My Den

ReTweet button in webpage.

contactnaveen — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:59:12 +0000

John Resig has released a Javascript solution for adding ReTweet buttons to the webpages. It makes use of Bit.ly JavaScript API for tracking the number of people visiting a blog post from Twitter. There are many such services available like Tweetmeme Button, Backtype Tweetcount which does the same, but JohnResig script is simple and straightforward and is interesting because of the following reasons

Completely Unobtrusive You can place the script in the of your document instead of inline. The other scripts rely upon document.write() and write out iframes into your document.

Speed Retweet.js works completely asynchronously, loading data and updating the rendering as it comes in. This means that the buttons won’t block your page while they’re loading (unlike the other buttons).

Pure HTML/CSS The result is just pure HTML styled with CSS – you can customize it however you wish, no images are required.

Number of clicks, not retweets. The number of retweets may be interesting to some but it’s a poor indicator of actual traffic. Instead, the number of clicks coming in is shown instead (a much more useful number).

You control the data All tracking works directly through Bit.ly, not a third party – this means that all the clicks and traffic can be stored straight in your bit.ly account, not some third parties.

100% Open Source This script is released under the MIT license and is completely open to modification and redistribution. The full source is available on Github.

Make use of this script to spread the message as Twitter has become a FREE marketing tool

“Aval appadi onrum azhagillai” from “Angadi Theru”

contactnaveen — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:49:35 +0000

One of my friends suggested the song “Aval appadi onrum azhagillai” from “Angadi Theru”, pheeew what a song it turned out to be.. I keep on looping this song again and again and again #whiletrue.

It is a slow and a very melodious song, which has multi-layered emotions ALL penned beautifully

Listen to the song

With the help of transliterate tool from Google, I drafted the lyrics

அவள் அப்படி ஒன்றும் அழகில்லை,
அவளுக்கு யாரும் இணையில்லை,
அவள் அப்படி ஒன்றும் கலர் இல்லை
ஆனால் அது ஒரு குறை இல்லை

அவள் பெரிதாய் ஒன்றும் படிக்கவில்லை
அவளை படித்தேன் முடிக்கவில்லை
அவள் உடுத்தும் உடைகள் பிடிக்கவில்லை
இருந்தும் கவனிக்க மறுக்கவில்லை

ந நா…ந நா

அவள் நாய் குட்டி எதுவும் வளர்க்கவில்லை
நான் காவல் இருந்தால் தடுக்கவில்லை
அவள் பொம்மைகள் அணைத்து உறங்கவில்லை
நான் பொம்மை போலே பிறக்கவில்லை

அவள் கூந்தல் ஒன்றும் நீளமில்லை
அந்த காட்டில் தொலைந்தேன் மீளவில்லை
அவள் கை விரல் மோதிர தங்க விலை
கை பிடித்திடும் ஆசை தூங்கவில்லை

அவள் சொந்தம் இன்றி எதுவுமில்லை
எனக்கு எதுவுமில்லை

… (மியூசிக்) ஆத் ஆஆதா

அவள் பட்டு புடிவை என்றும் அணிந்ததில்லை
அவள் சுடிதார் போல எதுவும் சிறந்ததில்லை
அவள் திட்டும் போதும் வலிக்கவில்லை
அந்த அக்கறை போலே வேறுஇல்லை

அவள் வாசம் ரோஜா வாசவிலை
அவள் இல்லாமல் சுவாசம் இல்லை
அவள் சொந்தம் பந்தம் எதுவும் இல்லை
அவள் சொந்தம் இன்றி எதுவும் இல்லை
அவள் சொந்தம் இன்றி எதுவும் இல்லை
எனக்கு எதுவும் இல்லை

Thanks to Vijay Antony for such a breezy song with poetic lyrics

Take Zoho everywhere with Zoho Gadgets

contactnaveen — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:00:03 +0000

We’ve launched gadgets for Zoho with the intent to connect Zoho applications with the external applications. To start with, we are offering the following six Zoho gadgets.

Zoho Docs (Including Writer, Sheet & Show)
Zoho Mail
Zoho Calendar
Zoho Tasks
Zoho Contacts and
Zoho Planner

Zoho Gadgets

Going forward, we do have plans to offer even more gadgets for their other applications.

The gadgets are OpenSocial compatible which means you can use these gadgets in any OpenSocial compatible network like iGoogle, Myspace, Blogspot etc., As these gadgets support the authorization standard OAuth, you need not enter Zoho login information to access them while you’re in iGoogle or GMail.

Also the gadgets can be embeded in Zoho applications like Zoho Notebook, Wiki, Writer, Show etc., with our standard embed option.

The following Media/blog has covered about ZGadgets release:

Also there are flurry of tweets abt Zoho Gadgets with the tag line “Take Zoho Apps Anywhere With Gadgets”

Please do give ZGadgets a go and let me know your feedback

Cracking Captcha in Javascript!

contactnaveen — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 09:36:23 +0000

Cracking captcha in Javascript: Yes you read it right Now it is proved that captcha can be cracked by writing an OCR engine using Neural Nets in Javascript.

ShaunF has written a GreaseMonkey script that automatically solves the captcha provided by the site Megaupload.

Click here to check out the online demo of this hack.

John Resig dissects the neural network Javascript OCR captcha code and explained how the hack works.

