Creating a new Ruby on Rails Project

Though creation of a new project has been mentioned in our previous post on "Introduction to Ruby on Rails", I am taking out the exact part of creating a new project into a blogpost as it would be easy for you to bookmark it.


Creation of new Rails project - Project name: first_app

---

#creates a rails app with all required folders
rails new first_app

#enter the directory of our app
cd first_app



Edit the Gemfile  specifying the exact versions of the gems required

---

source 'https://rubygems.org'

gem 'rails', '3.2.8'

group :development do
  gem 'sqlite3', '1.3.5'
end


# Gems used only for assets and not required
# in production environments by default.
group :assets do
  gem 'sass-rails',   '3.2.4'
  gem 'coffee-rails', '3.2.2'

  gem 'uglifier', '1.2.3'
end

gem 'jquery-rails', '2.0.2'

---

#Install the gems specified
bundle install 

#start the server
rails server

Open the webpage http://localhost:3000

---

Deploying your Rails App

#We use Heroku to deploy our rails application - Install heroku gem
gem install 'heroku'

heroku add:keys

#The --stack cedar argument arranges to use the latest and greatest version of Heroku, called the Celadon Cedar Stack. It creates a subdomain for us
heroku create --stack cedar

#Just push/deploy the code using the following git push command as heorku works seamlessly with git
git push heroku master

#That's it, our application is deployed, you can view it using this command.
heroku open

Version Control of your Rails Application using Git

Creating and Configuring Git Repo

#Set your name for identifying the commits
git config  --global user.name ""

#Set your email for correspondence during collaboration
git config  --global user.email xyz@gmail.com

#creating a shortcut "co" for checkout
git config --global alias.co checkout

#while we are inside our app directory, initializing a git repository
git init

#Adding all files in the current directory(.)
git add .

#Checking the status of the files under git repository. Since it's not committed yet, All of them woudl be visible
git status

#Committing the code with a message "Initial Commit" specified with -m flag
git commit -m "Initial commit"

#Now checking github status will give empty as everything is committed
git status

#Check the git log
git log

#Once the code has been commited, we can push it to Github for backup or collaboration
git remote add origin https://github.com/vamshi4001/first_app.git

#Push the code to remote origin added above as master branch
git push -u origin master


Branch, Merge, Delete and Push


#if you wanna edit something without affecting the original code, you create a branch
#This can be done using the following checkout "co" command with a flag -b and name of the branch
git co -b modify-README

#Check the list of branches with following command. It also shows which branch are we currently using with * before it
git branch

#Changing the extension of rdoc to md(Markdown Markup language), which github can understand and format neatly.
git mv README.rdoc README.md

#Check ths status of the git repo now. We have one rename and one modification
git status

#We need not add the renamed file now. We have a flag -a which will take into account all modified including the renamed ones.(Not newly created)
git commit -a -m "Improved the README file"

#Now we have committed to a branch created. We'll switch back to our master with following command.
git co master

#Now merge the changes in the branch "modify-README"
git merge modify-README

#check the branches, we'll be currently on master(indicated by a * beside master)
git branch

#Since we are done with modifications and merged, you can abandon it or delete it using a -b flag as follows
git branch -d modify-README

#Now push the modified and committed code to github
git push

Introduction to Ruby on Rails

This blogpost is kind of summary for most of the tutorials out there on internet. Once you've gone through them and if you would like to note important steps - just bookmark this post.

