Recursive queries

"We deal with an enormous set of information, and some threads have literally thousands of repies. Pulling this down into memory isn’t a problem when 99% of threads only have a hundred replies, but when they start to peak we end up wasting a lot of time. Recursion within PGSQL allows us to easily pass off this work to the database (which just so happens to be able to do it faster than we ever could), and save us a ton of network traffic and web processing time in the process.

To give you an idea of the effect this will have (pending everything works out), we’ve seen savings of up to 500% on some large datasets, just for the SQL processing time (returning 25 results, rather than 1000). This doesn’t even represent the cost in our application layer. Yes, you heard that right, the SQL statement is 5x more performant at the database level alone." - from here: Recursive_queries in PostgeSQL. Real example from Disqus (cloud discussions).

P.S. I can confirm that Disqus shows a good perfomance in our mashups (see Geo talk, for example).

HTML5 audio

HTML5 audio taglib. Lets you create a link with HTML5 audio player.

QR code for maps

Our mashup QR maps has been updated. Lets you create QR codes from maps.

Open mashup, select your area on the map (read marker always show the ceneter), set the scale and put your cursor (mouse) over the marker. You will see popup window with QR code. You can scan this code right from the screen with your mobile and load your map into your phone.

Click on the marker – you will see a current map size as well as a link for opening QR code image. This link helps you print QR code and/or embed it into another document.

By default mashup creates static maps (just images). Of course you can change the size for your maps (see Tools button on the top). Also you can create QR code for links to dynamic maps (iPhone, Android - Mobile maps mashup is used here)

MP3 player

This taglib lets you embed an MP3 file into a web page so that visitors can listen to the audio right in the browser itself without requiring an external player. Taglib simply adds Google Flash player for the given mp3 file. See MP3player taglib

Open mobile summit

/via Geo Messages

Markov generator

A general-purpose Markov generator - Java source code

Foursquare tips - local version

In our mashup Foursquare tips you can directly set (latitude, longitude) pair for the area you are interested in. Parameters for the URL are:

lat - latitude
lng - longitude

For example, London in Foursquare

Geo Messages

Programmableweb.com about our Geo Messages approach

Eurovision 2010

Live stream (with photos): Eurovision 2010

Foursquare tips

Our Foursquare tips mashup on Google Maps Mania

Directory of mashups

Our mashups directory has been updated.

Hackdisrupt

How to extract metadata

Here is a very interesting project from Apache - Tika. Apache Tika is a toolkit for detecting and extracting metadata and structured text content from various documents using existing parser libraries. Here is a list of supported formats:

* HyperText Markup Language
* XML and derived formats
* Microsoft Office document formats
* OpenDocument Format
* Portable Document Format
* Electronic Publication Format
* Rich Text Format
* Compression and packaging formats
* Text formats
* Audio formats
* Image formats
* Video formats
* Java class files and archives
* The mbox format

See also some examples of programming Tika here.

HTML5 on Google I/O

At a press conference after the keynote, Sergy Brin said he felt that the more limited hardware of mobile devices favored native apps for now, but that in a year or two desktop and mobile HTML5 capabilities will converge. What is happening now in the desktop browser is coming soon the mobile browser.

/via Geo Messages

Foursquare tips

Foursquare tips on Google Maps.

Technically it is Foursquare API + YQL + Google Maps API.

Google I/O live

LBS systems

An interesting article - Why Hasn’t Location Reached the Mainstream Yet?

"Because of privacy concerns, it is imperative for location-based services to clearly communicate the value proposition to users. Without a clear picture of what they’re getting in return, users may be hesitant to share location data." And do they (users) get a return at all? Mass location sharing (sharing location in social networks) help advertisers. It brings more precise targeting of course. But what about the users?

Than is why we think that Geo Messages approach has got more sense. In this case user just inform his/her partner on the peer to per basic "where I am". In the most cases you simply do not need to post this info into social network. In it not only the privacy issue. In the most cases is it signal vs. noise issue. Most of my circle in any social network simply do need (not interested) in my location data.

And by the way, we think that in systems like Foursquare tips information is more useful than raw check-in data.

Eurovision 2010

Add to your bookmarks: Eurovision 2010 in Twitter

Geo Messages - a new way for sharing location info

Coldbeans Software implements a set of mobile web mashups (HTML5 applications) that provide a new way for sharing location info sharing - Geo Messages.

Rather than let social network monitor your location (Google Latitude) or share your location info with some social circle (Foursquare check-in etc.) Geo Messages approach lets you share location data on the peer to peer basic. You can share your location info as a signature to the standard messaging (email, SMS). And what is important – shared location data (map) does not contain your identity. Your ID (name, phone) is in your email (SMS) only. The shared map does not reveal anything.