The HTML 5 Canvas getImageData API is used to get at the pixel data from the Captcha image. Canvas gives you the ability to embed an image into a canvas (from which you can later extract the pixel data back out again).
The script includes an implementation of a neural network, written in pure JavaScript.
The pixel data, extracted from the image using Canvas, is fed into the neural network in an attempt to divine the exact characters being used – in a sort of crude form of Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

On the related note, sometime back I’ve written a post on “Is Captcha Secure?”

Now it is proved that Captcha isn’t Secure. Thanks to ShaunF for his amazing piece of Javascript code

Naveen. V

JQuery1.3 released

contactnaveen — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:56:56 +0000

Few months back I’ve started using JQuery whenever I handle any client-side code. I was pleased with the way it worked and has written a post “JQuery Rocks“.

Today John Resig team has done a major release of JQuery 1.3. The major features of this release are

Sizzle: A sizzlin’ hot CSS selector engine.
Live Events: Event delegation with a jQuery twist.
jQuery Event Overhaul: Completely rewired to simplify event handling.
HTML Injection Rewrite: Lightning-fast HTML appending.
Offset Rewrite: Super-quick position calculation.
No More Browser Sniffing: Using feature detection to help jQuery last for many more years to come.

The full details of this release can be seen here and the JQuery minified code can be downloaded here

You can hit “http://api.jquery.com” to see the latest JQuery and JQuery UI documentation. It has the live running examples and the links to edit and experiment with the code examples given.

Also most importantly, this API site is also available offline as Adobe AIR application. Click here to download and install AIR API browser.

I’m really excited to try out the new features in the release. If time permits I will be playing with JQuery in the next couple of days and will try to integrate it in my existing codebase.

Zoho Mail officially released!

contactnaveen — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:57:26 +0000

Zoho has officially released the most waited ZMail application with Offline and Mobile capabilities!

Since I’m using Twitter in the recent days, I’ve become a luver of microblogging and write below 140 characters So for more information about the ZMail release check this out.

JQuery Rocks !!!

contactnaveen — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:13:24 +0000

I’ve been playing with JQuery, a Javascript Library for quite sometime and I’m pleased with the way JQuery works! It really reduces the burden of writing unnecssary JS code Let me brief of what exactly JQuery does and how to make use of it.

JQuery is an open source project, created by John Resig in early 2006. It is very lightweight and provides a wide range of features with cross-platform capability all in a single JS file.

The following can be achieved with the help of JQuery:

DOM traversal/selection
Add effects/animation to the webpage
Ajax capability (Retrieving an information from the server without reloading the page)
Modify the appearance of the page (CSS manipulation)
Offers a variety of JS plugins which can be seen here.

The above features exist in just a single 15KB file which can be downloaded here. The JS is dual licensed under GNU Public license and MIT license.

If you are new to JS programming u can check out JQuery documentation here.

Jesse Skinner has written an example on Simplify Ajax development with jQuery

Im now completely sold on JQuery. Thanks to John Resig for his excellent work

In my upcoming posts I will try to explain the main features of JQuery with simple example. Keep watching this space to know more on JQuery

Google does Face recognition!

contactnaveen — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:26:25 +0000

Google Picasa and their Online photo albums have introduced a new face detection feature!

Once you upload a set of photos, it locates the similar faces from the uploaded set and group it together. It asks you to confirm the groupings and correct if its necessary. Then you can assign a name tag for the photograph and u can browse the album of that individual on the fly.

Mike Horowitz, Google Picasa product manager said,
The “name tag” feature presents users with collections of photos with what it judges to be the same person, then lets them click a button to affix a name. “Once you’ve started naming people, we’ll start suggesting names for you based on similarity.”

I feel its reallly a great feature and as far as I know none of the web albums have this face recognition feature. Hope this feature will be extended in Google Image search and Gmail search as well.

Excellent job Guyz

Gmail Signup blocked!

contactnaveen — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:55:32 +0000

For registering into junk websites nd Forums/Blogs I was in need of a gmail-id. So visited Gmail’s “Create an Account” page, and was taken aback after seeing the message

“Account Creation Failed. We were unable to create your new Gmail Account. We apologize for the inconvenience”.

Yes I cudnt create a new account in Gmail. I also tried in different OS nd browsers but all in vain

I know Google would rectify this issue for SURE, so took a snapshot of the err message and uploaded it here.

I’ve also tweeted it here to check if anyone has noticed this issue, but yet to get a reply from my friends!!

BTW Gmail faced a system wide outage earlier this month and issues a straightforward apology here

Just wondering how Google itself could commit such mistakes

Update: As I already mentioned in the post the issue has been fixed and I’ve successfully signed up a Google Account!! Google is fast enough to fix their critical issues

Bday party!

contactnaveen — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:36:38 +0000

We usually go to Dominoes Pizza, Velacherry for the bday parties. Previous week also we went to the place and had good amt of burgers and Pizzas Today we tried differently by going to Eden, Besant Nagar. It was pleasant surprise for me, as the restaurant was quite good and we all had a great dinner. Then we went to Fruit Shop near Besant Nagar beach. It offers us quite all fresh natural juices and shakes even @ 10.00 P.M. Though we had a great dinner @ Eden I cudnt resist having two cups of Tender Coconut puddings and a fresh Mango milkshake. It was extraordinarily awesome and its till mouth watering

If u visit Besant Nagar beach do visit Fruit Shop without fail. Its really worth to enjoy the quality fruits and the juices.