Archive for May, 2007

Hackfest02 Complete!

nirav May 20th, 2007

Flex 3D UI

We had another Hackfest in Magnet this weekend. The last Hackfest was a roaring success. We had only five participants this time, but it was fun as well. For me, it was a “Samosa to Samosa” hack fest. We started at Saturday 7pm, and I really got on after 3 samosas in my tummy around 8.30! And after a Sunday morning dose of samosas, I started pacing down!

Collectively we did a number of things. Let me put some bullet points:

  • Openfire integration with MSN, Yahoo!, Google and AOL messengers. So now we can easily talk to our clients using the same internal Jabber based messenger system.
  • Streamlined user level backup system - spanning multiple servers and multiple configurations
  • Lot of research on Microsoft Share Point Portal Server
  • 3D UI with standard Flex components on Outsmart Labs. Amazing work! I wonder how they are doing it!
  • We read a lot of blogs and learnt many new things!
  • A lot of QuickSilver hacking
  • Batch audio conversion using Switch as I wrote earlier
  • Lot of research on mobile and mobile web - the trends, technologies etc
  • SQL Injection and general hacking around ;-)
  • SVN
  • MySQL Clustering
  • And we watched “Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro” - had a great time laughing! Spent more than an hour getting the VCD to show up on the projector though!
  • The dinner and in-between discussions were insightful - we talked on topics ranging from security, grid computing, mobile as a computer, IPTV, Windows hacking, Benefits of eating healthy food, GTD philosophy, planning with a calendar, RSS subscriptions with Thunderbird and MP3 streaming

Good fun as usual! I am always looking forward to Hackfests in Magnet! Missed Kartik, Ameya and Naveen though!

3 years

Magnet May 19th, 2007

* I just realized that I have completed 3 years in Magnet on 10th May. I have seen people coming, staying and living like they were never been part of team!

/me thanks himself for keeping faith :)

Fast and Simple Usability Testing

nirav May 19th, 2007

If you are working on a software project, usability testing (and understanding it in the first place) is very important. From 24 Ways:

Natalie Downe describes a simple approach to usability testing for those of us working to tight timescales or budgets. That’d be nearly all of us then. Learn how to make the most of your available user testing time, and perhaps this year you’ll not end up quizzing auntie as she stuffs her face with turkey.

Impress your friends with your schedule-friendly user testing

Quick audio conversion

nirav May 19th, 2007

Wanted to transfer some songs to my phone from iTunes. I have the default encoding set to AAC, so songs that I imported from CDs, get stored as m4a (MP4 audio) files. Realized that this format wouldn’t work with my phone, so was looking for some converter. Tried ffmpegX (that I normally use for video conversion) and it worked fine. But then I was lazy to do all files one by one.

Found Swith! A nice little utility that can batch convert you audio files to and from a number of formats. Including wav, gsm, ogg, mov, aac and mp3.

Switch - audio converter for Mac

Worked pretty well and I was ready to roll in a few minutes! Power of simple utilities!

Web2.0 award for 2007

Magnet May 16th, 2007

web2.0 award for year of 2007

Web2.0 Award for year of 2007 has announced on May 9th 2007 by SEOmoz. There are 200 web2.0 website in 41 categories and 15 Interviews with Founders of Winning Sites.

Check it out at http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0

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