!

Never get dozed of in midst of your work !

1.Select the duration , it alerts you if it finds you inactive for more than the set duration
 2.Choose your favourite wake up music, click browse music.
3.Click 'Set' and carry on with your work. The IdleTimer will wake you up, if you doze of.

4.Click 'Stop' to stop the IdleTimer



Download the app from here

Requires .NET framework version 4.0.3 or above.

Wednesday 25 September 2013

Using Stanford named entity recognizer

Stanford named entity recognizer allows you to extract entities from text, here entities implies 'person','place' and 'thing'.

Start by downloading the NER from here , stanford NER is developed in java. But nevertheless we can conveniently use it in other programming languages, here we will be using it in python.
The reason python is predominant in NLP is because of its rich support in NLTK and scikit.

Extract the zip file downloaded from Stanford , from terminal move to the directory


$ java -mx1000m -cp stanford-ner.jar edu.stanford.nlp.ie.NERServer -loadClassifier classifiers/english.muc.7class.distsim.crf.ser.gz -port 8082 -outputformat inlineXML

will start the server, now you can use its service at the specified port.

Now in python

ner.SocketNER(host='localhost', port=8082).get_entities("text string")

will extract named entity from the text


Equivalently you can use its service from any programming language!

Thursday 19 September 2013

Will code for free

Nope no fine-prints here, to reiterate again , I will code for free.

Though i am not an expert , I am substantial familiar on various technologies, check out my linkedin profile or browse in this blog to see some of my projects.



Why Pro Bono ?

Well like many others i have been in that spot , where i had completely no idea of some stuff and had to fruitlessly waste couple of hours in google and then spend some more hours to understand and develop something.

Also if any newbies want to work on their idea on a startup , they got to hire a programmer and shell out some bucks ! , not an option for many would-be entrepreneurs.

In my opinion we need to help each other and thus the pro bono service.

But please note i intend to do your project as a part time activity , if you are looking to develop a colossal project then I am not your man.

Please contact me if you need any thing.

Friday 6 September 2013

Know your Facebook Rank

check out this app , it gets you your facebook rank in your local circle ,by comparing follower count of your friends and also your global rank by comparing your follower count with most subscribed user.




Wednesday 4 September 2013

Check your Twitter Rank

Compare your follower count with the follower count of the most followed user, and get a twitter rank on a scale of 10.

check out : here





Monday 2 September 2013

Twitter app to manage your calendar

Check out this twitter app , which  gets all your tweets which refers to dates and displays on a interactive calendar, allowing you to manage all your activities.

Never forget any appointment !



Sunday 1 September 2013

Flickr image browsing and sharing , facebook application

Facebook application intended to allow the user to browse through flickr images is available here.


It is developed using php and dojo.




Saturday 31 August 2013

Twitter auto reply bot

Twitter bots are generally used for spamming with irrelevant ads, however @spartan_madness is intended for pure fun.

The bot searches for tweets with text "this is madness" and responds with a reply

"madness?, THIS IS SPARTA !!!  "



The bot was developed using pure php.

There are other bots as well for example check @DBZNappa .


I hope@spartan_madness wont be suspended !!



 EDIT:

Great just got account suspended

Thursday 29 August 2013

Map of Friends , Facebook application using amMap


The application is intended to allow users to browse all the check-in's of their friends on a map. Apart form accessing their checkin details the user can also look at the home and current location of the users friends .

The application can be found here






Wednesday 28 August 2013

Using multiple heroku accounts

Managing multiple heroku accounts can be difficult as each account requires a unique ssh key ,

To generate unique ssh key for each account use the following steps:
1. create a ssh key by  $ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "youremailid@provider.com" -f  ~/.ssh/unique_name

here youremailid@provider.com is the email id used for heroku account 

you may be asked to enter a passphrase , passphrase is something like a password for the ssh key.

2.Add this key to your server by    $ ssh-add ~/.ssh/unique_name

3. Login to your heroku 

4. then  use,  $ heroku  keys:add 

It will then indicate the list of keys available in the system, as

Found the following SSH public keys:
1) xxxx.pub
2) xxxx.pub
etc
select by indicating the number 1 or 2

You are done.


Now you have authenticated the email id. To allow usage git repository from your system create a new user by $adduser username
and provide a password for the same.

switch to the new user by $su username

then create a ssh key by  $ ssh-keygen -t rsa   


once the key is created , get the public key by using $ cat /path/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

login to your heroku account from a browser and click account, its top left beside the gravatar.

in your account you have an option to add ssh key, copy paste the key generated there.


