Internet will change again

If you remember those days, when one has to wait for an email to open, then for sure you know that its changed now. Not only fast internet, but the central delivery system, has changed from one server to cloud servers. And that is perfect for the problem in hand. Now all the data is residing in someone’s server(ok, cloud server). In the beginning, it felt perfect as it syncs to all the devices and one seamless experience for the user. With this, comes the security breach and that has already showed its effect in last year.
Fortunately, world is a better place. Individuals and startups have already acted upon this. There are so many cool products and services being tried last year that we may start to see the fruits starting from this year.
The philosophy has changed from “mobile first app” to “offline first app”, from “connected app” to “noBackend app”, its a revolution again.
The very chances are the experience may remain the same for the user, but the underlaying data and functionality of the applications are going to change again as it changed first from single server to cloud servers, now it would be single again, but only for your own data (So, it would be Re-Decentralizing).

redecentralize : taking back the net

Well, exciting beginning for the year. Below is the list of, some of the many initiatives, which will change the internet again.

arkos.io : Your data, your rules.
sovereign : build and maintain your own personal cloud
Ansible : Ansible is the simplest way to automate IT.
mailpile : A modern, fast web-mail client
Lima : Lima unifies the memory of your devices so they can act as one. Just for you.
owncloud : self-controlled free and open source cloud.
cozycloud : your personal cloud
Cozy: A personal Cloud you can host, hack and delete

Redecentralize ยท taking back the net

offlinefirst
nobackend

Backendless
deployd, THE SIMPLEST WAY TO BUILD AN API.
Firebase
Hoodie, VERY FAST WEB APP DEVELOPMENT
Kinvey
Parse
remotestorage, An open protocol for per-user storage
sockethub
unhosted : freedom from web 2.0′s monopoly platforms

This interview with Mailpile founder seems a nice start if you are wondering whats coming in near future.

Happy new year,
Cheers

Getting git gui back on OSX Mavericks

I have been using git and its default gui with

git gui

for almost from the beginning of my git usage. While everything was smooth for a long long time, recent update to OSX Mavericks, broke that experience. Well, for a new OS, its good that they have already installed a version of git with the OS itself, so new comers do not have to worry but just use git. But this git is from Apple and does not have the default “git gui”.
Now following the old method, I tried to install git again by downloading it from
git-scm site. While everything went well and the install was smooth, I still does not get “git gui” from the command-line.
The default Apple-git was firing up always instead of the “git-scm” version. The trick here is to add the “git-scm” version to the system path. Now that can be done in many ways for a MAC, I did it, by modifying the file “.bash_profile” (dot bash_profile) the name begins with a DOT and its a system file present at the “~/” location.

The paths in OSX may be surprising at first if you are coming from windows environment, but just remember
/ -is the root folder of the OSX
~/ -is the root folder of the logged-in user

The line to add in the end of the file, is as below

export PATH="/usr/local/git/bin:$PATH"

Thats all, I closed the Terminal window and re-opened it to get my favorite “git gui”.
Happy Coding.

OpenFL is here

The NME or haxenme project is taking a mature shape. The library is now known as OpenFL, which can be assumed as the successor of NME. Actully, OpenFL does use NME behind the scenes.
So, if you are working on NME projects for sometime now, its time to shift to OpenFL.
A true cross-platform library over a true cross-platform language ie; HAXE.
The new site is up at http://www.openfl.org
The other links are as below
Download home
API documentation

The main difference one would see, by coming from NME is most of the packages are now in “flash” not the default “nme”. This is to make it consistent with flash API and at the same time, the add-on APIs are on “openfl” or in the respective packages.

Happy HAXE ing

My first Android application on Play store, The Address.

theAddress
This is exciting to get my first Google Play store application. Previously I worked on some Android applications, but nothing was up there in the Play Store. For me its really a different experience pushing it to the Play store. Unlike pushing to Apple App store, the Play Store push feels like no brainer.
Now, talking about the application, its a personal note taking application for an absolute necessary address. This application does not require internet connection at all. Its a pure standalone application on its own. Its private to the user.
Open up the application, fill out the form to add an address and save it. Thats all it does. Once you come back to get the address, it shows upfront the saved address. Incase you are done with the currently stored address, update the form with a new address and save it. It does not store history of your previous addresses.
Now the implementation is done with Cordova (phonegap) 2.7 , jQuery 2.0 , jQuery Mobile 1.3 , lawnchair and GASP JS(GreenSock Animation Platform for Javascript). Its completely opensource and the code can be found at Github.

Looking forward to listen from you all.

