Web trends

The 2010 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) gets into full swing today and already we're seeing a big trend emerging: web applications being ported to consumer electronics, from the technology inside cars to Web-enabled TVs. From here.

It is actually what we did with our web friendly water meters.

LRU cache

A simple and useful cache for JSP (and/or Coldfusion) applications - LRU taglib. Cache supports LRU (Least Recently Used) filling scheme. So the old records will be automatically replaced with the newest on case of overloading.

More about geo-search

Our mashup Geo search in Google Maps Mania blog

Mobile maps

Mashup Mobile maps has been updated. Lets you prepare maps (as static images) for mobile devices.

Just set the marker in the place you are interested in, choose scale and map type as well as the size and click on the marker. You will get a link to the static image. Now you can just send this link to mobile user by email or SMS for example.

P.S. and you can prepare а mobile web page with this image, copy URL to mobile phone, send any link by SMS etc. with services QR code and Mobile pages. And QR map mashup lets you simply transfer a static map to your own phone.

Java by examples

A nice collection of Java source code examples

OAuth WRAP

OAuth WRAP (Web Resource Authorization Protocol) - a simplified version of OAuth. OAuth WRAP is not much different than OAuth except that a client only has to pass the Access Token in the HTTP Authorization header, so it completely eliminates the need for signatures. All server-to-server WRAP calls happen via SSL.
I think it is a future of OAuth. The current spec is not very usable, especially for the mobile services. With WRAP there is no need for the special libraries.

Geo discussions

Forums (discussions) connected to the map. A new mashup Geo Talk lets you create forums (discussions) linked to the particular place on the map.

Just mark a place, type a question (suggestion, information etc.) – in other words create an initiation for the discussion and get unique link for the map with embedded forum. After that you can share this link with your partners/colleges, print in your blog / twitter etc. – it depends on your own decision only – who you want to see among readers. And after that you can just follow to the discussion.

No registration required. Technically, it is Google Maps + cloud forums from Disqus.

You can discuss some geo points, POI’s (points of interests – shops, bars etc.) or, for example, create a private forum devoted so some meeting in the selected place.

Just for example – forum for Golden Apple bar in Moscow

JavaScript logging

JavaScript logging package – JS Log. Includes JavaScript library and server side component (servlet). Lets you asynchronously log data from JavaScript to server side and show (display) them independently from your web application. Helps you debug or simply monitor JavaScript code.

For your JavaScript application this logging is actually lust one call:

  jsLog.Info(your_variable, title_for_logging)

This call lets you save the value (for objects – all the properties will be saved) and comment (title, caption). And servlet defines a simple HTML interface for showing the saved values. Also servlet saves data in the log file.

Log servlet - who are your visitors

Collect your visitor's info with this statistical component - Log servlet. You can deploy it on mobile sites too.

P.S. And WebLog component lets you see collected log files.

Geo search

Mashup Geo search has been updated. Local news search, illustrated by the local photo - just click anywhere on the map.

Mashup supports locale parameter (language for the search). Just set a parameter hl in URL. For example:

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

Big map - small news

Our mashup Big map has been updated. Now you can see also local news, people, photo - just click on the marker.

To eat or not to eat

A New Year celebration added a lot to our delicious mashup Food on Twitter

Directory of mashups

Our mashups directory has been updated.

See you later

Happy New Year to all our readers! See you in 2010.

P.S. here is a New Year newspaper

iPhone web

Web frameworks for iPhone.

P.S. by the way, check out from your iPhone Mobile big map or create your own location sharing web application.

Atom feed for databases

Google Feed Server - Open Source project, lets you build Atom feed for databases. Technically it is Java application for Jetty or Tomcat.

P.S. here is a very interesting list of Open Source projects from Google.

Big map

Mashup Big map has been updated. Full screen google maps you can share via email, twitter or facebook.

Annotated links

Our mashup Annotated links has been updated. Lets you pack any link (group of links) and your own text comment (in post-it style) into one short URL. The final pack could be shared via email and twitter. So you can threat it as yet another way for link sharing in Twitter for example – your comment could be much more than 140 chars.

