Off late in most of the web projects that I take up i end up using the same resources again and again. So here is the basic list that we can together grow into an exhaustive one.

Graphics

Integrating recommender systems like that of Amazon and Youtube has become pretty easy with Apache Mahout. This article referenced here explains the following :

• Use cases where Mahout should be use
• The infrastructure needed
• How to scale this infrastructure

Check out the article here : http://ssc.io/deploying-a-massively-scalable-recommender-system-with-apache-mahout/

There is also a book available that explains using Mahout in details : http://www.manning.com/owen/

(Author: Heena Rastogi)

Android.

For some time now this word had been cropping up in my discussions with people. But I never got around start learning about it. So when at office I saw an opportunity, I tried to peep into the Android app development space.
I had a simple task at hand, to create the sharing feature for an Android app. So I googled for code snippets to achieve this. Here I present my quick consolidation of the google results based approach that I tried. There are in general two ways to do it:

• Either download API’s for Twitter, MySpace and Facebook and add dozens of lines in your code to create this feature.(will write soon about this)
• OR just load the twitter,myspace and facebook sharing link in an android browser.

I am sharing the browser method or as somebody said “the web way” of doing stuff. Read more…

It become a default assumption in all new web applications (that I have worked on or read about) to have an integration with either facebook, twitter, linked in, or all the three.

Working with these on rails is no longer rocket science as the various plug-in and gems do most of the work for us. I thought it would be appropriate to create a place for my reference as well as that of others to collect some good tutorials that allow us to do these integrations.  To start off, I am adding a few good ones that I have referred to or those that have a lucid explanation and are a good read.

Read more…

HTML 5 is all over the place. I started hearing about it first when i was reading about the canvas tag about an year ago. But all the noises reached their pinnacle when the iPad was launched with HTML5 support instead of Flash.

ExtJS.com has put together a nice article explaining HMTL5 in brief (Click here for the article) while diveintohtml5.org gives a detailed explanation on the features.

As the article puts it, HTML5 is just a part of the family of  specifications that people end up calling as HTML5.

Some of the highlights of the HTML family are as follows:

• Read more…

I use the Pydev plugin to develop Python programs on Eclipse. It’s a free plugin. Here I am listing down the step by step process to install and start working with Pydev.

1)      Download the Pydev plugin here

2)      Install the Pydev by just following the instructions

3)      Once the Pydev is installed open eclipse

4)      Goto Window -> Preferences -> Pydev -> Interpreter Python

5)      Click on the New Button Read more…

Ever since I started working on Ruby on Rails I have been asked by people to help them find links of some good tutorials to learn Rails. Well, the thing about Rails is that it is best learn’t by just jumping into the code and starting out, referring the basic stuff from RubyOnRails.org.

Leaving behind this thought, we at technoticles have started started creating a compilation of some good tutorials available on the web. We will keep updating this list as and when we find more of such interesting and useful tutorials.

Rails Introduction

Rolling with Ruby on Rails – part 1 – by Curt Hibbs

Rolling with Ruby on Rails – part 2 – by Curt Hibbs

Ajax on Rails – part 3 – by Curt Hibbs

Specific Topics

Rails Migrations -  IBM developerWorks

Using Facebook Connect with Rails – by Stuart Eccles

Improving Rails Performance -  by Stefan Kaes

Deployment related

Creating single executable to distribute Rails applications – by Erik Veenstra

Deploying using Capitrano on Fedora from scratch – Tutplus.com

External API is an interesting api that allows communication between JavaScript and the flash player. This is a very important feature for sites that have flash content in conjugation with JS code.

ExternalInterface is a part of this api that specifically concentrates on easy communication between ActionScript and the Flash Player. Read more…