Yahoo Pipes

Yahoo has a tool called yahoo pipes which works much like a hose pipe we use in our gardens. All you have to do is fetch some data (search results maybe) and pipe it through another filter to sort and eliminate some records. That’s it…your kind of data is ready!

For non-technical people (the one who are unable to understand the above paragraph), there are pipes built by others which can be used by you. Lets say you are looking for a good deal on camera phone with Bluetooth, there is a pipe available which will search for all the deals and show you the results.

The ones I liked:

1. People Search - This tool is fetching search results from Yahoo, MSN, Google and Flickr to find any people entered with "Name FirstName".

2. Google and Yahoo news - Searches Google and Yahoo news, then merges them together into one feed.

3. Page to Podcast - This pipe extracts mp3 links from page, analyze ID3tag, and makes Podcast.

4. Meta Search Alert - This Yahoo Pipe: 1. Aggregates these search results from (Del.icio.us + Findory + Flickr + Google Blog Search + Google News + Google Search + Icerocket + Live Search + Technorati + Yahoo News + Yahoo Search); 2. Filters the results and ensures that the links are unique; 3. Sorts the results by date…

URL: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes

Where are the technology people in India?

No offence intended, but what does these so called technology companies in India do? Outsourced work! Is that all what we can do? We, the IT people, do we create something innovative or just use what has been created by others? How many times do we get an opportunity to work on something other than the usual business functions (which will be CRUD) to be implemented?

Yes, we do have brains and knowledge to use the technology. How about creating something new, like a new language or doing something innovative. Why is it that most Indians show new ideas and innovative thinking after going outside of India? Is it because of our upbringing and education? Well, the answer is NO. Those wonderful advertizing ads which we see on TV and print media are brain child of our fellow Indians. So why can’t we (IT people) be creative?

Creativity in IT is nothing sort of new to the Indians since we have all read the stories of Indians being successful in doing so. I guess, Hotmail is the most commonly used example in this case. Innovative thinking does not necessary means complex algorithms, it essentially means simple technology…simple technology put to good use.

India’s educational tradition of strong mathematics, science and a strong system of tertiary education has created a strong vast pool of talented programmers and IT professionals. However, it is sad to notice that we still are the “clerk” that British empire had created. Yes, that’s what we are at our core…a clerk. IT people are no different. We do what we are asked to do. Never think out of the box. No new ideas.

So, it doesn’t matter if we are creative programmers or not; at the end of the day, we win our bread and butter.

EVDO Technology

We are working on a web application using J2EE for a customer to offer high speed internet connection using the EVDO technology. This is just another retail website, but new thing is the technology associated with the business.

The EVDO system allows cellular service providers to provide broadband high-speed data services to their customers. The EVDO is an "always-on" system that allows users to browse the Internet without complicated dialup connections. EVDO provides wireless data connections that are 10 times as fast as a regular modem.

With the announcement of EVDO deployment, OEM IDs (laptop manufacturers) are looking to embed the EVDO/1X chipset into their devices and provide customers a wide area wireless service.

My own free web email website (not yet hosted)

This is my old posting posted at planetsourcecode.com which I am re-posting on my own blog...

I am fascinated by the free email websites coming up every since Hotmail was bought by Microsoft. I am ready with my own free web email website solution for someone to buy or hire me to create for them. Let me give an overview of what and how I created.

Tools and Technologies: Microsoft Exchange Server, COM components, , SQL server 6.5 and site server

Microsoft Exchange Server will be used to send and receive the mails.

We’ll deploy the COM components in transaction server to use cluster of servers to scale for high number of users expected on a free web email website.

SQL server 6.5 to store the emails. Exchange has its limitation with number of users and size of data.

Site server to authenticate the users.

We’ll create COM components for:

1. User registration and Login using site server

2. Inbox view using SQL server

3. Compose and send mail using exchange. Save mails in SQL

4. Read mails (anything@mydomain.com) and save into the user’s account.

I am also working to create this solution in CGI or Java based technologies. Send your comments, it will help me.

Internet Printing Protocol (IPP)

We have to deliver a POC in 3 days using IPP, that is Internet Printing Protocol. Essentially, IPP is a standard network protocol for remote printing. Remotely, we can do all the things we do with a printer on our desk like printing pages, managing print jobs in the queue, setting the paper, etc.

An IP is assigned to the printer which enables us to uniquely identify the printer. Now the printer can be placed locally (on your desk) or anywhere in the world. As long as it is connected with the internet, we can use it.

Think of it as an e-post enabler, we can take print job on our website (or any application) to deliver printed pages (anywhere in the world) to the intended recipient of our user. All we have to do is setup print shops across the world with printers on IPP. As soon as an order is received, the print is fired.

We can authenticate and encrypt the print jobs to make IPP safer to use.