You can annotate links right on the site, via bookmarklet or via HTTP API.

Mobile network lookup

Personalization tool for your mobile web application. Custom tag MobileLookup lets you obtain info about user's home network (e.g. country, operator). Powered by API from Ericsson Labs.

From web to mobile

Let us present one tool lets you copy data right from the web pages to your mobile. It is about transferring web content to the phone. E.g. you are going to copy address info, scheduling, driving directions, prices in the shop etc. published on some page to your mobile phone. How to do that?

In general the idea is very simple. As soon as some text for saving is selected we can create on the fly a mobile page with this text. And that mobile page could be transferred right to the phone via QR code. So right on our phone we will get a mobile web page with the text selected from the web. Now we can bookmark that mobile page in our mobile browser and use it any time we need that info

Let us show it on the practice. We will use QR code maker mashup for creating a mobile page:

1. Just select any text fragment on this page

2. Click on the link below:

Copy to mobile

3. Your selected text will be passed to QR code maker mashup and just in one click you will be able to create a mobile page as well as an appropriate QR code.

4. And for the future usage you can save the link above in the bookmarks (actually, this link is a bookmarklet). So this web to mobile service will be available for any opened web page.

You can get more useful bookmarklets here

Buy and sell on Twitter

Mashup Buy-Sell supports geo search. So you can see related tweets for specified area only. Just use to parameters in the original URL:

lat – latitude
lng – longitude

For example, buying and selling in:

London
Palo-Alto

Mobile video and photo sharing

Techcrunch wrote about mobile video and photo sharing - Thwapr. The name is really strange, to be honest. Service presents a web application lets you share photo and video right from your mobile. Just upload your file to Thwapr and send (share) link to it. Really simple. And now check out two our old mashups :

SMS with attachments
and
Mobile files bookmark

Maybe we also need some special name for them ;-)

Web gate project

Web gate project presents a bridge for the mobile Internet and Smart Cards Web Server (SCWS). This bridge provides a “standard” (practically defined and implemented) way for the mobile internet developers (web developers) to deploy smart cards based features in the own projects. All in all, Web gate is a development tool targets web developers and provides for them a smooth access to smart cards features.

The main idea behind this project is how to mix SCWS and mobile Internet. No doubt, that the mobile internet word is much bigger, than the potential SCWS-alone based projects. So the aim of this project is to bring SCWS-based capabilities to the mobile internet developers. Let them deploy smart cards based projects via the familiar (well known) for them web tools.

Google Voice via Java

Java API for Google Voice

Common blogs via Posterous

Posterous group blogs make it easy for lots of people to all post and collaborate because all it takes is an email address -- no Posterous account is needed for people to participate and get right into it. Now they've brought that power to Facebook, Twitter, and wherever else you and your group have an audience. See here.

And here is our hint - is it very easy to share locations within that common (group) blog. Check out our Geo Post tool

Geo-photo

Mashup Pictures from Twitter has been updated and support now geo coding. You can request photo from some area, just pass two parameters to the original URL: lat - latitude and lng - longitude. For example, here is a photo stream from Googleplex: Google, US. Maybe, there is something new about Google phone?

P.S. btw, you can get latitude/longitude for any place here, for example. Just click on the marker.

Random programming

The "random" collection in Coldtags suite is growing. Now see Random color taglib, lets you generate random colors.

And of course, there are a huge collection of random things: random values, random content, random iterator and even a random code

Post geo data to your blog

Many modern blog platforms (most of them actually) let you publish data by email. You can just send email to some service address and platform transforms it into a new post. For example, in Posterous you can send data to post@your_blog.posterours.com, in Friendfeed it is share@friendfeed.com, in Blogger you can set address in Settings->Email&Mobile tab etc.