Ruby on Rails Setup

We need rvm, ruby, rails and creation of a gemset

---

#Install rvm
bash < <(curl -s https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/install/rvm)

#check versions
rvm -v

#Gives the list of available ruby versions
rvm list known

#Install ruby version 1.9.3
rvm install 1.9.3

#Check version of ruby
ruby -v

#Create a Gemset rails3tutorial2ndEd and use it as default
rvm use 1.9.3@rails3tutorial2ndEd --create --default


Now Install rails for this particular gemset and ruby version

---

sudo rvm use 1.9.3@rails3tutorial2ndEd do gem install rails

Now all required gems are installed.
Also install git along with this. So now we have Ruby, RVM, Rails, Git
Check GEMS with "gem list"


Now create a rails projects

---

#creates a rails app with all required foldersrails new first_app

#enter the directory of our app
cd first_app



Edit the Gemfile  specifying the exact versions of the gems required

---

source 'https://rubygems.org'

gem 'rails', '3.2.8'

group :development do
  gem 'sqlite3', '1.3.5'
end


# Gems used only for assets and not required
# in production environments by default.
group :assets do
  gem 'sass-rails',   '3.2.4'
  gem 'coffee-rails', '3.2.2'

  gem 'uglifier', '1.2.3'
end

gem 'jquery-rails', '2.0.2'

---

#Install the gems specified
bundle install

#start the server
rails server

Open the webpage http://localhost:3000

---

How to create a cool and usable CSS3 search box

Source: http://www.red-team-design.com/how-to-create-a-cool-and-usable-css3-search-box

In this new article, you’ll learn how create a cool and usable CSS3 search box using the HTML5placeholder attribute. For the browsers that don’t support this new HTML5 attribute, a fallback is created using Modernizr’s feature detection.

View demo

STRUCTURE

The form element is used as the wrapper, while the two inputs are used as search field and search button respectively.

The HTML code

You may notice the placeholder attribute, but just ignore it for now, as we will talk later about it.

The reason why there are so many id’s (instead of CSS3 advanced selectors asinput[type="text"] or input[type="submit"]) is because I wanted this to degrade gracefully for older browsers.

THE CSS

Form wrapper

#searchbox
{
 background: #eaf8fc;
 background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(#fff, #d4e8ec);
 background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear,left bottom,left top,color-stop(0, #d4e8ec),color-stop(1, #fff));
 
 -moz-border-radius: 35px;
 border-radius: 35px;
 
 border-width: 1px;
 border-style: solid;
 border-color: #c4d9df #a4c3ca #83afb7;            
 width: 500px;
 height: 35px;
 padding: 10px;
 margin: 100px auto 50px;
 overflow: hidden; /* Clear floats */
}

Below you can see the current result:

Inputs

Quick tip:

When adding float: left to an element, there’s no need to add also display: block. The last one it’s implied.

#search, #submit
{
 float: left;
}

#search
{
 padding: 5px 9px;
 height: 23px;
 width: 380px;
 border: 1px solid #a4c3ca;
 font: normal 13px 'trebuchet MS', arial, helvetica;
 background: #f1f1f1;
 
 -moz-border-radius: 50px 3px 3px 50px;
  border-radius: 50px 3px 3px 50px;
  -moz-box-shadow: 0 1px 3px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25) inset, 0 1px 0 rgba(255, 255, 255, 1);
  -webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 3px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25) inset, 0 1px 0 rgba(255, 255, 255, 1);
  box-shadow: 0 1px 3px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25) inset, 0 1px 0 rgba(255, 255, 255, 1);            
}

/* ----------------------- */

#submit
{  
 background: #6cbb6b;
 background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(#95d788, #6cbb6b);
 background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear,left bottom,left top,color-stop(0, #6cbb6b),color-stop(1, #95d788));
 
 -moz-border-radius: 3px 50px 50px 3px;
 border-radius: 3px 50px 50px 3px;
 
 border-width: 1px;
 border-style: solid;
 border-color: #7eba7c #578e57 #447d43;
 
  -moz-box-shadow: 0 0 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3), 0 1px 0 rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.3) inset;
  -webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3), 0 1px 0 rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.3) inset;
  box-shadow: 0 0 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3), 0 1px 0 rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.3) inset;     

 height: 35px;
 margin: 0 0 0 10px;
        padding: 0;
 width: 90px;
 cursor: pointer;
 font: bold 14px Arial, Helvetica;
 color: #23441e;
 
 text-shadow: 0 1px 0 rgba(255,255,255,0.5);
}

#submit:hover
{  
 background: #95d788;
 background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(#6cbb6b, #95d788);
 background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear,left bottom,left top,color-stop(0, #95d788),color-stop(1, #6cbb6b));
} 

