Kyte is the online and mobile video platform for Live and on-demand content.

You can upload videos (in any supported format) to skype and later fetch video
with your desired extensions (mp4, mov ...etc.). You can also get customize the
size of video and get video thumbnails etc.

The whole point of using Kyte is that it has got a list of APIs that deals with your
specific needs.

Some of the very basic advantages I see here is:

- You don't have to upload video to your own server - save disk space
- Don't have to write custom script to convert media to you desired extensions.
- Don't have to deal with media size, height, width etc.
- Don't have to worry about how to generate media thumbnail image.

When it comes to implementing it for your Iphone you need to just dig around the right API
method and implement it.

Here are the few steps you need to do

- Use your api key and signature to get server timestamp.

Note: the api signature needs to be in the exact format given in the api documentation.

- Once you get the server timestamp, create a new api signature and use it for fetching
data from other api services.

- Authenticate with your login id to get user ticket.

- You can fetch the media url for Iphone by requesting fetchTranscodedUrlservice with
transcodeType = "MOBILE_VIDEO" and extension "mp4"

Tags: api, iphone, kyte, video

To do anything in Iphone SDK development the 1st step is to find
the right framework you'll be using!

There are two simple ways to play a video on your device.

1 - Play a Video which is locally available.
2 - Play a Video from an URL.

For both the things you need to use MediaPlayer framework.

Here are the steps you need to follow to build the application.

* Create a view based application on your Xcode.

* Expand Targets and select your project. Type 'Command + I'
to bring the info window. You can add the MediaPlayer framework
there. (By default it's not included)

* Import <MediaPlayer/MediaPlayer.h> in the header file of your
ViewController.

* Change your header file like this, you need to have a 'Play'
button that plays the video. And link the button’s "Touch Up
Inside" event to the playVideo: action.




* Once both the header and view in the InterfaceBuilder is
ready you can write the implementation part in ".m" file



* MPMoviePlayerController work with a single designated initializer,
initWitContenthURL:. It either takes a file:// or a network URL (http://)

* You can add a Video that you want to play on project "Resources"

* Coming back to the playVideo action you just need to invoke the
play method on moviePlayer object.




* For more reference check Apple's Iphone development reference library.

== Output ==

Tags: iphone, mediaplayer, movie

Probably one if the simplest mistake I have ever done. But got stucked
with this for an hour before I would figure out what was wrong.

Rails has got a very nice set of helper functions that would generate
the HTML for you. So to upload a file you would probably write something
like this in your view.



But with this if you will try to extract the file in your controller,

params[:model][:image].read will give an error:

...
NoMethodError (undefined method `read' for "<file.jpg>":String)
...

So how come the image file became a String? Well, if you have done a
silly mistake like me than you have forgotten to add the "multipart"
value in the form.

So simply add this to your form_for tag and it would work like a charm.

Tags: file upload, helper functions, ror

I encountered an interesting issue with this couple of months ago.

Using mechanize you can select or click form dom elements, submit forms and automate
interaction with websites. But let's say there's a case when you select an element
or click on a button - and it's calling a Javascript function to get the result.

In such cases, you can't directly get the result by mechanizing the element. Rather
you could just follow two simple steps to get the result,

1 - View the page source or inspect the element using firebug.

2 - Do the exact thing in your ruby script that the javascript function is doing.

for example: If the javascript function is trying to load the data by opening another
Url then open that url in your Ruby script. Here, you can by pass the mechanizing step
and get the result directly!

Tags: javascript, mechanize, parsing, ruby

Today out of curiosity, I wanted to check how many labels I have
on my gmail account. And I ended up with a number "49".

Wow ... that's lot. Well, over the past few years I have subscribed
to various forums and mailing list ... sometimes to get a quick answer
and sometime to keep a track of how things are going with a Particular
technology (Let's say RoR).

I wish I could give time to all of these forum. But it never happens
always, while I reply to few of the posts on some forum, for others I
am just a silent reader.

But the color codes makes it easier for me to identify what does this
label mean to me.

* Red - Company Related
* Orange - Open Source Community/Mailing Lists.
* Green - Books/Study Materials.
* Blue - Personal.
* Grey - Social Networking Sites.

