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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

ClearSpring and publishing content on social sites

Widget and spreading content
To spread content in your website, widget is the most suitable way.  Most of end users like to see content of a website without going to that site directly. 

We have 2 ways to publish widget: copying and pasting publising script manually  or direct publishing.

In the real world, it's difficult to implement direct publishing feature on widget without contacting  target social networks to call their private API.  Moreover, social web is always growing, and has an ever-changing set of APIs, so adding new destinations and handling complex integrations is a challenge for us.

What and why ClearSpring?
ClearSpring is a widget platform to help us to implement manual and direct publishing feature easily.  Currently, they've integrated with over 80 social destinations and are trying to increase the number of destination more.

Just using some lines of code in ClearSpring API, we can create an interesting widget with the ability to spread content in most of famous social sites.


Please have a look on some screenshots of widgets that we've implemented in recent projects:



Publish widget content on your site using OnPage ClearSpring API




Publish content on widget (when it's shown in social network) using Widget API.

Have you ever tried ClearSpring API? Do you think it's interesting?
I am very happy to share with you my experience with ClearSpring widget platform

Monday, April 27, 2009

Upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04 - Flash player problem

Today, I've upgraded my Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04. However, I met the first problem with Firefox and Flash Player. The new version of Ubuntu has upgraded my Flash player version to version 10.0 but there is a problem: some Flash websites  can not play properly in my old firefox.


When I try to trace the registered plugins in Firefox by typing: about:plugins on the navigation textbox, I understand the reasion: Firefox is using the old Flash player plugin (9.0.4) and old version of libs.


Reading tons of online articles related to this issue, I found no way to fix this.
Suddenly, I remember that Firefox has created one hidden folder (.mozilla) in my home folder. So, I try to read the configuration there. And ... now, a solution appears in my mind. I tried it and solve this issue successfully.


Please follow steps as below to fix it, if you met this problem with Ubuntu.


Step 1: Open terminal, and delete the hidden folder .mozilla in your home folder. (/home/your user name/.mozilla)



Step 2: Uninstall all Flash and Firefox packages using Sysnaptic. Just type: flash and firefox into the search text to find plugins which installed in your computer.


Step 3: Install Flash player using Sysnaptic.


Step 4: Install firefox again.


Now, you can open your firefox and try again with some web site that embed Flash inside.
Good luck

My papervision3D demo

I am working on a demo with Papervision3D. At the first step, I met some difficulties in 3D maths and 3D programming concepts. However, I tried to come over them. With some fundamental knowledge, I created a demo to show a 3D album successfully.

Below is the screenshot for the demo.
 Am I handsome on this screenshot?
I will write some articles about Papervision3D to share with you later.
Wait n see!

Monday, April 13, 2009

Portable Office

Recently, I've installed many OS on my computer to test some frameworks and setup environment to build some Proof Of Concept. So, I can not centralize all of necessary working information: emails, chat log, documentations because I usually switch between OS.

One more disadvantage, when I go home and need to check old emails in company. I have to do remote desktop to the computer in my office - because all of old emails were downloaded into that computer.


To solve all of these issues, I decided to build a portable office for my own.

Requirements of the ideal portable office

1/ I can centralize all necessary information (emails, documents, chat log) in work just in one place
2/ I can take them into any place.
3/ I can work with them offline (in VietNam, there are some places that you can not access to Internet). These information can be synchronized automatically when the Internet connection can be accessed.
4/ The computer at my home is Ubuntu, so I need all of these information can be accessed from that easily.

Build the portable office

Step 1: Download and install necessary softwares

I found a good place that contains a lot of portable applications that I can use (http://portableapps.com/apps).
At the first step, I download all of necessary below portable softwares:

I install all of them into an USB in the folder: PortableApps.

Step 2: Install extensions for some softwares to help me to work offline

With firefox, I install Google Gear to work offline with Google Docs. Actually, I haven't tried this with my Ubuntu computer at home. Hope it works. Moreover, I installs all other extension to help me work efficiently with Firefox.

With thunderbird, do the same things.

Step 3: Just a little bit effort to work with my Ubuntu

Portable Apps works very nice with Windows OS in my company. But when I plug my USB into Ubuntu at home and run them with Wine. It can not save chat log and emails to USB. Why?
Just a simple thing, the user I am logging in is not the created user for files and folder on USB. Just do one thing with the PortableApps folder

Go to terminal and browse to the USB disk, type the command to change owner for PortableApps

chown -R myusername PortableApps

One more command to change mode to all folders and sub folders
chmod -R 777 PortableApps => this is very stupid, but you can assign your custom mode.

Now these apps can be run OK.

Do you want to try?

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

ASP.NET MVC - how to implement the plugin architecture

A long time ago, I've built a framework in ASP.NET based on ideas of Joomla (call it Joomla.NET). I improved some weak things in the Joomla architecture and port it to ASP.NET. However, the most favorite thing I like in Joomla is its plugin architecture. So, when ASP.NET MVC is emerging, the first question I put in my mind is: how I can implement the plugin architecture with this?

The most difficult thing to implement this with MVC is: we must have some ways to include all things related to a specific plugin (View, Controller, Model) into one assembly (dll) to package it. If we can do that, the rest thing of Plugin architecture is only the implementing a loading mechanism to load plugin and run.

I do not have much time to answer this question at that time.
Recently, I've found a great article about this.

http://www.wynia.org/wordpress/2008/12/05/aspnet-mvc-plugins/


This inspires me to update my JoomlaNet framework with MVC architecture. Currently, I am very busy with others. I will be back to JoomlaNet in the future.

Thanks J Wynia for this article.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Windows 7 running on Ubuntu

Today, I decided to install Windows 7 to develop a solution in .NET 3.5 and run with IIS 7.0. Unfortunately, I've installed Ubuntu already. I love it :-) So, I choose the solution to install it in VirtualBox.


Anyways, the Windows 7 looks great although it's not an official release version.
See it on my computer:
 

There are some small issues after installing:
1. It can not recognize the Shared folders of Virtual Box automatically like Windows XP. I have to share the folder in the host machine and use network drive mapping in Windows 7 to share data.
2. It can not recognize my USB: currently, I don't know why. However, I am using the solution for issue 1 to solve this also.

Update 1:
I found a new solution to solve issue 1: actually, Windows7 does not show shared folders in \\vboxsvr but it can recognize them. You just need to open the Console to run "net use" command and map it with a specific drive.

Example:
net use T: \\vboxsvr\SharedFolderInVirtualBox

T is the drive letter that you want to map.