Have you ever struggled with the time and a software project’s dead line, well for sure you should have experienced this kind of situation in many times before, as a developer. In today’s software industry one of most important aspects is the time, along with the talent and skills the ability to complete a certain task within a given period is of time is crucial. This impression leads to rapid application development, which every software company strives to accomplish. So whenever you reach this kind of situation there’s always a solution under the hood and that’s the beauty of software industry. Django Web Framework is one enormous solution that you can look for rapid application development. Python’s simplicity and Django’s flexibility cover up the needs in the context of this matter.

Intro To Python

From the external glance Python is a server side scripting language like Perl, PHP. Let’s talk about this, so what is a server side scripting language and what are other scripting languages that are currently on the job other than this server side scripting languages? Well server side means that the code you write (scripting) executes on the server side (web server) rather than client side (browser). Examples for client side scripting languages are JavaScript, VB script. The specialty of python is the flexibility, lightweight, high-level and, well it can be use as an OOP (Object Oriented Programming) language. Some may refer Python as a scripting language some may refer it as a programming language anyway the context of the whole idea is still the same. Now at the inner state Python has a collectable adoption within the industry, in the early 1990 that was Guido van Rossum created the language, since then is has been grown steadily and the concentration has increased remarkably in past few years. Python is used extensively for system administration tasks (it is, for example, a vital component of several Linux distributions), but it is also used to teach programming to complete beginners. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) use Python both for development and as a scripting language in several of its systems. Industrial Light & Magic uses Python in its production of special effects for large-budget feature films. Yahoo! uses it (among other things) to manage its discussion groups. Google has used it to implement many components of its web crawler and search engine. Python is being used in such diverse areas as computer games and bioinformatics. Google’s latest innovation, the Google Wave’s server is also implemented using Python called Pygowave.

What Is Django And What’s It Origin?

We can simply describe that Django is a web framework that 100% built using Python. That’s it, it’s really a framework that built for convenience and to reduce the time consuming efforts. Out of the box Django is very conceptive and robust basically the environment, so the developers only have to focus on how they going to implement a certain web application using Django, main considerations that affects a web application. Let’s see how Django is invented (the origin), Django grew organically from real-world applications written by a Web-development team in Lawrence, Kansas, USA. It was born in the fall of 2003, when the Web programmers at the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper, Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison, began using Python to build applications The World Online team, responsible for the production and maintenance of several local news sites, thrived in a development environment dictated by journalism deadlines. For the sites including LJWorld.com, Lawrence.com, and KUsports.com journalists (and management) demanded that features be added and entire applications be built on an intensely fast schedule, often with only days or hours notice. Thus, Simon and Adrian developed a timesaving Web-development framework out of necessity it was the only way they could build maintainable applications under the extreme deadlines. So if we look at the context of this situation, they invent this framework in order to simplify and to speed the development process of their web applications, that underline concept is the hall way to Django’s success within the industry.

Django’s Current States And Capabilities

Now, several years later, Django is a well-established open source project with tens of thousands of users and contributors spread across the planet. Two of the original World Online developers (the “Benevolent Dictators for Life,” Adrian and Jacob) still provide central guidance for the framework’s growth, but it’s much more of a collaborative team effort. This history is relevant because it helps explain two key things. The first is Django’s “sweet spot.” Because Django was born in a news environment, it offers several features that are particularly well suited for ecommerce site like Amazon.com, Craigslist, and The Washington Post that offer dynamic, database-driven information. Don’t let that turn you off, though, although Django is particularly good for developing those sorts of sites, that doesn’t preclude it from being an effective tool for building any sort of dynamic Web site. (There’s a difference between being particularly effective at something and being ineffective at other things.).Let’s take a look at Django’s most conceptual capabilities.

Based On Model View Controller (MVC) Design Pattern

Although Django is based on MVC design pattern the way it uses the naming for the pattern is bit different

• Models (Model) – abstract the used data by defining classes for them and storing them on a relational database
• Views (View) – take the job of the controllers in MVC and basically define, what the user get to see. Functions (functions that changes according to the model) not classes here.
• Template (Controller) – Define how the users see the view.

Division Of Easiness And Maintainability (Applications And Projects)

Give developer a more modularize way of manipulating the web application’s parts

• Application – this is the point where you store actual functionality. For example a discussion forum would be an application; a weblog would be an application.
• Project – A project is for example your whole web site (entire outcome). Here you store your central configuration and general templates and images.

Applications are a simple way to share common functionality between various projects.

Easy Start

• Python (Django can work above the version 2.5)
• A text editor

This is all what you need to start developing with Django frame work, because it ships with a light weight development server (NOT suitable for production environment) to play around with it.

Yet Flexible

• Fast CGI (Common Gate way interface) – Common Gateway Interface, a specification for transferring information between a World Wide Web server and a CGI program. A CGI program is any program designed to accept and return data that conforms to the CGI specification. The program could be written in any programming language, including C, Perl, Java, or Visual Basic. Django itself support better processing metrology to up holds a fast CGI surrounding.
• mod_python – is an Apache module that embeds the Python interpreter within the server.
• mod_wsgi – is a simple Apache module implementation which can use to host any Python application which supports the Python WSGI interface.

Supports Most Common Database Engines

• SQLit
• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• Oracle

Main Features Resides On Developers Perspective

• A good collection of contributed applications
• Administration interface
• Authentication system
• Comments system
• Template language focused in inheritance.
• Simple form processing.
• Lots of fun stuff.

Summery

As you can see Django is a more convenient and easy to handle web framework purely built using Python, once you have mastered Django it will simply speed up your application development process and enhance the usability of your application through easy maintainability. Django can be used to develop small-scale corporate web application to expandable ecommerce web applications (this is just a surface markup which means Django can be use to develop further more complex web applications, don’t judge it from the outside view). So Django is currently available as an open source product (under BSD license) all developers, architects and fun makers are invited to use it and experience emphasize power of it.

