Some thing that I know for sure...

Easy way to control your iTunes - MyTunesController

2011-06-09T17:19:00.001+10:00

MyTunesController allows you to have a simple control over your iTunes. It just sits on you menu bar, which gives you easy access to the controls. It supports Lyrics as well. But if you need more functionality other than the basic Play/Pause/Skip Next or Previous , then you are looking at something like YouControl. But for me MyTunesController do Job!!
Download MyTunesController for free.

A “Like” button from Google! - The “Google +1 Button”

2011-04-01T19:33:00.002+11:00

Google has unveiled their spick-and-span feature to be, the Google +1 Button a "tour guide" who will help people to discover more relevant content that is recommended by their friends and contacts.

So in near future, having a Google +1 button on your web pages will let users recommend your web content, so that their friends and contacts also see these recommendations when they do a google search in similar context.

BarCamp Apache Sydney 2010

2010-12-03T10:11:00.002+11:00

Anyone interesting in BarCamps, The Apache BarCamp Sydney 2010 will be running at University of Sydney on 11th December 2010. The event is free and open for public. Details are available at http://barcamp.org/BarCampApacheSydney
See you there!

Seventeen pages of success!

2010-07-29T11:04:00.010+10:00

Anyone who is interested in building an identity on “the internet” as a business, person, product, community etc; no matter what, having a web page hosted on a web server wont do anything. I think almost everyone interested in internet would know this already. But the point is how? How you make your web site recognize in the internet? Answer is SEO, The magic called Search Engine Optimization. Why? Because anyone who’s looking for something in the internet will first go to a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing etc; then they will search for it, search engine will provide them with some results related to the search term based on the data available with them. Then the person looking for this information will use these results to get what they want. Means, they will find your web site if it is in the search results.

So if your web site to be in the search results, search engine should know about your web site. Search engines to know about your web site, your web site should be search engine optimized. How do you make your web site search engine friendly or SEO, I think I found a good way to start with. A small e-book explains a lot about SEO and how you do it. Click here and just have a look. I’m sure you will find this very useful.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM – Express is FREE!

2010-06-26T18:08:00.000+10:00

Microsoft® has released their free version of Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 R2 which is called Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2 RTM – Express. Microsoft® says

“It is a powerful and reliable data management system that delivers a rich set of features, data protection, and performance for embedded applications, lightweight Web Sites and applications, and local data stores. Designed for easy deployment and rapid prototyping, this download includes support for Sysprep, Microsoft's System Preparation Utility for Microsoft Windows operating system deployment.”

I liked that part it says “lightweight Web Sites and applications”, so thought of downloading it which is with Management Tools since it is also “FREE”. May be you can give it a try as well, click here to visit the download page.

Add styling to a Zend Framework based web application

2010-06-25T22:35:00.001+10:00

Ordinary <link> tag won’t help you to add style sheets to a view script of a MVC application which uses Zend Framework. This is because URL doesn’t direct to the actual root directory. But with help of a view helper, called baseUrl() it'll be easy to solve this problem.

Add following 3 lines of code to the <head>; section of your .phtml (view) script. Remember, in this case your CSS files should be in yoursite/public/css

echo $this->headMeta(); 
<head>
   echo $this->headMeta();
   echo $this->headTitle();
   echo $this->headLink()->prependStylesheet($this->baseUrl().'/css
        /mystyle.css');
<head>

PHP5 DB Connection Class with MYSQLi using Singleton!

2010-04-06T19:02:00.000+10:00

Thought it would be a good idea to share my database connection class with you all, which I use in my apps. I have implemented this class in Singleton Design Pattern.

Use of this class will help you to manage the database connection of your PHP5 application, and will avoiding you and/or your programmers creating more and more DB connection instances, that will make your code more complicated and disorganized.

As a result of using Singleton Design Pattern, no one will be able to create more than one instance of the class. So whenever anyone tries to create an object of this class, they will either get a new object when it is the first time you are creating an object of this class, else you will always get a DB Connection instance which has already begin created.

I have made this class little bit simple to help everyone could understand it and to use when ever you need it.

