Now you know guys what kept me busy last few months. Videoswiper 2 is a Massive upgrade over its previous counterpart.
There are simply too many features to list here, So if you run a video site THIS IS THE TOOL FOR YOU.
Size Compare lets you see exactly how big an item would be in real life, right on your screen. It takes care of various screen resolutions, multi monnitor setup, mm/cm/inch to dpi to show you the exact size upto +-1mm accuracy on your screen.
This is a small tool i wrote for myself as i buy lots of hardware and its hard to visualize dimensions from data sheets. This help me do that.
We have been thinking of updating FreeDown 3 Java applet for sometime now , The new version should be available end this month. So i would like to ask if you guys have any feature suggestions for the same.
Some new features that might be available –
MP3 and AAC Downloading – We are working on allowing Mp3 and AAC Download using Java applets, though in beta if stable this feature will be in FreeDown 3.
API Based - More sites supported automatically , and sites fixed automatically.
New Theme – A New theme with more custom color options.
New Name – The Java version is not really free , so we will be moving it to a new name and site.
Youtube API – Simple Youtube search engine built in.
We would highly appreciate suggestions, And will give 5 free licenses to the top 5 suggestion contributors according to us.
A Small time filler presentation i gave at the hackers meet on 25th Sep 2010 @ Foundation for MSME Clusters.
People had asked to share it so here it is –
This covers my most commonly used tools for web development. Using these tools you can greatly speed up your development effort.
I have been freelancing for about 6 years now , business is good and have worked with lots of clients. But I had the long thought of my own small office and a few employees. So i have finally taken the dive, I have taken up a office and am in the process of hiring people.
The company will be called BaseApp.We will be developing small Web Products and build Embedded hardware. Now we will be offering and working on products that I always wanted to build. And have a more solid backup to support these.
You will be seeing new exciting products from our side,with better support and lesser turn around times.
Ipod touch 32 GB 3G seem to have issues with Wifi for me , and after searching on Google it looks like a common issue. But a lot of solutions offered online did not work for me. Though the speedtest.net App reported 3 Mbps + of download speed , Apps took ages to install and Youtube simply refused to play and buffered forever.
After trying various methods found online esp changing Wifi from g to b , which i did not want and changing some wifi settings and packet sizes. It did not resolve.
What i found worked for me was using a simple Proxy on my PC and connecting my Iphone to internet using that proxy. Everything seemed to work fine through the proxy ( but i have to keep my PC on ). Youtube plays without buffering, apps install within a few seconds and surfing is really fast.
The proxy i used was free proxy .
Thought might help someone since other techniques online did not resolve the issue for me.
BTW launchcast plays well on my Ipod touch in India , while it does not on normal PC due to ip restriction 
.
I needed an Apple Ipod to test some Iphone ready site i had done for someone one, Since Ipod touch and Iphone are almost same other than phone functionality. I went yesterday (12th July 2010) and bought an Apple Ipod Touch 3g (32GB) for about Rs 17340 in the morning (I had to deliver the site so could not have it shipped and wait 3 – 4 days). In the evening after returning home, the unit purchased did not work out once it was removed from the packing. I had better opinion of apple products … but how can they sell me a brick. Called up Apple Support and after the usual talk they also realized that i have been sold a dead Ipod Touch. So they assured me that next day it will be changed from where i bought it and gave me a reference number to use for the same. Going by the brand name that apple has, i relied and was somewhat optimistic, even if it went going back almost 17 kms on a working day.
So today when I went to the Same Place i bought it from the chaps there directed me to the apple Service Center at another location ( 9 kms from Nehru place) and on reaching there i was informed that the Apple Support Guys were telling Lies. There is no such concept of instant hand to hand replacement and I was asked to leave my ipod and wait for upto 15 Days. Now i m waiting to have my brand new Ipod back …
Some things i think u should know –
- Not one Apple representative Apologized for the Faulty product i was sold
- Even for a brand new product ( Not even a day old ) one is required to go through service
- Apple India is not Apple ( its ‘desi’ Indian Version which works like ‘desi’ companies )
- Not the experience i expected,I wasted a lot of time and effort just to buy one Ipod which i still do not have
I had high hopes and was kind of excited about owning my first Apple product . But I was utterly disappointed, frustrated and saddened by state of things. Also as i mentioned , it was an urgent requirement for some software that i am delivering and my work has suffered coz of bad product , apparently new?? and pathetic service.
Their competitor on the other hand atleast Microsoft gives me Free Onsite Wonder full support and service.
UPDATE : I had got a replacement after 5 days.
Here is a small php script which will grab Mega Video download link and is able to stream it to JW Player. Streaming uses server bandwidth due to MV same IP restriction. The script supports paid accounts for bypassing Megavideo time limit and showing streams to your users ( Technique used by many Anim sites ).
Using Webcam on windows should be easy, that is what i thought when i started out and wasted three days trying to get thing to work reliably. Most people used Video for Windows (VFW) in tutorials , but i found it very unreliable and crashing often, also when debugging it threw wired errors. Then I made up my mind to use the DirectX based DirectShow methods, Its needs DirectX SDK to build it and on downloading it and finally looking for the files i found that functionality have been moved to platform SDK. Anyhow i was not downloading another 4.5 GB of SDK to test if it worked. So after some Googling i found about the VideoInput library (uses DirectShow methods) which people sometimes use for OpenCV. I wished i had found it earlier , here is a small tutorial on hot to get started using it , since the original files which came with it did not work for me.There are a whole host of features supported so you can explore the documentation for more .
How to use webcam/tv tuner/capture cards in VC++ to capture video and take pictures –
1. Create simple Dialog based MFC project.
2. In the dialog make a Picture control and a Button , Picture control will Display the Video stream and the button will be used to capture a snapshot.Change Picture control to type Bitmap and attach a CStatic variable to it.
3. Now we will use a simple timer ( WM_TIMER ) to update the image being captured there are better way but this should do for a tutorial. In OnInitDialog() set the timer to refresh at say 10 times a second,
SetTimer(NULL,100,NULL)
4. Include the video videoInput.h header file. Also add the videoinput.lib in the linker input and for ignore library atlthunk.lib ( if it causes errors ).
5. Initialize the device using VideoInput API .
// in header
int device,width,height,size;
videoInput VI;
unsigned char * captureBuffer;
// in InitDoalog
device = 0; // first webcam
VI.setupDevice(device,320,240); // 320 x 240 resolution
width = VI.getWidth(device);
height = VI.getHeight(device);
size = VI.getSize(device); // size to initialize buffer
captureBuffer = new unsigned char[size]; // our capturebuffer
6. Now lets capture video and display frame in the OnTimer
if(VI.isFrameNew(device))
{
VI.getPixels(device,captureBuffer, false, true);
DisplayImage(&m_webcam,height,width,captureBuffer);
}
7. There is also example of how to capture image using libjpeg, please download the source and check it out.
This is a simple google pagerank script which can be used to show a graphic pagerank on your website. Or use it in your traffic stats script. Calling is very simple –
pr.php?prurl=http://www.ngcoders.com
It will show the small famous pagerank graphic with a bar graph and numeric page rank.