#submit:active
{  
 background: #95d788;
 outline: none;
   
  -moz-box-shadow: 0 1px 4px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5) inset;
  -webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 4px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5) inset;
  box-shadow: 0 1px 4px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5) inset;  
}

#submit::-moz-focus-inner
{
       border: 0;  /* Small centering fix for Firefox */
}  

HTML5 PLACEHOLDER ATTRIBUTE

This new HTML5 attribute shows a text in a field as long as the field is empty and not focused, then hides the text. You surely have seen this technique before with JavaScript!

Browser support:

• Firefox 3.7+
• Safari 4.0+
• Chrome 4.0+
• Opera 11+
• IE10+

Opera 11 supports it, but you cannot style it (yet). As for the others above, here’s how you can style it:

#search::-webkit-input-placeholder {
   color: #9c9c9c;
   font-style: italic;
}

#search:-moz-placeholder {
   color: #9c9c9c;
   font-style: italic;
}  

#search:-ms-placeholder {
   color: #9c9c9c;
   font-style: italic;
}   

Fallback support

For web browsers that are not supporting the this new HTML5 attribute, I made a fallback.

I used Modernizr to detect native support for the HTML5 placeholder attribute. Even if this could have been done by writing a short function, I love Modernizr as it also enables you to use more semantic elements from the HTML5 specs.

#search.placeholder {
   color: #9c9c9c !important;
   font-style: italic;
} 

$(document).ready(function() {           
 if (!Modernizr.input.placeholder)
 {  
  var placeholderText = $('#search').attr('placeholder');
  
  $('#search').attr('value',placeholderText);
  $('#search').addClass('placeholder');
  
  $('#search').focus(function() {    
   if( ($('#search').val() == placeholderText) )
   {
    $('#search').attr('value','');
    $('#search').removeClass('placeholder');
   }
  });
  
  $('#search').blur(function() {    
   if ( ($('#search').val() == placeholderText) || (($('#search').val() == '')) )                      
   { 
    $('#search').addClass('placeholder');       
    $('#search').attr('value',placeholderText);
   }
  });
 }                
});

View demo

CHROME’S INSET BOX-SHADOW BUG

There is a bug on Chrome when both border-radius and inset box-shadow are used. Anyway, there is good news about that. Paul Irish announced last month that Chrome’s inset box-shadow bug is fixed.

Later update

The demo was updated, thanks for pointing this out Atul.

So, if you’re using Chrome beta 10.0.648.119 or a greater version, this should work just perfect!

CONCLUSION

This example it’s mostly about progressive enhancement.

Regarding the CSS, as you will notice, this example will degrade gracefully for other old browsers. Now, regarding the HTML5 placeholder attribute, if native support is missing, then the Javascript code will do it for you.

Reverse search of Stock quotes

Hello All,

We've seen a lot of stock market applications which would try to put together a great amount of information relevant to us for which you will feed in a list of stocks you are interested in or you've invested in. As we all know, we don't know a lot of public companies in this world which are comparably making good profits than the stocks you already know. There may be a huge amount of hype given for certain quotes, but some may go unnoticed. There might be some stocks which are kind of underdogs but are earning a lot(at least comparatively). 

Say, you have an interest of investing about $500 with about $12 per share in some profitable company. So you have a question in front of you i.e. what are all stocks that have a current value around $12. This has invoked an idea of building a tool which will fetch you all stocks for a given range of your interest.

You provide us with your lower cap and upper cap for current ask value and we fetch you the relevant stocks ordered by their current value. You wanna check more details about a quote listed, it's just a click away - click on the stock name - you see the details in the box beside!

This is just the beginning and lot more usable functionality coming soon. Watch this space for more updates. Thank you all for trying this tool.