A new mashup Geo posts lets you create a personalized mobile web application for posting geo related data to your blog. Just set a service email address in the form below and get a link to mobile web application for iPhone, Android or S60 platform. This web application lets you email new postings right from the map - just click on the draggable marker presents the location. And application automatically adds to email a link to the location. So your posts will have a direct link to some map. It is probably the easiest way for sharing locations, write about some check-ins, lets your readers to see the place you are writing about etc.

This mashup is a part of our Geo Messages suite. And here is a full list of our mashups

NoSQL

A good collection of NoSQL materials

Useful bookmarklets

Our collection of bookmarklets has been updated. Check out for example a quick (one click) access to Twitter search. Just select any word (words) from the opened page and click on Got mashup from your bookmarks.

How to get RSS feed

A simple component for your JSP (and/or Coldfusion) application lets you obtain RSS feed URL for the given user in various services (twitter, friendfeed etc.) - User feed taglib

Posterous tips

Did you realize, that this mobile web application is actually a great tip for Posterous. You can not only share your location with friends by email, but also post geo-data right to your Posterous blog. Just email right from the map.

Code snippets

Where to search for code chunks - useful collection of sources

Dynamic properties

Dynamic properties - .ini files with some special add-on. Properties could be defined in dynamic.

JSOS 6.60

Btw, our Java Servlets Office Suite reaches the version 6.60. See it here

How to count sessions

Just one tag lets you count sessions (active users) in your JSP (and/or Coldfusion) application: - Live taglib

How to share location info from mobile

Mobile mashup Big map implements a new way for sharing location info to mobile users. This web application offers a full screen map with some marker pointing to the current position. Initially marker will be placed automatically but you can of course drag it to the new position. And as soon as you click on it, you will be able to send a link to the map via email and SMS. No registration, no passwords etc. Just send (share) a map. And do it via the standard messaging. Link to mobile web application is:

http://mbigmap.linkstore.ru (it is mobile site).

You can copy this link right to your mobile from QR code above. Also you can use this short URL http://bit.ly/7zu3iY.

It works on iPhone, Android and S60 phones.

P.S. and static maps for mobile users could be created with the following mashups: Mobile maps and QR map

Right from Google

What does Google CEO read on Twitter: http://tlink.linkstore.ru?u=ericschmidt
(via Twitter links)

Last wish component

Server-side component for JSP (and/or Coldfusion) lets you perform some specified actions upon session closing - Last wish taglib. Memory leaks preventing for your applications.

How to publish geo information to Twitter

Mashup Twitter location lets you publish geo-related information to Twitter. It is not about geo tagging in Twitter. Actually users do not need to geo-enable their accounts. Twitter location is just a way for publish messages (statuses) with some geo-related data. Click on the map and mashup will prepare for you a link to appropriate Google Map.
The goal is very clean – simplify Twitter publishing for messages (statuses) where location info (place) is important.
Mashup does not request any authorization, the actual publishing will be performed via the standard Twitter client.

You can pass the following optional parameters to the basic URL:

lat - an initial latitude (where to show the map)
lng - an initial longitude
zml - an initial zoom level
t - a message that will be added to any published status


For example, suppose we are creating some information system that collects information for discounts. We can choose a hash tag #discount and use the following URL for publishing locations with discounts:

http://twitloc.linkstore.ru?t=%23discount

(%23 – is just encoded #).

Etc.

A reference to the map will be published in the standard format that allows an easy extraction for geo data. For example:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=55.8783053 37.4362134

So if our information system programmatically collects all statuses with hash #discount we can easily extract latitude/longitude pair from the each message. Ant then show them on the map, display "nearest data" in mobile mashups etc.

London on Twitter

London on Twitter mashup has been updated. See the latest city news in the real time

Exclusive checkbox

JSP custom taglib for UI development - Exclusive checkbox. This taglib lets you add a special behavior for your checkboxes. Only one checkbox can be checked at a time. It is useful when only one of choices can be chosen, similar to a radio button. But the use of checkboxes lets you to uncheck something what is not possible with radio buttons.

Big mobile map

Google Maps API v. 3, should support mobile devices. So here is a model example - a full screen map for the mobile devices. It is a mobile analogue for our Big map mashup. Тhe same idea but for the mobile. Mobile link is:

http://mbigmap.linkstore.ru (it is mobile site).

