You know what again :-)

A Happy New Year to all our customers and readers!

P.S. here are some last minute ideas for your drink

Geo search

Our mashup Geo search has been updated. Local news illustrated by the local photos. Just click on the map for the place you are interested in.

You can provide the following optional parameters for the base URL:

lat - initial latitude for the map
lng - initial longitude
zml - zoom level

Also mashup supports language settings for the map. Parameter's name is - hl. For example:

http://geo.linkstore.ru?hl=ru
http://geo.linkstore.ru?hl=en etc.

Indoor positioning

The next big thing in LBS - indoor positioning. Swedish indoor positioning company Qubulus has launched a tool for developers called Gecko that paves the way to some interesting new types of apps. Check out it here.

WAC on Android

WAC 1.0 - Supporting runtime for Android: Installation instructions and release notes - by Opera. Great news. Web development for phones is coming. And by the way, one of the first implementations for our Geo Messages was a widget.

Geo SMS

http://servletsuite.com/GeoSMS.apk

You can download an updated version of GeoSMS for Android application right from the above mentioned QR-code and link. Lets you share location info on mobile without the social networks.

/via Geo Messages

YQL & Pipes

Good article - YQL: Using Web Content For Non-Programmers. A lot of mashups in our directory are actually powered by Yahoo tools. And yes, we are also worried about YQL future under Yahoo :(

You know what :-)

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our customers and readers!

P.S. here are some last minute ideas for your dinner

Clean URL's

Forward servlet has been included into JSOS.

This servlet lets you implement clean url's in your web applications. Servlet is acting as a front controller to your JSP files. E.g. you can have an original request /servlet/foo/bar and serve it as /foo/bar.jsp etc. Servlet automatically forwards original requests to the appropriate JSP's processing depends on the path.

JSOS 7.10

The largest collection of Java servlets and filters reaches ver. 7.10. You can download it right from Coldbeans site

Christmas 2.0

About LBS services:



/via Geo Messages

SPDY

"As part of the Let's make the web faster initiative, we are experimenting with alternative protocols to help reduce the latency of web pages. One of these experiments is SPDY (pronounced "SPeeDY"), an application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web, designed specifically for minimal latency. In addition to a specification of the protocol, we have developed a SPDY-enabled Google Chrome browser and open-source web server. In lab tests, we have compared the performance of these applications over HTTP and SPDY, and have observed up to 64% reductions in page load times in SPDY." - SPDY: An experimental protocol for a faster web.

Google's idea for HTTP replacement. Interesting read. The bad things that we need replace not only servers but browsers also. If it is not Chrome :-)

Cloud API for Voice, SMS, Twitter, IM

Tropo – cloud telephony API in the base of Voxeo. Free for development. Worth to try it? Interesting – they do have a Twitter processing similar to our T411 service.

jQuery taglib

How to use jQuery templates in JSP - jQuery taglib

Facebook puzzle

Our mashup Puzzle for Facebook has been updated. Lets you create a puzzle with photo from profile.

For example, Mark Zuckerberg

Geo Messages

Our Geo messages project has been updated. Lets you share location info on the peer to peer basic as a signature to the standard messages (email, SMS).

It is obvious, that the question "where are you" is one of the most often asked during the communications. 600 billion text messages per year in the US ask "where are you?" – as per Location Business Summit 2010 data. A huge amount of mobile services is actually being built around this question so their main feature is user’s location exchange. In the most cases it is implemented as the ability for the mobile user (mobile phone owner) write down own location info in the some special place (special mobile application). But it means of course, that user must be registered in this service (download some special application). And even more important – everyone who needs this information must use the same service too.

Typically we have now two models for location sharing in services. At the first hand is passive location monitoring and future access to the accumulated data trough some API. It is Google Latitude for example.
Possible problems are privacy - some third party tool is constantly monitoring my location and what is more important – saves it on the some external server as well as the shorted life for handset’s battery.

Another popular model for location sharing is check-in procedure in the various forms. It could be an active (e.g. Foursquare), when user directly sets his/her current location or passive (e.g. Twitter) when location info could be added to the current message (status). But here we can see not only privacy issue - all my friends/followers can see my location but also a noise issue – my location info could be actually interested only for the physical friends. For the majority of followers my location info (e.g. Foursquare status in Twitter time line) is just a noise.

Our idea of the signed geo messages service (geo mail, geo sms) based on the adding user’s location info to the standard messages like SMS or email. Just as a signature. So with this service for telling somebody "where I am" it would be just enough to send him/her a message. And your partner does not need to use any additional service in order to get information about your location. He/she will simply read SMS or email.

It is obviously peer to peer sharing and does not require any social network. Our location signature has got a form of the link to some mobile map with the marker at the shared location. And what is important here – the map itself has no information about the sender and recipient. That information exists only in the message itself. The map (marker) has no information about the creator for example. That is all about privacy.

There are several implementations for this approach: mobile web mashups (HTML5), mobile web widgets, Java Card applets for legacy phones, JME midlet for mobile Java phones as well as solutions for web applications.

And this update introduces Android application: Geo SMS. See more details on Geo Messages page.

LifeHack of the year

From email:

"This weekend we discovered that Gawker Media's servers were compromised,
resulting in a security breach at Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Gawker, Jezebel,
io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin, and Fleshbot. As a result, the user name
and password associated with your comment account were released on the
internet. If you're a commenter on any of our sites, you probably have
several questions."

