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PersonalDNA Cool UI Controls

Published May 1, 2006 | In Web Programming

After getting recommendations from both Yuvi and Aswin, I gave a try to the PersonalDNA test. More than the questions what captured my attention were the cool UI controls. (See that what happens if you are a web programmer. What ever be the website you always tend to look at them from the design perfective rather than as a user)

Here are some of those cool UI controls.

Sliders
slider

Two dimensional select

2.GIF

Empty the bucket

3.GIF

From the source I came to know that the author has implemented then using flash. With the recent outbreak of AJAX libraries its not far from seeing these controls implemented in pure (X)HTML/CSS.

And btw my personal dna report said that I am a free-wheeling inventor and if you know me then you can psych you/psych me

Posted in Web Programming | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Down with viral fever

Published Apr 30, 2006 | In Random/Personal

Just popped up to let you know about my viral fever. Have been under complete bed rest for the past week. No emails, no blogs and no computers either.

Fever went up to 106 F and the funny part was the temperature jammed the mercury inside the clinical thermometer that we had at home. Have to get a new one now 😉

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged | 1 Comment

More rants on iTunes

Published Apr 22, 2006 | In Apple/Mac/iDevices, Random/Personal

This is just a continuation of my thoughts on iTunes and even now my opinion on iTunes hasn’t changed much.

ID3 Tags

Well as my quest for organizing my music continues I keep bumping on the short comings of iTunes. Recently I found that some of my files were having incorrect Meta information (ID3 tags) in my iPod. So I opened iTunes to check them and I found that they were wrong even in iTunes. But I was pretty sure that I corrected the tags of these MP3 files using a MP3 Tag Editor. I checked the tags of the original file in my hard disk and it was having the correct data. Out of frustration I clicked the file in iTunes and it started to play and the tag got automatically changed. Then only I released that there was no refresh/update option in iTunes and when you edit the ID3 tags of the files outside of iTunes it will not get reflected until you play the file in iTunes. What a great optimization design!!

In order to make my iTunes happy I started editing the ID3 tags in iTunes itself and iTunes was happy to refresh it and were updated in my iPod too. Little did I know that it was not getting changed in the original file and it was just getting updated only in the iTunes library. And I was searching for an option to write the tag information to the file only to find that even this was not present.

So the lesson learnt: update the tag information of the files using some other tag editor outside of iTunes and then double click all those files in iTunes and play them so that the correct tag information gets updated both in the library and also in the file. How user friendly!

Podcast

I bumped again on the short comings of iTunes when I was trying to download some podcast.

No resume option for downloading podcast: Some of the podcasts that I have subscribed are more than 100 MB in size and when downloading, half way through the connection gets lost or iTunes freezes and the download process start again from scratch. Bandwidth is pretty scarce here and also costly and I end up wasting my precious bandwidth (and some bucks too).

No scheduling option for downloading podcast: if it’s available then I can schedule all my downloads from 2:00 am to 8:00 am every day when my ISP gives me free bandwidth. (Those who are having BSNL Broadband could feel the pain)

No way to subscribe to more than one podcast from a search result at iTunes Music store. You have to select only one at a time and have to perform the search again if you want to subscribe to more than one.

Giving reviews about podcast on iTunes: If I have to write a review about a particular podcast then I have to have an apple id and in order to have an apple id I need to have a credit card and I don’t have a credit card (yes seriously, believe me) and so no apple id and no reviews too.

In spite of all these short comings I am still using it, just for one thing – My little cute blackie 😉

Posted in Apple/Mac/iDevices, Random/Personal | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

How to Whistle Loudly?

Published Apr 16, 2006 | In Random/Personal

The ability to whistle really loud by keeping the fingers in the mouth was considered as a great skill among my friends circle when I was studying. Every time there was a function at school (or even at college) there used to be a gang of people who will be teaching their extraordinary skill to others and there will be a lot of rehearsals. You could see most of them with their fingers in their mouth and trying to blow in as much as they can only to get a small hissing sound. Most of them will stop trying but a few will be kept on trying till they could get a decent level of sound. Hmm.. that was a short trip down the memory lane…

Well if some of you are still trying then here is an excellent write-up which teaches you how to whistle really loud by keeping your fingers in your mouth.

PS: Make sure that you don’t get into trouble by trying it in a public place. 😉

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Second Chance to Pass Your Microsoft Certification Exam

Published Apr 7, 2006 | In Certifications

Microsoft is offering a free second shot for Microsoft IT Professional, Developer, or Microsoft Dynamics (formerly Microsoft Business Solutions) Certification exam.

You just need to register in the registration page before your first exam, and you’ll get two chances to pass. The last date is June 30, 2006.

More information at the Microsoft second shot offer page.

Posted in Certifications | Tagged , | 1 Comment

I am going naked

Published Apr 3, 2006 | In Random/Personal, Web Programming

Well don’t stare at me with that strange look 😉

My latest super hero Dustin Diaz of Web standards with Imagination is launching the first annual CSS naked day on April 05, 2006 in the spirit of promoting Web Standards along with good semantic markup and proper hierarchy structures.

If you are brave enough then you can also participate by running your sites completely CSS free for the entire day. The point is to show off the “semantic-ness” of your markup. So if you are participating then just leave a comment at the announcement page. The list of participants is maintained in the official page.

Way to go Dustin! I’m in! Any takers?

