July 17th 2011 : Textoo Pro now in the apple app store. Download it here : http://textoo.in

July 10th 2011 : Textoo v2.0 renamed to Textoo Pro

Release of Textoo Pro has been postponed to July 15th 2011 due to app store codesign issues.

Here’s a sneak peek into the brand new version of Textoo Pro – the iOS app which lets you send free real SMS to any mobile phone in India and other countries.
Based on the numerous feedback emails we have got, we have tried our best to incorporate all the enhancements into this version.

A brand new custom designed UI with retina support
With an intent to keep the UI similar on both iOS and android versions, the entire UI was rewritten by avoiding the use the standard components provided by apple SDK as much as possible. The UI design was inspired by Apple’s iBook application and each page was designed to work well on both portrait and landscape views with support for retina and non retina displays. Animations and transitions were added to boost the look and feel of the app.

Native support for group messages and multi select contacts
Textoo is often used by people who send bulk messages very frequently. With Textoo Pro, you can create contact groups and these contact groups will be available anywhere on you device. The contact selector also allows you to choose multiple contacts at once thus making it easier when it comes to bulk messaging.

Message Queuing
Whenever a message cannot be sent because of the absence of internet connectivity, the message will get queued in the outbox and as soon as connectivity gets restored, you will be prompted to send the unsent messages. This feature also ensures that users without edge or 3G connectivity can queue their messages which will get sent as soon as they arrive at a place with WiFi hotspots.

Message threads
Similar to the native messaging app, Textoo Pro allows you to start a new message thread or continue a previously started thread , thus keeping your messages organized. You can also control the maximum number of messages displayed in a thread. Whenever the message is being sent, the thread will include a progressbar showing the status of the sending procedure.

Automatic message slicing
Some of the gateways have a character limit for each SMS. Textoo will automatically detect this upper limit and slice the message into multiple parts and will send them one after the other. You could also specify the text which gets added after each of the sliced message to indicate to the receiver that it is one part of a long message. for e.g. (cont..)

Check out some of the other screens :

Stay tuned.. Textoo Pro will be available in the appstore on July 15th, 2011

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This is a recording of the webcast on Titanium for New developers ( a high level overview of Titanium architecture), hosted by Kevin Whinnery at Appcelerator Inc.

This webcast was broadcast on 5th Jan 2011, 9am PST.

Click here to view the webcast

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Number of followers: This factor contributes heavily to the score. More the followers, more is ones reputation. But its not just the number which decides the reputation. Each follower has his own reputation on twitter which will contribute to the user he follows. If a users reputation was only dependant on his followers, then a recursive algorithm would be required to accurately determine one’s reputation. Again the problem will arise when there are cyclic links, i.e. you are followed by a follower who is being followed by someone whom you are following, which will make it an infinite cycle. So the algorithm should stop the branching process as soon as cyclic links are detected. But most probably twitter.com would decide on the depth of penetration for each calculation beforehand.

Also there are certain users who back follow other users who are following them. Such cases will give rise to high rates of cyclic links and hence should not contribute much to the reputation calculation.

Number of retweets: You are definitely reputed if a significant number of users retweet your tweets regularly. So number of retweets coupled with the individual reputation of the user who is retweeting your tweet will add to your reputation score.

Number of mentions: If someone with a high individual reputation @mentions you, then your reputation score should increase.

mentions, favourites, listings etc….. todo

In the meantime checkout http://www.twitter-reputation.com. It is a small experimental page which I set up for finding out your own twitter reputation score based on the parameters listed above. I used the twitter @anywhere javascript API inspite of its limitations , instead of using the more stable PHP api, just to minimize server side bandwidth being used up for fetching user info.

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Recording

Watch the webcast recording for the Q&A session here

Q&A Transcript

These are the questions and answers which were posted during the Titanium webinar which took place on 27th Oct 2010

Q: Will Blackberry still be windows only?

Audience Question

Q: have you managed to clone clint yet?

A: we just hired a VP for support and services

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I just  tried out the sencha touch examples  on the android 1.6 simulator and the performance is pathetic. Seems like google forgot to properly implement their javascript V8 engine onto their OS.

Appcelerator’s Titanium Mobile and Sencha touch are 2 different frameworks which address a totally different set of audiences. Comparing them is like comparing apples to oranges. But, to a person who has never eaten fruits ever and wants to just try tasting one (analogy to creating a simple app which doesnt do much of processing) and not try juggling with the fruits (analogy to creating detailed games or apps with lot of processing involved), they appear the same. So here’s a post attempting to compare them and help out those who have to make a choice when it comes to building a  simple app.

Titanium Mobile Kitchensink app running in iPhone simulator

Sencha touch examples app running in iPhone simulator

.