Dartlang for devices with Rikulo

While working with Rikulo is as straight forward as working with any other packages of Dart, to make this work in devices, one has to keep following things in mind.
First of all “Rikulo” itself is not capable of doing device level development, rather it depends upon “phonegap” (now cordova) and to compile against this, there is another package named “Rikulo Gap“. So the basic pub setup looks as this.

dependencies:
  rikulo:
  rikulo_gap:

Once installed the development process is straight forward as Dart itself while taking advantage of the Cordova APIs.
Upon completion of the development process, jump into “Dart to Javascript” compiler and generate the javascript file for the project. Fortunately thats as simple as going to “Tools” menu and clicking “Generate Javascript” in the Dart Editor. One has to select the “.dart” file first, for which the javascript file has to be generated. Upon successful generation of the file, the generated file name would be something like “myProject.dart.js”.
Now you have to add this “js” file in your “html” file like the usual “script” tag. That means to deploy to Cordova, you have to add two script tags as below.



Once done, open up the Eclipse or which ever IDE you are using to develop the Cordova (phonegap) applications, copy the “.html” and “.js” file into the respective folders of the Cordova project.
Lastly, but most importantly, remove the version number from the cordova JS file (for example cordova-2.3.0.js to cordova.js).
Now we have a workable native application built with Dart, Rikulo and Cordova.

Happy Darting !

RayTrace V4.1.0 is now released

Well, its a long time since anything happening here. The good news is finally the long awaited feature of the smallest logger ie; RayTrace is available as of today. This is the vertical scrollbar for the logs.
I must say its more than just a requirement for this logger. Though we could scroll through the logs with mouse wheel or by selecting text from the logger, but then we do needed the scroller. The scroller is still is still way far from perfect, but at least the feature is active and is there for scrolling through all the data from initial to final.
The source code is up in github as well and the workable or binary files are here for you to download and use.
Thank you so much the patience and have a nice time logging.
Happy coding.

Java for iOS and Android

It seems that its a long wait for the Java developers. But the good news is the wait is over. finally we have an SDK which expects us to write in Java and deploy our application into iOS and Android.
Codename One is an opensource SDK, library, deployment system, all in all a platform to develop for mobile platforms.
The short story is I tried to put a simple helloworld application to put in my android phone and it took only 30 minutes to make my development environment ready to deploy to the phone.
Well, the whole of the SDK is just a plugin to Eclipse or Netbeans, depends upon your preferred IDE of choice. Thats all to it. What a developer gets, is a GUI builder, a simulator, the SDK and the complete framework. Now go straight into the IDE and start building the application you want to do with the Java skills. Finally decide where you want to put it, iOS or Android, select the option and push it to the cloud, so that Codename One cloud will make the build for you to deploy into the device. Thats a no brainer deployment and code migration.
What all that means is, one is very well ready to develop iOS applications in windows machine. A very nice and well thought of SDK and framework.

Happy Coding.

RayTrace v4.0.0 is released

Well, this release is mostly an UI update. There is a major functionality update of this new release is the “Advanced” settings. If you are using the default mode, it will work as it was working previously.
With advanced mode, one need to change two things. One is the “raytrace.as” which comes budled with this application. Inside this file one has to put the connection name. This name could be any string, it could be your project name, version name or your name, but then remember this name so as to put the same name in advanced setting text input (thats the second setting). After that its as usual process.
The release version can be found here for direct download and use. The source code is up in github.

Happy Haxe -ing

An IDE for HAXE and NME for every OS

The long wait is over! The search for a perfect IDE for Haxe and NME is finally over. Thanks to the hard work of Joshua Granick. He is still in development of this feature, but for me I found it perfectly alright to use it in my Mac OSX.
So the IDE is Mono Develop and making it a Haxe and NME IDE is just enabling the addin for it. Presently its a manual process but thats ok I think. The Addin is on the github.
Everything is just straight forward. Just a little thing on command line is to create a .hxml file in OSX. I am not sure if thats the case in other OSs. Navigate to your newly created project folder from Terminal and fire up the command below (where {projectName} should be replaced with your own project name)

haxelib run nme display {projectName}.nmml mac>{projectName}.hxml

Thats all to it. Just open up MonoDevelop and enjoy code hilight, code hinting and compilation from inside the IDE.

Happy haXe -ing

RayTrace v3.0.0

A new release of RayTrace, the simplest flash logger. Its made with haXe and compiled with NME for SWF output.

The feature list is as below
1. Stop and start button (To start the logger and stop the logger)
2. A sightly improved GUI (some colors at last)

With that here is the link to the compiled code (SWF and the lib for directly use in your project) and here is the github source code.

Happy haXe -ing