Behind the Scenes - Part3 Ajax

When I joined the interview panel in selecting PHP developers, I used to get minimum of 5-6 resume a week. In many of the resumes I notice them mentioning Web 2.0 and Ajax in their skill sets. During the interviews, either in person or telephonic they will be trapped by these terms. Many candidates fill up their resume with latest and hot technologies. But when we proceed towards asking any questions, many reply that they just started preparing/playing around with it.
But Ajax is not a technology in itself, it is a term that refers to the use of a group of technologies. The intention was to bring more user respone by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scene, without refreshing entire page for every request that user sentds. I do not want define about this here as many sites/blogs have already done in better ways and with lots of examples. There are many Ajax based applications, many frameworks/toolkits are available. May it be Scriptaculous, Backbase ...
Ajax Solutoire lists down all the Ajax based frameworks, toolkits, applications and many resources. Have a look and feel the user friendliness.

My earlier posts on Interviews:
Behind the Scenes - Part2
Behind the Scenes - Part1

In my previous post I listed many such successful applications.
YUI Ajax feed reader
Webwag
Webtop

Behind the Scenes - Part2

This time I was in the panel where candidates with Java and .NET experience were interviewed. To make the candidate feel more comfortable I was asking them about their project experience and told them to explain us about the projects they handled. A candidate told us that he did his project using ASP.NET and of course the database was SQL. I asked him what queries they used to retrieve data from more than two - three database tables. His answer really amazed me, "he said he uses the data set!". He could not give more information for that question.
The data set is a simple GUI box through which queries will be formed by simply filling up the fields with respective table names with which it makes contact.
I feel this kind of a tool will effectively enhance the productivity but sooner they will make developers dumb. I am not saying NO to such tools, but we should always keep in mind that even such tools also use the basic query form and to get the results. I feel it is good for us to get our basics right first!

Earlier Post: Behind the Scenes - Part1

Google co-op - Customize Google search engine for your site

What is this?
Co-op is a customized Search Engine that is built using Google's core search technology. It prioritizes or restricts search results based on websites and pages that user specify, and which can be tailored to reflect user's point of view or area of expertise.

How does it Work?
User can specify/submit the websites that he wants Google to search (It can be his own blog/website). Once you choose the list of websites Google needs to search in, create it. There will be a piece of code generated that user needs to add in his/her website. This code contains a simple search box and button to search.

Want to see it in action. You can try it out this in the Techsavvy Tips I have given in this page itself on top.

Do not worry about the look and feel of the results shown here, you can actually customize the look and feel of it!

This is very effective and useful as it

• Searches in the specific site. You can replace existing search option in sites.
• Easy to customize the look and feel.
• Can connect to web results too...

Know more about this by learning FAQ's
Register here for the Google to search in your website/blog.

Boxbe - Time for Spammers to pay their due

This is a great attempt of a startup that aims to make the spammers to pay their due!
Today everyone facing this problem of junk mail/spam occupying their inboxes at home, even at offices. This was a great attempt of Boxbe, to reduce the spam. More interestingly, the amount collected will be paid back to user or charity to the specified trust by the user.

How it works?
Read more about Boxbe, in this article.

Please do read through the Terms and Privacy before you try it out!

read more | digg story

Mozilla Extensions #5 : Usuability

Today, one of my collegues has sent out a mail that contains snapshot of Mozilla browser after installing various plugins that comes with Mozilla. It was really funny...



I think extension developers should give an option such as orkut plugin, where an icon is displayed on status bar when you click on it you get the tool bar on top and icon in the status bar goes off. This type of toggling will definitely improve the usuability of the plug-in and the scenario shown here will not occur.

Google Website Optimizer - 101 easy ways to use

One of the feature's through which goodle beacame famous was the Adwords advertising concept. Here is a tool from Google called Website Optimizer.
What it is?
Website Optimizer is designed to help AdWords advertisers test different landing pages in order to determine which one drives the most conversions – whether they are sales, sign-ups or downloads. This multivariate landing page optimization tool enables marketers to test different ideas for variations of headlines, promotional copy, or images and provides easy-to-read graphs showing which variation resonated best with their site visitors. More>>
Today, I came across an article that discusses on 101 easy ways to use this new tool Google Website Optimizer. Curious! Try out !

Quick References for developers

As I always mention about the various programming languages that are coming up nowdays in the Software field, having a cheat sheets(Refer my earlier posts: cheat sheet1 & cheat sheet2) is very good reference. Here I am listing few other online resources where you can refer to the code syntax and list of functions, code snippets.
These are very handy for the developers whenever they require few tweaks while developing:
Quick Reference
roScripts

Behind the Scenes - Part1

In the present technology boom there are many programming languages, new technologies getting updated almost every day.
In my company I was asked to assist in selecting the PHP developers. My self and my collegue interviewed many prospects that the consultancy had sent. We almost interviewed 20 members in both telephonic and in person. Since the position was not closed our HR was really concerned about the way we both are interviewing the candidates and he started to join the panel during the interview.
Coming to interview you won't believe it is such a simple and basic stuff that anybody can answer.
Few questions from my collegue are

"What are the storage types that MySQL supports?"
"What is the difference between InnoDB and MyISAM ?"

Almost majority of candidates we interviewed went blank and few managed to mumble on first question and failed on the second one.
Where is the problem?
Not to blame on the sophisticated tools that are made available in the market. We are so used that we often forget the way these tools work. To explain the above scenario many php developers (OpenSource developers) use a tool called phpMyAdmin to access,edit,populate the MySQL databse and these tools will provide easy ways to create database tables, structure, just by selection, few drop downs and then click go/finish button. But we should not forget that fundamentally even the tools uses the query to carry on the commands.
While using the tools and expertising them we should also understand the logic behind it.

Mozilla Extensions #4 : My Stickies

Around starting of the year (January - 2006), I heard about one-liner saying "Goodbye to Bookmarks, stickies are here!" (something like that...)
[Stickies What is this? MyStickies is a javascript script that can draw notes on web pages and tag them. The notes are saved to an online account and whenever you come back to the page, the notes will load back up.]
I signed up for this and used it now and then. I felt there should be some other way where we can use it to the maximum extent possible. But this december (after quite a long time)when I logged into this, I was welcomed with a note -" It seems that you haven't installed the Browser Extension on this computer yet. In order to place notes on pages outside of mystickies you will need this or the bookmarklet below. "

Here it is My Stickies extension for my favorite Mozilla browser.
It is really cool one to use, this extension gives you a toolbar that gives the options to add note and so on. And few transparent arrows will be seen on right bottom of the webpage. Once you add any note to the particular website, there will be a slider that comes on mouse over of these arrows giving away the note you have given to that particular website.
Why to wait, get the extension and say bye to the Bookmarks.

Zamzar : Online Conversion tool

Zamzar is one such a cool online conversion tool that converts anything to anything. All you need to do is to follow the following simple four steps:

Step 1

Select the files to convert(up to 100MB in size):

Step 2

Choose the format to convert to.

Step 3

Enter your email address to receive converted files:

Step 4

Convert (by clicking you agree to Zamzar Terms of Service)

Try zamzar to convert those rare files of yours to any format you would like to see them.