Here’s where Titanium Mobile wins :

1. Titanium is open source and free. Sencha touch follows dual licensing model like extJS, i.e. it is open source, but if you use it for commercial purpose, you need to buy their license.
2. Titanium builds native apps. So you have access to almost every feature in the phone, like say reading phone contacts, accessing accelerometer, GPS etc. Sencha will work inside the phone browser .  ALthough it can be made to work as a pseudo-app by embedding it inside a webview of an app made using Titanium/Cocoa. I suppose it can access GPS coordinates to some extent with the users authorization, but I am not sure about it. Also Titanium will support (in near future) running the app in the background and PUSH notifications which cannot be done using Sencha as it runs inside the browser.
3. When an app made using sencha loads , it has to load the framework first and then the content. So it will be a little slower in terms of loading time compared to Titanium built apps as it has to download the 300 KB sencha framework and the images for the buttons. Although the download process can be bypassed (Thanks to James Hughes for pointing it out) by including the framework in the Phonegap or Titanium resources folder, the javascript parsing time taken by the webview might become noticeable at the user’s end. On the iPhone simulator, it takes around 2-3 seconds for the sencha’s simple Nested list example to parse and display even when the Sencha framework is store along with the app.

Sencha touch runs in the any simulator, be in iPhone, android or blackberry. You do not need any kind of separate sencha touch simulator as such. Hence Sencha touch has its own set of advantages, namely :

1. Sencha gives more control in making changes to your UI after the app is published. Since all the code is getting loaded fresh from the server each time the user accesses, you can virtually modify the entire app without the user’s knowledge. But when it comes to a native app built using Titanium,  the changes have to go through apple’s review process and the user must manually update the app. In short Sencha requires a lesser turnaround time when it comes to bugs/updates.
2. Sencha works on almost all webkit based browsers which includes chrome, safari and opera. So you can be sure that it displays the same UI in iPhone,Android,Blackberry,iPad and also desktop browsers. So once IE and firefox fully supports HTML5, then you can have a single code which will work on all desktop browsers and all mobile devices uniformly. Titanium apps make use of native controls. So it gives a different UI on different devices and are currently limited to iPhone,iPad and Android devices (Blackberry devices soon)

Although both the frameworks use simple Javascript syntax , the choice of the framework will depend on the project under consideration. If the app just makes HTTP requests to some servers to fetch the results, then sencha touch should be good enough. But if there are plans of improving the app later on to make full use of the phones features like running the app in the background , accessing GPS data continuously , sending PUSH notifications, stream music & videos, write to Files & Databases etc then Titanium should be used. But a perfect mashup between them is what developers look out for.

Titanium too does not come without limitations. After playing around with titanium sdk 1.4 , I have realized that the guys over at appcelerator care more about the iPhone than android. Titanium android sdk does not support many of the functions provided in iPhone. Some of the most common ones are : Phone contacts, Animations, Horizontal Layout etc. Also the nature of android platforms limits the framework from providing some functions like WIndow transitions, webview for reading pdf,doc etc. I will keep adding more revelations about Titanium as I come across them. Cya later.

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Update : 17th July ’11
Textoo 1.0 is no more supported. Textoo Pro has reached the app store. Supports more gateways and has a lot of bonus features. Android version of Textoo is also being worked on. Click here to know more.

Update : 22nd Sept ’10
A new page has been setup here for the app. More info on this app with be posted on this page from now on.

Update : 15th Sept ’10

Apple has approved my enrollment into the developer programme. I am now expecting the approval process for the app to complete soon.

Update : 13th Sept ’10

The application is complete. I am now waiting for apple to approve my enrollment into the developer program so that I can release the app on app store. In the mean time you can have a look at the screenshots below. The app will support multiple gateways and the user will select a particular account to send the text message. The app also has a update feature to download the new gateway lists. Stay tuned for the developer API to add your own gateways to the application.

Update : 9th Sept ’10

This is taking longer than I thought, and I have put in more features than I had planned initially. Changing ETA to 13th Sept ’10..

Aug 26th ’10

I am now working on the creation of a mobile phone application for Android and Iphone which will allow you to send free SMS using the PHP API which I created a month back . This is the domain I never explored before, so will take a bit longer to come up with something useful. Hopefully, I can finish it by the end of this week, so that mid of next week, I can release it here. Follow me on twitter(@kiransmile) to stay updated on the latest posts.

This is a mobile application for iPhone 4 and Android 1.6 which will allow you to send SMS messages to India, UAE, Singapore, Kuwait etc using the free web based SMS gateways like 160by2, way2sms etc. Of course, you will need to register on the respective gateway websites to get an account, afterwhich you push in the accoutn details into the app using an easy to use interface. Afte

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So here comes the complete AS3/Flash source code with the PHP script for converting the drawing into an Image.
The demo can be found here.