Sports n Pics - Timeline of Sports in pictures

The following article is about Sports n Pics: http://mycollect.in/snp

The morning after euro2012 final happened, I woke up and was curious to see how did people around the world reacted before, during and after the match. I am sure there will be mixed reactions, exciting moments, celebrations for some and sadness for some. I can get all these in the form of news articles or boston.bigpicture or something like that. 

But I wanted to see the real feelings of people, their preparation for the match, their arrangements and cool merchandise bought, funny hats, happiness in their faces, love towards their favorite team, heartfelt situations during the match followed by elated moments. Finally celebrations in winning team and  other team's feelings for their defeat. Every moment mentioned above is felt by all football fans, I wanted to see them in personal. 

Best way I found is Instagram! People post every activity as mentioned above, which is a huge resource for fulfilling my request. But there was no way I can see them as a sequence in a nice UI where I need not do many clicks or run through several pages. 

With this pain point, I decided to develop an application which would solve this purpose. You can select your favorite league and filter the teams, select a team to see a timeline of pictures being listed and will keep on coming as you scroll down - that's it - select a team with single click and watch a huge set of pictures from all around the world depicting different feelings and moments of every one's life for a given sports event or a team. 

Link for my application is http://mycollect.in/snp

Now this application hosts all teams of MLB, NFL, NHL, MLS, NBA. So this would be a treat for fans of baseball, football, hockey, soccer and basketball!

Show your love by sharing and liking it. 

This is still in beta and adding many more features to make a perfect applications for a sports fan.

Please let me know your feedback. 

Does Human knows everything about his capabilities?

Human Being - The most intelligent being on Earth so far.

Is that true???

Human brain and body is the most advanced and complex system, but there are some limitations!

For instance, we have got te "Eyes+Brain" system, much powerful than the state of the art cameras in terms of lens and focus - but, some things are missing!

1. He doesn't have Zoom capability!
2. He can always see the colors, but can't switch between gray scale and colors!
3. and many more!!!

Why are they missing?

Are these features missing in human being or does he don't know the control for them?

Do we actually know what all things we are capable of doing?

Do we actually know all the controls for doing different complex things?

What's the human potential and how far we have explored it?

Why RSS have to die?

Most of the people are saying that "RSS is died", but why should we consider it as dead, only fact is that world has moved forward and services of RSS feeds is now enough. That doesn't mean that RSS have to die! It can start serving in a different format or provide service compatible to existing trend. Many of major companies are blocking social networking sites just in order to restrict their employees from getting distracted during work.

integrate RSS with twitter/FB

set digest time/period by company or user(3hrs/6hrs)

receive feeds in the form of mail, so that you dont miss ur frnds feed.

This is just one of apps where RSS can reincarnate itself to keep up with existing trends. please suggest any more apps that could save RSS.

Learning MySQL and PHP

• PHP and MySQL are two different languages that work hand in hand very well.
• In order to get us started the right way we will need our database up and running and the web server to be able to run php code. XAMPP is an excellent tool to put your localhost "alive" in under 5 minutes.
• We will need 3 informations in order to access and manipulate our databases: host ("localhost" usually), username and password (in XAMPP this comes by default with username "root" and no password.

• At first, we stored our host name (localhost), username and password in variables to call and update them a little bit easier (I can use the variable '$host' in 1000 pages and update it by only modifying this step instead of modifying all those pages one by one, that's why we store the info in variables).

