Author: Varun Krish

Varun Krish has been dabbling with computers and websites for almost 2 decades. He has traveled to over 30 countries and hopes to visit every country on earth one day. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of FoneArena.com and also advises startups and product companies on how to build better products. You can follow him on @varunkrish

Online Word Processing and Spread Sheet software AJAX

Soon we will be carrying paperthin laptop�s which will be used just as an input/output device with actual ( or major) processing & storing happening at remote servers. Thanks to internet, providing a stable communication pipe .

There are already few commonly used desktop applications out there one can use online such as NumSum (Spreadsheet), Writely(WordProcessor) which uses AJAX as its core. This somehow recalls my early days of computing when I worked on novell networked system which worked on local network. Now we have a BIG network out their courtesy internet and so many software companies builing applications on top of it.

Another interesting online application is YubNub which claims to be a ââ?¬Ë?command line for webââ?¬Ë? having Linux kinda flavour.

Things will continue moving in the above direction and we may soon be seeing more of similar applications� just need to think what they can be.

Good news for web-experts, good days ahead !!!

AJAX Powered IP to Location Lookup

In the midst of re-designing SEOmoz I decided I really needed a change of pace. I’ve only lightly used AJAX, so I decided to build an AJAX powered tool that looks up the geographic location of an IP address. It seemed simple enough to build and I figured it’d be good practice for some upcoming SEO tools we’ve got in the works. The database I used to look up the location of the IP addresses provides the latitude and longitude of the targeted IP, so I threw google maps in the mix as well (GG maps accepts latitude and longitude for designation locations). The coordinates provided for each IP can be a bit weird (apparently the IP at my residence is in the middle of the mountains near north bend), but it’s at least good for narrowing down the city, state, and country of the IP you’re targeting.

Check it out if you have a chance: AJAX Powered IP Location Lookup.

Rexv.org – powerful regex evaluator

There are some ajax regex tools to help test regular expressions. Recently I came upon rexv.org, which really is the swiss army knife of online reg ex tools. It supports three different regex modes: PHP PCRE, PHP Posix, javascript. Also includes options for greediness, case sensitivity, unicode, and others.

It evaluates your regex in real time, and also has some a nice tab on the left with syntax help. Browser support is listed as:

  • Internet Expolorer 5+.
  • Mozilla Firefox 1.0+
  • Opera 7.54+
  • Safari 1.2+ââ?¬â?¢

I know I can use all the help I can get with regex, so I love seeing more tools available like this.

via [ajaxian]

PHP 5.1.2 Released

[12-Jan-2006] The PHP development team is proud to announce the release of PHP 5.1.2. This release combines small feature enhancements with a fair number of bug fixes and addresses three security issues. All PHP 5 users are encouraged to upgrade to this release. Some of the key changes of PHP 5.1.2 include:

  • HTTP Response Splitting has been addressed in ext/session and in the header() function.
  • Fixed format string vulnerability in ext/mysqli.
  • Fixed possible cross-site scripting problems in certain error conditions.
  • Hash & XMLWriter extensions added and enabled by default.
  • Upgraded OCI8 extension.
  • Over 85 various bug fixes.

Further details about this release can be found in the release announcement and the full list of changes is available in the PHP 5 ChangeLog.

PHP 4.4.2 Released

[13-Jan-2006] The PHP development team is proud to announce the release of PHP 4.4.2. This release address a few small security issues, and also corrects some regressions that occurred in PHP 4.4.1. All PHP 4 users are encouraged to upgrade to this release. Some of the key changes of PHP 4.4.2 include:

  • HTTP Response Splitting has been addressed in the header() function.
  • An XSS problem inside the error reporting functionality has been removed.
  • Apache 2 regression with sub-request handling on non-Linux systems has been fixed.
  • A regression with the key() and current() functions have been fixed.
  • Over 30 various bug fixes.

Further details about this release can be found in the release announcement and the full list of changes is available in the PHP 4 ChangeLog.

What is Perl 6?

Perl.com has a new article entitled What is Perl 6?. It analyzes the changes to the language in light of the good and bad points of Perl 5 and provides new information about the current state of the project: Perl 6 exists, you can write code in it today, and it’s more consistent and easier to use than Perl 5.

Intel Macs May Boot Windows XP After All

While we’ll have to wait till someone actually tries it to get absolute confirmation, news coming from Intel in Australia, reported here by Dan Warne in the Australian Personal Computer magazine, is that the new Intel-based Macs may be able to load and boot Windows XP after all. Several of the early stories after the announcement of the MacBook Pro and the Intel-based iMac assumed that Windows XP would not boot on Intel Macs, since XP doesn’t support EFI (replacing BIOS in the new Macs), and Apple’s statement that they wouldn’t prevent the use of XP on Apple hardware didn’t really give people much assurance either way. This statement from Intel implies that there is really no issue.
via [slashdot]

Apple notebook based on Intel is a real

MacBook Pro: Apple notebook based on Intel is a real fact

It has eventually happened! Apple has announced its first notebook based on Intel processor. The new product is called MacBook Pro. The notebook is developed on the latest dual-core processor ââ?¬â?? Intel Core Duo. According to Apple, it is 4 times faster than PowerBook G4.


MacBook Pro is equipped with a 15.4ââ?¬? widescreen LCD. At the moment there are 2 basic configurations ââ?¬â?? with 1.67 GHz or 1.83 GHz clock rate. The recommended price for MacBook Pro starts from $1999. Apple online shop provides the info that the shipments of MacBook Pro start in February.


The specs of MacBook Pro:
  • Operating system Mac OS X v10.4.4 Tiger
  • 15.4ââ?¬? widescreen LCD with 1440×900 pixels
  • Processor Intel Core Duo with 1.67 GHz or 1.83 GHz
  • 512 MB or 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM (667 MHz)
  • Video card ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 128 or 256 MB GDDR3
  • HDD Serial ATA 80 or 100 GB, 5400 rpm
  • SuperDrive (DVDÃ?±RW/CD-RW)
  • AirPort Extreme (802.11g) wireless network adapter
  • 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet network adapter
  • Bluetooth 2.0+EDR interface
  • 1 FireWire port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, ExpressCard/34 slot
  • iSight built-in camera
  • Dimensions ââ?¬â?? 357x243x25.9 mm
  • Weight ââ?¬â?? 2.54 kg

via [Mobile-review]