You can copy this link right to your phone with QR code above. Also you can use a short URL: http://bit.ly/7zu3iY.

This map should work on iPhone and Android. I think S60 from Nokia should be supported also. Try it.

P.S. By the way, the static mobile maps could be created with our mashups Mobile maps and QR map.

Buy and sell on Twitter

Twitter mashup Buy & Sell has been updated. Lets you see buy vs. sell messages (statuses) in Twitter. Additionally, now you can see two "newspaper" formats: buy and sell.

Tweet Street View

Mashup for Google Street View and Twitter – Tweet Street View. Drive with Street View and see tweets nearby. You can see Street View and either an appropriate map or a list of Twitter messages nearby. So you can read the latest real-time news for the places you are in with Street View.

By default mashup shows some predefined sites and you can see your own location. Just pass your latitude/longitude pair to the URL: http://tsv.linkstore.ru?lat=YOUR_LATITUDE&lng=YOUR_LONGITUDE. E.g. drive through El Camino Real

Technically it is Google Street View (via Gmaps utils) + Twitter search + several mashups from our directory.

XML survey

A flexible way for data collection - Survey XML Servlet. Java servlet collects data from any html form and saves them in xml-format.

What are they talking about

Mashup Twitter buzz has been updated. Lets you see hot topics (hash tags) in any Twitter timeline. Check out what are trends within the given friends circle. For example what friends of @jason (Jason Calacanis) are talking about right now.

Newspaper in Twitter

Our mashup Newspaper in Twitter has been updated. Lets you perform Twitter search and wrap the output in the newspaper style.

Details of the previous update you can see here.

Big Map

Mashup Big Map has been updated. It presents a full screen map with the search and sharing options.

In the latest version you can see also local news (via Newspaper in Twitter mashup) and pictures (via PhotoMap mashup). Just switch on marker on the BigMap (it will always show the center of your map) and click on it.

London on Twitter

London on Twitter mashup has been updated. See the latest city news in the real time

vCard servlet

vCard servlet has been updated. A quick way for sharing address info in your mobile and/or web applications.

File hosting

Free file hostings - it says all.

More about geo tagging in Twitter

Twitter info mashup now supports geo location info. Mashup combines Twitter and Google social graph. You can see additional resources for any Twitter account. If the account in question is geo enabled you will get the last know location too (latitude+longitude for the last status message). Check out this for example: @raffi

Twitter geo tagging

Twitter taglib now supports geo tagging. You can post statuses with geo coordinates.

Let's go

QR code business cards

QR code business cards templates

P.S. and here is a generic QR code maker

Who is that

Our mashup Twitter info has been updated. Lets you discover social graph for any Twitter account. For example, you can discover additional resources for the given account.
This new version lets you see also the latest discussions from the users.

Local tweets

Mashup Local Twitter has been updated. Lets you see local tweets (and authors) right from Google Map. See who (and what) is writing nearby.

Links to read

Our mashup Twitter links has been updated. Lets you see links published in any Twitter timeline. A new version lets you also follow to discussions.

Newspaper in Twitter

Our mashup Search newspaper has been updated. Lets you perform Twitter search and wrap the output in the newspaper style.
What is new:
- you can discover the conversations (via Dialogues in Twitter)
- you can see local newspaper (just provide latitude & longitude pair as parameters to the original URL). E.g. check out London on Twitter

What did he say?

Twitter info mashup has been updated. Lets you perform search for Twitter account via Google Social API. Test your new followers for example – who they are. See their sites, blogs, photos. In the latest version you can see also the latest dialogues from the checked party.

Google Wave gadgets

This is a simple to follow tutorial on how to create an extension that other Google Wave users can install and use in their waves - Creating A Google Wave Extension In 5 Steps

Coldfusion in Open Source

CFML engine on the top of JBoss: Railo. Interesting.

P.S. And by the way, we've got a lot of CF developers using our filters or custom JSP tags.

