Entrepreneur Geek » Glancer Project

LivePlasma – matching music, videos, articles and more

Nirav — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 08:40:25 +0000

I wrote about identifying music and faces earlier. Glancer is a sort of people discovery engine, so here’s one more related application.

LivePlasma is a Rich Internet Application that helps you discover music and movies. You can search via a keyword and review the results. The results are linked to other relevant results. So you can navigate between similar results easily.

It’s quite similar to how we plot people in Glancer, they have nice animations! I got a little bored after exploring it for a while because there was nothing further that I could do. Actually there are a lot of options tucked away in the left panel. But I think some more options on the result item itself, would have been great.

It’s a nice implementation though!

What’s nicer, is how CNet integrated this technology in News.com. With each news story, you get a LivePlasma applet on the right that shows you articles related to this one. You can then dig deeper into the story. This is very intuitive and more enjoyable than searching for links in the article itself. They call it the Big Story and I recommend you pay a visit to news.com to find out how it works!

Best Tech Videos on the net

Glancer source code available

Nirav — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 17:12:11 +0000

I have collected Glancer files and put them up for download. You can get the full source code from Glancer.net. Note that this is still beta, no documentation is available and no guranttees are given

For all the delegates of Foss.In who had trouble accessing Glancer on Foss.In, you should be able to access it now. We have sync’d the latest delegate data.

Contributors welcome! Feedback welcome!

Glancer BoF – Todo

Nirav — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 09:30:54 +0000

Just finished a BoF on Glancer. It was pretty good actually. About 5 people who are actually interested in contributing to Glancer right away – Vivek and Jatin from Hubli, Pradeepto and Karthick from Bangalore and of course; Tarique Sani.

We discussed and here’s the todo:

Put the code on SF – I am doing this next week
Messaging Module
Conference guide printing options – short, detailed etc
More jazz to the UI
Optimization – loading and using
Compatibility issues
RSS Integration
Result paging so that we fetch only as many records as this screen can display
Calendar view for Scheduling
Bug with 0 score (does not show up people on the screen if score is 0)
How to integrate Glancer with other conferences
Contact other conferences and see if they are interested in Glancer
Admin interface?
Bridge type webservices for integration with other conferences and sync’ing?
System Admin / Hacker guide on installation and usage
Wiki for documentation
SourceForge Forum
Mobile version
Desktop version
Photo upload feature
Port the backend to other technologies – Java / .Net etc
Port the frontend to AJAX

We actually also hacked up the code a bit to auto match people when you click on the “Friend Finder” button. Earlier it showed a blank map, now it would show the people who match you by default.

I am excited!

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Glancer Beta Available

Nirav — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 05:17:03 +0000

The new and improved Glancer beta is available.

The beta version has the following additional features:

Integration with Foss.In – registered delegates are already imported!
Talk Schedules available
Search and shortlist sessions you want to attend
Print customized conference guide – with information on sessions you
are attending
Enhancements to People Finder
Preferences – fine tune the search results by managing weightage
Bug Fixes

Head on: http://glancer.foss.in/

Umm, glancer.foss.in?? And not glancer.net?? Yes, Glancer is now integrated with the foss.in systems. All delegates are automatically sync’d with Glancer. So you can login with the same delegate code that you got from foss.in.

We also have all the talks in there. You can read the feature list and start using it!

Notes:
1. This means, speakers will have to register as delegate and get themselves a code to use Glancer.
2. It takes a few minutes to get your delegate info on Glancer after registration.
3. We don’t have any contact information on Glancer now. Your privacy is intact.

Thanks.

AIR 2, Microsoft future UI and iCheckbox

Funny characters, Webservices and UTF8

Nirav — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 19:15:00 +0000

I was importing the Foss.In speakers and talks data into Glancer, and it started giving me some strange errors. This is what I got in OpenLaszlo:
error: java.io.UTFDataFormatException: Invalid byte 1 of 1-byte UTF-8 sequence.

And when I tried using PHP, this was the string:
SOAP-ENV:Server SOAP-ERROR: Encoding: string 'some string here' is not a valid utf-8 string

So I looked up what’s causing this. First I thought it would be MySQL. I had mixed up collation order on different tables. Some were the default latin_swedish_ci, some were utf8_general_ci and some were utf8_unicode_ci. I changed all the tables and fields to utf8_unicode_ci first. But that did not solve the problem!

This is the time when I switched to PHP to test. And found that the problem was because the string in the data was not a proper Unicode / UTF8 string. I checked up if this is due to the size of the string – I had text data types. But well, that wasn’t the problem. Then I discovered the problem was coming up because of some funny characters in the text.

Primarily, the “auto convert” characters that Word typically adds up. E.g. the double quotes getting converted to inverted double quotes, three dots to an ellipsis, the TradeMark, so and so forth. This was not acceptable to the webservice!