Here is the code,

/*PHP5 MYSQLi DB Connection Class implementing Singleton Design Pattern
 * 
 * Author  : Thanura Siribaddana
 * Date    : 05-APR-2010
 * Web Site: www.thanura.com
 * 
 *  Usage:
 *   $db = DBAccess::getConnection();
 *   $query = "select * from TABLE";
 *   $result=$db->selectQuery($query);
 */
error_reporting(E_NOTICE);

class DBAccess{

 const DB_SERVER="localhost"; 
 const DB_USER="root";
 const DB_PASS="pass";
 const DB_NAME="dbname";
 
 private $_connection;
 private static $_dbinstance;

/* Made the constructor private, 
* to ensures that the class can only be instantiated 
* from within itself.
*/
 private function __construct(){
  try{
   $this->_connection= new mysqli(self::DB_SERVER,
                                     self::DB_USER,
                                     self::DB_PASS,
                                     self::DB_NAME);
   if ($this->_connection->connect_error){
       throw new Exception("Could not connect to Database.");
   }
  }catch(Exception $err){
   echo $err->getMessage();
   die();
  }
  
 }
 public static function getConnection(){
  if (is_null(self::$_dbinstance)){
   self::$_dbinstance= new DBAccess();
  }
  return self::$_dbinstance;
 }
 /* Execute a SQL query and returns the results*/
 public function selectQuery($query){
  $rs=$this->_connection->query($query);
  return $rs; 
 }
}

All comments welcome!! For fine-tuning... For better ideas... any thing...

Happy B'Day!!!!

2009-09-23T23:57:00.000+10:00

Its 1st birthday of my blog. Tried to shear many things with you all that I get to know about the world. Ya I know most of them are into IT :)

So hopefully in this year I try my best to shear more and more things with you that will help you to know a new thing.

Thank you for reading my blog!! hope you got something out of it.

Thank You!!!

SEO and Web Designing Company from Sri Lanka

2009-09-17T00:45:00.000+10:00

vPowerWeb is a SEO, Web Designing & Developemnt Company based on Sri Lanka. They are experts in using white hat SEO techniques that will ensure a high rank for your website on organic search engine results. vPowerWeb’s Services are not limited to Search Engine Optimization, Few other services offerd by vPowerweb;

- Web designing
- Web development
- Logo and graphic designing
- e-Commerce solutions
- CMS customization
- Customized web hosting
- Internet technology based consultancy

In addition to that vPowerWeb has expertise in Joomla, Wordpress and CMSMS - Extention development, Template Customization, Full site developement.

Need AllVideos Plug-in to be work on different Joomla module positions?

2009-07-14T01:29:00.000+10:00

AllVideos is the ultimate video embedding plug-in for Joomla! But most of the time web devs need videos to be embed in different module position of the Joomla template. This is not possible with legacy AllVideos plug-in which was only supported to publish videos on content sections.
But you don’t need to worry, AllVedeos Reloaded is the solution that you are looking for. AllVedeos Reloaded is a great component which is built on legacy AllVideos plug-in. This component has improved to publish videos in any module position that supports by the Joomla template and in main content sections as well.
Hope you will love this Joomla extension so much, like I do… :)

www.deals.lk – A Free Classifieds website

2009-04-17T04:58:00.000+10:00

Delas.lk is a website that allows you to post FREE classified ads under hundreds of well arranged categories. Site is specially for Sri Lankan community, but not stopping any other person from any country in the world to post a classified ad for Free. Posting a classified at deals.lk is very simple, if you are new user you need to register with deals.lk and then the door is open for you to post any number of classifieds for FOC.
Deals.lk also allowed Free banner ads facility till 31 of July 2009, which has reach its limits where all banner space has been taken by different people. But you can always request a slot by putting an email to info@deals.lk
So it’s up to you to get use of these great deals with deals.lk

Simple Joomla! Hack to hide links from registered users.

2009-02-09T21:44:00.000+11:00

Last week when I was doing some changes to one of my websites, I came across a requirement to display "Login and Registration" link only for guest users, once the members logged in to their member area, it should be a "Logout" link.

