AVINASH 2.0

The Wrong Way of Building Websites

What’s the use of spending tons of money in building such a site that’s completely useless for mobile users?

I used to love Streamy since the day I received an invite to try it. Its developers are very intelligent for what they’ve come up with – a really powerful platform for power bloggers. But Streamy is attractive and all that only if you’re using it from your desktop/laptop/tablet pcs. I don’t know how does it work on iPhone & similar gadgets but I never got it to work on my Nokia Eseries phones.

The reason? – It’s too AJAXY. While all other web feed readers (including full web versions of Google Reader, Bloglines, etc.) work perfectly well on my Eseries devices, Streamy won’t even load.

You’ll face two problems while trying to use Streamy from your mobile phones. First problem is that Streamy doesn’t have an interface for mobile users (like Google Reader Mobile, Bloglines Mobile, etc.) and second, even the full web version doesn’t work.

I had stopped using all other feed readers since I became a Streamy member but their poorly built design (from the accessibility point of view) leaves me no choice but to switch back to my ex-feedreader.

Note: I still recommend Streamy over other web feed readers, if your only device to access the Internet is a computer.

After a long sleep…

… it’s time for me to get up and get involved in blogging once again. So, I’ll go ahead and say hello to all the people who have ever read this blog (& found something interesting/useful here).

How have you been? It was a long break for me (from blogging). I spent all this time away from the Internet trying new things, getting real and you know, ‘having a life’. :-) Although I haven’t returned back with a plan to do serious blogging, you may still expect 1-2 posts every week.

Now you’ll mostly find new articles of technical nature (programming, etc.) because I’ve done a lot of coding while being away from Blogosphere. I discovered that the backend side of the Web is much more fun to write about than just posting random lists & such stuffs. I’ll be writing about 4-5 things that I’m currently interested into: WordPress, Mobile Development, Google App Engine & Semantic Web.

That’s all for now. Hope to see you guys soon in the upcoming posts.

– Avinash

Happy BlogDay!

Did you know that today is BlogDay? :)

I was lost in my blog upgrade and other ‘news river addition’ related stuffs that’s why couldn’t find the time to wish you guys earlier. Some of you may have seen this blog completely erased if you visited a few hours ago. I tried to add extra scripts in the blog root directory but it didn’t work so I had to completely start from scratch. Sorry if you faced any trouble reading articles while the blog appeared to be lost in oblivion.

I’ve added some cool stuffs in the WP core and will be working on my news river project for the next 6 or 7 days. I’ve also read too many awesome articles this week so expect some cool article links in my tomorrow’s link collection. You can also expect a pretty big and detailed review of Streamy, with lots of screenshots. ;)

One thing that I should let you know: This blog may have gazillions of errors at this time ’cause of heavy tests running in the background. Please be patient for the next few days if you face any trouble.

Random Pearls [3] on Graphic Design, CSS, iPhone, etc

Before you read further, let me tell you that I’ve been using Streamy for past few days and reading much more articles than I used to. So, expect less big posts and more helpful hyperlinking stuffs on this blog. Also keep an eye on my Asides category to find useful quickies.

Recently, life has become pretty busy because of study, work, etc. I’m also working on a major web 2.0 project so instead of wasting my time writing about the same thing that has already been written by many other bloggers, I’ll try to provide as much high quality article links as possible.

I’m thinking to add a News River section in my blog that may start tracking over 20,000 self-picked RSS feeds in the first week of September, 2007. These are the best blogs that I’ve discovered in the past 15 or 16 months and I hope that you’ll like the quality of the articles that are included in the River.

Anyway, enjoy these links for now:

• Don’t Get Hacked: Google Bot Trick
• 20+ Free And Fresh Icon Sets – Smashing Magazine
• Filmmaker’s Tool Kit: Creating a Movie with Web 2.0 – Read/Write Web
• AideRSS: Socially Filtered Feeds – Library Clips
• Bad site design got you frustrated? Bookmarklets to the rescue – ArsGeek
• How To: Quickly Remove Backgrounds with GIMP – Lifehacker
• �Perfect� iTunes equalizer setting – 43 Folders
• A Look at Channelled Communications with Pibb – Web Worker Daily
• FotoFlexer Raises The Bar On Online Photo Editing – TechCrunch
• FREE iPhone Wallpaper – ART BACKWASH
• 7 Things You Didn’t Know About Adobe Photoshop – Attitude Design
• 15 Design Decisions That Annoy Readers – Devlounge
• 6 Keys to Understanding Modern CSS-based Layouts – Snook.ca
• 7 Powerful Relaxation Techniques – Pick the Brain

AVINASH 2.0 Goes Multilingual

After checking my Google Analytics report, I found that I’ve *many* visitors from non-English world. I was wondering how many visitors just visit and return without reading any article posted on this blog because of the lack of an article translation option.

