Building services like FriendFeed using PHP - Part2

Following the first installment in this series, here is the second part. In this part I will focus mainly on Bookmarking and News services supported by FriendFeed . Here we go

Supported bookmarking services by FriendFeed
1. Del.icio.us
2. Furl
3. Google shared stuffs
4. Mag.nolia
5. Stumbleupon

Except google shared stufss, all of the rests require just an username to generate the access point for retrieving user’s bookmarked items. And for the google shared stuffs, it requires the fully functional url of the feed available from your google bookmark service.

Access points

Del.icio.us

AP: http://feeds.delicious.com/rss/<user name>
example: http://feeds.delicious.com/rss/anduh

---

Furl

AP: http://rss.furl.net/member/<user name>.rss;
example: http://rss.furl.net/member/pigge.rss

---

Google Shared Stuffs
you can find your google shared stuff url from http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/stuff

example: http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/stuff?user=110703083499686157981&output=rss

---

Ma.gnolia

AP: http://ma.gnolia.com/rss/lite/people/<user name>.rss;
example: http://ma.gnolia.com/rss/lite/people/gerryquach

---

Stumbleupon
Whoops, Double Whoops, Tripple Whoops. It took quite a time for me to find the feed url. I dont know why it is kept so “SECRET” - LOL

AP: http://www.stumbleupon.com/syndicate.php?stumbler=<user name>.rss;
example: http://www.stumbleupon.com/syndicate.php?stumbler=jd001

---

Supported news services by FriendFeed
1. Digg
2. Google Reader
3. Mixx
4. Reddit

Here are the access points

---

Digg

AP: http://digg.com/users/<user name>/history.rss;
example: http://digg.com/users/msaleem/history.rss

---

Google Reader

You can find your shared item’s feed url here http://www.google.com/reader/view/user/-/state/com.google/broadcast

---

Mixx

Unfortunately during the time of writing this article, Mixx was napping - here is the screenshot. Once they are awake, I will update this section

---

Reddit

AP: http://www.reddit.com/user/<user name>/.rss;
example: http://www.reddit.com/user/jack_alexander/.rss

In next installation I will focus on scaling such a huge load successfully. Hope that will be interesting to many of you. Following installation will focus again on the access points.

Building services like FriendFeed using PHP - Part 1

Friendfeed is an excellent life streaming service aggregating all your feeds from different service providers, compile them together, build a social network among your known people and finally deliver all these feeds as a mashup. As a result you can immediately track activities of your friends on all the different service they use (like jaiku, twitter, flickr) and stay up-to-date. Hats off to the developers of FriendFeed for delivering such a nice application to us.

In this blog post I will try to focus on how to develop such a service like Friendfeed using PHP and JS and how to scale such a huge load successfully. Previously I’d also written another article focusing “How to develop services like SpringLoops using PHP“. The complete article will be delivered in multiple installments and in current installment, I will focus on Photo sharing services used by friendfeed.

Area to focus
1. Services to be supported
2. Update discovery
3. Parsing the feeds
4. Storing the data
5. Scaling

FriendFeed parses feeds from a total of 35 popular services from around the web - lets have a look at them one by one and I will give you idea about the access points of these services. Though Not all of them are feed, so I will try to focus those services as well to give you a basic idea.

Service 1 : Flickr
Usable PHP Library: PHPFlickr

Flickr is an excellent photo sharing services under the banner of Yahoo. Friendfeed parses all the photo from a user and also the list of his/her favorite photos. Given an username you can easily find the Flickr ID like (76536911@N00)of that user and once you got it, here is the access points for list of public photos and favorites

List of photos
http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=<user’s flickr id>&lang=en-us&format=rss_200
example: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=76536911@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200

List of favorites
http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_faves.gne?nsid=<user’s flickr id>&lang=en-us&format=rss_200
example:http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_faves.gne?nsid=76536911@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200

Service 2: Picasa Web Album
Picasa is another photo sharing service under the banner of the Giant, Google. Given a picasa user name , here are the access point of user’s public photos

List of public photos
http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/<picasa user name>?kind=album&alt=rss&hl=en_US&access=public
example:http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/countdraculla?kind=album&alt=rss&hl=en_US&access=public

Service 3: Smugmug
Here comes another photo sharing service where users can buy and sell their photos. Given a smugmug user name you can find the feed of this user’s photos

List of public photos
http://<smugmug user name>.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=nickname&Data=Ifocus&format=rss200
example:http://ifocus.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=nickname&Data=Ifocus&format=rss200

Service 4: Zoomr
Zoomr is another photo sharing service started in late 2005 by Kristopher Tate as a place for him to share photos with his friends and later became a public services, is currently supported by FriendFeed. And here we go with the access points

List of public photos
http://www.zooomr.com/services/feeds/public_photos/?id=<zoomr user name>&format=rss_200
example:http://www.zooomr.com/services/feeds/public_photos/?id=wolfmank&format=rss_200

In next part, I will highlight the access points of supported bookmark services and news services supported by FriendFeed Have a nice weekend.

WorldTimeEngine - How about making your own in PHP?

I recently came by this site WorldTimeEngine where users can search the local time of any place using the name, street address or just latitude and longitude. Since that time I was thinking how easily you can make your own. As long there are some good people over there (For Geocoding API) - its a not a big deal, you know? Lets have a look at the following PHP code.