• Next we define '$connect' with the actual connection code. This is very important because it's a little different from most of the examples out there.
• Notice the '@' character right at the start of the 'mysql_connect' command. It's used to hide the errors that php produces if any of the variables contain informations that are not correct and the script can't connect to the host.
• This is a very important step in writing secure code that will not leave empty doors.
• The errors can output a lot of sensitive informations and we don't wanna put that kind of info in the wrong hands so we will hide the default errors and put our own messages to identify where the error is.
• Let's take a live example for a better understanding: Instead of 'root' as the database username, I will put 'rosot' and delete the '@' that is supposed to hide my errors. Here's the ugly output: 'Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Access denied for user 'rosot'@'localhost' (using password: YES) in D:\xampp\htdocs\test\index.php on line 9' It gives out my username, it's not a big thing since it's the wrong one but keep in mind that the same error will be shown if we enter a wrong password so it's not safe.
• Let's put back the '@' character and run this code again. The output is somehow the same because I defined this way but you can change it to whatever you want since you're in full control. We managed to control the errors and display only what we need by using an if statement.
• By default, the command 'mysql_query' executes a query the we define and store in a variable or inside the parenthesis (it's the same thing). This mysql command returns TRUE or FALSE (TRUE = I executed the query successfully, FALSE = no I didin't) and this boolean return will help us figure out if we should display an error message or success.

• if ( ! @mysql_query ( "CREATE DATABASE `roscripts`" ) )

  Another character (!) is joining the game: if ( ! //code here ) means that if the code that follows the character is not true than the condition is true. In pure english it goes this way: "If I can't execute this query, I do this...". This condition is the same with the following but a little more elegant:

  if ( @mysql_query ( "CREATE DATABASE `roscripts`" ) == FALSE )

  So if the code can't execute the query command, it hides the default errors (thanks to '@') and displays the message that I want (in our case the code dies and displays the mysql error : 'die ( mysql_error() );').

Sample Application that takes a word and Enters into database.

1. create a empty php file and name it as index.php
2. lets have a text box to enter the word and 2 buttons, one for submit and other for reset.
3. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   " method="post">
   
   
   First name
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. In form action we are writing , because we are going to write the php functionality in the same page.
5. Now we have to write a functionality in php which will insert the word entered in text box to a specified table in the mysql database.
6. Specifying the database parameters
7. $database="mystore";
   $conn = @mysql_connect( 'localhost', 'username', 'password' ) or die( mysql_errno().': '.mysql_error().NL );
   @mysql_select_db($database) or die( "Unable to select database");
8. Now get the value of text box into a variable $name = $_POST['first'];
9. Build a sql query :$sql = "INSERT INTO terms VALUES ('$name',NULL,NULL,NULL)";
10. Run the query
11. $result = mysql_query( $sql,$conn );
    mysql_free_result( $result );
12. Thus, we have inserted the record successfully.

Display of data from mysql table onto a html page.

1. Now i want the display of records in the same page as and when i insert.
2. So, we need to write a code for displaying the data in mysql table onto html page.
3. For getting the data, we need to fire a sql query "select * from terms".
4. Build the query :$query="select * from terms";
   
5. execute the query and store the result set in a variable.
6. $rt=mysql_query($query);
7. putting the data into a unordered list.
8. echo "
   ";
   while($nt=mysql_fetch_array($rt)){
   echo "
   • $nt[term]
   "; //nt will contain each row.
   }
   echo "
   ";
   

Information Extraction versus Information Retrieval

Information extraction (IE). Unlike information retrieval (IR), which concerns how to identify relevant documents from a document collection, IE produces structured data ready for post-processing, which is crucial to many applications of Web mining and searching tools.

Programs that perform the task of IE are referred to as extractors or wrappers. A wrapper was originally defined as a component in an information integration system which aims at providing a single uniform query interface to access multiple information sources. In an information integration system, a wrapper is generally a program that “wraps” an information source (e.g. a database server, or a Web server) such that the information integration system can access that information source without changing its core query answering mechanism.

Wrapper induction (WI) or information extraction (IE) systems are software tools that are designed to generate wrappers.


Source: Survey of Web Information Extraction Systems
Traditional IE aims at extracting data from totally unstructured free texts that are written in natural language. Web IE, in contrast, processes online documents that are semi-structured and usually generated automatically by a server-side application program. As a result, traditional IE usually takes advantage of NLP techniques such as lexicons and grammars, whereas Web IE usually applies machine learning and pattern mining techniques to exploit the syntactical patterns or layout structures of the template-based documents.