• The latest official version is 1.1.1 – can download form here
• Documentation can be found in the following link (for installation instructions and sample applications.)
• Support + Community can be found here (also there’s a good ticketing system and IRC channel)

References

• Holovaty, A. (2009). The Definitive Guide to Django (Second edition). Apress.
• Home page. (2010). Retrieved from Django project: http://www.djangoproject.com/
• TERM/C/CGI.html. (2010). Retrieved from webopedia: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CGI.html

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Sixthsense is a technology that can be used to take the real world objects in to digital world with a minimum effort and a higher accuracy. Parnav Mistry, an Indian research assistant in MIT Media Lab has come up with number of applications made through this SixthSense Technology. Among them, SixthSense Camera, a pen that can draw in 3D, a physical Google map, a camera that can make any surface an application controlling interface were some of the most attractive innovations came out through this technology. People are very much excited with this technology as it takes them to a dream world. It is said that that this technology will be an Open source technology. Therefore the usability of this technology will be high as well.

History

Steve Mann is the father of SixthSense who made a wearable computer in 1990. The SixthSense technology was first implemented as the neckworn projector+ camera system. He was a media lab student at that time. There after it was used and implemented by an Indian who is the man has become very famous in the recent Pranav Mistry. There will be a long future rather than the short period of history for the SixthSense technology.

Development

Software

Pranav Mistry says the SixthSense software will be open source. As far as this seems to be a little set of items, there will not be user interfaces or much advanced programs for the users. There will be much harder and secured coding inside the device to make sure the security of the software. It will be interesting to know the new language for coding for a sixthsense device.

Hardware

In order to control the SixthSense, it requires some advance hardware as it appears to be. In some of the public presentations, the presenter was wearing some controlling devices including color markers, Camera and projector. When the product come to the real market there has to be lot of improvement for these hardware. They has to be compact and easily controllable. How ever the hardware integration of SixthSense technology is quite innovative since they have manage to develop camera and pen like day to day objects.

Applications

In Pranav Mistry’s demonstration, he showed several applications that can be made using the SixthSense technology. It would be a great achievement for the Information Technology as well. Since it is the beginning of the SixthSense applications, there will be lot of tough problems ahead the SixthSense application developers.

Motion Capture

The innovative camera is something that got applauds of the crowd in the demonstration. Four rubber rings in the four fingers two in each can be used do draw a rectangular. It will be the area covered by the photograph. Then the photos can be taken to any interface for editing, managing the galleries and sharing. This is much controversial. There is an inbuilt storage device where the data can be stored. When using a surface, the whole data is taken into that surface and stored in the device after the editing. The data can be hacked during the editing period. That is a serious issue in this camera application. And also the capturing device being so small like 4 rubber rings can be used to capture the photos of any location.

There are so many new applications to be developed in the near future. A remote controller for media devices can be implemented to be worked with fingers using this technology. Except having the remote controller to send fast forward, rewind or next or previous options, a SixthSense device can be used. The current process of sending fast-forward or rewind with advanced options. For example, using 2 fingers to send 5 seconds, 3 fingers to send 10 seconds likewise it can be done.

Many games can be made using this technology. A car race using an imaginary steering wheel will be an attractive application. The player will have to drive the vehicle as a real one using his arms. The SixthSense tool kit will be a good replacement for the XBOX game kit and it will not be much expensive as it is said.

3D Drawing

A pencil that enables users to draw in 3D is good innovation. It will be a good tool for the beginners to the 3D modeling world. Also it will help a lot for the engineers as well. Another implementation is the physical Google map. It provides the all data that is provided by the Google. The map available on a surface and when you keep something in it, it detects the place where the options available. Dragging and dropping hardcopies to the computer will be a good and efficient replacement for the scanner. This is much more advanced because this can take 3D objects as it appears.

Future Development

It seems to be that there can be a good future for SixthSense technology applications. There are several things that designers must pay their attention. The digital cameras came into the market with a promising call. But it did not provide the real quality for the photographers at a reasonable price. Therefore most of the professional photographers still use the analog cameras. Nano technology came into the world, but the general consumers do not use that technology so far. The reason is the extremely high price. SixthSense devices are very much different from the computers, this will be a new topic for the hackers and the other people also. First thing is to provide the security for the SixthSense applications and devices. Lot of good technologies came and died due to the security threats. There are some weaknesses that can reduce the accuracy of the data. Some of them were the on palm phone keypad. It allows the user to dial a number of the phone using the keypad available on the palm. As far as the palms are different, there will be some problems regarding some issues such like the sensitivity, and several other facts. Also 3^rd party attacks can be possible.

In addition to that Microsoft is developing a controlling environment whore the user doesn’t even have to touch the controller device named ‘Project Natal’. This will be a significant market competitor to the SixthSense technology since it still required some hardware involvement with the user.

References

• TED. (2009, 11). Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology. Retrieved 05 22, 2010, from TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html

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Cascading style sheet is a popular technology used by web developers to separate content of the web pages from its design. CSS provide wide range of features to control the look and feel of the web pages without even touching main HTML design. The standards for CSS are developed by World Wide Web consortium also known as W3C. That makes a CSS a universal web styling language with consistent syntaxes with improved cross browser compatibility. Most importantly CSS file can be totally separated from the main HTML design as well as it can be embedded with it. Most of the popular web designing tools including Adobe Dreamweaver support CSS by its default configuration. In order to cope up with the modern demands of we design CSS has evolved drastically with in past few years. As a significant result of that improvement the CSS3 standards are developing by W3C. The progress they have made is displayed in here which is in official W3C web site. However at this moment most of the proposed features have been implemented by major web browsers, so we can already enjoy the power of CSS3.

