Recently in Business Category

We often keep hearing about some PHP integration at some level or the other in all the major open source IDEs. But frankly, none of them seemed much useful to me. I somehow never liked PDT from Eclipse (and for some reason I don't like Eclipse at all :S). Now the latest milestone release of Netbeans has a cool addition: PHP Integration that really kicks! Just to mention a few highlights: great intellisense for both the builtin library functions as well as our own, full support for class browsing and intellisense for object oriented PHP as well, integrated debugger, live error checking and much much more. Do check out if you are a PHP developer! You might no longer need the expensive Zend studio to have a smooooth PHP development experience.

Below is a screen shot with some of the candies demonstrated, click to enlarge:

CutePDF is a software that lets you convert any printable document into a PDF file - and that too very easily. You simple have to select 'File > Print' and select the CutePDF option.

You can find the details here. I've been using it for a long time now and I really find it useful - it puts no ads, and it keeps the original formatting intact - which is so nice I'd say.

TrueSpace, one of the popular 3d production systems in the market - is now free. Here is a piece of art produced using TrueSpace:


It used to sell at a price around $600 before Microsoft acquired the parent company Caligari some time back.

TrueSpace, which is now actually a Microsoft product, is available for download at www.caligari.com (free registration required).

Different people have come up with different opinions about this relatively surprising news - to set free a $600 product. But the general opinion is that Microsoft has taken this step to compete with Google's SketchUp - which is also available for free - and allows you to upload content to Google Earth directly.

Here is an excerpt from the official blog posting:

As you'll recall, several months ago we acquired Caligari because of their advanced 3D toolset - trueSpace (among other assets). I've always felt sketchy about other 3D freeware, so starting today trueSpace 7.6 is now available for download.....FOR FREE! And, there is a direct connection into Live Search Maps so you can create SUPER high resolution 3D models using trueSpace, then right from the environment upload the model into Live Search Maps as a collection item. Once you've created your collection, you can import your collection into your Virtual Earth application and BAM you have your own custom 3D models in your Virtual Earth application. We'll host the models right in our 3D collections cloud! This is going to be a long post - get some coffee and make it diesel.

TrueSpace is way ahead in terms of features and power when it comes to comparison with SketchUp - so time will tell how the audience react to this.

I personally use Blender 3D, but choice is always good.

Whenever I read Rasmus Lerdorf, I feel amazingly blessed for that particular time of the day. This man is a true gentleman. I would assume you'd be pretty amazed when I call a geek a gentleman but he truly is. Lerdorf's writings are so very different and better from all the other "php experts" in terms of pleasure that one avails when reading.

I, for one, had lately become a language purist complaining why PHP doesn't have a much more organized structure for some of the things. And in this article, Rusmus seems to have read my mind. He answers those questions beautifully and emphasizes that PHP was never meant to be the Goddes of beautiful code structure, it was just a mistress that solved the Web problem.

Here is an extract from article that would make the point clear:
Here is the link to the article:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/php_experts/rasmus_php.html

The interesting thing to note is that he answered this very question of mine about the lack of formalized structure to some of the things in PHP quite a while ago (somewhere in 2004 to be precise). A genius isn't a genius for no reason and mashaAllah Rasmus is definitely one of them. Looking at the amount of stuff he has written, it seems to me that he is not much of a talker, which reminds me of the line I once read in the beautiful PHP Manual: Those who talk don't know and those who know don't talk!

This was first published in the Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter in response to the actions of some within the hobbyist tech community at that time - where hobbyists distributed copies of Microsoft software free of charge in the club meetings without paying Microsoft anything. Bill Gates wrote this open letter to the community to make them realize how it is hurting software innovation. Interesting read.

I was able to watch this Indian movie titled "Iqbal" - which is a story of a farmer's boy who wants to become a member of the Indian Cricket Team. The movie is good in itself with some really touching scenes - and as expected from an Indian movie: a lot of emotions.

Iqbal stars Naseeruddin Shah as the mentor of Iqbal, and a host of other characters. I loved how Iqbal's family members have acted in the movie. Especially Khatija, Iqbal's younger sister who helps him in every way possible - and is Iqbal's official interpreter - since Iqbal cannot hear or talk by birth.

I think movies like this should be more frequent from the Indian cinema. I have lately grown sick of the usual indian masala films that I cannot digest even if I have to see them for about 20 minutes.

I remember Satya, which I really liked - and it is one of my most favorite movies for some reason - and I always feel that Indian film makers should come up with similar stories more and more frequently. I agree that such movies may not generate the amount of revenue any masala film usually generates - but the situation is changing - and there are always people who are interested in intelligent cinema - that consumes you for a long term message - and not just a couple of hours of non-sense.

Additionall, I think it is the responsibility of the film makers to change the taste of those addicted to useless nonsense by introducing movies like this. Nagesh Kukunoor, the director of Iqbal is one of those people I guess, who want to change the taste of the audience by incorporating entertainment and real life values, to create a better experience. He has already directed similar kind of movies such as Rockford and Hyderabad Blues.

Old memories brought back when I visited FAST NU Karachi Campus today. The memories were incidently of FAST NU's Lahore Campus, which is built (almost) exactly like the one in Karachi. It was DigitalEyez - the event people of creative flare were looking forward to. I went in quite late, and I saw a welcoming group of people over there. I was with my friend Sarfaraz and we were treated like special guests which was surprising. BTW this 'special' is not the one you may end up thinking about. Faisal Abidi, who was the participant and guest relations executive showed us around. I'm almsot certain he took us as if we are from press or CIA, or he was damn too generous in helping us have a nice experience. Anyways, the good thing was, we were happy! We settled into the auditorium for the short movies, and some of them were really well made, and different. I liked how the audience enjoyed.

Since we were late, we only discovered the web design competition lab with judges trying to figure out what design to choose as the winner.

Afterwards Sarfoo had to have his camera looked after by the Sony service centre people, so we left just before the prize distribution ceremony over there.

I feel bad that I was not able to participate in the web design competition, but anyways, it must be better, that is why God disabled me from taking part in the competition.

I noticed that Procom is coming, so I'll have to try and find time to sharpen my algorithm skills, just in case I decide to dive into Procom. Strangely enough, this time its Procom.net instead of Procom, and that .net is for what? I don't know. That's not a domain name or anything, its just a name. I know Microsoft has .net but looking at what Procom offers, I am still confused what that additional ".net" is doing in there now.

Anyways, cheerz!