(415 hits) Sandwriting app Download

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17th Dec ’10 :

Now here’s the deal. 160by2,way2sms and freesms8 offer free SMS and earn money through the ads on their website. By using this PHP script, we are bypassing their website illegally as their ad never gets shown. I hope you will keep this in mind when you use this script. If you want to send free SMS legally, then head over to http://freesmsapi.com and create an account. They are offering an excellent service totally free of cost.
Also the developers at way2sms and freesms8 keep changing their url’s and security methods to prevent such scripts from working (160by2.com guys are cool about this). And as this PHP code published here can be viewed publicly, their jobs become easy. So I will not be able to continue development of the scripts because as soon as I publish the code here, way2sms/freesms8 change their code to break my code.
So there should be a way to restrict access to the PHP code published here so that the code reaches appropriate hands only. Maybe a password protected SVN or forums based on reputation points, I dont know..
Post in your opinions about this as a comment and lets see whether we can work it out together.

Update as of 5th Oct ’10 : Bulk SMS services restored !!

Update as of 24th Sep ’10 : Govt has banned bulk sms temporarily. So all the bulk sms providers have stopped their services. More info. This script will not work till Sep 29th. In the meantime, I will upload the next version of the script which can check internet connectivity, login errors and other responses sent by the gateway. I will also be adding support for freesmsapi.com and freesms8.com gateways.

Update as of 10th Sep ’10: The code has been updated to accomodate a small change in the way2sms website.

Update as of 15th Aug ’10 : The code has been updated to work on all 160by2 and way2sms accounts and also will fetch any error codes being generated by these gateways. If you encounter any bugs, drop in a comment.

This is a PHP script I wrote a while back to automate the sending of SMS/text message using 160by2.com/way2sms.com account.

You can use this PHP API script to send free sms India, Kuwait, Singapore, UAE, Phillipines, Malaysia etc. Very useful if you are combining this with the registration page of your website to verify the users mobile number similar to verification of their email address.

Some possible real world applications of this script are :
1. Email to SMS.
2. Birthday alerts/Daily joke/thought for the day/news SMS
3. Gtalk/XMPP to SMS

Pre-requisites to use this script :
1.You need a hosting server with PHP5 and cURL extension enabled. The server should be able to open socket connections to other servers.
2.a valid,verified 160by2.com account or way2sms.com account (Create an account for free on one of these gateways and send a test SMS through their UI first.)

Example Usage (Also included in example.php):

include_once “class.curl.php”;
include_once “class.sms.php”;

$smsapp=new sms();
$smsapp->setGateway(‘way2sms’); // you can set gateway to be 160by2 to use your 160by2 account;
// way2sms code has been tested on different accounts to be stable.

echo “Logging in … “;
$smsapp->login(‘username for way2sms’,'password’);

echo “Sending SMS … “;
$result=$smsapp->send(’10 digit mobile number’,'Your text message’);

if($result)
{
echo “Message sent”;
}
else
{
echo “Error encountered : “.$smsapp->getLastError();
}

Limitations :
1. 160by2.com offers a character limit of around 145 for each message. Way2sms offers a character limit of 140 characters per message. Please see that the character limit is honored.
2. also a limit of 50 messages per day per account and 10 messages per recepient phone number holds good for 160by2.

(4279 hits) SMS API Download

I had also written a script using this class to send an sms alert to notify as soon as the booking for an upcoming movie opens up on bookmyshow.com, if someones interested in using this bookmyshow script, drop in a comment.

New SMS API

Supports 160by2, freesmsapi, freesms8. Does not support way2sms as of now.

To send free SMS all over the world using your iPhone/iPod touch, use Textoo Pro app. It is currently the best iphone app to send free unlimited text messages easily.

(2513 hits) PHP SMS API v2.0 Download

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Install this plugin into Joomla through the community builder plugin installer and enable it.

Defining multiple forms

Click on this plugin under the plugin management tab and in the params section define the forms in this format:

form_name1:field_name1,field_name2

form_name2:field_name1,field_name2

• form_name is a identifier for the form you are creating. Keep it unique and without spaces. This form_name has to be passed as a GET parameter to the default CB registration page to show up only the fields you want.
• field_name1,field_name2 etc are the names of the fields under the Field management tab in CB.

An example entry could be like this :

agent_form:name,username,password,company_name

user_form:name,username,password,address

The 2 forms can be accessed by adding &form=agent_form and &form=user_form respectively to the default CB registration form URL.

Please note that you could also have mandatory fields in any of the forms. In such a case the mandatory fields will be filled with some text to bypass the validation checks before the form is submitted.

Passing hidden data

Sometimes it is necessary to store information based on the above defined forms. For example, when the agent_form is submitted, you may want to store a specific value say ‘agent’ in one of the CB fields (say cb_usertype) so that you can know later,what form was used by the user. This can be done using the hidden data field.