Once done, whenever you want to push your git repo to heroku thats before $git push heroku master

switch user $su username

then try pushing it . Thus you can manage multiple account wherin a new user for different email is needed.

BubbleFeeds facebook application

Check out bubblefeeds app on facebook.

The application was built using php and d3.js and is hosted on heroku .; d3.js allows document manipulation based on data.

The application is aimed to declutter the wall as in ,it allows the user to select the friend whose wall the user wishes to see.The application will then display all the posts in the friends wall by bubbles , the color of each determined by the type of the post and the dimension determined by number of likes which depicts the popularity of the post


each bubble is a clickable link which takes the user to the post.


The legend to understand the bubble :

Wednesday 21 August 2013

Using database on heroku

Heroku allows applications to be hosted which need database. Either mysql or postgresql can be used, it is easier to host an application which uses postgres hence we shall be using the same.

To use postgresql you may want to check this .

After logging in to your heroku account in the terminal (check this) add an addon for the current app by
using $ heroku addons:add heroku-postgresql:dev

Then login to your account and check the app, your database can be observed  here.


You can then use the host,database,user and password information in your application to access the tables in the database.

use $ su postgresql_username

to login to postgresql .

Then to access the remote database on heroku , use
$ psql -h host -U user database

(note: here host,user and database implies those indicated in the image or the details from here.)


Now you are logged in. you can now enter create table etc sql commands to be executed on the remote server.
The table can then be accessed in the application.But note that the database in psql and not mysql.


if your app is using mysql, then convert mysql to psql replace the following set of instructions:

mysql_connect to pg_connect
mysql_query to pg_query
mysql_fetch_row to pg_fetch_row

and so on.

Installing phppgadmin and configuring it with postgresql in linux

phppgadmin can be used for developing application which uses psql for database.

Lets begin :

1.install postgresql  by  $ sudo apt-get install postgresql

2. install phppgadmin by $ sudo apt-get install phppgadmin

3. Create a user for postgresql by $ sudo -u postgres createuser -d -r -P username
then enter password for the user created.

4.make apache acknowledge postgresql as a database server by editing the conf file of apache
$sudo gedit '/etc/apache2/apache2.conf'  
and add this in a new line  at the end                   Include /etc/phppgadmin/apache.conf  

5.Restart apache2 server by  $ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

6. If localhost/phppgadmin throws up 404  then configure postgresql by
editing the conf file  $ sudo gedit /etc/postgresql/9.1/main/postgresql.conf

and add this at the end of file in a new line           listen_addresses = 'localhost'

7. now edit  pg_hba.conf by $ sudo vi /etc/postgresql/9.1/main/pg_hba.conf

Replace         local all all ident sameuser            with              local   all         all                               md5

That would be it.

you can also access postgres by  $ sudo -u postgres psql username

Saturday 17 August 2013

PHP on Heroku

Heroku allows you to host your php applications free of cost , until your user base increases . This is hence a good place to host ,if you are testing out your application in the market.

Heroku requires GIT which is version control tool, which allows you to track changes you have made to your code.

Lets begin,

Install GIT

Linux users can try the   $sudo apt get install git


You also need to have a Heroku account ,go here


Then install the heroku toolbelt , its a command line interface to upload codes onto heroku; For this go here.  Linux users can  do so by running

$wget -qO- https://toolbelt.heroku.com/install-ubuntu.sh | sh



login to your heroku account from the terminal by
$ heroku login





Go to the directory/folder where you have developed your php application.
Then run   $ git init


This creates a new subdirectory named .git that contains all of your necessary repository files — a Git repository skeleton


You can add all the content in the directory to the git repository by
$ git add .


Once done , commit it by
$ git commit -m "message"




Then run  $ heroku create  . First time users will be asked to add a key, verify the rsa key, the key for git being  16:27:ac:a5:76:28:2d:36:63:1b:56:4d:eb:df:a6:48


Push the commited code to heroku by
$ git push heroku master




Then run      $heroku open   



It should open up your php application in the default browser !!!





Note , If you make any changes in your code later on, just commit it by 'git commit'  and push it to heroku by 'git push heroku master'

Monday 22 April 2013

Facebook app development, php SDK, ' $facebook->getuser returning 0 ' Problem

This has been a stubborn problem;
The problem being the user despite attempt to login by clicking the login url was not able to login, as the permission dialog box never appears to allow the user to approve the permission.

But try opening the login url in a new tab, it works !!.  For some reason the permission dialog box never appears in the same page.

So the work around is provided here.


