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WordPress Plugin updates

Published Feb 7, 2011 | In Plugin Releases

Over the past two weeks, I have updated a couple of my WordPress Plugins. Most of them are optional updates, so I thought of consolidating all the changes here instead of creating separate posts for each of them.

Bulk Delete

Bulk Delete is a WordPress Plugin which can be used to delete posts in bulk from selected categories or tags.

I updated this Plugin to v1.2. It is a mandatory update.

The following were the major updates

  • Added support for deleting posts by custom taxonomies
  • Optimized the code which prevents the blank screen that you get when you have huge number of posts to delete on an under-powered server.
  • Added Dutch translations
  • Added Brazilian Portuguese translations

Easy Retweet

Easy ReTweet is a WordPress Plugin, which lets you add retweet or Tweet this buttons for your WordPress posts, together with the retweet count.

I updated this Plugin to v2.3. It is a mandatory update.

The following were the major changes

  • Fixed issue with permalink for official Twitter button
  • Added Brazilian Portuguese translations

Twitter Avatar Reloaded

Twitter avatar reloaded Plugin adds a new field to the comment form to get the user’s Twitter username and stores it together with comments and using it replaces gravatar with twitter avatar when the comment is displayed.

I updated this Plugin to v0.6. It is an optional update.

The following were the major changes

  • Added Dutch translations
  • Added Brazilian Portuguese translations

Google Scribe

Google Scribe is a WordPress Plugin, which allows you to enable Google Scribe to WordPress comment input box.

I updated this Plugin to v0.4. It is an optional update

The following were the major changes

  • Added Dutch translations

Github Ribbon

Github Ribbon is a WordPress Plugin, which can be used to add Github ribbons to your website.

I updated this Plugin to v0.3. It is an optional update

The following were the major changes

  • Added Dutch translations

Bulk Move

Bulk Move is a WordPress Plugin which can be used to move posts from one category to another in bulk. This Plugin can also be used to remove assigned categories from posts.

I updated this Plugin to v0.4. It is an optional update

The following were the major changes

  • Generated translation files
  • Added Brazilian Portuguese translations

Stay updated

I would be posting updates about this Plugin in my blog and in Twitter. If you want to be informed when new version of this Plugin is released, then you can either subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed or follow me in Twitter.

Posted in Plugin Releases | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Sharing content in Android using ACTION_SEND Intent

Published Jan 26, 2011 | In Android/Java

Very often, you might want to enable the ability for users to share some content (either text, link or an image) from your Android app. Users can share the content using email, twitter, Facebook, sms or through numerous other ways.

The users might already have installed some custom apps for each one of the above service. So instead of coding all these again, it would be really nice (for both your users as well as for you as a developer) if you can invoke any one of these apps, where users want to share content from your app.

Sharing text

Android provides a built-in Intent called ACTION_SEND for this purpose. Using it in your app is very easy. All you have to do is to use the following couple of lines.

In my phone, it invokes the following dialog box listing the apps that have registered to get notification for this intent.

sharing-content-android

Sharing binary objects (Images, videos etc.)

In addition to supporting text, this intent also supports sharing images or any binary content. All you have to do is to set the appropriate mime type and then pass the binary data by calling the putExtra method.

Registering for the Intent

If you want your app to be listed when this Intent is called, then you have to add an intent filter in your manifest.xml file

android:mimeType specifies the mime type which you are interested in listening.

Happy sharing 😉

Posted in Android/Java | Tagged , , | 100 Comments

Installing PHP 5.3.x in Ubuntu through apt-get or aptitude

Published Jan 25, 2011 | In Unix/Server Stuff, Web Programming

Recently, I wanted to play around with some stuff which is available only in PHP 5.3.x (more about it later in a separate blog post) and so was looking for a way to install it on my Ubuntu server, where this blog is running.

After poking around a bit, I found that Karmic Ubuntu hasn’t upgraded to PHP 5.3.x yet and the only way to do is to compile from PHP source. Even though I am pretty comfortable doing it, I didn’t wanted to do it, because it is very difficult to upgrade at a later point in time.

I was continuing my research and then found that it is in fact possible to install PHP 5.3.x though apt-get or aptitude. I thought of documenting it here, so that it would be useful for others who want to do the same thing.

Adding dotdeb to the source list

First you should add dotdeb repository to your apt-get source list. Add the following two lines to your /etc/apt-get/sources.list file

sudo vim /etc./apt-get/sources.list

Adding dotdeb keys to keyring

Dotdeb packages are GPGsigned. Issue the following commands to add the keys to key-ring

Install PHP5 packages

Then issue the following command to retrieve the updated package list. I am using aptitude here; you can use apt-get as well.

sudo aptitude update

sudo aptitude upgrade

And then you can install PHP5 packages (and modules) using the normal install command.

sudo aptitude install php5 libapache2-mod-php5

Installing php5-dev package

The above method will install all php5-* packages, but php5-dev has some dependency issues with libtool packages. In order to solve that you have to manually install libtool v1.5.26. To do that use the following commands.

Now it’s time to enjoy the new features that are available in PHP5.3 🙂

Posted in Unix/Server Stuff, Web Programming | Tagged , | 17 Comments

Bulk Delete Plugin now supports deleting posts by Custom taxonomy

Published Jan 24, 2011 | In Plugin Releases

I have updated my Bulk Delete WordPress Plugin, which lets you to delete posts in bulk. The new update adds the support to delete posts by custom taxonomy, in addition to deleting posts by tag and category.

