On very interesting app for this is layar. So what other application can implement this in a very cool way? Here’s my take, after the break.

1. Multilingual Translator

Would be awesome if we can read any foreign language books by using our mobile phone’s camera, and then the application would translate and override the text visually with your chosen language.

The text can be detected with OCR scan and the translation itself using Google Translate.

2. People finder

Say you are at a bar and you’ve been approach by a stranger. By using your phone’s camera, you can extract information realtime from facebook, twitter and other social network sites. Instant face detection! Now you’ll know if she’s single and joyful, or a sociopath murderer.. Well, not really but you get the picture :p

3. Gaming

How cool would be for us to play Magic The Gathering and have the monster and fight animation displayed on our phone or portable gaming system.

4. Item identification

This idea works really well in museums and wild life recreation sites, how cool would be if we can identify what animals are we seeing in afrika, or what fish are at the pond, what flower are we picking and of course identifying a poison mushroom would be very useful in a stranded island.. That is assuming you have internet connection XD

5. Shopping

You’re walking on a store and you see the TV that you like, you grab your phone, fling the camera and the app finds the cheapest, best offer and discounts available for the product. We can order directly from the app and deliver it right to our house. How convenient would that be

I think that’s all I can think of, got any more ideas?

I’m currently writing this from Wordpress application on Blackberry. I might say that I’m pretty impress so far. It’s quite easy to use and I can manage my posts (including previous posts), pages and comments directly from the app.

I hate the ‘add photo’ feature though because it doesn’t give me the thumbnail view or at least the same view as Blackberry’s default media manager. But then again it’s still in a beta stage. Will be looking forward on using the 1.0 version.

It’s pretty much what I need to mobile blog. Would be cool to use this to write drafts for ruangfreelance.com while on the go.

Will be using this app more often.

Here’s the screenshot:

Akhirnya setelah 6 bulan planning dan pending-pending akhirnya jalan juga ni satu proyek Seneng banget si dengan perkembangannya gantibaju.com. Dalam 3 minggu sudah lebih dari 300 desainer yang bergabung! dan dari 300 desainer tersebut 66 desain sudah masuk. Harus diakui bahwa banyak juga desain yang ditolak karena berbagai alasan, tapi senang sekali melihat partisipasi yang sangat positif.

Oh iya, ini ada beberapa desain yang menurut gw keren abis. Most likely bakal masuk ke editor’s choice +hint hint+

Kalo kalian, desain mana yang kalian suka?

Akhirnya ArusMedia diluncurkan juga, sudah sibuk planning dan mempersiapkan banyak hal untuk akhirnya bisa launch! Tapi senang sekali rasanya melihat another one of my baby booms! Let’s see how far this one can take me

Inspirasi terbesar kami sepertinya adalah Envato, iri sekali kenapa mereka bisa membangun blog networking dengan suksesnya dan di indonesia sendiri belum ada. Bagusnya, iri tersebut bisa menghasilkan produk kita sendiri.

Saat ini ArusMedia terdiri atas MakeMac, Twentea dan Ruangfreelance. Untuk kedepannya kami akan terus menambah keluarga kami dan menjadi one big happy family. Kolaborasi Jakarta-Bandung ini diprakarsai oleh Kuswanto, Anggi Krisna, Felix Widjaja, Hendrik Ng, Agus dan tentu saja saya sendiri.

Arus Media itu sendiri apa si? I’ll just directly quote from the site:

ArusMedia adalah sebuah perusahaan yang bergerak dalam bidang e-bisnis. Saat ini fokus terbesar kami adalah pada situs opini berbentuk blog yang mempunyai pasar yang sangat khusus. Blog-blog kami menggunakan Bahasa Indonesia sebagai bahasa pengantar, karena pasar terbesar kami di tanah air. ArusMedia didirikan pada tanggal 25 Oktober 2008, dengan berdasarkan inisiatif, kesamaan visi dan misi dari para ke-enam pendirinya. Kami mengawalinya dengan MakeMac, Ruang Freelance dan Twentea. Ketiga blog tersebut, semuanya menitik-beratkan pada opini. Dengan pemikiran yang inovatif, kami berdedikasi untuk selalu memberikan yang terbaik kepada para pembaca dan pengguna layanan kami.

Menarik? Let us know menurut kalian prospek bisnis seperti ini apakah akan berhasil di Indonesia atau tidak. Would love to hear all your opinions!

Made using jquery Ideally, it would be better if the input field displays the formatted number directly and if clicked, then it shows the unformatted number for editing like what we usually see in most spreadsheet. Anybody knows how to do something like that?

Updated
Nevermind, I did it with this simple jquery codes:

this.numberformat = function(){	
 
	$("input.numberformat").focus(function(e) {
		this.value = stripToMoney(this.value);
	}).blur(function(e) {		
		this.value = DecimalAsString(this.value);
	});
};

This is as simple as formatting the numbers on blur (out from focus) so that it would look formatted when your cursor are not in that field, and strip the input field from dots (.), comma (,) and strip (-) when the cursor are in the field. Here’s the code for striping the format:

function stripToMoney(words,character) {
	var spaces = words.length;
	for(var x = 1; x<spaces ; ++x){
		words = words.replace("-", "");
		words = words.replace(".", "");
		words = words.replace(",", "");
	}
	return words;
}