I tried to install a popular WordPress translation plugin but unfortunately, its latest “stable” release had some bugs that seemed pretty stubborn! I kept clicking on the language flags after configuring the plugin but it kept showing me ‘page not found’ error in return. Duh!

So, for now, I’ve installed a translation plugin (that is pretty visible now, I guess) that takes visitors to Google translation page and shows my blog in a frame (I hate frames, I’m telling you). Since I don’t like the current translation plugin, I’ll keep trying to find a better one.

But, until I find a better one, you gotta use the current translation option (sorry, my friend! If you dislike the current translation option, please wait a few days! I’ll find out a plugin that works properly.)

“Hello there! Do you know any WordPress translation plugin that doesn’t suck? If you do, please let me know in your comment! Should I say “please” once again? ;)”

Thanks!

[tags]WordPress, Translation plugin, Multilingual, AVINASH 2.0[/tags]

WordPress MU 1.2 Available For Download

WordPress MU 1.2 is now available for download. This is primarily a bugfix release but it also has a security fix. So, if you are running WordPress MU, the upgrade is highly recommended.

VIA

[tags]Blogging, WordPress, WordPress MU[/tags]

New Feature Additions To AVINASH 2.0 – DoFollow, etc.

Recently, I’ve done too much tweaking on this blog. Except all the major backend improvements, there are 3 major comment related additions to this site that are quite visible and useful. I’ve also tried to improve readability.

a). I’ve installed the WP DoFollow plugin on this blog to share some backlink love. Feel free to leave comments and stay assured that the “nofollow link attribute” won’t be added to your links. Just don’t spam, please!

b). Now you’ve the option to get notifications of followup comments via e-mail.

c). 3rd and pretty useful feature addition to this blog is the “comment preview button”. Now you won’t have to feel ashamed when you click the submit button and find that you wrote something wrong! You can always preview comments before you submit them.

Note: I’ve tested option (c) on FireFox 2 and Opera browsers. It works nicely in both browsers. If you are an Internet Explorer user and this blog looks weird after clicking the “Preview” button, please let me know!

Umm.. Am I forgetting anything!? Yeah! I almost forgot to say that now, there is a contact form on About Me page for the people who want to contact me. I’ll be adding a few major *visible* features to this blog in next few weeks. AVINASH 2.0.1 will have many social networking capabilities. Stay tuned and you’ll see. ;)

[tags]Avinash, AVINASH 2.0, DoFollow, Backlink Love[/tags]

WordPress 2.0.7 Released

Because of a bug in certain versions of PHP that could cause a security vulnerability in WordPress powered blogs, the WordPress team has released WordPress 2.0.7 to fix the PHP security problem.

They have also fixed the Feedburner issue that was in WP 2.0.6.

URL: http://wordpress.org/development/2007/01/wordpress-207/

Happy New Year! :)

Well..

It’s January 1st, 2007!!! After saying Goodbye to 2006, I had few minutes left to post this article on my blog. :D

Wishing you a Very Very Happy New Year 2007!! No matter how was the year 2006 for you people, I wish that 2007 brings a lot of happiness and becomes a very very successful year for all of you! :)

Enjoy, friends! ;)

[tags]Happy New Year 2007[/tags]

Make International Calls For FREE

FuturePhone enables you to make international calls without spending a penny.

URL : http://www.futurephone.com

They are providing everything for free. No advertisements. No signup required. Don’t forget to check out their FAQ page : http://www.futurephone.com/faq.html

Main source: Lifehacker

Official Google Blog Hacked

After my “one worst day period”, when I checked Google Blogoscoped, I found a scary post about Google. Just two days ago, Google security team had posted on their official blog that “We keep the bad guys away” and yesterday, the official blog got hacked.

That is enough to proove that there are too many experts in the security field (Bad/Good) who have the skills to break into any system. This teaches us that we should never challenge a hacker, ‘a cracker’ to be exact because it seems that they have too much time in their hand.