Your personal mobile services

Mashup Mobile pages has been updated. This application let you create a set of the personal mobile services:

- create a personal mobile web page for one click contact info sharing
- copy any long URL right to mobile web browser
- create a shareable bookmark on your mobile and share it later by SMS
- send a long text by SMS right from web site
- create a bookmark with some text content and share it by SMS

See an additional info here

P.S. and here you can create your personal mobile video playlist

Directory of mashups

Our mashups directory has been updated.

Dialogues in Twitter

Twitter has never been an ideal two-way conversation tool. It's hard to keep track of back-and-forth communication between users, particularly when you're not actually part of the discussion but still interested to know what's being said.
Dialogues in Twitter mashup lets you restore conversations. Just post there an URL (or simply status ID) for any public status (posting in Twitter), published in reply to some user and see the whole conversation. It looks so, for example. Also you can use an appropriate bookmarklet from our suite.

QR code for mobile content

Mashup QR code maker has been updated. Mashup lets you mobilize any content. Just copy-paste some text (links etc.) and get back two things:

a) mobile landing page for your content. It is a mobile web page your users can access to
b) QR code lets you load a link for this auto-generated page right into your mobile browser. And of course, as soon as such a page is loaded you can share it with your mobile friends/partners/clients etc.

It is probably the simplest way to mobilize your content without any special skills.

Also you can attach your own files to mobile pages. So you can distribute you content for loading into mobiles by this way.

In the latest version you can create also one-time readable mobile pages. Such a page will be automatically destroyed after the first opening. You can share payable content for example etc.
De-facto this option does the same trick for mobile web our old mashup Secure notes does for the "normal" web.
And we will provide a public API for creating mobile pages programmatically. Actually the same way Secure notes is doing right now.

Photo map

Photo map mashup has been updated. Real time photo stream from Twitter. See local photo right from Google Maps.

P.S. Google Maps mania blog mentioned it here.

Who they are

Mashup Twitter info has been updated. Lets you perform search for Twitter account via Google Social API. Test your new followers for example – who they are. See their sites, blogs, photos.

Local Twitter

Local Twitter mashup has been updated. Lets you see local tweets and authors right from Google Map

CellID processing

Cell ID is the unique number of a GSM cell for a given operator. Any phone is always connected to some cell, and by knowing this number, you know the Cell, and by knowing the position of the cell, you know where your phone is. There are some accuracy issues, as the cell can cover from several hundreds of meters to several kilometers, but this could be a very good starting point to locate the phone. And here is a server side Java component lets obtain latitude and longitude by the given cell - CellID taglib

Swine flu

Swine flu real time info from Twitter

Code snippets

Code snippets - an useful collection of sites for useful code snippets collections :-)

List widget

List widget from Twitter:

JSP and JavaScript integration

JSP – JavaScript integration component is updated. It is a tool lets you call business logic programmed in JSP right from your JavaScript code. In other words it is JavaScript wrapper for JSP code. Here is an example.

JSOS - a new generation

Our servlets suite is going to get a serious update. All the old components will be redeveloped. Maybe it is not as fast as we wish, mobile development and mashups take a lot of time, but anyway we are working.
Portal servlet was the first redesigned control. Now it is JQuery based wrapper for your collection of links.
The most recent example is Tree view servlet. It is also based on JQuery plugin (Dynatree) nowadays.

Bookmarklets for developers

Our bookmarklets suite has been updated.

Newspaper in Twitter

Our mashup Twitter gazeta has been updated. Lets you wrap Twitter search results and present them in newspaper style.

Real time search

Our search mashups have been updated:

Twitter links – see links published in any Twitter line. Web resources selected by the friends circle.
Twitter buzz – see hash tags published in any Twitter line. Hot topics discussed by the friends

Social search for Twitter

Mashup Twitter info has been updated. Lets you perform search for Twitter account via Google Social API. Test your new followers for example – who they are.