Unfortunately Joomla! Core doesn’t support that feature, which I think most of you might also need badly. But it was a very simple hack, and will be useful for Joomla! devs who are looking for the same functionality. Here I'm posting a small PHP code which does the Job.

if (!($my->id)) {
echo "
Welcome!

Sign in Or 

Register.
"; 
}else{
echo "
Welcome! ".$my->name."| 

Logout.
";
}

Auser Manager to work as in it's Demo!

2009-01-09T19:28:00.000+11:00

To make Auser manager, which is a Joomla! component, to work same as in it's demo you might need some reading on the web other than downloading Auser component from www.alikonweb.it . This is because Auser Manager itself uses some plug-ins like SecureForm which gives the CAPTCHA facility, a visual verification of an image. So you need to install SecureForm Plug-in and enable it.

Not only that, in the demo you can see some Ajax base field validations, which you won’t get with Auser manager installation. available at the moment (Moment of this article is getting published). What is in the demo is a beta version under development and testing. So the version with Ajax messages is not available for download at the moment.
But there is a workaround. To have all those ajax messages you need some more work to do. Get FormCheck by MooTools which is a set of Java script libraries. This allows you to add ajax messages to any form fields in your web site. With some code editing of Auser manager you’ll be able to get the functionality as is in Auser manager demo.
Good Luck!

How to upgrade your existing Joomla 1.5.x to Joomal 1.5.8.

2009-01-04T04:32:00.000+11:00

When I had to upgrade one of my existing Joomla web sites to the latest version of Joomla, I went through the installation guide and read everything under “Upgrading 1.5 from an existing 1.5x version”, and thought why can’t we say it in simple and straight forward manner.

So here it is...

To be in safe side take a backup of your Joomla site, means take a copy of your Joomla web folder, then go to http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/frs/?action=FrsReleaseBrowse&frs_package_id=3365 which has the list of updates that are relevant to your installation of Joomla(Check your Joomla version in Admin Area -> Help-> System Info).

Once you download the correct upgrade file for your Joomla site, what you need to do is extract the compressed file to a location that you want (May be to your Desktop). Then what you have to do is go in to that folder and copy all files and folders in it to clipboard. After that go to your existing Joomla web site location (FTP to the server)and paste everything to you Joomla folder. Overwrite whatever existing files in the web folder with the new files.

Now your Joomla web site is upgraded from Joomla 1.5.x to Joomla 1.5.8 (Latest at the moment)

Ops… Am I Geek???

2008-12-04T19:42:00.000+11:00

Do you rate yourself as a Geek? YES?, OK... up to what extend? Hmmm Let’s see,

I found this nice little web site when I was roaming around the internet, it was really interesting. Site has a nice way of rate you as a Geek under few categories. You should be very open and honest about the information that you provide.

You can generate your own Universal Geek Code! This code will let others know about you Geekness. This is the Version 3.x of the Geek Code. Just click on www.geekcode.com and start create your own geek code now.

This is my Geek Code,

GCS d-- s+:+ a C++ U++ PL++ E W+++ N+ o+ K---- w++ MPS+ Y PGP- t X++ R tv- b+ DI--D+++ G++ e+ h r+++ y+ z+++

What’s yours??? Give it a try!!!

War has begun! Chrome Vs IE 8

2008-09-22T14:37:00.000+10:00

The Company
Microsoft is a giant software company that holds the monopoly of PC operating systems around the world. Company started in 1975 and come all the way up till 2008 with an unbelievable growth. This giant company started their own graphical web browser in 1995 to compete with Netscape. Name was Internet Explorer Version 1.0 commonly known as IE. IE’s first release was an additional software piece bundled to the add-on package of Windows 95. After that it was available as a free download in the internet. Recently Microsoft has release their latest version of IE, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 with new set of features.

Google! On the other hand a company with tremendous growth over a short period of time and now has become the number one revenue generator in the IT industry. Company has a clear vision and a mission which leads them to the top of the IT world. Google dominates the search engine world and also powered with additional services like free mail service-Gmail, earth viewing-Google Maps, video-Google videos and many more. Latest news from this excellent company is that they have released their first ever graphical web browser, “Chrome”.

