Reddit Redirect

Whenever I read digg stories from the RSS feed, I prefer to skip the Digg comments page and navigate directly to the stories. By default, the links on the RSS feed point to the Digg page. I installed this greasemonkey script that saved me a click and took me directly to the stories.
The story with reddit was different; they used to take me directly to the stories. However, I noticed that reddit recently started to show the comments page instead of taking me to the page where the story resided. Here is a quick script, like the Digg Redirect script, that takes you directly to the story.
The script is hosted here and works only on reddit comments page. Currently, the script works only if a user arrives from Google reader, so that user can still comment on the story if he arrives from elsewhere.
The script is simple, and all it does is find the link to the story and redirect the user to the link. The script parses the URL and finds the ID for the story. It then finds the element "title_t3_", picks the url and redirects the user. A pretty simple script !!

Extending the Aadvark Bookmarklet

Since installing Firefox 3, I have started to use Aardvark as a bookmarklet rather than an extension. Apart from not cluttering my Firefox extension space, the bookmarklet is cross browser compatiable and extensible. The page details the steps to extend the bookmarklet and also has an example loader. However, I think that there could be a better (but probably more complex) way to write extensions.
The way to add new commands is not very well documented, and the idea of assigning keystrokes is also not well defined. The loader is the point of entry into Aadvark and it requires to be customized to add extensions. I would prefer if the point of entry would still be the main Aadvark loader and extensions are loaded from locations specified by the user. This post explains a way to use the main aadvark loader and still use extensions specified elsewhere. There could be functions in the Loader that would be used to add new funtions (specify function body, key, etc) or modify existing funcitons.
The biggest problem with this approach is that the bookmarklet cannot really remember the extensions that a user has loaded and hence the user may have to specify the extensions everytime Aardvark is used; a totally unusable approach. Hence, I was thinking that the extensions (loaction of the Javascript) could be stored in a cookie. This cookie would be of the Aadvark domain and the loader would have to do the following to read and load the extensions

1. Create a hidden iFrame in the page where the launcher is invoked.
   
2. Set the source of the iFrame to a document that can communicate with the invoked domain.
   
3. Read the extensions and load them in the invoked domain

This approach seems a little complex to code would fail when cookies are cleared, but it could give more power to Aadvark. It would allow people to develop a whole set of powerful extensions that can be easily invoked from a single place; something like an Aardvark extension directory.
I am currently working on this, but as the first step, I have modified the extension to have a better "modify" option setting element.contentEditable=true;element.designMode=on. Watch out this space for updates.

Sneak-O-Scope - Version 2

A little more work, and here we are ready to release version 2 of Sneak-O-Scope. A couple of features have been added, suggestions from users incorporated and a bug fixed. If you are new to this widget, you can take a look at the blog of this application.
The changes are

• Self visits are no longer recorded. Hence, you will see only visits by others on your profile.
• Details of the visitor are not recorded better.
• If the viewer has also added the application, their Orkut profile is shown.
  
• If the application is not installed, their IP address is shown. This is done as required by the privacy policies of Orkut Opensocial
  
• The last 10 visits are shown in the table described above.

Some users also complained that visits to their profile were not recorded. We noticed that the application was collapsed in the profile page. Please note that the application MUST BE EXPANDED on the profile page to record visits. You may have to move the application above some applications to keep it expanded by default.

Some features that we are looking in the next feature include publishing updates on the activity stream, robust server support, and many more. So watch out this space for updates.
Also a reminder. This is an open source project, so please drop us a line if you would like to contribute.

Sneak-O-Scope now on Orkut

Hi,

After a long time of vetting, Orkut has finally added Sneak-O-Scope to the orkut application. directory. You can click on this link to add the application to your orkut profile page; just ensure that the application is higher than most applications so that it is not collapsed and is properly loaded.
Some changes in the application required by the Orkut Team were

1. Remove link to "View full application" - this was done
2. Show the actual link of the profile instead of the link of the iFrame - this could not be done for reasons explained later in this post.

Till now, we were relying totally on whos.amung.us for storing and getting the data. Once the application takes off, we are planning to write a PHP backend to store all the analytics data and use Google Graphs to display the statistics.
We are also planning to add functionality where the statistics also show links to the profile of people who were on the profile. There is one limitation with this though; the visitor should also have installed the application to get his details, else we can only get the IP address.
The issues link is a list of all the features planned.
Since this is an opensource project, you are welcome to contribute to it. The project is hosted at http://code.google.com/p/sneakoscope.

So far so good, now we will have to see how well we market this so that people start using this. I would hate to see this fail like ScrapsTimeOut.

