RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds play a major role in bringing information from different sites (provided they support it) no matter what technology was used behind those sites. It is a major breakthrough in distributing content. RSS a part of Web 2.0 culture aims in standardizing the way of distributing content. Content and a standard way always means look for a XML structure. RSS is nothing but a standard XML structure that represents content that can be distributed. Either the consumer can process the information further or display it in the form it wants is up to it. If you are new to RSS, then you already have a site in front of you that can demonstrate RSS. Yes TechMasala is RSS enabled. Click on this button (you can also see this button on the sidebar under the section RSS Newsfeeds) and your browser should display an XML representation of the recent feeds on TechMasala. If you are subscribed to TechMasala and receiving this post by mail through Feedblitz then you might also want to know that Feedblitz receives the RSS feeds and converts them back to an HTML email and sends it to you. If you have seen the XML and want to know the anatomy of RSS then you can go through this article “The Anatomy of RSS feed“.

I have trained several batches of pass outs from college on the topic of networking and web application concepts.  I keep telling that understanding the entire flow of a web application helps a lot when developing the application.  It also helps to isolate issues at different levels viz., application, web server, network etc.  It is a great effort to make a documentary movie that explains the flow of information in the internet at a network packet level.  Watch the move “Warriors of the net” and you will understand what I am talking about. Nice attempt.

If you are developing a web application that focuses on producing content and referring to web site links and you also want to make it a rich internet application with AJAX features, then you might want to show a snapshot of the website link on your application in a popup.  Say when the user mouse hovers on a link this popup comes and shows a snapshot of the site before the user actually decides to click on it and get into that site.  Browster is an example application that adds as an extension to your browser and shows the preview of your search result before you can click on a link.  The added advantage of Browster is that it not only shows the preview but acts as a mini browser within the browser allowing you to navigate with the links you see in the preview. WebshotsPro is a site that can generate thumbnails of websites.  How does it do it? With the help of Webshot which is a command line tool that can generate the thumbnail of websites as images. Adding a preview of external page links is an added value to the application and helps the user in deciding whether to get into the site or not.

Web 2.0 is all about applicationsworking together with internet as the operating platform.  Lifespree Explorer is one of the real examples to this definition.  The objective is to bring together dynamically photos across the world in one page with details.  If you see it as one single application that does all this then you are wrong. The application as such uses the services of Google Maps to bring the world map with zoom features and Flickr to pick up the photos for a particular region/keyword combination.  The technology enablers are Ruby on Rails as language and script.aculo.us for styles.  Brilliantly put together with AJAX it brings the richness and gives a feeling as though tremendous effort has been put in building it as one single application.

I tail gated to a survey “Almost a Clean Sweep: About 3 in 4 Use AJAX” through Javalobby and was also surprised with the statistics and the way it is projected comparing the language/technologies that have been used to build the application.  The survey should have been all about how many applications are AJAX based out of all the applications built in a given period rather also including the technologies used to build them.  Each of these technologies has evolved in its own way and has its own advantages and disadvantages.  Most likely the statistics would be something significantly different in the next year.  But the way this survey has been taken, it has taken more attention on which language/technology is best to use in terms of implenting AJAX.  I was rather glad some of the comments to the O’Reilly XML.com post which talk about how the survey should have been. But on the actual survey, it also points out couple of downsides to AJAX namely security and complexity.  It is very true that they are disadvantages but we also understand that nothing comes for free.  There has to be a tradeoff in each and everything we opt for, there will be some downsides but how much you can compromise to overcome the downside is more important.  As people overcome the difficulties looking at the positives it brings technology will evolve to overcome those complexities.

I love illusions but I loved this site “Illusion or Reality” very much, one because it is done in Flash and it is easy to go through, next it gives everything at one shot including why the brain works that way and tricks you.

Happy Weekend!

I got this link “Subversion Quick Reference” through dZone. If you are using subversion as the version control system for your project, this is a handy reference. Particularly when you have to work with subversion from the shell prompt.  It is worth keeping a copy handy anytime.

When you want to download a huge file or a file that is in demand and there are many users downloading the file at the same time, the server hosting the file is in huge pressure to meet the needs. BitTorrent is a protocol where the file is split into many pieces and resides in different computers. BitTorrent works on the policy of give and take or what it calls it as “tit for tat”. A system requesting a file also needs to give space to store pieces of files. The more a computer shares its space for storing pieces of files then there is a equal share of bandwidth rather than feeding on one machine that has the whole file which in BitTorrent terminology is called as “leeching”.

When the file is split into different pieces and is available in different machines, one system acts as a tracker that knows where these pieces are located and the order in which they have to be glued to make it a single piece. The client requiring the file gets a torrent file that has information to get to this tracker. Then the BitTorrent application communicates to this tracker and the tracker helps in getting the pieces of the files and the client application finally puts it all together. BitTorrent brings the web 2.0 culture in terms of sharing responsibility and resources so that everybody benefits. BitTorrent is widely used in downloading media files like movies though in principle the protocol can work for any type of files.