Thursday, April 30, 2009

HTTP GZIP - 2

Compressed data is a simple and very effective way to improve web site usability. See some statistics here for example.
Compress filter from JSOS solves this task for Java web applications. The latest version supports also both client-side and server-side cache. So you can for example compress some big file only once and serve all the sub-sequential requests right from the cache.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Google and Twitter

Meta search Got: Google Blogs + Twitter has been updated. See the latest from the Net in the same time on the same screen.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

GPS location

Some of the popular Twitter applications (Twittelator, TwitPic) let you automatically publish geo location with the status changes. This location information looks like a short link (e.g. via bit.ly service) pointing to the appropriate google map.

And here is a Java (and/or Coldfusion) component lets you deal with such location info - GPS location. Custom JSP taglib lets you decrypt location link and extract coordinates (latitude, longitude) from it, or vice versa – create such a link for the given coordinates.
And here is a real example: Twitter mashup lets you publish some location right from the Google Maps - Twitter location. Just click on the map.

P.S. see also components for URL shortening services.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Tweet vs. Tweet

A new Twitter mashup - Tweet versus Tweet. Search Twitter for two topics in the same time: good vs. bad, $IBM vs. $ORCL, like vs. dislike, hot or not etc.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Short URL's

is.gd URL's shortening service is supported by Coldtags suite. See is.gd taglib.
Now you can use a full line of the most popular URL's shortening services right in your JSP (and/or Coldfusion) pages: TinyURL taglib, Bit.ly taglib as well as the "un-tiny" service: UnTiny taglib

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Page speed

At the very bottom of many web pages, you'll see a like that states: "This page was generated in X.XX seconds." This is measured by a little snippet of timing code. Here is an example of that code for JSP (and/or Coldfusion). In other words is is a practical "how to" measure the page generation time.

1. Add Exec time filter to your web application (download and save .jar file in your /WEB-INF/lib directory, add filter’s description to web.xml file

2. Describe a mapping for this filter (see examples here). Actually this mapping describes the files (pages) covered by the measurement.

3. On your JSP page deploy Exec Time taglib:

<%@ taglib uri="taglib.tld" prefix="calc" %>

Page generated in <calc:ExecTime /> ms

Friday, April 24, 2009

HTTP GZIP

HTTP gzip compression on your site - a series of tests using curl to see exactly how much time is saved on the client side.

P.S. For Java web applications you can use Gzip filter from JSOS

Thursday, April 23, 2009

LDAP in JSP

Our LDAP component has been updated. Now you can request directory attributes too.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Chat on the map

Comet based chat (by Jabbify) on the map. Bigmap mashup supports real time chat

Friday, April 17, 2009

Coldtags suite ver. 3.65

A new version of Coldtags suite is ready. A largest set of custom JSP taglibs over the Net offers 365+ web components for JSP (and/or Coldfusion) developers.

From the latest additions check out for example UnTiny taglib - lets you easily obtain the original URL from the services like TinyURL.com

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Mobile phone as a telecom platform

Using AT command you can easily turn your mobile phone into SMS gateway for example. We wrote about this already.
But the interesting thing that you can extend this approach to the voice calls also. Here is an experiment:

Hardware:
Mobile phone Sony Ericsson K320i
USB Data cable

Software: any application capable read/write serial port.

The following command AT*ECAM=1 switch on call monitoring. So for any incoming call you will get ECAV messages describes a type for the call (e.g. voice call) as well as a phone number for the second party. So actually you can develop some telecom services using your mobile phone as a telecom platform

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Serving remote content locally

A proxy for the remote content – Dump servlet. Let us see the typical case – you are linking to the image on the other site. Yes - it is so called hotlinking. You are eating the traffic from that site.
Dump servlet in this case lets you request the remote content only once – during the first call. After that it will be cached and served right from your host.
Another possible use case for this servlet is a cache for the remote CGI scripts. Actually servlet supports both – client side and server side caches.

Address book 2.0

Share your address info via QR-code. A widget for Opera lets you create QR code with your address data so it is just a matter of one click for the partner to get your full and correct address data right for the own phone. See and download here MECARD widget.

Friday, April 10, 2009

IP geo location

Yet another database with IP's geo locations. It is free, updated monthly, supports XML API.

It would be interesting to switch GeoTrace mashup to this new DB.

P.S. for JSP you can use the following taglib also: Geo IP

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Twitter calculator

A yet another interesting usage for Twitter 411 mashup: Google calculator, available via Twitter. Just send to t411 a direct message in the following format:

gc your_request

For example:

gc 100 rubles in dollars

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Short URL

You are welcome to checkout a new component in Coldtags suite: Digg URL. Lets you create a short URL via new Digg service:


<%@ taglib uri="taglib.tld" prefix="d" %>

<d:DiggUrl>http://www.servletsuite.com</d:DiggUrl>


and you will get this: http://digg.com/d1Q9SG

Actually Coldtags suite includes also the following "short urls" components:

Tiny URL
Bit.ly
Annotated links

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

How to post to Twitter

How to write status in Twitter from JSP (and/or Coldfusion). We are using 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>

P.S. also you can use a specialized Twitter taglib.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Image Scale

One of the popular components in JSOS - Image Scale servlet obtains an extended functionality. This servlet lets you scale the images on the fly. And you can do that for the local images (images within your web applications) as well as for the remote images:

/servlet/ImageScale?/mybigpic.gif

or

/servlet/ImageScale?/http://some_host/mybigpic.gif

Servlet supports both server side and client side cache. You can save the scaled images on your server so next time they will be served to the users right from the cache as well as provide Expires header for client side cache.

The typical use cases are:
- image thumbnails for your galleries,
- scaling images for the mobile web sites

Friday, April 03, 2009

Google is buying Twitter

TechCrunch is telling about this. Then main reason by their opinion is search. More precisely - real time search.
And how it could looks like you can see in Got mashup - Google Blogs + Twitter search

Twitter for teacher

A really interesting collection of Twitter applications for teacher in Top 100 Twitter tools article.

And of course, our mashup Protected notes (password protected text notes) mentioned there makes it even more interesting :)

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Prize for the readers

Clean this protection with the coin and get your own personal code:

       Ready? Your code is: 01042009       


type your code in the comments to this message. The winners will be announced shortly.

Google Blogs + Twitter

Search mashup Got (Google blogs + Twitter search) lets you obtain the search string right from HTTP request: http://got.linkstore.ru?q=search+what
E.g. the latest from the Net about USD and Euro: http://got.linkstore.ru?q=usd+euro