And here’s the one to format the number into groups of 3 and separate it with a dot (.), something like (1.000.000):

function DecimalAsString(value)
{
	var i = parseFloat(value);
	if(isNaN(i)) { i = 0; }
	var minus = '';
	if(i < 0) { minus = '-'; }
	i = Math.abs(i);
	i = parseInt((i + .005) * 100);
	i = i / 100;
	s = new String(i);
	if(s.indexOf('.') < 0) { s += ',-'; }
	s = minus + s;
	return FormatNumberBy3(s);
}
 
function FormatNumberBy3(num, decpoint, sep) {
  // check for missing parameters and use defaults if so
  if (arguments.length == 2) {
    sep = ".";
  }
  if (arguments.length == 1) {
    sep = ".";
    decpoint = ",";
  }
  // need a string for operations
  num = num.toString();
  // separate the whole number and the fraction if possible
  a = num.split(decpoint);
  x = a[0]; // decimal
  y = a[1]; // fraction
  z = "";
 
 
  if (typeof(x) != "undefined") {
    // reverse the digits. regexp works from left to right.
    for (i=x.length-1;i>=0;i--)
      z += x.charAt(i);
    // add seperators. but undo the trailing one, if there
    z = z.replace(/(\d{3})/g, "$1" + sep);
    if (z.slice(-sep.length) == sep)
      z = z.slice(0, -sep.length);
    x = "";
    // reverse again to get back the number
    for (i=z.length-1;i>=0;i--)
      x += z.charAt(i);
    // add the fraction back in, if it was there
    if (typeof(y) != "undefined" && y.length > 0)
      x += decpoint + y;
  }
  return x;
}

And of course, don’t forget to run the function on document.ready

$(document).ready(function(){
	numberformat();
 
	$("input.numberformat").each(function(e){
		$(this).setValue(DecimalAsString($(this).getValue()));		// Apply the decimal as string to all 
	});		
});

Enjoy! ]]> http://rajasa.com/blog/2008/09/03/live-number-format-in-web-app/feed/ 2 http://rajasa.com/blog/2008/08/18/making-desktop-application-using-web-technology/ http://rajasa.com/blog/2008/08/18/making-desktop-application-using-web-technology/#comments Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:51:00 +0000 Kuy http://rajasa.com/blog/?p=305 Ever imagine making a desktop application using PHP? or maybe Ruby on Rails? Try ASP, Coldfusion or whatever technology the web are made of today. Well I did, and I made a few myself this year and it works great! Why would I want to do that? Why not make one using current desktop technology like Visual Studio, Delphi, etc?

To answer that questions, let’s review the weakness of a desktop application: First of all, it’s Operating System specific. You can’t run a Windows application on Linux or Mac and vice versa. Second, It’s harder to maintain if it’s installed on numerous computer. Third, It’s rather hard to make and eye candy out of a desktop application (maybe this is just me, but there are tons of ugly Windows application out there..).

Ok, if you’re still reading this then I believe you are interested. Read on

Now now, what would we use to make this work? Let’s list the tool of the trade that I have used on my previous project

• PHP
• XAMPP (available for windows, mac and linux)
• Opera or SSB (Single Site Browser) like Mozilla Prism (Windows) or Fluid (Mac)
• A little understanding about batch file (windows), Applescript (Mac), or shell script (Linux)

And to make it short, I’ll just list the steps:

• Write your code like you are making a web app
• When you are done, install XAMPP on the computer you wish to install the program to
• Migrate the application to the installed XAMPP
• Make sure that it is accessible with the computer’s browser
• Put the XAMPP on the Startup Menu (or Login Items if you’re on Mac) so that it would run everytime the computer starts
• Install your preferred SSB or use Opera (Why opera?)
• Direct the homepage of the SSB or Opera to the web application’s address
• There you go, your very own desktop application

With general SSB application like Mozilla Prism or Fluid, you can change the Application Icon into something more appropriate. This way the user would never realize that it’s not a desktop app.

Ok, I know that it’s kind of like a cheat. But it works and it beats the hell out of learning another language! So what’s the catch? Here’s some:

• You can’t use an Desktop OS specific Action like drag and drop (but then again most Windows app doesn’t have a drag-and-drop feature)
• It would be rather big (the size in KB) since you are using xampp or maybe other instant web server

But look at the bright side:

• Copy and paste works
• Migrating would be a piece of cake, just copy the whole XAMPP folder!
• Making it look like a desktop app is easy with Ajax framework like ExtJS or others alike

So there you have it, I know you can make a more desktop-y looking app with Adobe Flash, AIR and Flex and there are great applications using it like Snitter (Twitter client) but I can’t code in AIR and not really interested in it at the moment, maybe later

Why Opera

Opera provide 2 features that I need for my project, it provides full screen and Kiosk Mode (user can’t go to another page or close opera without a password). This was needed because I made an touch screen interface application that users can interact independently. Moreover, opera provides an excellent command line options so that you can make your own setup with a batch file, change the icon so it would look like a program and can also put it to the Windows Start up menu so that it would run automatically when the computer starts.

Hanya bisa pasrah dan protes saja disini. So, apakah fastnet akan menjadi the next Speedy? Only time will tell.

• Carousel Banner
• Kwick Sliding menu

And here’s one for unobstruive table (html) styling, have use this on current project and very pleased

• Tablecloth – unobtrusive table styling and highlighting

Need a grid? try this one:

• Ingrid – as in In Grid..

How about including an HTML file in another HTML? Prototype maker’s wet dreams here’s how:

• HInclude: Include HTML in another HTML

Will be looking forward on using it in my next projects

But what’s more interesting is the fork projects of activecollab that want to keep it free, namely:

• OpenGoo
• ProjectPier

I’ve tested them both and I believe they are still in the phase of rebranding. No additional feature up until now but I will be expecting more results from the community. For me? I’m sticking with activecollab 0.7.1 for now.

Let’s just hope the spirit of open source stays ignited!