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One year of blogging

over 2 years ago | Alex Rothenberg: Common Sense Software

I just noticed that its been a year since my first post and thought I'd take a moment to reflect on the experience....

I set out with a goal of writing 2-3 posts a month and have managed to write 28 articles over 12 months so I feel pretty good about that. Most of the time I've gotten excited about something I accomplished or learned during the week. The process of writing it up turned out to be as much of a learning experience for myself as the original discovery. As they say "Teaching is the best way to learn"!

I've been most surprised how easy it is to get to the top of a Google Search results list (for very specific searches of course). With my Google Analytics tracking I can see more than 1/2 of my hits coming from search engines and not all of them are me searching for my own name :) Its been great when I've gotten comments from people I don't know (especially when the comments are positive).

Writing this blog has also helped turn my focus outward so I'm not only working on internal projects at my company but feel (in a small way) a part of the broader community.

I hope to continue in the coming year as I'm having a lot of fun so far ...

One year of blogging

over 2 years ago | Alex Rothenberg: Common Sense Software

I just noticed that its been a year since my first post and thought I'd take a moment to reflect on the experience....

I set out with a goal of writing 2-3 posts a month and have managed to write 28 articles over 12 months so I feel pretty good about that. Most of the time I've gotten excited about something I accomplished or learned during the week. The process of writing it up turned out to be as much of a learning experience for myself as the original discovery. As they say "Teaching is the best way to learn"!

I've been most surprised how easy it is to get to the top of a Google Search results list (for very specific searches of course). With my Google Analytics tracking I can see more than 1/2 of my hits coming from search engines and not all of them are me searching for my own name :) Its been great when I've gotten comments from people I don't know (especially when the comments are positive).

Writing this blog has also helped turn my focus outward so I'm not only working on internal projects at my company but feel (in a small way) a part of the broader community.

I hope to continue in the coming year as I'm having a lot of fun so far ...

A non-ruby post about marketing tips

over 2 years ago | Amit Kumar: RubyizednRailified

Goggling about some Ruby thing, I came across a nice article on Marketing Tips. I was forced to share these beautiful thoughts ....

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/07/9-marketing-tips-from-a-six-year-olds-lemonade-stand/

Kuchh dard anokhay hote hain... part-2

over 2 years ago | Sukhpal Bhatti: life

Continued from "Kuchh dard anokhay hote hain..." - part-1 (appended below)Kitabon mein jo likha haiwo apne hi jhele hote hain,is duniya ke bheed meinhum aksar akele hote hain,jisko paane mein lagte hain barsousko ek pal mein khote hain,Kya khushi kya gamSab waqt ke khayalat hote hain,Kuchh log gam mein bhi haste hainKuchh khushi mein bhi rote hain,Ye to bas ek nazariya hai zindagi jeene kaVarna

Amazing Paper Craft Castle on the Ocean

over 2 years ago | Rohan Daxini: void TechFuels()

See this wonderful paper craft art installation by a genius of the name of Wataru Itou, a young student of a major art university in Tokyo. The installation is hand made over four years of hard work (yeah "four years of hard work") complete with electrical lights and a moving train, all made of paper! Clearly, this man must have created one of the most stunning examples of Paper Craft in the world.


It is exhibited at Uminohotaru, a place which in itself is a major attraction: a service area in the middle of the ocean, right between Tokyo City and Chiba Prefecture. If you haven’t checked it out yet, use Google Earth for a close up of what is probably the weirdest parking lot in the world. (it’s more than a parking lot actually) Enjoy this wonderful work of art!


Friendship / selfishness ???

over 2 years ago | Sukhpal Bhatti: life

Friendship has a special slot allotted in once life. And everyone looks for a good friend for himself/herself. They say "Man is a social animal" & that's true actually. And surely, we need society & more importantly friends in this environment. Although many have tried to define friendship but its far away and much more vast than any definition in practicality. But one thing is for sure,

Top 10 Hot technologies

over 2 years ago | Lalita Chandel: My View

While browsing, I came across an interesting article which talks about 10 hot technologies for 2009 (ex Cloud Computing, Green IT.....etc )
http://technology.inc.com/managing/articles/200812/technologies.html
Nice read !