There are five main tasks defined for text IE, including named entity recognition, coreference resolution, template element construction, template relation construction and scenario template production.

RISE (Repository of Online Information Sources Used in Information Extraction Tasks).

Classification

Message Understanding Conferences (MUCs) have classified as MUC Approaches and Post MUC Approaches.

MUC Approaches:

1. AutoSolg
2. LIEP
3. PALKA
4. HASTEN
5. CRYSTAL

Post MUC Approaches:

1. WHISK
2. RAPIER
3. SRV
4. WIEN
5. SoftMealy
6. STALKER

Hsu and Dung classified into 4 categories, hand-crafted wrappers using general programming languages, specially designed programming languages or tools, heuristic-based wrappers, and WI approaches.

Chang classified based on the degree of automation, They classified IE tools into four distinct categories, including systems that need programmers, systems that need annotation examples, annotation-free systems and semisupervised systems.

Mulsea classified IE tools into 3 classes:
IE Tools based on

1. Syntactic/Semantic Constraints
2. Delimiters
3. Both 1 and 2.

Kushmerick classified many of the IE tools into two distinct categories finite-state and relational learning tools.

Laender proposed a taxonomy for data extraction tools based on the main technique used by each tool to generate a wrapper, which are

1. Languages for Wrapper Development.
2. HTML-Aware Tools.
3. NLP-Based tools.
4. Wrapper Induction tools.
5. Modeling based tools.
6. Ontology based tools.

Laender compared among the tools by using the following 7 features: degree of automation, support for complex objects, page contents, availability of a GUI, XML output, support for non-HTML sources, resilience, and adaptiveness.

Sarawagi classified HTML wrappers into 3 categories according to the kind of extraction tasks.

1. Record level wrappers. - exploits regularities to discover record boundaries and then extract elements of a single list of homogeneous records from a page.
   
2. Page level wrappers. - extracts elements of multiple kinds of records.
   
3. Site level wrappers. - populate a database from pages of a Web site.
   

Information Extraction versus Information Retrieval

Information extraction (IE) is unlike Information Retrieval (IR), which concerns how to identify relevant documents from a document collection, IE produces structured data ready for post-processing, which is crucial to many applications of Web mining and searching tools.

Programs that perform the task of IE are referred to as extractors or wrappers. A wrapper was originally defined as a component in an information integration system which aims at providing a single uniform query interface to access multiple information sources. In an information integration system, a wrapper is generally a program that “wraps” an information source (e.g. a database server, or a Web server) such that the information integration system can access that information source without changing its core query answering mechanism.

Github Configurations

GETTING A PUBLIC KEY

First check to see if a ssh key directory exists.

$ cd ~/.ssh

$ ls

config                id_rsa.pub
id_rsa                known_hosts
$ mkdir key_backup
$ cp id_rsa* key_backup
$ rm id_rsa*

Here we have an existing keypair, id_rsa and id_rsa.pub, which we’ve copied into ~/.ssh/key_backup before removing. By default, ssh will use keys in ~/.ssh that are named id_rsa, id_dsa or identity.

Generating a key

If you have an existing keypair you wish to use, you can skip this step.

Now that we’re certain ssh won’t use an existing key, it’s time to generate a new keypair. Lets make an RSA keypair:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "tekkub@gmail.com"
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/tekkub/.ssh/id_rsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /home/tekkub/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/tekkub/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
01:0f:f4:3b:ca:85:d6:17:a1:7d:f0:68:9d:f0:a2:db tekkub@gmail.com

At the first prompt you can just hit enter to generate the key with the default name. You should use a good passphrase with your key. See Working with SSH key passphrases for more details on why you should use a passphrase and how to avoid re-entering it every time you use your key.

Note: If you don’t use the default key names, or store your keys in a different path, you may need to run ssh-add path/to/my_key so that ssh knows where to find your key.

