Qumana:

It’s readily available for free download. They just ask for your email Id. No verification required even. Quamana comes with a unique feature of inbuilt integration for it’s own advertising network. It’s know as QAds. Have you heard about it..? I’ve not. QAds is now know as Adgenta. Neither I know about it. It has standard rich text editing features, store as draft option, categories, keywords tagging and many other features. It’s definitely worth a try as it’s free anyways !

Forget to mention it’s localized in four languages.

Ecto

Next in the list is Ecto. It’s not a freeware. It comes with a price tag of $ 19.95. Is it worth the cost. Really not sure. I don’t find any compelling feature as compared with Qumana. Ecto has a big legacy. It’s is the successor of the wildly popular Kung-Log which earned a 4.5 mice rating in the MacWorld July 2003 issue as well as high ratings at VersionTracker.com and MacUpdate.com. [ Information source: ecto website]. Anyhow you have a one month free evaluation copy. Download and try it out…!

Ecto also supports all standard features – Offline editing, RT Interface, spellcheck, multiple-accounts, support for most popular weblogs , Keyword tagging, Categorization. Few additional features would be syntax coloring of HTML, Quick access menu with HTML templates, Posting Summary, ability to change the posting date of entries …

MarsEdit

Next  in the list is the MarsEdit. It’s again a commercial software. It comes with a price tag of $ 39.95. Too high…! ah! It also has one month fully functional evaluation version. More than the standard features, It gives some nice features like

• Live preview - Unlike other browsers, I needn’t click the preview button to check my layout and content often.
• Integrates with Other Editor – Integrates cleanly with BBEdit, SubEthaEdit, TextMate, TextWrangler, and any editor that supports that ODBEditor suite.
• Quick Access to Media – On Mac, it gives one click access to your iPhoto, Flicker, Aperture, Lightroom …etc
• Re-Blog It – It comes with a browser bookmarklet. Starting a new post from something you read is just a click away…!

Somehow, I liked the MarsEdit User interface. I felt it’s more native to Mac as compared to others. For me It’s as easy as my Mail application. I’ve finally settled down with ‘MarsEdit’. Still I’ve to figure out if my spent of $ 39.95 is worth it…!

It’s not an exhaustive list. Please do share your comments about your experience / view about this and other tools available.

As of today, a valid email by definition is defined by these below RFCs

• RFC 5321,
• RFC 5322,
• RFC 4291,
• RFC 5952 new,
• RFC1123,
• RFC3696 (especially the errata).
• Let me also point out some RFCs that are less relevant, even thought they are frequently cited: RFC 822 (obsoleted by RFC 5322), RFC 2822 (obsoleted by RFC 5322) and RFC1035 (updated by RFC1123).

Few things I’ve noticed and would be interesting to note.

• A Plus sign is perfectly valid in a email. Thus markishh+blogging@gmail.com is a perfectly valid email. Moreover, email clients like gmail use the second portion i.e next to plus as ‘label’ for the incoming messages from them. I really have not tested what happens if it has two plus signs.
• The maximum length of a valid email is 254 characters. It comes from the maximum length of a SMTP transaction is 256 characters including the two angled brackets
• Regexp can’t be used to validate email 100 %. It can test the basics to an extend.
• Special characters can be used in a valid email, it they are enclosed in double quotes. Thus “markish#@test”@markish.in is a valid email. But remember they can’t be escaped by a backslash like what most of us believe.

Ok Now, let’s see how email can validated to a much better extend. Email validation can be done at client end as well as server side. Client side you can implement any regexp that would satisfy. Something like below would help

• ^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,3})$
• ^[a-zA-Z0-9_.-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+.[a-zA-Z0-9-.]+$

In the server side, I’d suggest is_email.php a parser / validator developed by Dominic Sayers as a perfect fit. You can download this from here

Once you download the PHP version from here, just include the same in your project. Some thing like below code snippet would do the trick of validation. It’s the best known validator for email as per the existing RFC standards.

Simple Usage

require_once 'is_email.php';
$email="markishh@gmail.com";
if (is_email($email)){
	echo "$email is a valid email address";
 }else{
 	echo "$email is invalid";
 }

The above is very simple and straight forward usage of the script. is_email function returns a Boolean which can be validated against. The class also supports an extended result for the email we supply.