History

CSS1

CSS1 is the first edition of Cascading Style Sheets which were introduced in 1996. It came with the support for several properties. Introduction of unique ‘id’ for each property and introduction of classes to properties that should have the same styles attributes were the most important things there were.  Margin, border, padding and positioning also powered by style sheets although they could be done by using the HTML elements. Spacing between lines and rows of tables are also easily done using the stylesheets. The W3C stated the importance of using CSS instead of having the html as the giving the ability to optimization and making it easy for the designers to design and settle down the design easily.

CSS2

CSS2 was published in 1998. Positioning of index with several property values such like fixed, absolute, relative and indexing were the commonly highlighted ones among them. Bidirectional texts and some other new front properties such as shadows were introduced by this edition of CSS. Two updates and features came in to fix the errors in CSS 2. CSS 2.1 was the last 2^nd generation edition of CSS.

CSS3

CSS3 is the latest edition of the CSS Stylesheets. There are several new functionalities have been provided through CSS3. Functions such like opacity, Text-overflow, media queries and box shadows are some of the much attractive introductions.

Rounded Corners

As there are much new features, the simplest and easily useable one is that the rounded corners. The previous CSS2 stylesheets did not allowed users to make this available in one step. They had to add four circular images for the four edges of the div and make the border rounder. The “-moz-border-radius” and “-webkit-border-radius” properties enable the users to be those borders round. Male the border image availability is another great introduction as it lets the user to add custom and decorated images for the borders.

Background Decoration

The background decoration is available with the possibility of customizing it. ‘background-origin’ and ‘background-clip’ gives a customized display for the content background. It has also enabled to have multiple backgrounds to the same content through the CSS3 styles. In addition, there is a new feature which is called background-image-size to resize the size of the background image of the divs.

Colors

There is a huge variety of colors available with the new CSS edition. HSL, HSLA and RGBA are the new color schemes. The new ‘A’ value stands for the opacity. With this value, the divs can make transparent and give a much attractive look to the appearance. In early editions, the transparency was obtained by adding a .png or .gif image as the background.

Text Effects

Most of the occasions when it is need to add customized text effects such like the shadow; the designers used graphics made using the Photoshop like software. With the latest edition of the CSS, it can be done without adding a weighted image to the content. The ‘text-shadow’ property comes with making them possible and providing a better image than the CSS. Text overflow control has made it easy to give good boundaries to the content while having the two values which are ‘ellipsis’ and ‘clip’. ‘Word wrap can be used to mark the boundaries of a particular text area while giving the options to mark the boundaries even by the number of letters or words.

Attribute Matching

Attribute matching made the styles available for some tags which are named with some starting part of a string. For example, the ids’ which are named as ‘sosa’ and ‘sopa’ can be easily applied with styles by making the tag name starting value as ‘so’. The outline property can be used to make an outline for the content. In earlydays, it was done by having two separate divs and applying the border to the outer one in which the width and height values greater than the inner one.

Box Model

Box model is a new property which was introduced with the CSS3 edition. With this, it can be easily assigned with customized div appearance. There should be two inner divs and a single outer div with the width of each inner div being 50%.

Web Fonts

A new collection of web fonts was introduced with the CSS3 edition. The multi column layout view also can be applied to the content as it can be used to provide multi column paragraphs. Media boxes are also a new implementation that could help to give a good view to the end user.

Suggestions For Future Development

One of the most expected further implementations are that the ‘Math’ functions of the CSS. It can be used in a vast area if it was introduced with mathematic functions. Aural Stysheets also expected to released but the W3C has not made a clear statement about that. There will be a set of properties for creating charts in the near future. Although CSS can be used now also to draw these charts, it is expected to be more convenient way in the near future. Image processing functions will be a good implementation to future. The page size could be removed from a large capacity. Though W3C has introduced universal standard for CSS, different browser engines have slight variation of interpretation. This can be identified as a major drawback of CSS standards. Due to this developer still have to think about using CSS in some special development scenarios. Furthermore in future releases CSS might contain advanced image processing techniques too. When thinking about far future CSS might be able to control HTML tags beyond 2D layout. Even at this moment there are some demonstration of 3D image gallery made using CSS3 with the aid of HTML5. They will be even improved most importantly to work on any browser platform.

References

• 7 Awesome CSS3 Techniques You Can Start Using Right Now. (n.d.). Retrieved 06 07, 2010, from Mashable: http://mashable.com/2010/06/04/awesome-css3-techniques/
• Cross-browser CSS3 border-radius (rounded corners). (2010, January). Retrieved June 2010, from dimox.net: http://dimox.net/wp-images/css-border-radius.jpg
• CSS3 Modules. (n.d.). Retrieved 06 08, 2010, from CSS: http://www.css3.info/modules/

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Joomla is one of the most famous open-source Content Management Systems. Most of the open-source CMSs are not that rich in functionality. Among them, Joomla gives much than any other. The Joomla framework is written in PHP.  It makes users easy to publish the content to the web with the available wide variety of modules. Polls, language internationalization and RSS feed are some of frequently used ones among them. The popularity and the consumer attraction are well showed by the download times within the first year being 2.5 million.

Content Management Systems

A content management system is a tool that can be used to separate the content from presentation. In general, a Content Management System follows three steps. There are designing the end user template, adding the content as text or html to the database and displaying the results to the end user. Increased functionality, being easy to do large-scale changes in a very easy manner and no need of HTML knowledge are the some of the advantages of Content Management Systems. It will be a great option to use a CMS for large, often updating, multiple contributors required and dynamic content included websites.

History Overview

The name Joomla came from the Arabic word jumla which means all together. This was a legalization of the early Content Management System which was known as Mambo. It was trademarked by Miro International Private Limited. Joomla has a very short span of history as a Content Management System. It was first released in the August 2005. Thereafter, day by day it has improved its functionalities and become stronger than the other once.