Tags: gmail, labels, personal

This will be my 1st Barcamp in Bangalore. There's already a huge list of
sessions which are being registered by various open source hobbyist and
geeks!

I am planning to take two sessions. One will be on Ruby and other one
probably on I-Phone development. But it depends upon how busy my
schedule is.

But never the less I am looking forward to meet lots of new people and
share ideas.

Tags: bangalore, barcamp, community

CocoaMySQL is a MySQL admin tool like phpMyAdmin. But main
difference is that it's a desktop based application for Mac OS X.

While it was heavily used by many DBA and web developers for
last couple of years, the project has recently been abandoned and
it's source code has been used to create a new project called
"Sequel Pro".

It currently supports MySQL database with future plans to expand
to other database engines including SQLite and PostgreSQL. 

You can download the dmg package from here.

Tags: cocoamysql, database, mac, sequel-pro

Yesterday (16th Feb) was my last day with Entrip guys. It was a nice
8 months journey with them. I personally think I will definitely cherish 
some of  the moments! 

Shardul and Akshay both are wonderful colleagues. And we have
achieved so many things together. Anthony and Nick both have a 
great  vision in their eyes, I definitely learnt most of the good things 
from Anthony. Especially, how to work in a start up. This experience 
will definitely help me, if I'll plan to start my own start-up in future! 

So when there were so many good things, few things also disappointed 
me. I don't want to talk about it. All I know is that I have learnt so much 
there, and that's the best part.

I am joining an U.S. based start-up called SocialSenseLabs from 18th.
I'll probably work this week in Pune and then reallocate to Bangalore.
I had been offered four jobs in one week. There's nothing to be proud
of, I feel I am very lucky to have lots of good contacts! The reason I joined
SSLabs is because they are a product based company and I definitely
believe in their ideas. On the technology point of view, I'll continue working
on RoR & I'll get lots of opportunity to work on IPhone & Android platform.   

I'll definitely miss most of my friends who have supported and stayed by 
my side whenever I needed them. Especially, Ankit - Who used to be my 
team leader while I was in Red Hat, and later became a very good friend. 
I always had a very nice and friendly room mates. After Abhishek, Akshay, 
Manoj and Ratikant teamed up with us. There was always a party every 
now and then. I am gonna miss all of them. But at the same time planning 
to start another chapter of my life in Bangalore. 

Tags: friends, jobs, personal

For last couple of days, I am learning I-Phone development. And have 
built some basic but interesting apps so far. 

The fun started with the huge i-phone sdk download. Which took me 
almost 18 hours! And later I released that the binary is corrupted due 
to pausing and reloading the download multiple times. 

I didn't want to repeat the same mistake again. So without spending 
much time on this, I met Rohan (the founder of Social Web Factory). 
I got the sdk and couple of video tutorial from him, which was enough 
for me to get started. 

The tools that come with the SDK are:

• Xcode (Where you actually write your Objective-C code)
• Interface Builder (Helps you to build the UI quickly)
• Instruments (Used for performance testing)
• Simulator (You can test your application on your Mac OS X)

 After going through the video tutorials I purchased the beta book of 
Iphone SDK development from Pragmatic Store. It cost me almost 30$.
But like all the other pragmatic books, it was amazing too. 

I have finished reading 7 chapters of it so far, tried and played with 
some codes. And the most interesting app I have designed is to build 
a table view app where there will be few names and you can add more 
names to the list or delete an existing name! 

  


I am looking forward to explore more in terms of how I can make richer applications, 
that can provide some real life solutions. 

Tags: iphone, mobile development, objective-c

The Entrip team was there in Bangalore from 8th Jan to 11th Jan to
pitch in HeadStart.in.

While Nick was in U.K.. Anthony, Me, Shardul and Akshay went to talk
about our product. It was a learning experience for all of us to talk about
what we have been developing for last couple of months in front of a
larger and smarter crowd.

In our Trip we also visited the ThoughtWorks, Bangalore office and
had an exercise there to understand their agile way of working. Sidu
with whom we mostly spent our time was quite an impressive guy - can
say a Rails guru who was cool enough to tell us about every bits and
pieces that we have asked for.

Finally, after coming back we thought we would use our product to
capture our experiences!

Tags: conference, entrip, headstart, thoughtworks