Extended Usage / Testing

require_once 'is_email.php';
$email = 'markishh@gmail.co';
$result = is_email($email, true, E_WARNING);
if ($result === ISEMAIL_VALID) {
	echo "$email is a valid email address";
} else if ($result < ISEMAIL_ERROR) {
	echo "Warning! $email may not be a real email address (result code $result)";
} else {
	echo "$email is not a valid email address (result code $result)";
}

The extended results gives you the SMTP level results as well. This is a very handy as well as simple script that can be added to your existing projects as well.  I hope someone would find it useful and interesting.

@ Credits to Dominic Sayers for developing such a complete validator.

Download link again : http://code.google.com/p/isemail/downloads/list

The validity of the data present in the cache depends on the implementation logic and hugely depends on the nature of the application itself. For example, In an online store, the cache data containing the list of products available in the store can be valid for even 2 hours as there is very less chance of a product being added every 2 hours. But the cache data holding the availability (stock) of products can be valid for probably 2 minutes ( assuming , it’s a real online store where business happens) as the availability keeps changing.

Today we’d talk about one of the techniques in output caching – Record set caching. It’s one of the straight forward approach, that can be implemented. In layman terms, The record-set after a complicated query would be stored separately so that, the future requests can be served from the temporary storage instead of running the time consuming complicated query again every time.

To start with, Let us consider an example. A page delivering search results in JSON format from a product catalogue accepting a search query. Let us put down the algorithm to implement this

Step 1 : Check if a valid cache data exists in cache
Step 2 : If Yes read, the cache data and serve it to the user / client
Step 3 : If No, Read it from the DB and serve the user.
Step 4 : Update / Create the valid cache data with the one got in step 3

Let’s get into coding rightaway..

Source code

$mcdir = "cache/";
$mcache_validity=10;
$mfnam = $mcdir . "ch_" . $search_data ."_file.txt";
$mread_from_cache = false;
if (file_exists($mfnam)) {
	$mctime = (filectime($mfnam));
	$mtime_offset = time() - $mctime;
	if ($mtime_offset < $mcache_validity * 60) {
		$mread_from_cache = true;
	}
}

In the above code snippet , we just check if there is a valid cache data available. The logic behind is to have a separate file to store the result-set for individual search strings. I’ve set the validity of the cache data to 10 minutes. The next step would be based on the decision made in step-1

Source code

if (!$mread_from_cache) {
    $msql = "select product_id,product_name,product_img,product_desc,product_rate
            from product_master where product_name like '%$search_data%'
            where flag_dele=0";
    $mres = mysql_query($msql);
    $mresult = array();
    while ($mdata = mysql_fetch_object($mres)) {
        $mresult[] = $mdata;
    }
    $cacheData = readCache($mfnam);
    (md5(serialize($cacheData)) == md5(serialize($data))) ? $data = $cacheData : writeCache($data, $mfnam);
}else{
    $mresult = readCache($mfnam);
}
echo json_encode($mresult);
flush();

In the above code, we based on the value of ‘$mread_from_cache‘ , either read from the database or from the cache data. I’ve got a simple query for illustration. It may not be the case in an application. Here we have used two user defined function, one to write and other to read from the cache. The below is the code for them.

Source code

function writeCache($data, $cacheFile='default_cache.txt') {
    if (!$fp = fopen($cacheFile, 'w')) {
        trigger_error('Error opening cache file');
        exit();
    }
    if (!flock($fp, LOCK_EX)) {
        trigger_error('Unable to lock file');
        exit();
    }
    if (!fwrite($fp, serialize($data))) {
        trigger_error('Error writing to cache file');
        exit();
    }
    flock($fp, LOCK_UN);
    fclose($fp);
}
 
function readCache($cacheFile) {
    if (!file_exists($cacheFile)) {
        return '';
    }
    return unserialize(file_get_contents($cacheFile));
}

This is a very basic implementation of record set caching. This can be improved based on the application demand and other load factors. We’ve taken a more procedural approach in this code. In the next article I’d talk about handling the same in a more object oriented approach.

Do share your comments and suggestions.