How It Works

The content is the key in a Content Management System. Therefore the content is displayed with three types. A section is the basic among them which groups a group of content. A set of sections are categorized as a category. Articles hold content like images, text and other content. There is a Media Manager to manage the images like things. Contact is a place to store forms. The user can change colors and the graphics using the website template. In addition, the users are able to use plug-in that will add automated content to the user’s content. The site owner has the full permission to the content and the owner can check them by just adding ‘/Administrator’ to the homepage URL. It contains many more other features like User Manager, Language Manager, Banner Manager, Polls, Search, Web link Management, Syndication and Newsfeed Management, Menu Manager, Template Manager, Integrated help system and web services to provide a top class output to the Joomla consumers.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Joomla

It is said that Joomla is the most recommended Content Management System for a website that contains large content. It can be described as a fully fledged CMS. The deep levels of navigation make the content well managed and improve the efficiency of the website. The main advantage of Joomla is the free and open source availability.

There are so many disadvantages as well. It has a bigger learning curve when it is compared to other CMS like WordPress. Joomla is not the best option for small sites. It is not at all good with Search Engine Optimization. JavaScript and CSS can get bulky due to the slow loading time and the layout changing is also not that easy when compared to other famous CMSs. Some costly plug-ins for Joomla comes freely with the Content Management Systems like WordPress.

Competitors

There are number of Content Management Systems available in the today’s world. Durphal and WordPress are the most famous ones among them. WordPress is much lighter than the Joomla and it can be a good option for the websites with small content. Durphal is much powerful and flexible when compared to the Joomla. But the numbers of Joomla users are greater than Durphal. The main reason is that it is the easiest CMS to handle websites with large content. In a nutshell, WordPress is the best for the end users, Durphal is the best option for the web developers and Joomla will be the best web designing CMS.

How To Make Joomla More Efficient

One of the major concerns over the other Content Management Systems with Joomla is that the high complexity of operating for the end user. It will be a better implementation if it is possible to reduce the complexity for certain extend. Blogs are the world’s fastest growing type of web pages. Among the Content Management Systems, WordPress is the most popular for blogging. The reason is that it can be updated frequently in an easy manner. It can be great if it is possible to provide two editions of the Joomla CMS. One will be for the high end users and the other one will be for the normal users. The reason is that the normal users can be provided some easy and lightweight tools with them. Most of the good software has several editions. Microsoft products have become that much popular due to the user availability in their own choice. This edition based development is not that often seen in the Open source products. Providing it can do much better for everyone. Another major issue in Joomla is the weaknesses that it has. There are so many security threats and vulnerabilities in it.  Therefore the content can be damaged or hacked during the processes of developing.

Consumer Response

There is a rapid growth in the Joomla community since it was released. The latest builtwith statistics shows that it has achieved the third place from the Content Management Systems. In addition, it has had a +0.18% movement from the 4.6% total CMS used websites. Another factor provided to prove the consumer response is that the number of comments and posts appear on the walls of the social networks. With the Video component and the Joomla web services the users and the new trend has attracted to this community.

References

• CMS Usage Statistics. (2010, 05 18). Retrieved 05 27, 2010, from CMS Usage Statistics: http://trends.builtwith.com/cms
• Joomla-Advantages and Disadvantages. (2009, 09 28). Retrieved 05 27, 2010, from slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/tradocaj/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-joomla

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Social networks were gaining their popularity in an exponential rate in the past few years. If you take a look at Alexa web ranking you can see so many social networks at the top including Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. The major reason behind this success was people like to express themselves and they won’t get enough chances with their busy life style. And some people feel more comfortable to express their feeling with a online friend rather than real friend. Apart from that there were so many creative technological innovation done by social networks in order to make it easier to express their member’s feelings. However at this point Social networks has became a addictive web applications and you can easily find so many people who are spending large part of their life connection to them, playing games with their online friends, chatting without knowing what is happening in the real world.

Current Social Networks

Facebook

Facebook is at the top in when it comes to the popularity of social networks. It’s providing all the common features of any social network including personal profile, multimedia sharing etc. In addition to that Facebook API provides facility to develop 3^rd party application which can share facebook member details. This is the one of critical success factor of the facebook. In addition to that it provides highly performance tuned streamlined interfaces with a chatting module. In past few years facebook was doing so many developments and so many new applications were introduced. It leads facebook to highly sophisticate at the same time highly complex social network. However traffic ranking was continuously increasing for facebook.

Twitter

Compared to other popular social networks Twitter is new. But it gained exponential popularity due to its highly simple functionality. The major feature is members can write a message which contain maximum 140 characters and other member who follow can read it in their main page. In addition to that your message will be added to twitter main time line if your profile is not protected and the entire world can see it. Due to this simple functionality so many user were attracted to twitter and it was showing nearly 300% member base growth in past few years. And it won’t collect your personal data like facebook and other social networks. So there are lesser chances of privacy issues to occur. These days most of the online marketers using Twitter to promote their products and services to large crowd.

Ning

Ning is a special kind of social network concept. It allows its members to create their own social network on Ning platform. And they have made it so user friendly, so any non-technical use and create their own social network within few minutes. They also providing major functionality for the social networks and users can easily configure them by drag and drop development interface. At this moment Ning supports large amount of social networks on their platform. According to Alexa ranking it’s gaining its popularity in a decent rate along with the number of social networks on it.

There are so many other social networks including MySpace, Hi5, Flicker which is specially designed to share images, Orkut which is prowled by Google and LinkedIn.

Features

Networking

The most common feature in any social network is Friends network. It allows you to create your own profile and add your personal data in to that. After that you ne send request to other member, the one who confirm it will become your friends. Your selected private data will be shared with all the members and other may shared with your friends. It provides features to communicate with members through text messages and various other ways. Multimedia sharing is one of the popular features. There you can upload image or video and your friends can

Micro Blogging

This was a pretty old feature in social network. It was there in almost all the social networks including hi5 and Facebook with different names. But Twitter took only that feature and creates a new social network with lead to huge success and popularity. It allows you to write a message with limited length and share it with your friends.