This was strange to me, as Unicode should support any character in the world, but I just went ahead and removed all such characters and things started working!

FYI, here are the characters that I replaced:
” “ ’ ™ … • ‘ — –

Handling Unicode with PHP

Glancer Update – Talk Schedules etc

Nirav — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 11:26:57 +0000

Long night on Glancer yesterday. Got the talk pagination to work and fixed a few other things. Just when I was winding up, saw Atul’s announcement about the Foss.In schedules being put up! Have added the same track color codes to Glancer now.

BTW, all these features are not yet uploaded. We are working with the Foss.In team right now to integrate Glancer with Foss.In. All delegates will be able to use Glancer with their delegate registration code. You will have to just enter additional profile details to find people with similar interests. The talk and speaker details will be available and you can shortlist talks and print a customized “work book” for yourself.

It’s coming soon! I am posting this because I know people are waiting for Glancer Beta.

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Glancer Update – Edit Profile complete

Nirav — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 19:09:05 +0000

Here’s a small update on Glancer.. What has been accomplished in the last few days:

Changed city from Kolkatta to Kolkata (thanks to Indranil Das Gupta for pointing out the mistake)
Zoom level – added provision to zoom out slightly into negative. So that people on the boundary can be seen
UI cleanups
Added very simple About Us / Feedback dialogs
AddedLogout option
Edit Profile added Yes!
Detect if full profile not present, show profile page on login (since we will be integrating with Foss.In delegate data)
Edit Preferences – change weight assigned to different matching criteria

Next item on todo list is the Talk Scheduler. It’s going to be major! I think we should be ready with the next delivery by Tuesday!

Glancer initial response – Wow!

Nirav — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:31:00 +0000

We released Alpha of Glancer on 14th, and have received superb response! I posted on the Foss.In/2005 mailing list about Glancer and it triggered a lot of compliments (including a few grumbling notes about Flash).

I am tempted to quote a few items, but am resisting it. You can read the whole thread here.

Overall, people liked the “coolness” of the app. They liked the way friend finder works. They liked the registration process and even the “incorrect login shake”!

We got feedback. People want edit profile option, privacy policy should be highlighted, it does not work correctly on some systems (the text does not display) etc. We are working on these items and will have them covered in the next version.

In the meanwhile, I am also talking with Foss.In people about the best way to integrate Glancer with foss.in website.

Keep your fingers crossed. I think you will like what’s coming next on Glancer!

Glancer Alpha available

Nirav — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:27:44 +0000

Ok, so here it is! Glancer alpha is out. Checkout: http://www.glancer.net/

It’s still in Alpha, but works well overall.

We encourage all Foss.In/2005 delegates to register on Glancer. It will allow you to find people matching your interest easily. Then you can meet those people at the conference. Registration is a simple process. You have to enter your contact details, occupation details and select the topics and technologies you are interested in. You can select as many topics and technologies as you like. We match people based on the city, occupation, topics and technologies. Each match is considered as one point. The more the points, the better the match is. Note that we don’t have an “edit profile” option yet, so enter complete details at registration

BTW, after you register, you can search for “nirav” or “kartik” to find out how the matches come up.

The source code will soon be put up.

Send in your comments / flames to support (at) glancer (dot) net.

PS: I believe everyone who will register, will find it cool!
PS2: Requires Flash 7 player! Done with Openlaszlo and PHP5.

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Glancer Stutus – alpha on Monday

Nirav — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:13:09 +0000

Glancer is going good. The WSDL Blues are finally over. I was struggling with WSDL file creation earlier. Once that was solved, I had a tough time putting web service security in place. Integration of web service security with Laszlo was another hurdle. But it’s through now!

BTW, the plotting of matching people on the Match Map was more difficult than I thought. I am not a trigonometry guy and couldn’t figure out how an icon will be placed on the cirlcle, given its degree and distance. I struggled for 3 hours, then gave up. Called in for help. Just turned around and asked people in the office! Surprisingly (for me), they said: “Oh, that’s simple! x = r cos theta and y= r sin theta”. And I am like, “Umm, well.. all that looks right, but tell me how it will work!”. It’s sometimes amazing how easily I forget things! I was a top scorer in Maths in school, and had done all this trigo stuff very well then. But I can’t make out a sin (sine) from a sin now!

Once that was solved, I had late nights over shift of origin and shift of quadrants! We wanted to show the matches in a circular way (from A to Z on the cirlc), and Flash’s 0,0 starts at top left. I think we have a pretty good solution on that now.

As a matter of fact, it’s been extensively long nights for the whole week. Stayed over for 3 days, went home at 2 twice, and it’s already getting midnight today. It’s been a good experience though! Lot of learnings! We only have a half an hour slot to speak about all these experiences at Foss.In though! I will have to be very choosy!

Oh, the big thing! We will have alpha version of the app up on Monday. Stay tuned!

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