<?
$place = “Bucharest”;

$geodata = getGeoCode($place);
print_r($geodata);
echo getTime($geodata['lat'],$geodata['lng']);

function getTime($lat, $lng)
{
$url = “http://ws.geonames.org/timezone?lat={$lat}&lng={$lng}”;
$timedata = file_get_contents($url);
$sxml = simplexml_load_string($timedata);
return $sxml->timezone->time;
}
function getGeoCode($address)
{
$_url = ‘http://api.local.yahoo.com/MapsService/V1/geocode’;
$_url .= sprintf(’?appid=%s&location=%s’,”orchid_geocode”,rawurlencode($address));
$_result = false;
if($_result = file_get_contents($_url)) {
preg_match(’!<Latitude>(.*)</Latitude><Longitude>(.*)</Longitude>!U’, $_result, $_match);
$lng = $_match[2];
$lat = $_match[1];
return array(”lat”=>$lat,”lng”=>$lng,”address”=>$address);
}
else
return false;
}
?>


Changing the variable “$place” to “Bucharest”,”Dhaka”, “Toronto” and “Oslo” gives me the following result


Array
(
[lat] => 44.434200
[lng] => 26.102955
[address] => Bucharest
)
2008-03-01 08:41

Array
(
[lat] => 23.709801
[lng] => 90.407112
[address] => Dhaka
)
2008-03-01 12:42

Array
(
[lat] => 43.648565
[lng] => -79.385329
[address] => Toronto
)
2008-03-01 01:42

Array
(
[lat] => 59.912280
[lng] => 10.749980
[address] => Oslo
)
2008-03-01 07:43


Nice, Huh?

Getting Dell BCM4328 Wifi Card Working on Ubuntu 7.10

After trying,searching and crying for more than one month, I finally get it working today in my laptop (Dell Inspiron 6400) - I am one of the happiest ever in this world right now :D. here’s how to. All the credit goes to “kayvortex”

Model of my wifi card is “Broadcom BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 01)”

Steps

1. Install Ndiswrapper Common and Ndiswrapper Utils (You can do it using synaptic)
2. Download The Driver from ftp://ftp.dell.com/network/R151517.EXE and unzip it somewhere. You will see a folder named DRIVER
3. Execute the following commands


sudo ndiswrapper -i /download_directory/DRIVER/bcmwl5.inf
sudo ndiswrapper -l
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper


4. Then, set ndiswrapper to load on startup:

sudo ndiswrapper -m
gksudo gedit /etc/modules


and add the following module to the list


ndiswrapper


5. Restart (This is a must)

Now you can use Fn+F2 to turn on your wifi )

Making a jobsite using PHP

I was involved in making a job site few days ago. During the development, I have studied how easily anyone can develop a job site using PHP (language independent in true sense) . So I decide to write a blog post about my experience and here it goes. But note that this article is not about scaling or balancing the load on your site during heavy traffic, heh heh.

When you start making a job site, the most complex thing that I’ve found is making the resume-submission-system. Specially the resume editor is more complex than most other parts of a job site. Numbers of sub sections makes it really “not-so-lovely” to code . I am not going to foucs on resume-editor in this article but want to help you on “how easily you can create you can make/run a job site by your own”.

If you want a ready made job-board software which you can just plugin easily under your domain (zero effort, seriously) you can go for “job-a-matic” which is just register-setup-run type one. Please note that it doesn’t come with source code. Its just a customizable solution which you can run under your domain name.

If you love challenge but still want a ready made one with source code then you can go for “Jobberbase“. It is written in pure PHP and uses MySQL in back end. It comes with nice user interface and

How to configure Citycell Zoom USB Modem for Linux (EC325)

Today I have configured the CDMA USB modem (HUWAEI EC325) provided by citycell with their zoom connection to use in my linux distro (Mandriva Spring 2007) - Heres how to-

Attach the modem with your pc/laptop

1. check if the USB device is detected properly
cat /proc/bus/usb/devices

you will get some output like this

…..
…..
T: Bus=02 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=05 Cnt=02 Dev#= 4 Spd=12 MxCh= 0
D: Ver= 1.01 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=16 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=12d1 ProdID=1001 Rev= 0.00
S: Manufacturer=Huawei Technologies
S: Product=Huawei Mobile
S: SerialNumber=HUAWEI EC3X1
C:* #Ifs= 2 Cfg#= 1 Atr=e0 MxPwr=100mA
I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 3 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=ff Prot=ff Driver=pl2303
E: Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS= 16 Ivl=128ms
E: Ad=8a(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=0ms
E: Ad=0b(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=0ms
I: If#= 1 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=ff Prot=ff Driver=pl2303
E: Ad=83(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=0ms
E: Ad=06(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=0ms
…..
…..

2. Now probe for this USB device
modprobe usbserial vendor=0×12d1 product=0×1001

3. Now check with dmesg if it has been successfully probed
dmesg

you will get some output like this

[ 2315.412106] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial
[ 2315.412508] drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for generic
[ 2315.461938] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic
[ 2315.461945] drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial Driver core
[ 2315.480382] drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for pl2303
[ 2315.480414] pl2303 2-6:1.0: pl2303 converter detected
[ 2315.480608] usb 2-6: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[ 2315.480620] pl2303 2-6:1.1: pl2303 converter detected
[ 2315.480691] usb 2-6: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB1

4. Now configure your wvdial.conf as shown here.
vi /etc/wvdial.conf

[Modem0]
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Baud = 230400
SetVolume = 0
Dial Command = ATDT
Init1 = ATZ
FlowControl = Hardware (CRTSCTS)
[Dialer cdma]
Username = waps
Password = waps
Phone = #777
Stupid Mode = 1
Inherits = Modem0

Now save this file

You are done!!

Now you can connect to internet by applying the following command in shell

wvdial cdma

Thats it!