Virtual Box folder sharing

Found this article very useful..This explains how to share the folders from host OS to Linux OS in Virtualbox.

http://www.giannistsakiris.com/index.php/2008/04/09/virtualbox-access-windows-host-shared-folders-from-ubuntu-guest/

Innovations in Software Industry

During browsing, came across a interesting web page. Here David A. Wheeler is listing out most important Software innovations. Ofcourse it is based on his own analysis and not a perfect list.
But it is an intersting reading for software developers and students.

http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html

His articles on Secure Programming in Linux and Unix environment is available in IBM developer works : http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-sp1.html

Open Social - social networking APIs

These days i was reading more and more about startups...But the interesting thing is most of the startups are for enabling Web2.0 technologies and applications. One of the main focus is social networking domains, like orkut, facebook, bebo, etc..But the funny thing is the interfaces and features provided by almost all the social networking sites are same(may be lookwise it is different).So, it is very logical to have a common APIs to use by all the application. The search for this APIs gave me this link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSocial

Yes, Open social makes the design of social networks very easy. OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for web-based social network applications, developed by Google along with MySpace and a number of other social networks. It was released November 1, 2007. Applications implementing the OpenSocial APIs will be interoperable with any social network system that supports them, including features on sites such as Hi5.com, MySpace[2], orkut, Netlog[3], Sonico.com[4], Friendster[5], Ning and Yahoo!. Here is the official site and more info : http://www.opensocial.org/

COMEDI Driver

COMEDI is short form for COntrol and MEasurement Device Interface. The name itself contains the intended functionality of it. Yes, COMEDI project develops open-source tools, libraries for data acquisition. It is having a lot of applications in Medical, instrumentation softwares. The implementation concept behind COMEDI is Linux Kernel modules. Comedi is implemented as linux kernel modules. Comedi is rich with the functionalities provided by it's libraries comedilib(in user space) and Kcomedilib(in kernel space).

You can see some of the applications that uses Comedi in the official comedi website: http://www.comedi.org/applications.html

This linux journal article briefly explains COMEDI using practical examples: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7332

A Bash script to download the picasa albums

Google restricts the download of picasa web albums to the users with Picasa software only. Google released their Picasa version for linux - Redhat and Ubuntu sometime back. Today i installed the Picasa2.7 version in ubuntu. It is working fine. But the download feature is not working in picasa web link. I think it is a known issue with Firefox, in linux or some add-ons might be required.

So, i started googling. I ended up in this link - http://blue-gnu.biz/content/bash_script_quickly_download_entire_picasaweb_albums

Thanks for the problem. ..:) This bash script is working very fine in linux. I should say it is faster than download with picasa software. Anyway i started learning more about bash scripting. In my last article, i wrote about scripting using Python - Scripting is very powerful tool for most of the linux users.

Python - a comparison with C

Here you go..: http://blog.marcelotoledo.org/2007/08/10/how-to-write-a-spelling-corrector/

Here a spelling checker is implemented in Python and C. Python code is just 21 lines and C code is almost 190 lines. But for big dictionaries, C code performance is much better compared to Python version.

Loopt - Mobile social network

Today watched a video about loopt in youtube. I always felt that social networking sites like facebook, orkut are very powerful tools for connecting with people through internet. But this one seems to be even more interesting..

Loopt is a way of connecting with your friends through mobile. Loopt uses GPS and related data to display the location of a user’s friends along with their presence status (available, away, etc) on maps and lists. Users will be able to request alerts when friends are within a certain distance, send messages to groups of friends within a certain distance and soon will be able to tag and blog physical locations in a way that’s accesible to friends through Loopt.

This one is freely available with most of the carriers and devices in North America.

Read more about loopt and other players in this promising business arena in techcrunch.