Applications

So many social networks provide API which can be used to develop 3^rd party application which can be interact with it. Facebook is showing major success in there with Facebook API. In the Facebook there is millions of application developed and so many users are addicted to them. In Addition to that Twitter is also providing highly sophisticated API to control Twitter using 3^rd party application. However this has its negative effects, why so many people develop robots to spam and do other harmful things in the social networks using their APIs.

Future Of Social Networks

Privacy And Security

These days’ main concern in all the social networks is Privacy and security. In past few years there was so many incidents reported about the breach of privacy in social networks and sometimes they led to huge disasters as well. If you take a look at those incidents most of the time it about “Not using” provided security and privacy features. Due to that all the social networks providing highly simplified privacy and security controls. More creatively some social networks don’t collect member’s private details as far as they can. In future social networks will provide more sophisticated privacy features and users will be able to control each and every parameter as they want. And the privacy groups will be well defined like they have in Facebook now as Friends, Friends of Friends and Public. In the other hand when you increase privacy it will be difficult to share things freely. In order to solve such a problems social networks will provide clearly defined public data and more comprehensive searching to connect with each other. There may be search which shows a relationship between you and another member who is not your friend in a tree structure like graphical representation, but still you can see his personal details.

Simplicity

Twitter became success it selects only one feature which is micro blogging. At the same time Flicker is a huge success it select only image sharing. This is the future trend in social networking. People need them to be simple and highly user friendly rather than full of complex features. And most of the social networks provide mobile interface where users can control it over the phone or its browser. This further increases the interaction and simplicity of the social networks. In near future there may be dedicated mobile devices which can be used with Social networks.

More Personal Details

With the improvement of the security and simplicity of social networks people will share more and more probate information with them. Even now Google Latitude provides a facility to update your location via mobile phones GPS unit. And social networks already have your email, its password and large part of your personality details. In future if they manage to get your DNA structure online? There won’t be any privacy and it can simply re create you not just with physical features but with personality features as well.

There will be continuous and increasing impact on human civilization by online social networks. They can be positive or possibly negative according to current observation.

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GPS satellite grid is maintained by Unites States Government and it gives as a free service to the public. The Global Positioning System provides facility of giving the information details of a certain place under any condition of weather. More than 30 GPS satellites located around the earth helps to calculate the exact position. US government understood the less importance of functioning this only in their country and then they made it available worldwide.

It has a lot of advantages. The best thing is that it gives us an accurate idea about a position of some object or a person. That feature of the Global Positioning System can be used for so many applications and already done by several people. Another advantage of this Global Positioning System is that it gives us whole details about the location with a lot of details such Altitude etc.

Technology

The Global Positioning System is a system which has a group of satellites in earth orbit that transmit precise signals, it allows GPS receivers to calculate and display accurate information about the location, time and speed to the person who is using the application. The GPS receiver is designed to calculate the location of the receiver based on the singles received using Mathematical formulas.

The way how Global Positioning System works is simple. Each satellite transmits a unique signature as the signal. That signature consists of the position of each satellite. When there is a need of calculating a place, at least four satellites transmit signals to the object and calculate the time taken to receive that signal back. With the time and the speed of the signal, the distance is measured. At least a GPS unit needs to have four channels To be able to lock onto four signals. Most of the units have 12 channels. Calculations were made for the orbits necessary for each of the 31 satellites. As the orbit has 360 degrees in it, at least 6 satellites are visible to any place on the earth.GPS can be used in any type of weather and they are used on land, air, and in water.

Applications

There are so many devices made with the implementation of Global Positioning System. Google Earth is the most famous application that uses the signals received by the GPS receivers. It enables public also to access the maps which tell the users about the locations all around the world.3DEM is freely available software that will create 3D terrain scenes and flyby animations and export GIS terrain data files using any of the following freely available terrain data as a source.People use Global Positioning System for several uses. A research published on a magazine states that the percentage of uses for each several requirement is as follows.

• Car navigation 37%
• Hand held 26%
• Tracking 10%
• GIS 8%
• Survey 7%
• Manufacturing 7%
• Vessel Voyage 2%
• Military Related 1%

United States and European countries show a rapid growth in using GPS for the car navigations and the number of GPS equipped mobile phone usage. Those facts prove that the Global Positioning System helps many people in many other ways.

Navigators

Navigation applications are the most famous GPS applications. The latest releases of those applications allow users to have much advanced features and facilities.

DeLorme Street Atlas 2010: This is software that enables users to do things like trip planning, GPS navigation and mapping. This was much harder to learn how to work with it with the software. It is said that the latest edition has removed that complexity and made it easy for the users to use.

Gramin nRoute: This is free software that enables laptop users to make their work easy with the GPS maps. However, users must already have a MapSource product running on your computer for nRoute to work.In addition to those Microsoft AutoRoute and Streets and Tips are some of the other famous applications.

Tracking

A tracking applications are not that much popular as the navigation applications. But, so many people take uses of them. It enables users to find a location of any object that is tagged with a system.

Top Grossing Apps on iTunes: iPhone users can have this facility through the iTune store. This made the iPhone look much smart in its words.

LOCiMOBILE Apps for tracking people: This enables iPhone users to track people in a particular place at a particular time.

GPS Tracking Lite v2.0 is taking the nation by storm: GPS Tracking v2.0 by Locimobile is their biggest update to date application and it includes much advanced features than the others.

Auto pilot Applications

An auto pilot application is software that enables a vehicle to travel automated with the GPS map. These have been tested and made so many applications where the accuracy is also high.

Future of GPS Applications

There can be several further implementations also as this GPS has become widely available. This can be used to provide a solution for the deforestation.  The green plant density of a certain area can be calculated or estimated. With a comparison and analyze, the deforestation rate can be calculate and can ask the officials to pay their attention on those areas.

