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

Well this was or may be the idea the social networking sites came into existence. I started with Orkut, then MySpace and now Facebook. Firstly I was amazed with the concept and features provided by these sites but now it has changed.

Wow !! was my reaction when I first logged into Orkut. Within few weeks I found it pretty cool that I have 500+ friends and I can keep contact with them forever. I can see what a friend is upto or can join various fans group, create my own group, plays games and the list can go on…. Daily in evening like a habit I will check my wall or any updates or watch some funny videos and spend time by updating my status and waiting for my friends reply or commenting on other walls.

OOOF !! I never realized that this habit has become an addiction and everyday when I get a free time I will login to these sites or keep on refreshing my page so that I can be first one to see other updates.

The networking site represents me as a “proxy” or my “clone” (let me use some technical words, feels good) on the internet. These days it has become a status symbol. I was completely surprised when my friend said “Kul, you have 500+ friends. You me be a popular guy “. Not only this , various companies are checking the profiles of candidate at these sites and trying to judge them before taking interview which I feel is questionable. Also I have been reading about the research done in this field to understand the behavior of users and various social networking models. That’s too much of work I believe.

But lately I realized that the amount of time I am spent on this had increased and my actual productivity towards other things has decreased. These sites don’t bring out anything good or make one an expert or be useful in any way. Also some of the best minds are working in developing these sites and keeping it active whereas that talent could be used to build something more meaningful.

I am not  against the social networking site but I guess these should be used for something more other than chat ,gossip, ’like this’ and upload photos.

Note: These are just my views and doesn’t intend to harm or hamper the images of social networking sites

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

Think of the brain as a collection of nerves, thin pipes with openings to the outside world in form of organs, the eyes, ears, skin, etc.

The internet is also a collection of network pipes with opening to the outside world in form of input devices.

In the brain the input stimuli passes as a signal triggering reactions. If lots of nerves see/hear/feel the same event then there is a consensus formed in terms of what happened.

Similarly if some major event happens in the outside world, bloggers, news agencies , etc, all cover it extensively, these being the input points which help the internet brain in developing a consensus.

This brain, like our brain could one day become the basis of driving something bigger than itself. Well, if we come to think of it, the internet has already started to drive its end points. It is getting to the point where it can create a consensus in the actions of the organs, like how the when the brain tells to grab something, then all the parts, the arm, the forehand, the wrist, the finger all come in unison to complete that task.

Open source software is a successful example of this coordination.

When Web 2.0, social networks reach their logical culmination they will make sure that every one is part of the conversation, which will mark the formation of the full fledged internet brain.
It even makes sense to think of the human brain too as a conversation, between our memories and the run time inputs.

If we delve deeper into understanding the exact working of the internet, of social networking, of open source software, we might be able to unlock the secret of our brains, and hence open the frontiers to the ‘next’ in science.

This article is inconclusive, ’cause its intended to be more a conversation than a static piece.

Google brings Quake 2 to the browser with HTML5 – VentureBeat

Hands-on Review of Marvel Comics for iPad – BoingBoing

Rails 3.0: Second beta released – RubyOnRails.org

iPad apps go live in App Store - CNET news

Microsoft’s new strategy and gamble with FREE Office – CNET News

Gmail Becomes an App Platform: Google Adds OAuth to IMAP – ReadWriteWeb

Chrysler to Build A Battery-Powered Electric Car by 2012 – Design News

39 Examples of Minimalist Web Designs – YouTheDesigner

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

Self organization and bottoms up systems as followed by ants and flocks of birds are already  widely documented.

Business World recently published a good article about learning from nature about how to invade into existing businesses. The article uses example ranging from Asian carp to the zebra mussel and how they create new opportunities for themselves and those that can adapt quickly enough to help exploit the way they affect things.

Read the complete article here.

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.

“To err is human but to really foul things up you need a computer” quotes Paul Ehrlich.

The computer history has witnessed major disasters which had led to loss of people, property and money due to the failure of so called “thinkable machines”.
Failure of technology in a field can lead to major disasters. Therefore “technological disasters” when taken together as a phrase suggests situations in which large numbers of people, property, infrastructure, or economic activity are directly and adversely affected by major industrial accidents, severe pollution incidents, nuclear accidents, air crashes , major fires, or explosion. But is it all due to the failure of a technology? The direct causes of these disasters or emergency situations are identifiable human actions, deliberate or otherwise. In this article we will identify that the causes of these disasters are mostly from the generalized set of human errors and unethical practice of their profession, irrespective of the field of disaster.
On analyzing the tech disasters, a common pattern of negligence and errors can be identified. Taking into consideration the technological disasters it can be found that there is a recursive pattern of similar flaws which leads to the major disasters. To start with, these disasters were the result of a combination of
- Legal
- Technological
- Organizational
- Human errors.

