Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Windows 7 taskbar pinned application shortcut

I found this shortcut accidentally while deleting an email in gmail which is (Shift + 3, i.e #)

Press Windows + number(1,2,3.. . so on) for applications pinned to taskbar. Starting from the start menu button, 1 is the first application, 2 is the second, 3 is the third. Cool huh!

- yam

Monday, November 01, 2010

PyS60 - Multiplayer SMS based Hangman Game

Sometimes I do Pys60. Its a great tool to do POC type of apps. I referred Mobile Python by Jürgen Scheible and Ville Tuulos. There is a Hangman game tutorial to demonstrate how incoming SMS can be monitored etc.

I modified the game by adding some state of multiple players and made it multiplayer. If I can remember, I also added hints feature to it. Attached file is the latest code that I have. 99% its in running condition. You can test and lemme know if you find it useful.

For some reason, the program behaves stupid if delivery reports are enabled in the phone running the game. I guess this is because Delivery report is also an incoming SMS and the program wakes up for it. Also, its not for heavy traffic kind of ok.. Its just a POC!

Yes, 3 posts in 1Hr. today, I was desperate!

Well, seems like there is no way to upload files other than images and videos. Renaming the .py file to .jpg and uploading. Download and rename it before using. Does not work, it says file corrupt. Smart ;)

Edit : Added dropbox download link below.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20544295/hangman.py

OpenCMS Paging

Sometime back one of my colleague was looking at how to do paging in OpenCMS. I spent may be 20 minutes doing some google and reading the api docs and here's what I have arrived at.

Dropbox link : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20544295/opencms_paging.snippet

There is one drawback in the above code. Folder navigation list is retrieved every time. This can be done only once by have the total_size variable stored in session for the first time.

I have to tell you, OpenCMS naming convention is not that good, also the way the functions accept parameters. Looking at the code above, its not easy to figure out what exactly is going on without having the javadoc on the side. Also, why would you want to accept string type values when yo uare expecting numeric values(page number and paging size)? Btw, this was tested on OpenCMS 7.5.3.

If anybody knows how to improve it, please comment.

- yam

Using Mobile Phone For Taking Orders

This occurred to me when one of the restaurants near my office printed their mobile number as well as the land line number on the take away menu card.

Basically, whoever delivers services through phone calls like restaurants, flower merchants, grocery etc should use mobiles to receive the requests. That way they need not jot down the address or caller's name etc every time they call. All of that can be stored as the caller's name!

A similar case can be seen in Meru Cabs. Whenever you book a cab from Meru Cabs, they update the telephone number you are calling from against the address where you are located currently(Obvious, when you say I have to go from X to Y). The next time you call them from the same number, they know that you would like to book a cab from your office, home wherever you are! I love this idea. People! start implementing it!

- yam