…
Kapil Mohan: do u have a spare laptop?
arnabdotorg: no
arnabdotorg: i dont have any laptop
Kapil Mohan: when u have…. have 2 .. ok?
arnabdotorg: waiting for apple to release ibook
arnabdotorg: what about my a spare laptop?
Kapil Mohan: u will get it when i get mine
arnabdotorg: when are you getting it?
Kapil Mohan: when u get 2
arnabdotorg: ohk
…

arnabdotorg = my good friend in need.

Well, I really didn know that! Is google indexing horoscopes?

Hey, today I heard that Google acquired Writely. This is big news. Microsoft, can u survive this knock? Ha, yes u can. But this is big one. Ain’t it?

Read here for the story on Writely’s blog at Blogspot!

More thought: So, now Google has one more product which is in beta. Hail beta till eternity. Ha.

We had some very cool stuff showcased at Barcamp Delhi 2006. One technology that impressed me was Watir – Web application testing in Ruby. Angrez Singh of Persistent Systems presented a talk on this. Watir is an open source web application functional testing tool. It drives IE like a user will do by clicking links, filling up forms etc automatically and shows the results. It currently supports IE.

Angrez has written Ruby scripts which enable this thing to drive FireFox. Great! He is using JSSh to control FireFox from Ruby. Here and here are more discussions about this.

In the demo, he actually showed how Watir was automatically filling up yahoo mail login page and driving the browser to do a login. It was cool. It was slow, though. When asked, he said that it is because of JSSh which is slow in transmitting messages. I also think so. The culprit has to be the middle man. Later I asked him what all it entails to support more browsers and how easy it is. So, he said that one needs to write Ruby scripts which will drive the browser and also a browser plugin or something which will let Ruby drive the browser.

Frankly, I was impressed by the power of this tool. Ruby itself is getting hotter day by day. And now a powerful web application functional testing tool built in Ruby. Good. This is one thing I am surely going to play around with for some time.

Whew! Barcamp Delhi happened today. And what an amazing event it was! If you missed it, you missed something. Many thanks to Amit, Jon, Gaurav and Manik for planning the whole thing. Love to Adobe for their infrastructure and great food. It was heartening to see so many people speaking on so many cool things. Knowledge was flowing in all directions. In my opinion, Barcamp Delhi is a runaway hit. Bangalore, we beat ya!

I heard sessions on AJAX, MindCanvas, RIA and FLEX, Blogging Network, Web 2.0, Open source web application testing, Blog monetization, Micro-content, Structured blogging and knowledge management. There were more sessions but since they were split between two rooms, so I was able to attend these ones only. I would have loved to blog the action live from there, but I couldnt since I dont have a laptop. Somebody PLEASE donate me a laptop (second hand/old ThinkPad/HP/Dell will do). PLEASE contact me if you are generous enough. I will appreciate your gesture!

I gave a talk on how to develop MVC based AJAX applications. Basic point was that people tend to use AJAX as a one shot fancy improvement to their existing web projects. However, to build enterprise RIAs in AJAX we need more serious thought and follow proven software development practices. So, I demonstrated how we can leverage the proven MVC architecture to build robust, scaleable, modular and maintainable RIAs. It looked like only techies attended the talk, which was expected. Going by the things that came up in QA and the discussions that it led to, I assume that the talk was well received. Here are the powerpoint slides of the talk (261KB).

I will blog more about what happened in other sessions. Soon.

Meanwhile, checkout photos from the event at Flickr. They even have pics from the booze party which happened later!

So, Barcamp is making its first foray into Asia with Barcamp Delhi on Saturday, 4th of March 2006. The theme is ‘Next Generation Internet: Web 2.0, mobile computing, and other cool stuff’. Cool. Venue is Adobe New Delhi campus. Very cool.

Personally, I think Barcamp is more about open-conference than un-conference. The idea is great. Knowledge flows best when it knows no bounds!

Its going to be a great great event. I will be going there and will try to blog live from there.

Read more details on the official Barcamp Delhi page.

Gaurav sums up the concept of Barcamp and things about Barcamp Delhi very well here.

If you plan to come, then do add your name to the wiki. See ya there!

A very happy birthday to Arnab. Rock on mate!

Hey, below is the blog mulletization code for WordPress powered weblogs. It’s damn easy. Have fun!


<?php 
  // to count posts inside WP loop
  $postCount=0; 
  // number of full posts to display
  $displayNumPosts = 5; 
?>
<?php
  // WP loop
  if(have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); 
?>
    <?php
      if($postCount<$displayNumPosts) {     
    ?>        
        <!-- TEMPLATE CODE TO SHOW FULL POST -->
        <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>">
        <?php the_title(); ?>
        </a>
        <div class="content">
        <?php the_content(); ?>
        </div>    
    <?php } else { ?>
        <!-- TEMPLATE CODE TO SHOW MULLETED POST -->
        <?php the_time('M j, y') ?> 
        <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>">
        <?php the_title(); ?>
        </a>        
    <?php } ?>    
    <?php     
      // increment $postCount
      $postCount++;   
    ?>
<?php
  // WP loop ends
  endwhile; endif;
?>


Hmmm… I thought the main page was getting too damn long, and also people didn want to read all of the older content. So, I mulleted the main page. So now, the page shows 5 most recent posts and then gets tired and spits only post titles with hyperlinks. Nifty, eh?

Have done this through PHP code in template. Maybe making a plugin for this will be a good idea!

Here is a very good discussion on ‘blog mulletization’ on Jon’s blog.

Guys, I got the audio of Rang De Basanti recently. And as I listen to it, I am liking it more and more. The music is awesome (A R Rahman hain bhai!), theme is good and the tracks are very diverse. And for heaven’s sake, its not all about loads of some silly mush. Believe that – it even has a track for you and your mother. I hope the movie also turns out to be that good.