My Personal Site is down!

@Readers:

My personal website www.udayms.com is down. I am trying to work with the domain space providers to get it back up and live. So, some links in this blog may not work. I shall try to get it back up ASAP.

Till then…

-Uday

SSD Awesomeness

Wow!!!!

 

We took 24 256GB Samsung MLC SSD’s and put them in RAID to make this awesome computer! See how we did it, and what the results were!
For more information on these drives, check outhttp://www.samsungssd.com.

Warning: This clip is a piece of Samsung marketing material.
Warning 2: It’s actually pretty fracking amazing, and it might change your view of computers.

Samsung techies linked 24 of the company’s 256GB SSD drives together in a RAID with the hopes of making the fast SSD drives even faster. The system actually reaches transfer speeds of 2GBps. What’s that much speed mean to you?

• All of Microsoft Office opens in .5 seconds.
• 53 programs from the test rig’s Start menu open in 18 seconds.
• The complete system defrags in about 3 seconds.

Basically, we all know that hard drives are holding other components in computers back, slowing down our day to day usage. But I’ll be honest in saying that I didn’t things were this bad. While almost no mortal could afford to build this amazing rig, suddenly that SATA3 technology isn’t looking so impressive.

 

ThunderBolt

Really interesting stuff… http://code.google.com/p/flash-thunderbolt/

ThunderBolt is a lightweight logger extension for ActionScript 2 and 3 applications using Firebug. For logging without Firebug, especially for AIR applications, check out the ThunderBolt AS3 Console.

For more information about ThunderBolt AS2 and ThunderBolt AS3 check out the Wiki.

The ThunderBolt project based on the Mozilla Public License 1.1..

Connecting people

I haven’t posted anything here for a ‘long’ time now. The last few months have been really hectic with all the sudden changes at work and in personal life. Still trying to catchup with whatever has been happening around me and slowly regaining control over life (both professional and personal).

So…. Here I am… in Bangalore. I quit from Extreme Networks and am joining Nokia R&D facility in Maratahalli Ring Rd, Bangalore. I shall be working with the Ux team at Nokia in the Software & Services division.

One of the first projects I am going to be engaged in is Ovi.com. It’s an exciting new concept from Nokia. I shall be blogging in detail about Ovi sometime soon.

In the last few months, I have received hundreds of mails from readers. Some had written in just to show their support and appreciation. Some had mailed me with technical questions and some with job offers. And because of the personal reasons mentioned here and here, I was unable to respond to any of those mails. I really apologize for that. I am just in the process of catching up with the hundreds of unread mails in my inbox. I shall respond to your mails asap.

Once again… Thanks for all the mails and queries. Keep reading and mailing…

Adobe Flex Intro PPT posted

A couple of weekends ago, I did a presentation for The Chennai Cold Fusion User Group (CCFUG Homepage). Am posting the ppt here. The presentation covered the basics – intro to RIAs, intro to Adobe Flex, a couple of examples and a little bit about Adobe AIR. Check it out… if you have nothing else to do … The audience were cold fusion developers who were new to Adobe Flex and Adoe AIR. I touched the basics and then walked them through some code examples of Flex and Air.

Check out some snaps from the event and check out this post by Akbar after the event. You may also want to check out the CCFUG homepage at http://www.cfugind.com.

CForm SWC

Lately I have been getting a lot of mails about using CForm. So, I kind of wrapped up the whole thing into a SWC and here it is. So all you need to do is download this and add this to the Lib of your project. For the source code, you can still check it out of SVN. But, to just use the CForm, you really do not need the source-code, you can just use this swc component. Click here to download the component.

[Component] CForm v1.0

CForm is all about creating data entry screens. This component allows developers to create standardized forms/CRUD screens in their applications. The CForm component is a Data Entry component that can be very useful if -

1. you are building business applications with many data entry/view screens
2. you are working with a lot of developers. each handling separate screens/modules
3. you wish all your screens to have the standard look & feel across the application
4. you wish to avoid different developers/designers designing their own UI/UX paradigms for their specific screens

Let me try to explain this in a very simplified manner. CForm reads XML file to create user entry forms. To implement CForm, the following steps are involved.