Moment I came in, I wanted to configure the edge and I realized I’ve continued to pay the extra rental to Airtel though I’s not using it. Finally after searching through the web, I’s able to connect / configure successfully. Thought of sharing it here, someone may find it useful

Step – 1 : In HTC Hero, open settings -> Wireless Controls
Step – 2 : Enable Mobile Network
Step – 3 : Navigate to Mobile Network Settings ->Access Point Names
Step – 4 : Press Menu and select ‘Add APN’
Step – 5 : Configure it as below

Hope this helps someone, someday. Even I may need it again…!

Today morning, I had a look at the new UI finally. It looks new and fresh. Below are the few notable features.

Two column layout

Twitter Home page

The home page now has the two column layout. The left pane has the usual stuff – the chain of tweets. The right pane / details pane is the new one. Twitter also recognizes the type of content your tweet has. It’s pretty intelligent now! Click on a tweet in the left column, and the detail pane has lot of options for the same and it allows interaction with the content of that tweet as well. What is displayed in the detail pane depends on the nature of the tweet:

• Videos: If the tweet contains a link to a video from sites such as YouTube, Vimeo and USTREAM, that video plays in the detail pane. This is cool feature but never know how much load twitter can handle on this. Already we’re used to “Twitter over capacity” screen…
• Maps: If the tweet is a check-in via services such as foursquare, the detail pane displays a map.
• Pictures: If the tweet includes a link to a picture posted using services such as Flickr, DailyBooth, Twitpic and DeviantArt, that image appears in the detail pane.
• Hashtags: If you click on a hashtag within a tweet, the detail pane conveys up-to-the-moment search results.
• Products: A tweet containing a link to a product on Etsy or other select eCommerce sites will cause a product image to display in the detail pane. I feel twitter is going to build some revenue model around this.
• Replies: A small icon appears in tweets whenever one Twitterer responds to another. Click the arrow and the prior conversation is presented within the detail pane.

Twitter Detail Pane

Better Profile Overview

With lot of space on the right pane, Twitter has made use of it by putting images of your ‘followers’ and ‘following’ ( 7 each) and Listed and favorites. Still lot of space is available. Hopefully, they may come out with google like ‘ads’ on the right pane in the near future…

What is Missing ?

All said and done, I’s expecting bit more from Twitter this time. The following are missing or I missed noticing them.

• Revenue Model: This is the major topic of debate from the day one Twitter become popular. I’s expecting something would be rolled out with this atleaset. But still it’s missing big time. The right pane / detail pane is the place which may be used as placeholder for sponsored ads in near future.

• Performance: Again I don’t see any great improvement in loading time and performance of the site as a whole.

• Priority: With Google introducing Priority Inbox, and twitter identifying the content of the tweet, I’s expecting something like priority in the tweets.

• More than Text: I’s expecting Twitter to allow image / video uploads directly from Twitter web Interface like Google Buzz and Yahoo MeMe. May be Twitter still wants to keep them simple and smart..!

Glitches

The new user interface is still having lot of issues and cross browser compatibility issues. The background images / themes the users have been using would become void and need to be changed immediately.

Happening behind the Embedded Video

Twitter new user interface promises ‘Easier Interaction’ and ‘More Discovery’. While any change in interface can cause complaints from long-time users, I believe the new Twitter will meet with strong user acceptance. As the new design is rolled out, users have the opportunity to accept it or return to the original design, but I think many will embrace the intuitive new functionality. Share your views and comments on Twitter new UI here.

Once you register you have more credits for free and you can manage your contacts as well.The delivery is also quite fast. It hardly takes 5 seconds. This for a free service is quite ok I feel. The revenue model for this site is based on advertisements and building sms advertisement campaigns for business. 

It also provides users the ability to send with their own sender ID. Probably this will fit the business group. It also aims at sending advertisements along with the messages sent for free. 

It’s worth having a look and giving it  a try…!

I wanted this site ( single page) to load faster without any complications. I’ve just put the IP of the visitor and a small JS to copy the IP to your clipboard.

Snapshot of ItismyIP.com

I think,  I’m far better this time in choosing my domain name..I’ve seen around 100 hits already in a day without much doing from my side. So I added my adsense today to it.. Hope it gives me back the 10 USD within this year.

I know there are ‘n’ number of popular sites giving this service. But I’m thinking of something different that would help me have my share of traffic. Any suggestions welcome in this regard…!

Have a look here and do share your comments..