Directory of mashups

Our directory of mashups has been updated

Generators

55 generators for web designers. Repetitve tasks such as creating a looping background or styling a basic CSS menu etc. that actually works

Re-tweets

More real time search mashups - Retweets. Lets you see re-tweets from any timeline. You do not need even to have your own Twitter account. Just set any twitter name you are interested in and see what his/her friends retweet (actually - share with public). And of course, Twitter users can check out own friends circle with this mashup.

JQuery for iPhone

JQuery iPhone style plugins. Title says all, actually.

Semantic web

SPARQL - query language for semantic web

Google + Twitter

Actually we add Twitter to Google search: Got mashup. And here you can see local news illustrated from Twitter: Geo Search

What does CEO of Twitter read

What does @ev read (from Twitter Links) - Evan Williams circle (CEO of Twitter).

Search engines

Search engines usage as per log from http://www.servletsuite.com (relative values):

Bing: 1
Yahoo: 1.41
Google: 94

of course, it it a technical site, so programmers, probably, are not so "bing" :-)

Randomization for your web

Add more dynamics and personalization to your sites with "random" components from Coldtags suite. You can, for example:

Add random file (and/or image). See random content taglib
Include (exclude) some code depends on the probability: random body component
Iterate over random elements in collections: randomize taglib

Directory of mashups

All our mashups (Twitter, Google Maps, search, mobile etc.) in one place: Directory of mashups

What does Google read

What does @marissamayer read (from Twitter Links) - Marissa Mayer's circle.

Trends in web hosting

Cloud servers are going to replace shared hosting accounts and present a good alternative to VPS and dedicated servers. They are chipper and much more scalable.

Geo search

Our mashup Geo search has been updated. It is local search from Google, illustrated by the twitter photo-stream.

Yahoo mashups

An useful mashup from Yahoo Hack Day: http://insidertrades.org. Lets you check out once per 30 seconds insiders trading and send email alerts. Very good example of Yahoo tools power.

P.S. by the way, the following mashups use Yahoo Pipes:

Twitter links
Twitter buzz

Google Static Map

A new component in JSOS - proxy for Google Static Map. The Google Static Maps API lets you embed a Google Maps image on your webpage without requiring JavaScript or any dynamic page loading. Bit it requires a key (free registration on Google). And this API key is connected with some domain. So if you are distributing your map it could be a problem – map will be actually requested from some other domain. This proxy lets you always perform request from your domain (domain associated with key):

Just describe servlet and mapping:

<servlet>
  <servlet-name>StaticMap</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>com.jsos.staticmap.StaticMapProxyServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>staticMap</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/servlet/staticmap</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

and now you can request static map by this way:

http://your_host/servlet/staticmap?key=your_key&maptype = mobile&markers = 40.8403347,-82.2393255 &size=240x320&zoom=16


P.S. original component used for this custom proxy is generic HTTP proxy.

MySQL GIS Extension

MySQL GIS Extension tutorial.

Lets you add a special column for your latitude/longitude data tables - geometry. Then you create an index on that column called a spatial index. This is really an R-Tree index that is very fast when you’re doing range queries.
You want to use MySQL's GIS because spatial indexes are faster for latitude/longitude range queries than regular indexes.

Links in Twitter

Our mashup Twitter links has been updated. Lets you see all the links published in any Twitter timeline (links from friends). For example, here is a collection of links from @t411 circle: http://tlink.linkstore.ru?u=t411.

Photo map

A new Twitter mashup - photo livestream: Photo Map. Displays photo from Twitter on Google Maps.

P.S. you can check out also the following mashups deploys Twitter's photo:

London's Twitter
Photo-Twitter
Food on Twitter

Smart meters

Google is pushing its Powermeter project – web access to data from electricity meters. But electricity data is not only source requires web access.

Here is a demo from one of our project – web access for smart water meters. You can get access to meter’s data via HTTP based API (get XML and/or JSON). And of course you can simply see data via web (including mobile web). Check out the following link: http://mbus.linkstore.ru Property name is demo, password is demo

Smart meter with M-bus support is developed by Russian company Abava.Net

Free security tools

Useful collection: 100+ free security tools