• Developer creates XML file for each screen. The XML will contain the list of fields, controls to be used etc.
• CForm is called in an MXML.
• Now, the developer can use many of CForm’s exposed methods to access/manipulate data in the CForm.

The Demo walks you through a few use cases of how CForm can be used in real world. There are clear instructions on each example in the demo. For a detailed documentation on the XML part of this component, check out here and for the AS and MXML angle check out below. The source code will also be made available shortly in a 2 or 3 weeks. As of now, if you need the source code you will have to check it out from the SVN repository at http://flexedtoolkit.googlecode.com/. If you like this component and would be willing to extend a helping hand, send me a mail .

If you have any questions/suggestions after viewing the demo, leave a comment on this page!!

**Update: Compiled SWC now available for download.

[ SWC | Demo | XML Documentation | Source of Example ]

Happy New Year!!!

So, after a couple of months of hibernation, am slowly trying to catch up on my blogging activities …. Here’s wishing you all a very Happy and Prosperous 2008. Looking forward to another year of pleasant surprises from Adobe, Apple, M$, Google, Yahoo and all the other folks who actually make technology work for the rest of us!!!

I have finally managed to wrap up work on a component that has been pending for a long time. A component for developers to create data entry/crud forms easily. Check out my separate post on this!!!

So, once again… Cheers! And let’s hope this year is filled with less destruction and more peace than last year…

Buzzword

I guess this is already old news by now. But, I just recently happened to check it out. I came to know about such an application when my Manager suggested it. After trying it out, I have one word – AWESOME!!!!

Ok. What I am talking about here is a full fledged online document application (Yeah! Just like Writely, Google Docs) developed in FLEX!!!! I was amazed at not only how feature rich the app was. I was stumbled totally because many of the stuff they have achieved. They have done stuff which I never thought was possible using Flex.

For me, Buzzword definitely takes Flex to the next level. It has been developed by the folks at Virtual Ubiquity. It says on their site -

Buzzword, the first real word processor for the web, is a breakthrough in collaborative authoring for documents that matter. Many online pundits agree with us.

And Guess what? Adobe is acquiring them. You can register and try it out yourself here. Check out the screenshots here. Click on thm to see a larger view.

CustomGrid v1.2

I am releasing the v1.2 of CGrid. It’s been in drafts for a long while now.This time, a few more basic niceties have been added to the CGrid.

1. Export to Excel (Copy selected rows or entire grid to clipboard and paste in excel)
2. User can select columns to view and width of the columns etc. This setting for each grid in the application is remembered across sessions.(For this to work properly, you will have to ensure that you always specify a distinct ID for for each grid in your application.) This feature is very useful, if you are fetching a lot of columns to display but are not sure whether all the users would be interested in all the columns. Now, the user can choose to see columns of his/her choice and that choice is remembered across sessions.
3. Fixed the sorting logic in the column sort.
4. The CGrid can now take in custom itemRenderer from the caller.

Check it out… For more details about what CGrid is all about, check out this post.

It’s been a long time since I updated the grid component. Hey, for that matter… It’s been a log while since I last posted here. Been quiet a bit busy lately. Anyway, am almost back. This month is also going to be a bit hectic. But, I hope to post regularly from September onwards.

Note: Thanks to all who downloaded CGrid v1.0 and used them in their projects. It really feels nice to see that the component has served some good purpose. The CGrid component is individually responsible for keeping my blog alive and  bringing in readers even though I haven’t posted anything new for the last couple of months. So, this component is kind of the ‘old man’ of this blog. Anyway, Lemme thank all visitors for checking it out. Keep downloading. Keep leaving comments ….

[ Demo | Source | Sample Printout ]