PS: I was just wondering what if the webmaster has hard coded all style information using inline style attribute and is not using any external CSS file.

PSS: BTW it’s already on Digg too.

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

Uploading Videos into iPod

Published Mar 29, 2006 | In Apple/Mac/iDevices

Quite a few of my friends asked me how to upload video into iPod. So instead of explaing to each and every one of them separately I thought of writing about it and then directing them here.

First if you want to play the video in your iPod then it must be in MP4 file format. If you already have your files in this format then you can add it to your iTunes library by just drag and drop. If it is not then you must use a Video converter to convert it into the MP4 file format.

Luckily there is a software called Free iPod Video Converter which does exactly the same and more over it’s free. Download it from its website and install it. You can add the files which need to be converted by just drag and drop and then select the appropriate parameters (99% of the time you don’t need to change anything.)

Free Video Converter

Then enter the tags for your video file and click ok

Free Video Converter

Now click convert button and you are done.

Free Video Converter

After the conversion process you can just add the generated file to your iTunes library and then it will get automatically uploaded to your iPod the next time you connect it.

Other useful converters from the same company – Jodix

And most of them have the similar GUI and operation.

This article is part of an ongoing series of posts under the title ‘iPod Tips and Tricks‘. Here is the list of article in the series

Posted in Apple/Mac/iDevices | Tagged , , | 27 Comments

My favorite Podcasts

Published Mar 27, 2006 | In Apple/Mac/iDevices

As I said before I was trying to subscribe to some podcasts and thought that I could share them with you. So here is the list

Tech – mostly web designing and programming

Web Standards with Imagination – Feed
Audible AJAX – Feed
TalkCrunch – Feed
SXSW 2006 Interactive Panels Podcast – Feed
O’Reilly Etech 2005 – Feed
Carson Workshops submit – Feed

General

The kamla bhatt show – Feed

So if you guys have some recommendations then do let me know. And also I ran into some problems when dealing with podcasts in iTunes more on that later.

Posted in Apple/Mac/iDevices | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Thoughts on iTunes and iPod

Published Mar 26, 2006 | In Apple/Mac/iDevices

Well it’s been nearly 2 weeks since I became an owner of iPod. So I thought of sharing my experience with iPod and its (evil?) cousin iTunes.

If you want me to describe an iPod in just a single word then the answer is “WOW!”. I am not here to keep on dragging about my iPod but one thing is sure Steve Jobs has done really a great job.

Organizing my collection by adding the appropriate tag took me close to 10 days since the collection itself was huge and also for the reason that I have put it in the most unorganized state before. I was Googling for the every song name to find the album (film) and the artist and luckily the index from Raaga helped me a lot for lookup.

iTunes

The more I use iTunes the more I dislike it. That’s why I said that iTunes is an evil cousin of iPod. I some how feel that Apple could do iPod a big favor if they could break the relation ship.

The thing which I dislike most about it is its error handling. At times it is just a silent failure (Even Jeremy has noted about it before) or a wired and totally misguiding error message. For instance there were some video files in my library which were in a .mov format (means they cannot be played in iPod) and guess what was the error message that I received when I connected my iPod. It was something like this “iTunes was not able to write to your iPod” which totally rocked me. I then realized that it was caused because there was a file in an up supported file format. How Good??

The next wired thing that I found out was that, if you change the ID3 tags of your mp3 file then it will not reflect back in your iTunes until you play that song, not even if you restart iTunes. I thought that a simple refresh button would have saved me lot of time instead of me selecting every file that I have changed and then clicking the play button.

Added to all these is the fact that it is soo sluggish and consumes nearly every bit of my 512 MB Ram.

I am going to try some podcasts now and let me hope that it handles them at least well.

Posted in Apple/Mac/iDevices | Tagged , | 6 Comments

BarCamp Hits Chennai

Published Mar 22, 2006 | In Events/Conferences

BarCampChennai

Well if you

  • live in Chennai
  • a bit savvy about technology
  • read Decccan Chronicle this Sunday

then you must surely have heard about BarCamp hitting Chennai. Yes the next BarCamp is going to take place in Chennai on April 8th and 9th.

If you haven’t heard or still wondering what is BarCamp then here is the text straight from the official site.

BarCamp is an unconference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. The BarCampChennai focusses on Web 2.0, Social Media and Next Generation Internet.

BARCamp is an open, welcoming, once-a-year event for geeks to camp out for a couple days with wifi and smash their brains together. It’s about love and geekery and having a focal point for great ideas, like FOOcamp but open.

The event will be free or very close to free. But there’s a catch! Partipants are expected to contribute back to the conference by participating actively. “Active participation” might mean giving a presentation, helping with a presentation, blogging or podcasting the event, or whatever other creative ways to contribute people can come up with.

There is no audience. Only participants! This is unlike any conference you have been to before. It’s new, it’s different and it’s going to happen in our city. Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join. When you come, be prepared to share with barcampers. When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.

Wanna participate ? no registration, no fees, no need to send email nothing, just go the BarCampChennai page and add your name to the confirmed Participants list. It’s a Wiki and if you are not comfortable editing it then check out this tutorial.

Wanna present a topic? Just select your topic from this list and add your name to the Confirmed Participants list. Again it’s a Wiki so just edit it.

Wanna organize? Here is the list of things to be done. Select one and continue working on it.

Happy BarCamping..

Posted in Events/Conferences | Tagged , | 3 Comments