The hidden data field also uses a similar format for definining the fields.

form_name1:field_name1=value1,field_name2=value2

form_name2:field_name1=value1,field_name2=value2

So here, once the form_name1 is submitted, the field_name1 will have the value set to value1.

Note that the value should not contain any special characters like commas or quotes. The value is added directly to the database as soon as the user registration is confirmed and hence will skip any validation checks.

One of the real world applications of this feature is by combining with the JLS grouping plugin which will add the current user to the necessary user group based on one of the CB fields.

This is Based on “Different User Registration Forms” plugin by Bog Imp

(5198 hits) CB Multiple Registration forms plugin Download

If you need any new features on this extension, leave a comment below. I will be happy to add them

Adding form specific title/description

You can add multiple delimiter fields to your CB fields list which enables you to add any html code or static text to your form. This technique combined with the above plugin can create multiple CB forms with form specific titles. But the only limitation here is that the field names for the delimiter fields are also displayed. I dont think there is a way to avoid that.

Auto assign user group based on the registration form

I have modified Jorge Luis Savoini’s (aka BestBeast) JLS group selector plugin to make it work for Joomla 1.5 and CB2.2. This CB plugin also needs to be installed using CB plugin installer. This plugin allows you to assign different user groups based on a value from combo box which the user selects during Registration. But in real world applications, you may not want to ask the user to explicitly specify the user group, but instead you want to redirect them to the appropriate form and use the hidden data method in the above plugin to pass the required data to cb_usertype field. More details on the joomla extensions page for JLS group selector.

(584 hits) Modified JLS group selector Download

For those who want to display partial CB registration form as a module on your homepage , this extension might be useful.

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Basically, instead of displaying “<City name>,<country>”,  this script will display “<Road name>, <areaname>,<cityname>,<country>”

The internals : As soon as the script is executed, It uses the google latitude developer api to get your current co ordinates, then it makes use of the google maps v3 geocoding api (previously called reverse geo coding) to get the info about the co-ordinates of your current location which includes the street name/road name etc.

Steps to add this cool thingy onto your own site:

1. Install google maps application on your GPS mobile phone having GPRS connection (symbian s60,iphone,android)  and then enable Latitude inside google maps app. Ensure that detect location is selected inside the latitude settings under google maps.

2. Goto google latitude web page (http://www.google.com/latitude/apps/badge) and select Enable and show best available location.

3. In the javascript embed code section of the badge config page, select zoom level automatic, and choose the map type, size of map.

4. Put the generated embed code on your blog to display the map and an approx city level address (we’ll fix this in a moment)

5. Now to display a more accurate address (which includes the roadname,streetnames, areanames) , extract the userid for latitude from the javascript embed code and put it in the below PHP code (line 2)

6.Add this PHP code into a file named “mylatitudelocation.php” and upload it into your webserver root.

7. Add this iframe code into your blog widgets sections to display the accurate address of your current location

<iframe src="mylatitudelocation.php" width="100%" height="50" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Here’s the PHP code:

<?php $latitudeUserid=”-4xxxxx….” // change this and insert your latitude user id (available from the public badge embed code ”

function ago($tm,$rcs = 0) { $cur_tm = time(); $dif = $cur_tm-$tm; $pds = array(‘second’,'minute’,'hour’,'day’,'week’,'month’,'year’,'decade’); $lngh = array(1,60,3600,86400,604800,2630880,31570560,315705600); for($v = sizeof($lngh)-1; ($v >= 0)&&(($no = $dif/$lngh[$v])<=1); $v–); if($v < 0) $v = 0; $_tm = $cur_tm-($dif%$lngh[$v]); $no = floor($no); if($no <> 1) $pds[$v] .=’s'; $x=sprintf(“%d %s “,$no,$pds[$v]); if(($rcs == 1)&&($v >= 1)&&(($cur_tm-$_tm) > 0)) $x .= time_ago($_tm); return $x; }

$latitudeAPI=”http://www.google.com/latitude/apps/badge/api?user=$latitudeUserId&type=json”;

$locationDetails=json_decode(file_get_contents($latitudeAPI)); $lat=$locationDetails->features[0]->geometry->coordinates[0]; $lng=$locationDetails->features[0]->geometry->coordinates[1]; $timestamp=$locationDetails->features[0]->properties->timeStamp; $when=ago($timestamp);

$latlng=”$lng,$lat”;

$geocodeAPI=”http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?latlng=$latlng&sensor=false”;

$locationDetails=json_decode(file_get_contents($geocodeAPI)); $locationString=$locationDetails->results[0]->formatted_address;

echo “$when ago, I was in $locationString”; ?>

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