Burad's Blog » web2.0

Unveiling beauty of statistics

burad — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:31:56 +0000

Google just released Statistics for a changing world: Google Public Data Explorer in Labs. Its pretty cool. Reminds me of Hans Rosling and His similar tool GapMinder (Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view.)

I loved Google Domestic trends (Though US data only). It was quite interesting to relate them to actual data/market. You can check out Google Data explore’s interesting statistics here. Pretty cool and informative. huh !

You can also have a look at information aesthetics : (Where form follows data) (great blog if you are fan of interesting charts.) and Flowing Data. Also do share if you know any similar/interesting data/statistics visualization blog.

PS: post after long time, Actually since google reader, Buzz, twitter came into picture I can directly share stuff I like with friends there only. So quite a few things to post here.

dot com bubble…Again ?

burad — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:40:00 +0000

Richter Scale : Here Comes Another Bubble

Web 3.0 ? Web scraping?

burad — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 09:43:00 +0000

Interesting reading from readwriteweb.com : Web 3.0: When Web Sites Become Web Services

Important points :

The rise of the API culture
Web Scraping

what is WebScraping ??
Dapper, Teqlo, Yahoo! Pipes – the upcoming scraping technologies :

Yahoo! Pipes, a new app from Yahoo! focused on remixing RSS feeds. Another similar technology, Teqlo, has recently launched. It focuses on letting people create mashups and widgets from web services and rss. Before both of these, Dapper launched a generic scraping service for any web site. Dapper is an interesting technology that facilitates the scraping of the web pages, using a visual interface.

Related post :
Web2.0
Living with web-based software

Improving interactivity with Javascript

burad — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 04:37:00 +0000

HTML controls other than conventional Push buttons, radio buttons, check boxes, select boxes, and text inputs, can power up forms, webdev using javascript to increase interactivity and easy (for users). List of such controls includes : slider, Date picker, Smart text boxes, Advanced tooltips, Auto validation etc.

Read more friendly bit >> Improving interactivity with Javascript
In addition, I find image maps also very handy when it comes to intereactivity when used properly with tooltips…as i used them in Paint Chat.

Bonus link[ ] DailyBlogTips > Web 2.0 Webdesign Tutorials
Related post :

Play with html using javascript

Firebug : web development evolved

burad — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 10:22:00 +0000

I found firebug very useful while developing my Paint Chat (which is not a big code as such but still), so here it goes in admiration of firebug:

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Firebug is firefox addon that helps you in webdevelopment with
its powerful feature such as javascript debugger, Inspect and edit HTML, Tweak CSS to perfection, Monitor network activity, Explore the DOM and many more. Feature I like most is its quickly diagnosing problem, it allows you set break points and checking intermediate values of variable for javascript thus making a great javascript debugger. Many times you are stuck at where did the code went wrong so in way its a lot useful in saving time.

I also like is its inspecting html and modifying html and css on fly and see the results with helpful tooltips. It also help in positioning of divs, images with its nice feature of visuallizing css metrics with ruler and box model coloring(HTML inspecting).

It other great feature is its interface which is comes with browser window split in two halves one for your website and one is extension interface (though it also can be detached from it). I am also a fan of Web developer toolbar extension but what it lacks is a java debugger and this great interface but both are a must of a web developer.

If you want to develop firefox extension..

A thousand on del.icio.us & Stumble

burad — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:00:00 +0000

Today i crossed 1000 bookmarsk on del.icio.us and stumble
On del.icio.us :
On Stumble:

My del.icio.us page
My StumblePage
My collection of del.icio.us tags
Firefox Extension created by me : My Del.icio.us Toolbar 2.0 Provide your feedback.
Try Del.icio.us Searcher

Play with html using javascript

burad — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 18:59:00 +0000

Javascipt can be very fruitful and flexible when it comes to modifying webapges dynamically (though client side). Javascript can be helpful in creating response to browser events like mouseup, mouseover etc, veryfying of form values prior to submitting them, changing style and value of html elements dynamically.
Examples i disscuss here are being user by me in developing Paint Chat !! So here I go..
You can write javascript functions and code in section as:

Action on events:

Example of events can be mouseclick, keystroke, submitting form etc.
With onload()

 

Now init() function will be called when this html page is being loaded.
For links, javascript function can be evoked when clicking, mouseover over links like

 Refresh !

Now function replay() will be called when Refresh! is clicked. For input text box

Now whenever content of textbox changes the function suggest() will be called. It can be useful when feature like google suggest has to be implemented or so.

On submitting forms:

So whenever this form is being submitted checkForm() function will be called and can be helpful in verifying values of form elements.

onMouseOver and onMouseOut:

 

Now when mouse is over image fade() function will be called and can be used for animate and styling purposes.

Registering of events

A simple way can be:
Conside the html code :

..... some... html..text..

Now using javascript you can register event for this div by:

 var div_sample = document.getElementById('sample');div_sample.onmousedown=sampleMouseDown ;

Now whenever mouseover ocours over this div html element sampleMouseDown() function will be called. Events can also be registered using addEventListener() . Find more information baout it here:Advanced event registration models

Modify Style and values for html elements

Within some javascript function, you can first get the element object by getElementByID() getElementsByName() for example conside the javascript code:

document.getElementById("colorcode").innerHTML = "#000000"; document.getElementById("bgtest").style.backgroundColor= "green";

The first line find the html element with id colorcode and then set its value to “#000000″ using innerHTML. In second line, it sets the background of html element with id “bgtest” to green.

Some other tweaks which were useful :

Calling some function repeatedly with some time interval, consider javascript code:

var intervalID = setInterval(drawCurve, 100);

So the drawCurve() function will be called repeatedly after 100ms. You can cancel this process( removing repeatedly calling) by clearInterval(intervalID);

You can use setTimeout(drawCurve,100) function to delay drawCurve() execution for a specified time period(100ms).

Calling a php function inside javascript:

var testImg = new Image(); testImg.src="form.php?name=form_value" mce_src="form.php?name=form_value";

Now here in form.php you can fetch value of variable name using $_GET and can perform appropriate action.

Some links:

Paint Chat !!

burad — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:57:00 +0000

Now chat using a paint brush !!.

I had made this app which uses paint brush to express yourself and share with others. This uses HTML:Canvas for drawing graphics using javascript, so no sluggish java applet and flash. It uses XMLHttprequest to synchronize paint screen with server. You can share this url with your friends to have a chat with paint brush and use Refresh !! to update your paint screen with that of your friend.
Read about Paint chat.
Try It out : Paint Chat

Updated: I have added feature for filling up whole background with color and also the transparency feature.

Online Music & Photo Editing

burad — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 10:37:00 +0000

Techcrunch covered web2.0 startups relating to photo editing and Social music. Some of them really cool like pandora, last-fm for music which i use very often. I also have used picnik. So here are links for more such web applications.

Social Music Overview
Online Photo Editing Overview

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

burad — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 04:54:00 +0000

I found this awesome video through digg . It explains how web has evolved making it more interactive, flexible and useful through videos, photos, map, search and much more…
Web is becoming more powerful with technologies like Ajax, XML etc
It was created by Michael Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University.

Youtube Link