The framework of login/logout looks like this


$facebook->getuser();

if($user)
{
//user logged in display the content
}


else
{
$url = "https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?"
."client_id=CLIENTID&"
."redirect_uri=http://apps.facebook.com/APPNAMESPACE&"
."scope=COMMA_SEPARATED_PERMISSIONLIST";
echo '
<div>

<script> top.location.href="'.$url.'"</script>

</div>';
}


That's it folks.

Monday 15 April 2013

Twitter apps tutorial

Twitter has a good set of flexible apis which you can use to develop large set of apps.

To start , register a new app from your twitter account, here .
If you are hosting your app in localhost then in 'website' and 'callback url' fields enter the localhost url , something like http://localhost/twitterapp/ ; In case it doesn't get accepted try replacing localhost with 127.0.0.1 or change browser.

Once your app is registered. Download libraries in the programming language of your choice from here .

Once that is done you can start coding on your app.

(Please note you have to use the consumer key and consumer secret provided here in your app development )

The api offered from twitter allows you to

  • Read Tweets from your timeline.
  • See who you follow, and follow new people.
  • Update your profile.
  • Post Tweets for you.
  • Access your direct messages.

for accessing direct messages, you need to select  'Read, Write and Access direct messages' in application access type , provided in the application register page.


Once the user signs in , your application will receive an Oauth token which can be stored in a local Database so that you can have offline (user) account access.
Also once you are aware of a tweet id or user id, you can get offline/online details of it using several api's.



You need to edit the config.php to mention the consumer and secret keys along with the path to callback.php

And specify the path to the main php code aka index.php in callback.php once the user verification is complete

You can customize the signup page in connect.php




Happy coding.

Thursday 21 February 2013

Running Facebook apps from localhost

It is possible to develop facebook apps in your localhost be it xampp in windows or LAMP in linux.

Lets make a hello world facebook app  here.

Firstly download a php sdk from here .This allows you to use loads of functions which you needn't worry about defining !!

Paste this in your server (directory) /var/www in LAMP or htdocs in xampp

Now you need to register as a developer and also provide details of your app in facebook , so login to your facebook account and register as developer (look here)


Once you are registered as a developer , go here


Click on create new app, and provide the name of your app, (it has to be unique!)

Then click on continue if your app name is accepted, else try with another name.
After the security check , it allows you to edit the app settings.

 The difference between 'App on facebook' and 'website with facebook login' is that when you select app on facebook , The app runs in a canvas page in facebook itself unlike the other case wherin you login via your facebook account in some other website.

Here inside your /var/www or htdocs you need to create a directory_name folder and paste your codes (.php , .html etc) inside it.

I use something like http://localhost/face/app_name/

'app_name' is a folder inside 'face' , this allows you to have multiple app_name inside face.


Now copy this and save as appname.php inside your directory specified in the Canvas url of facebook app.

The php codes needs you to mention appid ,secret and path to facebook.php (from downloaded sdk)

Run the app in a browser , http://localhost/face/app_name/appname.php.

If it is running you should be able to see your profile pic and other information.


PS:

While developing apps you may need to get permissions on certain user data , for that go to permissions in app settings page.


Enter details in User & Friend Permissions: or  Extended Permissions:


To test these go here



In case you need to install server or create localhost go through this


After these steps if still , the app doesn't  run , check link

Saturday 9 February 2013

Haunted by Couldn't load plugin in youtube ?

Recently the youtube videos were not accessible via google chrome browser.(The chrome browser has inherent shockwave flash player,and dosen't rely on explicit installation of flash player .)

There is a solution to this, you can access the google plugin inventory by typing chrome://plugins/   in chrome browser.(check out other google chrome   tricks )

 Disable the pepperflash player

Enjoy Youtube!! .
 

Chrome : "couldn't load plugin"

Disable pepperflash



 Viola,

 And yes this works for all Operating system (Windows,Linux etc )

Sunday 3 February 2013

Atmega tutorial

Recently i had to collaborate with a medical industry on development of digital weighing machine.

Lets see .
The first think you need to do is download the avr studio software from here,this will allow you to cross compile your code.And then you would be needing a programmer which can transfer the crosscompiled hex files from your machine to the atmega chip , you may need to develop the programmer , check this. Once these are done you have to get a usb programmer software that can allow you to use your programmer. I use 'Atmel usb programmer' from Robokits India along with Winavr for windows.

To start , go to AVR studio
1.Start a new project


 2.Give project details



3.Choose your device.
4.Programme your code
5.Compile for errors
6.Build your solution

Once these are done go to the workspace where the solution is saved, then look into the Debug directory inside your project, there search for a .hex file.This is the cross compiled hex file which you need to transfer to the device via your programmer

Go to the software used for usb programmer (in my case, Robokits)

1.Choose your device

2.Choose your hex file

That would be all.