Cultivation also can be helped with this Global Positioning System. The empty lands can be explored and let the people to cultivate on those areas is something that can help the people to improve their production and the right place for the right product will be available through this system.

The functioning of the currently available GPS is at a very low level. This can be developed with advanced features that could be able to find the areas where marijuana cultivated likewise. The cameras should be much more sensitive to identify such objects. The research things will be easy if that kind of facility can be established. The application developers will have much advanced API for their development that can give a greater outcome.

Other Satiate Grids

IRNSS

It is named as Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System which will be released by 2014 as it was approved by the government in 2006. This will be fully control of the Indian government. This will be totally base on India.

QZSS

Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) is to be developed by Japan for their GPS coverage.

References

• Forssell, P. B. (2009). The dabgers of GPS/GNSS. Coordinates , 6-10.
• Hlavac, M. (2007, October 11). List of laptop GPS navigation software programs and review. Retrieved May 16, 2010, from laptop gps world: http://www.laptopgpsworld.com/37-list-laptop-gps-navigation-software-programs-reviews

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Bitmap and Vector graphics are two main types of graphics that can be used to display vivid information to the viewers. Graphic designing has improved very much during a short span of time. Graphic designing task is done with several intentions in several manners. Depend on the place and the time, the designing methods differs. Number of applications and tools has developed to provide the consumer request to the maximum extend.

Bitmap Graphics

A bit map is a map of bits. The bits are stored in well organized arrays where the array elements are called as pixels. Bitmaps are also named as the Raster Artworks. Possibility of making very smooth color gradations makes it easy to apply photographic or artistic effects. Graphic Interchange Format (.GIF), Joint Photographers Expert Group (.JPG, .JPEG), Tagged Image File Format (.TIFF, .TIF), Encapsulated Postscript (.EPS) are some of the famous Bitmap graphic file formats.

Graphic Interchange Format

It was introduced in 1987 and has become a very popular graphic file format since it supports a wider area of the worldwide web. This format can be used to create the animations as well. With available 256 different colors, it supports 8 bits per a pixel. Images with continuous colors will not be well viewed by this format.

Joint Photographers Expert Group

It is a widely used bitmap graphic format that uses lossy compression. The compression ratio is 10:1 and there is a little quality reduction also.

Tagged Image File Format

TIFF formats are very often used in Apple Macintosh computers. This format can use both lossy and lossless compression techniques. The TIFF format is the standard for document management systems and document imaging.

Encapsulated Postscript

EPS can be used as a postscript document that contains additional information about the file formats. In addition this can be used to have a preview on a document containing information.

Bitmap Graphic software

• Adobe Photoshop
• Corel Paint
• Paint Shop Pro

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Bitmap Graphics

The main advantage of a bitmap is that it can be accessed sooner through the internet when you have the proper size. The accuracy is very high when displaying image information including the shadings and the other complex and smooth places. Another advantage is that it can be used as a universal format. Most of the Bitmap graphics are not proprietary.

There are many disadvantages of using the bitmap images when it comes to professional level. The main disadvantage is that it cannot get the original quality when resizing. The best solution to overcome this is to cut the image in the size which it is needed to use.

Vector Graphics

Lines and curves are the basics of Vector Graphics. The Vectors are defined by the mathematical drawings and calculations. Illustrator (.AI), Encapsulated PostScript (.EPS), PostScript (.PS), Windows Meta File (.WMF) and Flash Movie (.FLA, .SWF) are some of very popular file formats.Vector images do not have the issue of reducing the quality when zoom the images. The mathematical functions that describe the images can resize the images without getting blurred.

Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator Artworks are proprietary file format of Adobe Systems. There is much software that supports Adobe Illustrator file formats. This AI formats supports both PDF and EPS formats.

Windows Meta File

It can be used in Microsoft Windows systems as a graphics file format. As WMF was a 16-bit file format, the new 32-bit Enhanced Meta File format was introduced to support the windows versions after Windows 3.0. Enhanced Metafile Plus extension and compressed formats such as Compressed Windows Meta File and Compressed Windows Enhanced Meta file formats were announced with the Windows XP released.

Flash Movie

This is also a format developed by Adobe Systems with the intention of making the video streaming available over the internet. The SWF format was released first in 2002, with the Flash player version 6. The latest formats of flash movies are much different compared to the previous versions. There are two main video formats named .f4v and .f4p and two audio formats named .f4a and .f4b.

Vector Graphic Software

• Abobe Illustrator
• Corel Draw
• Macromedia Freehand
• Macromedia Flash
• Resizing is better in vectors than the bitmaps
• Vector graphics usually require fewer amounts of data than the bitmaps.
• Vector graphics are easy to edit than the bitmap graphics.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Using Vectors

There are some disadvantages over using the vector graphics. The images with complex curves are hard to reproduce. It can be harder to write the code for a particular image. The vector images come relatively slower. The other disadvantage is that the most of the vector formats are proprietary.

When To Use Vector And Bitmap

Vector will be the best option for images with text, many colored graphic objects. Due to its algorithmic functions, it will not be hard to give a quality image. Bitmaps are the best choice for complicated images with shadows and many shades, 3D effects, textures and photographs. The main thing is to consider when choosing a bitmap image is that to choose the same size that is need to be applied on the corresponding place.

Converting Two Types

Bitmaps to Vectors: The edges of the objects are located in a bitmap image and the resulting shapes are converted into vector objects.

Vectors to Bitmaps: There are two main issues when converting vectors to bitmaps. The first step is rasterization. Determining the color of each pixel can be not that perfect. Vectors being the mathematical functions of lines and curves cannot make a perfect contact with the each pixel of the image.