Web Browser
Web Browser is a sophisticated software application that enable its users to search, view and interact with information and other materials like videos, music etc, that are available electronically. Web browsers allow users to roam around the World Wide Web by going through available links and web addresses. There are hundreds of thousands of web pages available in the Internet, those contain various information that is accessible through a web browser.

It doesn’t mean that web browsers are only used in the World Wide Web; it can also be used to access locally hosted web pages and other applications that are developed to be compatible with the graphical web browsers. It can also be used as a content viewer of the file system.

Google Chrome Beta
Chrome browser development has started as an open source project at Google in order to initiate a new era of web browsers which supports today’s web applications effectively. Most of the web pages that are viewed in a browser today are probably a web application rather a simple HTML web page.

Google has introduced ample new technologies to the browser world along with Chrome and those have made Chrome a stable, faster and a secure web browser. Instead of traditional single-threaded rendering mechanism, chrome has introduced multi-process architecture which has its own memory space and its own global data structure. So each tab has its own process which increases the browser stability to its maximum. Because of this multi-process architecture if one tab gets crashed it will not affect any of the other tabs, only the crashed tab will be the sad tab with "AW-Snap". Users also can view these processors, usage of memory and CPU they consume with the use of Chrome task manger facility. Even plug-ins have their own process running which of cause can be seen in the task manager of Chrome. Don’t forget to click on the “Status for nerds” if you are really a nerd and in need of seeing more precise data about the process memory usage.

V8 is a Java Scripts Virtual Machine for chrome which is far more advanced than the typical Java Script engines used in ordinary web browsers. V8 gives a power to Chrome by executing heavy java scripts within milliseconds. V8 is capable of dynamic code generation which gives more speed. Further, it has a highly efficient garbage collection mechanism. So developers do not need to worry any more to load their web applications with fancy java scripts pieces, they simply have V8 now!

So what is the significant difference the end user can see other than these technological jargons? In Chrome main feature that end user will see is Tabs. Tabs that can be attached or detached by simply drag and drop them where ever you prefer, and tabs that have their own set of controls including a URL bar known as Omni box. Omni box is not just a URL bar. It has an inbuilt Google search and also offer search suggestions. It also shows the list of previous site that the user has visited.

Chrome has also introduced a new mode of browsing called “incognito mode” which allows users to browse through any site they want without having a history or history search and without saving any cookies in the computer.
One last feature that the end user will be interested is that the safe browsing. It will warn the user when a user gets in to a site that might harmful. Because chrome has very large list of harmful sites and it matches the site that the user visits with the list.

This is not everything about Google Chrome, besides this is merely a few of the fantastic things that anybody could see when looking at newly born baby. If you look for more, there will be definitely much much more things available about what this excellent piece of software can do.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
Microsoft has released their latest version of Internet Explorer that is version 8 beta 2 with a list of newer features. IE 8 also uses a multi-process architecture but not like in Chrome. IE 8 doesn’t create process for each tab, it is sort of a hybrid model which creates several instances of IE and shares them among the running tabs. Here again if a tab crashed no affect to the other tabs as user can simply kill the iexplorer instance that is not responding without harming the other running tabs. Further the automatic crash recovery mechanism reloads the tabs that got crashed and takes the user to the page that was there in that tab before crashing.
Microsoft has also improved the script engine which responds more quickly for Java Scripts and AJAX than earlier versions.

When it comes to user experience IE 8 has introduced a new set of features which are not there in their previous versions of IE. Web Slicer is one of the eye catching feature which allows users to view only a part of a web page that is frequently updating without going to the full site again and again.

‘InPrivate’ is another feature that is also available in Chrome which allows user to brows without a trace. Which means no search history, no cookies, no saving of user name passwords etc.

IE 8 has ‘SmartScreen’ filter which provides the warnings to the end users about harmful web sites that are listed as unsafe.

When it comes to the list of features and the use of hardware of a computer both the Browsers are much similar and both take the Web applications to the new era of internet. Users will experience and enjoy these fabulous features of both bowers. However Chrome has introduced few original concepts to the world of web browsers. Most importantly although IE 8 is free, Chrome is free and it is also an Open Source project where the whole world contributes to its technology, ideas and to numerous other things.