These four forms the major part of the generalized set of errors responsible for failures. The results of the errors are further exacerbated by the failure of containment and safety measures and by a complete absence of community information and emergency procedures during the disasters.
When we talk of organizational errors, it involves disputes among inter and intra team members working on the same project, lack of communication among the team members and personal gains (cost effectiveness).Followed by technological errors like incorrect assumptions while coding, incorrect usage of the software and error in logical calculations. None the less human errors form a big part of the fault pie chart. Human errors are mostly because of the negligence and unethical behavior of the professional at their workplace. The failure to review the final design plan and the failure of efficient test plans, add to the reason leading to the major disasters.
In order to discuss the pattern of errors, I will throw some light on major disasters:

Therac-25 tragedy
(The field of medicine has also witnessed tragic disasters due to the failure of software in their field. The most famous is the case of Therac-25. Canada’s Therac-25 radiation therapy machine malfunctioned and delivered lethal radiation doses to patients. Because of a subtle bug called a race condition, a technician could accidentally configure Therac-25 so the electron beam would fire in high-power mode without the proper patient shielding. The above disasters were the result of the human error and negligence.)
What actually went wrong which lead to this disaster? The general consensus is that the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited is to blame. There was only one person programming the code for this system and he largely did all the testing. The machine was tested for only 2700 hours of use, but for code which controls such a critical machine, many more hours should have been put in to the testing phase. Also Therac-25 was tested as a whole machine rather than in separate modules. Testing in separate modules would have discovered many of the bugs. Also, if the AECL believed that there were problems with the Therac-25 right after the first incident then it is possible that most of the 5 other incidents could have been avoided and possibly the 3 fatalities.
In another case of Kansas tragedy, due to disputes between G.C.E. and Havens,
• The design changed from a single to a double hanger rod, simply because Havens did not want to thread the entire rod in order to install the washer and nut.
• Another problem was the lack of communication between G.C.E. and Havens. The drawing prepared by G.C.E. was only preliminary sketches that Havens interpreted to be the finalized drawings. Another large error was G.C.E.’s failure to review the final design which would have allowed them to catch the error in increasing the load on the connections.
It can be concluded, that the negligence and human errors can be seen as a part of a generalized set whose subsets leads to major disasters.
Due to unprofessional, unethical and ignorant behavior of the employees, their careless decisions had lead to major disasters.Taking the software disasters into account, it’s clearly visible that the cannons of the software engineering code of ethics were breached at the stage of decision making which had finally lead to the failures. If the associated software firms would have been stringent towards the code of ethics, these tragic disasters could have been easily avoided.

But the question arises over here that why these firms were unable to adhere themselves to the fundamentals of the code of ethics?

OR

Can we say the software code of ethics is an inflexible pot-pouri of principles?

Human is infallible, viable of making errors so when it designs the product, the testing of the product is as essential phase as the designing. But the companies due to time lag are not able to devote the required time span to the testing phase.

In Hartford incident, the programmer of the CAD software used to design the coliseum incorrectly assumed the steel roof supports would only face pure compression. This design was also supposed to be delivered on time, and thus the smallest designing flaw lead to the biggest disaster.

ACM/ IEEE had created their cannons, but some of their cannons are overlapping. In order to fulfill client’s interest sometimes the firms are ready to compromise with essentials of public, product, management and judgment principles. There is no authority to check whether the code of ethics is being strictly followed or not. Similar failures of software had been repeated in history and had cause major loss to the society.

This problem stated above is not only with the software community but other engineering communities face the same. There is much more to be added to the software code of ethics in other to make it more profound and grounded, which might also help in avoiding future disasters. In comparison with code of ethics of other profession, my study suggests following points should be added.

- Software engineers who have knowledge or reason to believe that another person or firm may be in violation of any of the provisions of the “code of ethics” shall present such information to the proper authority in writing and shall cooperate with the proper authority in furnishing such further information or assistance as may be required.

- Software engineers should seek opportunities to be of constructive service in civic affairs and work for the advancement of the safety, health and well-being of their communities, and the protection of the environment through the practice of sustainable development.

- In order to make software professionals more vigilant towards their responsibilities, they shall not affix their signatures or seals to any engineering plan or document dealing with subject matter in which they lack competence by virtue of education or experience or to any such plan or document not reviewed or prepared under their supervisory control.
“To err is human but to really foul up things you need nothing more than a careless, irresponsible human mind” .

My personal opinion states that, however hard we can strive to make professionals realize their responsibility, by creating code of ethics but this disasters will continue to happen until each professional realize their own responsibility towards the public and society. There is need of revolution within ourselves in order to realize responsibility of each decision taken by us.

By Heena Rastogi:

She is currently  a graduate student. As a part of an under graduate curriculum she did research on technological disasters and code of ethics by ACM-IEEE for SE in the light of these disasters..