Sharing location info via the social network is not only a privacy issue. Very often it is signal vs. noise issue – most of the user’s circle in some social network is simply not interested in his/her location. And peer to peer sharing obviously solves this problem – your location data go to the interested party only.

600 billion text messages per year in the US ask "where are you?" - quote from Location Business Summit 2010. And Geo Messages offer a simple (one click) answer.

You can get mobile links right here: http://servletsuite.com/geomessage

Databases today

"Databases: relational vs object vs graph vs document. Is relational database dying? Why a model affirmed and finally consolidated over years is now object of discussion? Which alternatives exist and how they can match your needs in practical situations?" - a good overwiev of modern DB status

YQL taglib

Perform your YQL requests right from JSP - YQL taglib. Coldfusion developers can use it too of course.

Coldtags suite ver. 3.95

Coldtags suite supports now 395+ custom JSP tags.

No-Sql architecture

A good article about NoSql architecture

FOWA

Future of web applications:

Natural language processing in Java

MALLET is a Java-based package for statistical natural language processing, document classification, clustering, topic modeling, information extraction, and other machine learning applications to text.
MALLET includes sophisticated tools for document classification: efficient routines for converting text to "features", a wide variety of algorithms (including Naïve Bayes, Maximum Entropy, and Decision Trees), and code for evaluating classifier performance using several commonly used metrics. - see it here.

Traffic layer in HTML5 maps mashup

Google Maps API v.3 adds traffic layer. You can see it now in our Mobile map mashup. Try to share a location (or simply get a link for your map). And for the saved location mashup shows walking/driving directions as well as traffic conditions (of course, if they are applicable in your area).

P.S. waiting for ads manager :-)

/via Geo Messages

Location via SS7

Locating mobile phones via SS7. Via sending MAP_SEND_ROUTING_INFO_FOR_SM request from own SMSC.

Geo Messages

A dedicated page devoted to our Geo messaging approach: explanations, links to mobile applications, articles - Geo Messages

Interesting events

A couple of events worth follow to:

Who is that

Our mashup Info from Twitter has been updated. For any account in Twitter lets you lookup other resources associated with this account. For example it could be a good way to check out who is that your new follower, or who you follow to etc.

Mashup does not require you to authorize in Twitter (and does not require from you have your own Twitter account). Just set any valid Twitter name on the mashup’s page or directly provide it in the request parameters:

    http://tinfo.linkstore.ru?u=name_from_twitter

This new version adds more statistical data as well as integrates Google and LinkedIn search.

Geo SMS review

Our Geo SMS mashup on WapReview site

Browser for Twitter

A new way for Twitter reading - Eddi browser.

P.S. in this context we can remember two our mashups: Retwits in Twitter and Twitter buzz.

Directory of mashups

Our mashups directory has been updated. Check out for example a dedicated page devoted to our Geo messaging approach.

CSS grids

Grid generators for CSS - a great list

JSOS 6.80

Coldbeans Software announced the next milestone in JSOS (servlets office suite) development. JSOS reaches the version 6.80. This largest collection of Java servlets and filters provides 141+ "out of the box" components ready for building web-pages. See it here.

Geo SMS

At the first it was Geo Mail mashup. And now we can offer the similar tool: Geo SMS. Lets you share location info via SMS (Android, Nokia S60).

Use the following QR code for loading this mobile web application right to your phone:



or type the following short URL: http://bit.ly/9WTrpU

Data-Intensive Text Processing with MapReduce

Jimmy Lin‌, University of Maryland and Chris Dyer‌, University of Maryland:

"MapReduce is a programming model for expressing distributed computations on massive datasets and an execution framework for large-scale data processing on clusters of commodity servers. The programming model provides an easy-to-understand abstraction for designing scalable algorithms, while the execution framework transparently handles many system-level details, ranging from scheduling to synchronization to fault tolerance. This book focuses on MapReduce algorithm design, with an emphasis on text processing algorithms common in natural language processing, information retrieval, and machine learning. We introduce the notion of MapReduce design patterns, which represent general reusable solutions to commonly occurring problems across a variety of problem domains. This book not only intends to help the reader "think in MapReduce", but also discusses limitations of the programming model as well." - see book's PDF files here

600 billion

600 billion text messages per year in the US ask "where are you?" - as per Location Business Summit. A lot :-)

Is not it a big market for our Location sharing services? Even a simply geo aware email should be good!

Redis tutorial

A distributed key-value store - Redis

iStone

from the secret lab of one well known company:



author's page is here.

P.S. devoted to Mobile map mashup :-)