References

• (2009). Retrieved May 2010, from www.eznetu.com: http://www.eznetu.com/Graphics/graphic_types/images/bitmap-vector-diagram2.jpg
• Harris, A. (n.d.). Vector Graphics. Retrieved 05 31, 2010, from http://wally.cs.iupui.edu/n351/vector/Vector_Graphics.html

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Color Theory is the guidance for mixing and making visual impacts on the color combinations. Writings of Alberti and notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci show the first appearance of the color theory. There are three main aspects of using the color theory. Giving the maximum readability and clarity to the viewer, drawing on with an effective meaning and creating a good combination of graphics to the viewer are them. Ones sweet can be bitter for someone. Therefore the color theory gives a justification for make it in favor of everyone.

Color

It is the frequency of a light wave within the bandwidth located in the electromagnetic spectrum where human eye can catch it. The range of frequencies which are higher than the maximum of the above bandwidth is called as the ultraviolet region while the lower frequencies are in the infrared region. Every visible color in the spectrum is a combination of the three basic colors which are Red, Green and Blue.

Color Depth And Color Pallets

In general, a picture is a collection of pixels where each pixel has a unique color. The number of colors that a pixel can have is defined as the color depth. The color depth is equal to two to the power of number of bits that image have. For example an 8bit color image can have 256 colors to represent a one pixel and a 16bit color image can have 65536 colors to represent a single pixel. A color pallet is a mathematical table that defines the available color of a pixel. They are also called as the Color Look Up Tables. Most common pallets are of 1, 4,5,16 and 24 in bit depths.

Web safe colors are the colors that are being shared by the Windows and Mac operating system pallets. There is a combination of color codes ‘00’, ’33’, ‘66’, ‘99’, ‘CC’, ‘FF’ for each color in the web safe color palette. Each color is defined with three pairs of numbers.

Color Models

Color Model is the way to specify colors in the terms of computer. RGB, SGB, HSL, CMYK, CIE are some of them. It represents color in a mathematical system.

RGB is the most famous color model from all. It contains Red, Green and Blue which are the primary colors of light. The 24-bit RGB color system represents each color by providing 8-bits for each color. Therefore there are 256 shades of each red, green and blue color.

HSB is a combination of Hue, Saturation and Brightness. Every color has 3numbers from each representation. Hue is a value between 0 to 360 degrees. The next number saturation is a percentage value between 0 and 100. The last one is brightness that can have a value between 0 and 100. HSL is the replacement of lightness for the brightness in HSB. Lightness means the black color availability of the color.

HSI color model includes a parameter for the intensity. The distance unit percentage from the center of the HSI color pyramid is defined as the Saturation. Intensity defines the distance up axis from black which will be ‘0’ or ‘1’.

CMYK color model is a collection of Cyan Magenta Yellow and black and it is the color model used in printers as well. Cyan is the while light without red. Magenta is while light without green. Yellow is white light without blue. But this model is less applicable in multimedia production. They are the primary colors of pigments that are used to make the other colors in practical.

Analogous And Complementary Colors

Analogous Colors are defined as any close three colors on a 12 colored color wheel. The nature is the best example for a practical place where the Analogous combination can be found. There is lot of varieties of greens that are closer to each other in the jungles as well. They are very much pleasant to the eye because of the less change in it. Also it has less attraction in it due to the low color change n it. Split Analogous colors are the colors that are located once after a once in the color wheel.

Complementary Colors are any two colors that are located one against one. They are very hard to pick up on human eyes and it shows things highlighted. Places where to find quick attraction can be colored with complementary colors. Although these combinations are not that cool for eyes, it will not be a good implementation for the pictures that should keep the eye for a long time. Split-complementary color scheme are the ones that have one hue but located in each one’s opposition.

Color Theory Applications

There are so many applications of color theory can be found in the day today life. Graphic designing is the most famous one among them. Several artworks have become famous due to the proper application of the color theory. Color theories are highly applied for the advertising purposes. There are so many products that has become much famous and so many that has become less popular due to the color selections for the advertising. A company logo is the trademark of a company. It will be a key factor in the business purposes. Normally the Analogous color patterns are applied to the logo designs because of it provides the majesty of that company. Advertising is very much different from the logo designing and the complementary colors are applied to get more consumer attraction for the sales purposes. Video games are also applied the color theory with several intentions such like changing the player’s mind during the play, highlighting and hiding several operations for the player and so many other tricks that could attract the player to play the game. World Wide Web is another famous application of the color theory that gives dynamic content to the site visitors by using several techniques. Cascading Style Sheets are often used to provide the content to the user in a very much attractive manner. Interior designers concern very much on the color theory to match the suitable colors for the building according to the place.

Color theory is not that famous as most of the other theories used for any other works. But it is one of the rapidly used theories in the world and this can be applicable for most of purposes and activities.

References

• Color Models: HSB, RGB, CYMK and LAB. (n.d.). Retrieved 05 27, 2010, from WOWAREA: http://www.wowarea.com/english/help/color.htm

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NoSQL is a non-relational database system, which means it is not an SQL database, which has developed getting most from the UNIX system and for its user interface; it has used the UNIX shell language.  In addition, the object databases can be classified as ‘NoSQL’ databases.

When working on complex operations with a large set of data using a table-based database system, it   needs more resources and time consuming and it is actually an incredible piece of software but it might not be the best tool for every stored procedures. NoSQL is easy to use database system, its performance is fast, and it is a portable without any limitations other than the memory and the processor speed.  It uses key, value pair to store data so, if you want to keep your data in a persistent state and have access to them, then this would be an ideal database system. The object databases are been based on client-centric architecture rather than server-centric architecture and the queries are performed on the client. In addition, without bound to server hardware limitation, the data can be partition and scaled easily. However, if you have to work with around 10 gigabyte of data table that must be update each second from various clients, you cannot rely on the NoSQL since it lacks of performance on very big tables. At the same time some NoSQL databases do not even support a basic feature like automatic partitioning, but they provide reliability features like distribution, replication, snapshot, record-level version history, and MVC. Those are the reasons people like NoSQL most.

