Mobile maps

New Google Maps mashup – Mobile Maps. The idea is very simple – select the area on the full screen map and send link to this map to any mobile user. And even more – the link here is a static picture. So any mobile user (regardless of the mobile terminal capabilities) will be able to see this map. How does it work:

1. Scale or move the full screen map here: http://mmap.linkstore.ru
2. The marker always points to the center of your map
3. Hit envelope icon and type email address there. You can use email-sms gate from your mobile operator and send link to the map via SMS.
4. Send map (as a static picture)

Technically this mashup uses Google static maps.

Coldtags suite ver. 3.40

New version is ready. 340+ reusable web components for JSP (or Cordfusion) applications and still growing.

SMS with attachments

A new look for old things. Really, a new way for sending SMS was described. See details here

How to twitter from JSP

As per Twitter API in order to post new twit from the application you have to perform HTTP POST request to the following URL: http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

See how to do that easily with HTTP taglib from Coldtags suite:

<%@ taglib uri="taglib32.tld" prefix="t" %>

<t:GetPost url="http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml" method="post">
  <t:setAuthorization user="your_twitter_name"
   password="your_twitter_password"/>
  <t:setParam name="status">test from JSP</t:setParam>
</t:GetPost>

tag setAuthorization defines a BASIC authentication scheme, so you have just provide here your twitter name and password. Tag setParam defines here
a parameter status (as per API requirements) with your message. So now you can post to twitter right from your JSP pages.

Images cache

One useful trick with Expires filter. This filter lets you set Expires and Cache-Control headers for the serviced responses. By this way your web application may deploy client-side cache for the requested resources. For example, you may decide cache all the requested images on the client's box. So for the sub sequential requests images will be served from right the local computer, and your own server will be free from this task. This simple idea lets actually save a lot of server's resources. How does it work:

1. Describe Expires filter in your web.xml file. An initial parameter expires sets here ttl for cache in seconds (24 hours in this example):

<filter>
<filter-name>ExpiresFilter</filter-name>
<filter-class>com.cj.expire.ExpiresFilter</filter-class>
<init-param>
 <param-name>expires</param-name>
 <param-value>86400</param-value>
</init-param>
</filter>

2. Set a mapping.

<filter-mapping>
 <filter-name>ExpiresFilter</filter-name>
 <url-pattern>*.gif</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

<filter-mapping>
 <filter-name>ExpiresFilter</filter-name>
 <url-pattern>*.jpg</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

...

Now the mapped files (gif, png etc.) will be cached on the client side