Newspaper in Twitter

Our mashup Newspaper in Twitter has been updated. It is Twitter search output wrapped in the newspaper style.

You can also provide initial parameters for your search. Mashup accepts the following parameters:

q - query string
lat - latitude for the local search
lng - longitude for the local search

For example:

Java newspaper

Munich, Germany

Geo chat

Yet another mobile mashup - Geo chat. HTML5 mobile web application lets you chat with people nearby. Anonymously, you do not need any special account. Just a text chat with people near you (in the same café, in traffic jam etc.) Check out it from iPhone, Android, Samsung or Opera 10.1 mobile browser.

http://geochat.linkstore.ru

(it is a mobile site).

You can copy link right to your phone with QR-code above. Or use the following short URL http://bit.ly/gCbzm3.

There is the similar mobile mashup City chat - the dialogues there are connected to some place from Foursquare. Geo chat is almost the same but implemented for any geo place without the connection to some predefined place

Technically it is a web mashup that uses chat engine from Coldbeans.

As per similar "city-level" applications check out also City forums

Photo-search for Twitter

Our mashup Photos from Twitter has been updated. Lets you search photos from Twitter timeline.

You can set initial parameters for your search. For example the above-mentioned script lets you pass the following parameters:

lat - latitude for search area
lng - longitude for search area
q - query string

For example:

Photos from London

Salad

P.S. You can also see pictures right on the map with the following mashup: Photo-map

QR code in French

Our QR code maker on some French site

P.S. the largest English collection is still QR code how to

Amazon services for Android

"The AWS SDK for Android provides a library, code samples, and documentation for developers to build connected mobile applications using Amazon Web Services. Example applications developers can build with the AWS SDK for Android include:

A media application that uploads photos, videos, and more to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for world-wide distribution through Amazon CloudFront.

A social game that shares moves, high scores, and other data between devices using Amazon SimpleDB.

A messaging client that broadcasts messages between devices using Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) and Amazon Simple Notifications Service (Amazon SNS), without requiring any additional server infrastructure." - Amazon Web Services SDK for Android. Source code included - github.

Looks interesting. They (Amazon) also provide the similar component for iOS.

Mobilize your data

Our mashup QR code maker has been updated. It is probably the simplest way for getting your content to mobile web. Simply copy-paste any text and service will create for you:

- a mobile web page with this content (landing page)
- QR-код for the fast loading that page right into your mobile browser
- HTML for publishing this QR-code on your own site (blog etc)

And of course, you can simply print QR-code and stick to the some real object.

You can publish any text with this mashup. For example, in the simplest case you can just publish a link (URL). And QR code generation mashup will prepare for you a page for the mobile downloading.

Mobile pages created with service include social buttons (Facebook, Twitter, Emai). So the content on the mobile page could be simple published to Twitter and/or Facebook for example. From this point of view mashup’s functionality could be explained so: create QR-code for publishing to Twitter (Facebook).

P.S. you can see all QR-code related tools on the dedicated page: QR code how to

GPS on Android HTC

Discovered a big problem with GPS on Android HTC (HTC Desire). Does not work.

Spent two days trying to understand why onLocationChanged could not get data ...

All about QR codes

Actually, we've developed a lot of tools for QR codes. For example, how to get any content and make it available for mobile phone, create, publish and load a mobile map for any location, create a mobile discussion forum for any physical object, create QR codes in Java servlets and JSP, add Facebook Like button for any object, create mobile ID card with your Facebook, share address and contact info, get address from Twitter and Foursquare and load it right to mobile etc. Now you can see all of them on the dedicated page: QR code how to

LeWeb 2010

LeWeb: LeWeb 2010. Paris, 2010



/via Geo Messages

City chat

Our mobile mashup- City chat. HTML5 mobile web application lets you talk with other visitors for the same place (café, office etc.). Lets you add on-demand chat service for any particular place. No registration required. Check it out from your iPhone, Android, etc.

http://citychat.linkstore.ru

(it is a mobile site).

You can copy link right to your mobile browser with the QR-code above. Or use the following short URL: http://bit.ly/a7aOKv

Techically it is a mobile web mashup that uses Foursquare, YQL and chat engine from Coldbeans.

As a similar "city" application see also City forums

Mongo DB online

"MongoDB lets you store and query data expressed as JSON documents. It offers conventional indexing, replication and lets you perform map-reduce jobs on database contents. You can get started from the comfort of your browser by heading over to the MongoDB web site and using the online "Try It Out" interface." - see details here.

Google interview

140 Google Interview Questions: "You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct phone number, but you cannot ask him directly. You must write a the question on a card which and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and return the answer to you. What must you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure Bob can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your phone number?" - check out more here

Photo-map

Our mashup Photo map has been updated. It lets you see real time photos from Twitter on Google map

You can directly describe an area for photos. Base URL accepts the following parameters:
lat - latitude
lng - longitude
zml - zoom level
mrk - (1/0) - show or not a marker at the center of map

How to make presentations

"I have a short five-slide deck to share that provides a solid framework for understanding our business." - see details

Geo search

Our mashup Geo Search has been updated. Google search for places illustrated by the local photo from Twitter. Just click on the map for place you are interested in.

Phone clip

The GoSmart Clip is an ingenious new smartphone holder for travelers who are always on the go - see here.

Redirection service

Redirection components for your Java web applications:

Redirect filter and Redirection taglib (for JSP and/or Coldfusion)