It is closely integrated and an extension of the UNIX environment. When using NoSQL, a database is just a regular UNIX ASCII file and you can use, move and maintain it as any other files that you have access. In addition, it does not need a fixed schema or data type, it does not have the ‘JOIN’ query, and ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability) properties are not important here. Moreover, queries are relatively simple than relational database system. Moreover, when using the table-based database system, there will be problems regarding the versions, but in this NoSQL database, you do not have to care about which version you are developing and which version the clients have.

There are some well know companies use the NoSQL databases as their storage and retrieval database system. Facebook’s Cassandara, LinkedIn’s Project Voldemort, Google’s BigTable and Amazon’s Dynamo are some of them. Chordless, CouchDB, Db4o, GT.M, Hbase, Hypertable, Memcachedb, Mnesia, MongoDB and Redis are some popular open source NoSQL projects.

Nowadays, the web community is more developed than it was. Therefore, it needs more technology with high performance rather than the traditional way of RDBMS to store and retrieve data. To meet the requirements of many ecommerce applications it needs an object database such as NoSQL where you can work with your own preferred language. If you have problems related to the scalability like reaching the limit of the write capacity of a single database server, amount of data is greater than a single server can hold or your page loading is being slow as well as structure related problems like tables with lots of columns and a little of them are actually used, and have a lot of join queries to deal with or your schema have a large number of many to many join tables you can think about to change to NoSQL.

References

• (n.d.). Retrieved January 2010, from Ycombinator.com: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=859468
• (n.d.). Retrieved January 2010, from Odbms.org: http://www.odbms.org/blog/
• (n.d.). Retrieved January 2010, from Eflorenzano.com: http://www.eflorenzano.com/blog/post/my-thoughts-nosql/
• (n.d.). Retrieved January 2010, from Buytaert.net: http://buytaert.net/nosql-and-sql
• (n.d.). Retrieved January 2010, from Carsonified.com: http://carsonified.com/blog/dev/should-you-go-beyond-relational-databases/
• (n.d.). Retrieved from http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_j6mB7TMmJJY/SxKcnXYD5GI/AAAAAAAAAX0/5uC0_Uo1fU8/s1600/p1.png

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Compressed DVDs were getting popular in past few years because it’s easy to transfer them over the internet due to their reduced file size. Though the file size is reduced, the quality of the video is almost same as DVDs. There are various video compression algorithms to compress a DVD to 700MB file. The most popular one is DivX. But the main problem with DivX is, the compression tools having only commercial versions. But fortunately there are open source products out there which are may be better than DivX. The most popular open source video codec is XviD. (You may figure out that XviD is reverse order of the characters in DivX). Most of the torrents up loaders are using XviD codec to compress DVDs and make 700MB DVD Rips.

We can make our own DVD rips by our self. This will be really useful to compress and back up huge move collections.

Process Of Compressing DVD

• Extract and separate Video and Audio Track in DVD
• Index The Video File
• Compress The Audio file probably to MP3 format.
• Process the video index, mainly resize, color filters and remove grains.
• Configure the Codec specially compression matrix, min and max quantizer, iFrame interval etc
• Compress the Video.
• Include synchronized and compressed video and audio in media container, mainly AVI.

This process may seem complex for a general user. But there are some fully automated tools to compress DVDs with just few clicks.

Getting Started

Software

• DVD Decrypter: This is the software we are going to use to copy DVD to hard drive.
• AutoGK: This is a package containing many open source software which requires for each phase in video compression and playback.

Hard Drive Space

The DVD compression process requires a huge amount of disk space. Due to that it’s better if you can have more than 10GB of space free for this.

Copy DVD To Hard Drive

The 1st step is copy the DVD in to Hard Drive of your PC. When you copy it, use file mode in DVD Decrypter (Mode >> File). And remove all protection in DVD before copy. (Tools >> Settings >> File Mode >> Options). Then select destination and hit decrypt. The DVD will be copied in to your hard drive in given location without any protection.

Compress With AutoGK

Select Input And Output Files

The step one in AutoGK is selecting the DVD source and selects a destination for compressed file. Select the DVD files from the location you saved them using DVD Decrypter as the input file. You have to select the .ifo file related to main movie. Probably there will be many .ifo files, the .ifo file having related most number of .vob files must be the one for movie. Then select the output file. Give a Hard drive location which is having more than 10GB for this.

Select Audio Track And Subtitle Tracks

DVDs contain various Audio tracks and Subtitle tracks. When we compress the DVD we can select them as appropriate. When it comes to Audio tracks we must select AC3 track. If not the audio compression won’t work properly. You can select subtitle tracks as you need.

Select Output Size

When you select the output size you must be very careful. If it’s a movie having play time less than 2.20h you can go for 700MB. If the play time is more than 2.20h, it’s recommended to go for a 1400MB output size. If you have a special requirement you can go for custom size. If you’ll go for target quality, the output file won’t be standalone player compatible. In other words you won’t be able to play it in a domestic DivX certified DVD player.

Advance Parameters

If it’s a 700mb output in the resolution, go for fixed width between 672 – 640 and CBR Mp3 – 128 kbps. If you going to rip to 1400mb file make the resolution fixed width 720 which is original size of the DVD and Original Audio track.

Expert Tips

To determine Audio bit rate and resolution you can use the factor bits per pixel. To calculate bits per pixel you can use this excel sheet. If bit per pixel value for the specific case will be greater than 0.15, output file will be almost good as DVD quality. Try out different value for resolution and audio bit rate.

Start Encoding

Now it’s all done. Now hit add Job, then start. Now all you have to does is waiting till it gets converted. It may take long time and that would depend on the processing power of your computer.

Playback

For the play back video you can use DivX codec and your favorite media player. If you need to see subtitles, the software “DirectVOBSub” is already there in your PC since it comes with AutoGK.

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