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Archive for the ‘Web 2.0’ Category

Getting back to the drawing board…

August 3rd, 2008

Drawing boards are so much more fun than paper’n pencil

Posted in ApnaBill, OpenSocial, Rails, Ruby, Startups, Web 2.0 | Comments (0)

Head on with OpenSocial - Orkut Apps!

August 1st, 2008

Pushing ApnaBill.com into a Zarro Boogs state suddenly gave me the much needed time to start tinkering with other things in the roadmap. Hence the next obvious destination for me was OpenSocial - about which I’ve been hearing for quite some time now, almost everyone I know is writing some sort of social apps (FaceBook or Orkut)… moreover, these apps can bring a whole new sense of visibility to ApnaBill.com.

Thanks to Rohan, I started off with an inclination towards Orkut apps.

I must say, Google has done nice job of documenting the OpenSocial API’s. The starting point was ofcourse Orkut developer docs

OpenSocial tutorial for Orkut
Anatomy of an Orkut app
Orkut Developer Guide
API’s : OpenSocial, JavaScript and Gadgets

Ofcourse, to use any of these - you need the Developer Sandbox access to Orkut

The docs and the presented examples seem all good - but if you are a first time OpenSocial developer, the disconnect would be very obvious to you - specially how the OpenSocial API’s and Gadget API’s and JS API’s are all connected.

What I understood from all the reading was that OpenSocial is a set of API’s which all conforming web services expose. Each of these web service (Orkut/Hi5/etc) is a Container and each container exposes some proprietary API’s as well. So if you are developing an app which is to be deployed across multiple websites, make sure you do not use any proprietary code.

And what was the best way of understanding the codebase? Read the Examples! All of them! The more you read them, the more you would be able to the connect between all ingredients of OpenSocial API’s.
OpenSocial apps are primarily HTML and JavaScript - styled using CSS. The HTML forms the display of your app while the JS (bulk of your app) helps you fetch and render the data to & fro from your web service (Orkut/Hi5/etc).

There’s something interesting to note here…
Orkut’s sandbox environment requires your app to be stored on a publicly accessible location. That mean, if you have a website where you can host your JS/XML/CSS - you are good to go instantly. If not, try the Google Gadget Editor and save your files on google’s server.

I was lucky when it came to app hosting. Tata Indicom in Pune, gives static public IP’s for postpaid broadband connections. That means if I run apache on my server and dump my app files on /var/www/orkut folder (Ubuntu) then I can edit the files on my local machine while Orkut sandbox environment can fetch them straight from my machine - awesome! Now I get to use my favorite editor… yay!

App’s main view - Canvas

Profile view of the app

As you can see, my app does nothing intelligent - just lists my friends and their details. But what’s interesting is, I can detect at runtime that which view is being rendered - is it app’s main view or is the app being shown in my profile.

Think of this in more productive sense. If I am building an app for ApnaBill.com (lets say), I can display summary or something on the profile view and a more detailed analysis of the same thing in the app view - isn’t that interesting

What’s next? - Giving purpose to my app!

My example codebase - app.xml, canvas_view.js, profile_view.js
Please replace REPLACE_ME_1 with path to canvas_view.js and REPLACE_ME_2 with path to profile_view.js
Note - I am learning JS as I am proceeding with OpenSocial apps. Please use the above code at your own risk.

[update]
I am a big fan on “Emote” application on Orkut - so decided to examine how it works… loaded up Emote and inspected the “net” tab in Firebug and found this - http://www.rockyou.com/google_apps/emote_example/view/Emote_XML.php -if you can see, Emote is using completely different set of HTML for canvas and profile views. It also has included “dynamic-height” feature to hide the nasty scrollbars - interesting! You might also be interested in checking out the localization technique and the app headers - lots interesting information is there on how they should be used.

Posted in ApnaBill, OpenSocial, Web 2.0 | Comments (6)

Zarro boogs found!

July 31st, 2008

This is the sweetest possible message Bugzilla can ever show a developer
Tonight, I’ll be syncing live ApnaBill.com with the most stable version we ever had - the operations are still getting formalized but the code-base looks awesome!

If you come across any bug @ ApnaBill.com, feel free to ping us at our support channel - who knows, you might just save the day for thousands of users

Posted in ApnaBill, Ruby, Startups, Web 2.0 | Comments (0)

Proto.in July 08 Edition

July 21st, 2008

The atmosphere was electrifying at Proto4 - and the talks were doing everything to make the conference even more interesting!

The presenting startups didn’t got much time to attend the conference talks - we were quickly rushed for the rehersals which were to prepare us for the upcoming showcase on 2nd day of the event. Helping us all along was the great team of Proto - which made sure that we had everything we needed to be ready for those 6 minutes of showcase - a big thanks to the Proto Team.

A quick presentation from ApnaBill kicked off the rehearsals - we fumbled alot, were mixed up alot - and the feedback was all worth it. Just a quick work of advice - never go to a presentation unprepared. ANY preparation is better than NO preparation

After the day of reharsals, we mutually decided that Sameer would head our pack onstage. He did a nice job with the presentation and I guess our point got communicated across to the audience pretty well.

ApnaBill.com Presentation

Sameer presenting ApnaBill.com to a hall packed of audience

ApnaBill.com team (Sameer in front (second from start), Me and Sandy)

Before the day ended, each startup demo’d their products on the stalls. Checking out the stalls were potential users and investors alike.

Me posing with ApnaBill.com (ghosh! that right click…)

Here are some goodblog articles which described the event pretty well.
Rishabh from Mutiny.in - Proto.in goes North
Amit Ranjan from Webyantra - Proto IV at New Delhi: Impressive show for startups, entrepreneurship & technology
Slideshare - A list of startups showcasing at Proto4, Proto4 pictures
AlooTechie - Proto 4- A Winner’s Showcase

* More pictures and videos to follow…
**Pictures courtesy Amit from Slideshare.

Posted in ApnaBill, It calls for a blog..., Proto.in, Startups, Web 2.0 | Comments (5)

A teaser from ApnaBill.com

May 30th, 2008

The current week is just halfway through, but it has already been one of the most eventful week for ApnaBill.com - with some definite advances towards the release. We’ll be launching the live pilot mode release in just days time.

More good news - we’ve expanded our network coverage from a handful of operators/cities to a pan India coverage.

We’ll be supporting 16 different prepaid vendors across 14 different geographical locations - I must say, that is a mighty list!

And to give you a small hint with what’s in the store, I present to you, bits and pieces from ApnaBill.com UI - all this and much more is just waiting to go live!

All the hard work that has gone into cross browser support…