GoSync

A few day ago, I had written about an project I was working on that would send me SMS reminders for appointments on my Outlook Calendar. This post is about the technical details and instructions for use.
The 1.0 release is available here. To install

1. Download the zip file and unzip it at a location where you wish to install it.
2. Navigate to the bin location and open google.properties file
3. Enter your google email id.
   
4. Do NOT enter the password. It will be encoded and written to the file the first time the program is executed
5. If you want you password to be saved, leave google.password.save=true. Else, change it to false.
6. Setup your mobile on Google Calendar. Some tips here.
7. Run gosync.bat
8. To ensure that your outlook and Google Calendar are synchronized, put the bat in your startup folder or use Windows Task Scheduler to schedule sync cycles.

As for the code, you can browse through the source code from the repository or use the web interface to browse through it.
Appointments from Outlook are picked up using a Java Connector library. This library has a dll and uses the Java Native Interface to connect to Outlook. Technically, something like JACOB could also be used. For interaction with Google Calendar, the Google Java library is used.
Some of the features that I am looking at getting into the next release (if this project is used by people :) ) include

• Deleting appointments when deleted from outlook.
• Creating events in a separate private calendar.
• Better way to handle password.
  
• Better support for recurring events

Please do drop in your comments on the project/ code or bugs. Watch out this space for updates.

Sneak-O-Scope

I had written about my experiences with opensocial and its caching troubles in a previous post. Here is the Opensocial Application that I had been working on.
Called Sneak-O-Scope, the application is like Google Analytics for your orkut profile page. The widget shows you statistics about when and from where visitors visited your profile and even how many people are viewing your profile at any given time. These statistics are updated in real time.
The application is currently in sandbox and the application has just been submitted to the orkut Gallery. If you have a sandbox account, you could add the application from this URL. Also, ensure that the application is displayed on the profile page as this is from where it picks up details.
When viewers visits your profile, they see an badge representing the numbers currently on the page. This also records the visit of the viewer. When you view the widget, you can see details like location of visit, time graphs, etc. Here is a screenshot of the widget.
Will write about the technical details of the application in a later post. I would be glad to hear your comments about the application. The application is opensource and you can take a look at the code here.

Blackberry for the poor

Hey,

I missed another meeting this morning, and that is when I decided that I needed a reminder system that was a lot more reliable than simple outlook popups. I also stumbled across a plugin for pidgin that sends SMS for missed IMs. That was when I started to write this simple system in Java that could use the Google Calendar Service to send me an SMS, alerting me about the meetings.
Outlook to Google Calendar syncing is nothing new, Google already has a sync software for this.
The only problem with that package is that it does not sync selectively; all information from my outlook goes on to Google Servers. This is something that will not go down well with the policy makers at my job. If only the software allowed the user to select the fields that need to be synced.
So I had to cook up something, and here is what i wrote. Since the code is on Google Code, you can simply sync the code and build it using ANT. If you want a pre-compiled version, drop me your mail id, I could send across the build that I have on my system. You could simply call the batch file during system startup, or event put it in the Windows Task Scheduler so that the Google Calendar and Outlook are in sync.
The code utilizes an outlook interface library and the Calendar client library that Google provides. Technical details will follow in the next post.

Orkut Opensocial Caching issues

Hi,

I had analyzed opensocial applications in the past, but writing an application is a whole new thing. I found some free time this weekend and finally decided to put the months of lazy reading to work. The API was good, but I did have some issues with caching. I don't have a external server and prefer development on my localhost using Apache Tomcat.
However, google demands that the files need to be externally visible, something that makes my build process longer. Hence, I thought that simply hosting the gadget application xml file externally, with source locations pointing to localhost should work. Interestingly, the Opensocial engine parses the application xml and modifies the source even for the script and image tags present in the file.
The technical explanation for this seems to be that this is done for caching and is the default behaviour. Such a substitution also happens for HTML/Text content fetched over gadgets.io.makeRequest. This is a main reason why development on localhost can't be done.
The caching advantage this idea provides is definately good, but I am not a great fan of making this the default development mechanism. Some of the disadvantage are

• Develpoment requires externally visible server
• Referrers are from google; depending on referrers for anti-phishing / anti-replay may not work
• Flash will not be served from the same domain, so script access may have problems
• User location may not be tracked
• Application that have images or scripts that update in realtime will still be served through google.
  

Since we also have the Javascript enabled, bypassing this restriction is not a big deal. Using iFrames could be an alternate, but this way, we would need a lot more code to call opensocial functions.
As a result, in the application that I am currently writing, my app.xml simply appends a script tag to the body. This script then loads my HTML file, directly from my server. Note that this HTML is already converted (using this) to a JSON string by a filter (or a tag library) at the server. This is picked using YUI GET. This also keeps HTML content separate from the Javascript files.