Adding the key to your GitHub account

Now launch your browser and open the account page. In the “SSH Public Keys” section click “add another public key”, then paste your public key into the “key” field. If you leave the title blank the key comment (your email) will be used for the title.

REPOSITORY SETUP:

Global setup:

 Download and install Git
git config --global user.name "Vamshi Krishna Reddy V"
git config --global user.email vamshi4001@gmail.com
      

Next steps:

 mkdir Twinsight
cd Twinsight
git init
touch README
git add README
git commit -m 'first commit'
git remote add origin git@github.com:vamshi4001/Twinsight.git
git push origin master
    

Existing Git Repo?

 cd existing_git_repo
 git remote add origin git@github.com:vamshi4001/Twinsight.git
 git push origin master

Import a Subversion Repository

• If the repo you are importing is very large, your import may time out.
• If your subversion repository contains a non-standard directory structure, this import process will probably not work for you.
• This service currently only supports public subversion repositories.
• You can find details on how to run a manual import here.

Accepted SVN URLs

• http://example.com/project/svn
• https://example.com/project/svn
• svn://example.com/project/svn (try to avoid)

SVN Repository URL

Blog Related Stuff

http://blogcosm.com/ - A daily reference to the world of blogs.
Blog Classification NLP[pdf]

Twitter Bots

I love Twitter. Why? Quite simply, because of the amazing community of helpful, knowledgeable, and diverse people around Twitter. I’ve already met many interesting individuals, both on and offline, because we all participate in the Twitter community. And Twitter keeps getting better through innovation from the community. There is a growing trend here, the use of Twitter bots.

What are Twitter Bots? They are special Twitter accounts that perform a special function and provides you with useful information. Twitter bots come in 2 basic flavors:

1) Push Bots - These bots don’t do anything fancy. Once you start to follow them, they broadcast messages to you. The most common uses of push bots to date have been by sports teams (for scoring updates) and weather forecasts.

2) Pull Bots – These bots are more sophisticated than push bots. You can interact with them by using Direct Message commands. The features of pull bots greatly exceed push bots. Pull bots operate as micro-applications behind the scenes, processing commands from a Twitter user, doing some work and then sending the result/data back to the original user via a Direct Message.

A simple example is the Timer bot. It’s Twitters version of a personal reminder service. Here’s how it works:

• Follow Timer bot
• Send a direct message to timer like this “d timer 45 call mom’

The timer bot will save your request, wait 45 minutes before sending a direct message reminder back to your Twitter account that says ‘call mom’

Here is a list of some of the more popular Twitter Bots. If you have others you find useful, add them to the comments and I will update the list.

• gCal - Add Google Calendar events
• HappyTwitDay - Send Happy Birthday Wishes
• WineTweets - Share what you’re drinking with other wine lovers on Twitter (check this out @garyvee)
• TweetBeep - Track topics in Twitter and have them emailed to you
• Tipr - Tells you the amount you should leave for a tip when dining out

Source: http://www.kenburbary.com/2008/06/twitter-bots-usage-steadily-growing/

Apache Cassandra

Cassandra was open sourced by Facebook in 2008, and is now developed by Apache committers and contributors from many companies.

SOME DEFINITIONS:

Stable releases

Cassandra stable releases are well tested and reasonably free of serious problems, (or at least the problems are known and well documented). If you are setting up a production environment, a stable release is what you want.

Betas and release candidates

Betas are prototype releases considered ready for user testing, and release candidates have the potential to become the next stable release. These releases represent the state-of-the-art so are often the best place to start, and since APIs and on-disk storage formats can change between major versions this can also save you from an upgrade. The testing and feedback is also highly appreciated.

Nightly builds

Nightly builds represent the current state of development as of the time of the build. They contain all of the previous day's new features, fixes, and newly introduced bugs. The only guarantee they come with is that they successfully build and the unit tests pass. Nightly builds are a handy way of testing recent changes, or accessing the latest features and fixes not found in beta or release candidates, but there is some risk of them being buggy.