Like the previous updates, this feature was also requested by the users of the Plugin. So if you have any feedback or feature request, don’t hesitate to contact me, I will try to add them to the Plugin.

Screenshot

Delete WordPress posts by custom taxonomy

Download

You can download the latest version of the Plugin from the Plugin’s home page.

Feedback

If you have any comments or if you want to report any bugs, please leave a comment below.

Stay updated

I would be posting updates about this Plugin in my blog and in Twitter. If you want to be informed when new version of this Plugin is released, then you can either subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed or follow me in Twitter.

Posted in Plugin Releases | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Looking back at 2010

Published Jan 23, 2011 | In Random/Personal

2011 started off as a busy year for me and so I was not able to publish my year end review post for 2010 on time. Finally I have got some free time and without much delay, here is my year end stats and review post for 2010, which just ended.

Highlights of 2010

2010 has been an eventful year. I started giving talks regularly in local meetup groups, started having crush on CouchDB and then on Arduino, learned a lot of stuff about Android and even released my first app to the Android market, released a couple of WordPress Plugins and themes, together with a couple of RoloPress releases, created my first jQuery Plugin, consolidated all my code to github, bought a new bike and travelled a lot.

Time for some stats now 🙂

Number of Posts

no-posts-per-year

When compared with 2009, the total number of posts has gone. One important reason for this is that, I have been spending more time on stuff like Android and Arduino rather than writing posts. Hopefully this year, I will get some free time so that I can start writing more posts like 2009.

Number of Comments

no-comments-per-year

Like the number of posts, the number of comments has also gone a little low. Hopefully this year as I start to write more posts, the number of comments should go up.

Average number of characters per post

avg-length-posts

The average length of posts as stayed the same when compared with 2009. I am planning to maintain the same for this year too.

total-length-of-posts

Again, because of the less number of posts, the total characters that I have written in 2010 has gone down. 🙁 Hopefully this should go up in 2011

What’s in for this year

This year I am planning to concentrate more on Scala, Android and physical computing using Arduino. So expect some cool and fun projects this year. 🙂 Also I am planning to travel a lot this year, so keep a watch on my Flickr stream as well.

<shameless self promotion>I have created these wonderful graphs using my year end stats WordPress Plugin. If you run a WordPress blog then you can also generate these graphs by downloading my year end stats WordPress Plugin.</shameless self promotion>

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Trip to Rajasthan

Published Jan 3, 2011 | In Travel/Trek

I just came back from an 11-days vacation in Rajasthan. (If you are following me in Twitter, you would have already known about it, since I was tweeting about it quite frequently 🙂 )

I was travelling with just one backpack and a very rough plan. I covered Rajasthan almost from tip to tip. The following is the list of important places that I visited

  • Udaipur
  • Bera
  • Jaipur
  • Nawalgarh
  • Churu
  • Ramgarh
  • Fatehpur
  • Bikaner
  • Jaisalmer
  • Khuri Sand dumes

This was my first major (backpack) trip and I have lot of things to talk about, but I am kind of very busy this week due to the amount of work that got backlogged because of my vacation. 🙁

I will talk about my experiences in more detail and will also start to post pictures as and when I get time. Till then Happy new year to everyone. 🙂

Posted in Travel/Trek | Tagged , | 4 Comments

FeedStats, my first Android app

Published Dec 9, 2010 | In Android/Java

Just a quick note to you let you guys, that I have just pushed my android app to the market. 🙂

It’s called FeedStats and it allows you to get the stats of a feedburner feed url and shows the data in a graphical format.

I created this app to demonstrate how we can draw graphs in android using JavaScript in a HTML page and then embedding it inside a webview.

If you have an android phone, then you can download it from the Android market, by searching using the term “FeedStats”. Try it out and let me know if you have any feedbacks/comments.

The entire source code of the app is available at my github account. Download and play around with it.

Posted in Android/Java | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Easy Retweet Plugin now supports official Twitter button

Published Dec 1, 2010 | In Plugin Releases

I have added some updates to my Easy retweet WordPress Plugin and have released a new version

Official Twitter Button

In addition to supporting bit.ly retweet counts, Easy Retweet Plugin now supports the Official Twitter Button. You can choose either bit.ly button or the Twitter button.

Screenshot

easy-retweet-option

Download

You can download the latest version of the Plugin from the Plugin’s homepage.

Feedback

Please keep the feedback coming and if you want me to add any new features or find a bug, please leave a comment.

Posted in Plugin Releases | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Making Arduino talk with Android using Amarino

Published Nov 29, 2010 | In Android/Java, Arduino, Events/Conferences

Last week, I gave a talk + demo about using Amarino to make both Arduino and Android talk to each other in Bangalore Open source Hardware meetup

I have uploaded the slides which I used for the talk to my slideshare account and you can download it from there or view them here.

Making arduino-talk-with-android-using-amarino from Sudar Muthu

The slide also includes the schematic diagram for the circuit which I used for the demo. The source code that I used for the demo can be downloaded from the below links

Posted in Android/Java, Arduino, Events/Conferences | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Scaling web applications using Memcache

Published Nov 23, 2010 | In Events/Conferences

Last weekend, I gave a talk at Chennai Geeks meetup about using memcache to scale web applications.

There were lot of good questions and the discussion which followed after the presentation was very good. Thanks for the organizers for putting together a great event.

I have uploaded the slides which I used for the talk to my slideshare account. I have also embedded them below so that you can easily view them.

Continue reading »

Posted in Events/Conferences | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment