• 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/

Finding your apps
First of all I always find it difficult to find where my apps are on Facebook. So i thought i’ll keep the url bookmarked:  http://www.facebook.com/developers/apps.php

Using WAMP
I am a lazy person and like out of the box solutions. So for a windows machine WAMP gave me apache, php and mysql bundled.

• Install wamp
• Open port 8080 for external access, make sure the machine can be accessed from outside your domain
• To create fbml app you might have to work directly on the server, to see results at runtime
• create you app folder in the www folder
• Start all services in wamp

I was working on a IIS server and it did not have curl enabled.
To enable curl:

• edit php.ini in \bin\php\(your version of php)\ and
• edit php.ini in \bin\Apache\(your version of apache)\bin\ folders.
• search for curl and uncomment this line -  extension=php_curl.dll

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.

Just load these URLs to your android browser on button click:
Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/home?status=http://(name of your website:www.xyz.com;add this without quotes)
MySpace:  http://www.myspace.com/Modules/PostTo/Pages/?c=(name of your website:www.xyz.com;add this without quotes)
Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http//(name of your website:www.xyz.com;add this without quotes)

In the following code snippet,  I am sharing a link “www.inc.com” on button click:
//Post message to Facebook where facebook is a button
facebook.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener(){
@Override
public void onClick(View v) {
Intent browse = new Intent( Intent.ACTION_VIEW ,
Uri.parse("http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.inc.com%2f"
) );
startActivity( browse );
}
});

//Post the message to Twitter where twitter is a button
twitter.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener(){
@Override
public void onClick(View v) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
Intent browse = new Intent( Intent.ACTION_VIEW ,
Uri.parse("http://www.twitter.com/home?status=http://www.inc.com" ) );
startActivity( browse );
}
});

// Post the message to Myspace where myspace is a button
myspace.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener(){
@Override
public void onClick(View v) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
String test= "www.inc.com";
Intent browse = new Intent( Intent.ACTION_VIEW ,
Uri.parse("http://www.myspace.com/Modules/PostTo/Pages/?c="+test.toString()
) );
startActivity( browse );
}

Hope this get you started as well on your Android learning journey as it has got me started.

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.

Facebook

• restful_authentication for facebook (by Stuart Eccles)
• facebook’s page explaining methods to integrate Rails projects with the Facebook platform

Twitter

• oAuth authentication for twitter (by Avand Amiri)
• list of oAuth examples in various languages @ twitter.com

Linked In

• oAuth integration for LinkedIn with the twitter gem (by Wynn Netherland)
• alternative to oAuth to authenticate with LinkedIn (by Paul Lindner)

Hope this helps and do comment with more such tutorials that you find on these social networking integrations. I’ll keep adding to this list as and when I find good new tutorials.

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:

• LocalStorage,  a client-side key-value database, meaning it is stored in the users browser (similar to cookies but it’s designed for larger quantities of information)
  
• Graphics support with the <canvas> tag (it is a JavaScript controlled drawing area)
• Video and Audio support with the <video> and <audio> tags
• New structural elements like <nav>, <header> , <footer>,<aside>, <article>, <section> tags

• New inline elements to mark things like time and numbers (<mark>, <time>, <meter>,<progress> tags)
  
• Web Workers – enables JavaScript to work on the background and allows spawning of multiple threads
• Offline Web Application – support to run web applications offline
• Geolocation – api to  support getting location information using IP address, wireless connection, etc
• CSS3

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

6)      Select the path where the “python.exe” is present and click on OK

7)      If the path is successfully found the screen should look like this

8)      Click on OK. Now goto Window -> Open Perspective

9)      Select the Pydev perspective , which means the plugin is successfully configured and you are ready to write the first program.

10)   Goto File -> New -> PyDevProject

11)   After Click on Finish , the project appear is “PyDev Package Explorer”.

12)   Right Click on src -> New -> PyDev Module

13)   Enter the name of program and click on Finish.

14)   The screen should appear as follows:

15)   Instead of “pass” write

print ‘Hello World’

16)   Run the program with the play button as a normal java program runs.

17)   Check the console screen to see “Hello World”

And now you are all set to go and write python programs in Eclipse

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

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

As the Adobe site mentions you can do the following on the HTML page:

• Call any JavaScript function.
• Pass any number of arguments, with any names.
• Pass various data types (Boolean, Number, String, and so on).
• Receive a return value from the JavaScript function.

From JavaScript on the HTML page, you can:

• Call an ActionScript function.
• Pass arguments using standard function call notation.
• Return a value to the JavaScript function.

Here is the tutorial on the Adobe site explaining how External API works.
This api was introduced as part of Flash Player 8.