Do you treat usability as an important aspect ?

over 2 years ago | Rohan Daxini: void TechFuels()

While working on usability aspects of menu (and other controls) for my news reader application "whiz", I read important aspects of usability posted by Jacob Nielsen who is considered "Guru of Usability".


Usability is defined by five quality components:
  • Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
  • Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
  • Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
  • Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
  • Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?
Follow this link to read on basic usability principles and more.....
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html

I think usability should be one of the most important aspect for any developer, designer, manager, BA etc and one should give usability the topmost priority. Designing systems that make sense to code warriors will often lead to a site that is not usable by the average person.

Jacob Nielsen correctly points out "For intranets, usability is a matter of employee productivity. Time users waste being lost on your intranet or pondering difficult instructions is money you waste by paying them to be at work without getting work done."

According to Jacob Nielsen, sites that spent 10% of their budget on usability reaped a 100% increase in sales/conversion rates.

Fight continues: Round 2 - Google vs. Microsoft

over 2 years ago | Rohan Daxini: void TechFuels()

Recently there has been a lot of buzz on Google launching new OS. This news is making rounds on almost all news sites and blogs. I am wondering whether this move by Google is a strong response to Microsoft for launching Bing which is trying to give tough competition to Google's core business. I was waiting for Google's response but didnt thought it would be in the form of new OS :)

Well its too early to comment on this but seems the fight continues and Round 2 was distinctly impressive.

Google's answer to Yahoo’s YSlow

over 2 years ago | Nilesh Naik: TechnoBites

You cannot hold them back for long. Recently Google announced a new open source plug-in for Firefox called Page Speed which can be used to assess the performance of web pages and make recommendations on speeding up the delivery which sounded a lot like Yslow to me. I couldn't wait & got it test on the Citibank's homepage.

Below is the comparison between the tools (YSlow on the right)


For each rule, Page Speed gives you a general indication of how well you’re doing, in the form of a green tick (good), red circle (bad), or amber triangle. You can also hover over a rule to see your percentage score. Page Speed does not provide an overall percentage score, but it does arrange the results in order of importance.

For me the major differences that stood out were:

  • PageSpeed focuses a lot on CSS which YSlow doesnt. It'll tell you which CSS rules aren't being used by the current page, and identify some potentially overly-specific CSS selectors
  • It not only tells the percentage of savings done through minifying JS and how much overhead you can save, but also provides a direct link to a already minified version of the file which you can simply save over your current file
  • It also provide you with optimized images & the savings done by it (saving your time on using other tools like smush.it)
  • The Page Speed Activity feature lets you monitor real time browser activity such as network latency, DNS lookups, connection establishment, and JavaScript processing.
  • One thing found missing was to give some overall grade to assess your pages overall performance as YSlow does.
  • YSlow 2.0 gives you the flexibility to customize the rules that are applied. There are 3 default rulesets YSlow (v2), Classic, and Small Site or Blog. The Classic ruleset provides 13 rules while version 2 has added 9 additional rules.
Overall Page Speed adds a new dimension to building better web apps and wouldn't mind it using it after I am finished with YSlow.

....Well I am still pondering over why Google hasn't made this a Chrome plug-in rather.

Installing Rails plugin from Github on Windows

over 2 years ago | Amit Kumar: RubyizednRailified

One more pain when coding on windows (as if I was born using Unix/Linux etc ;)))... but try installing a plugin -

ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/toamitkumar/extra_sanitize.git

and it will fail with an empty folder.

After googling found a way -> here which suggests using http instead of git protocol.

ruby script/plugin install http://github.com/toamitkumar/extra_sanitize.git

Well this also failed with an empty folder. After hours of struggling found adding a trailing forward slash to the url did the trick.

ruby script/plugin install http://github.com/toamitkumar/extra_sanitize.git/

It works now....