Hackosphere

Wondering why peekaboo post hack doesn't work?

2009-07-03T00:12:00.000-07:00

I have not been blogging for a long time and not been visiting my website anniyalogam.com for ages. Just recently when I tried to access it, I saw that the domain seems to be hijacked by somebody (it shows some parking page) even though Yahoo still reports that I have the ownership of the domain. I reported this problem to Yahoo but they haven't responded yet. I don't know how long it will take

The Web is not ready for Chrome yet!

2008-09-04T13:35:00.001-07:00

Most of you would have read about the new and fast browser from Google called Chrome. I have always been amazed at how Google gives its own twist to a well established application paradigm. When they announced Gmail, I wondered how I was using an email application without conversation mode so far and immediately fell in love with Gmail. This time, it is Chrome. Geeks who tested it with Javascript

PowerMaze is out

2008-07-25T07:53:00.000-07:00

PowerMaze is the advanced version of iMaze (my iphone app) that I have been working hard on for the past few weeks. It has been listed in AppStore today. PowerMaze is a multi-level maze game in which you navigate the ball by tilting the iPhone in different directions. As I got many complaints about iMaze that the ball is jerky, I took lot of effort to make it smooth for PowerMaze. For those

iMaze - My first iphone game

2008-07-09T20:41:00.001-07:00

Update: TechCrunch mentions about iMaze! iMaze is now the 4th most popular free game for iPhone.I had written about my love for iphone last year. When Apple announced the SDK for iphone application development in March, I signed up for developer program immediately. I got the approval soon after that but I couldn't do anything worthwhile due to my workload. Last month, I found that I had time to

I'm on Twitter

2008-06-04T19:35:00.000-07:00

As if Twitter is not facing enough downtime, I am also on Twitter to increase its load. I haven't been actively tweeting (correct?) so far hoping to get back to blogging. I realized that I do get some random thoughts (mostly reflections on some news I read) but I am never able to sit down to write a complete post. So, I am going to use twitter actively. My inspiration is Aditya, who has been

Yahoo lost its exclamation mark

2008-02-08T08:54:00.000-08:00

Poor Yahoo.. After reading this TechCrunch post, I feel really bad for its founders and employees. I think Jerry Yang would be longing for those early days when the company was controlled by him and not external entities and shareholders. Looks like they have a tough decision to make today. "Should we sell our souls and succumb to Microsoft or partner with Google for search advertising which may

What can Semantic web do for you?

2007-11-27T23:57:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody! It's been a long time since I visited my own blog and I am happy that my 941 readers are still subscribed to my feed! It was one of my newly acquired interests (or should I say craze?) that brought me back here. It's called Semantic web. Some of you may have heard the term from the startups lately that claim to bring Semantic web to reality. I have been reading a lot about

New look, new feature at Vibes

2007-08-01T00:30:00.000-07:00

Vibes is back in business with a new look and a new feature. The new look is inspired by Aditya's earlier work and I thank him for that. The new feature is Integration with Google reader allowing you to easily import your shared items into Vibes. The idea is to collect interesting news/blog items shared by everyone while reading their daily dose of feeds and bring out the items liked by many. For

Increase your subscriber count using feedburner redirection

2007-07-26T23:41:00.000-07:00

This is old news but I thought I will write a small post informing about this new feature in Blogger for the benefit of those who may not know about it. Even if you burn your Blogger feed to Feedburner, some percentage of your visitors may still be reading the Blogger feed. This could happen if they had provided your blog URL (instead of your feedburner feed) to their feed reader and their feed

Update about bvibes.com

2007-07-22T15:42:00.000-07:00

Update(7/24/07): I know that the website is down again. I am working with the hosting service on this. I will always remember the last few weeks of my internet presence :) Yesterday, the incapable people at A2 hosting started cribbing again that their server is overloaded because of bvibes.com and disabled my account. Some of you might have noticed that bvibes.com was down again. I decided to put

bvibes.com is up

2007-07-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

My website bvibes.com is up and running now. Please go ahead and submit your posts. For those who reported that faded version of peekaboo posts is not working, it should work now if you follow my original instructions in this post. Those who reported non-beta peekaboo posts not working, can you try again now?[If you are using Neo, check out Diddy's mod of Neo called EboNeo. Nice job, Diddy]

My account has been suspended

2007-07-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

Yes, it has happened. And they didn't even inform me before doing this. That's why bvibes.com is down and Neo template doesn't work. Neo users can pickup the entire Neo script from here, add it to your template and get your blog working. It will take some time for me to move over the bvibes database and code. So, it maybe down for a few more days.

How to get your blog posts read by 100 people?

2007-07-15T19:16:00.000-07:00

I am glad to announce that bvibes.com has close to 200 users after about 6 weeks of it's debut. I checked the statistics of the submissions today and looks like some posts that were submitted got 80-100 pageviews. Here's the top posts that got highest pageviews (you can see this by clicking the title of the statistics module in the sidebar of bvibes.com).For those bloggers who want to promote

Hacks broken again: here's the fix

2007-07-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

Recently, I had relocated my script hackosphere.js. But my new account couldn't handle the load of hackosphere.js. So, peekaboo posts and other hacks won't work again. This script is used in close to 1000 blogs (my estimate) and whenever somebody accesses any page of any of these blogs, this script is accessed. That's what causes this enormous amount of traffic. Given that so many people have

Apology for the issues with my hacks

2007-07-11T18:30:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: This won't work anymore. You have to copy the script to your template as described in a later post.I realized the real popularity of my hacks today when my new hosting service said it cannot handle the load generated by numerous requests to hackosphere.js. Here's the email I got from them:"Currently your site hackosphere.bvibes.com (aka anniyalogam.com) is using too many resources on our

Anniyalogam.com relocating...

2007-07-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

As i had mentioned earlier, I am retaining anniyalogam.com but changing the name servers to point to the new location. I have initiated the name server change but it will take 1-2 days to propagate over the internet. I have confirmed with my hosting provider that there won't be any disruption of service during this time for those still accessing anniyalogam.com URLs. Just in case there's any

For those using the fade effect...

2007-07-09T12:46:00.000-07:00

Few of you are using the fade effect for peekaboo posts. If you are one of them, you will notice that it doesn't fade anymore (it will appear instantly). This is because I have made some code changes to support both fade and non-fade versions with the same javascript file - http://bvibes.com/hackosphere/widgets/hackosphere.js. This is part of the transition from anniyalogam.com to bvibes.com. To

Please read: anniyalogam.com closing down

2007-07-08T23:05:00.000-07:00

I have decided to host all hackosphere related files in bvibes.com instead of anniyalogam.com as I don't want to pay for two hosting services. So, I have copied all the files, scripts etc from http://www.anniyalogam.com to http://bvibes.com/hackosphere. I wanted to give you all enough time to make the change in your template, so I will keep the current hosting service till the end of this month.

Pownce review: Messaging for web 2.0 era

2007-07-07T23:33:00.000-07:00

Pownce is the new brainchild of Kevin Rose and a few others. I recently got invited to try it out and I did (The video that you see above was captured using Adobe Captivate). When I first read about Kevin's cryptic definition of Pownce as "IM competitor", I wondered if there's any innovation left in the "beaten to death" concept of IM. After checking it out today, I don't think it is a direct

Special effects for Peekaboo posts!

2007-07-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I thought my most popular hack, Peekaboo posts, needs a makeover. A while back, I received a comment that the post expands too quickly when you click "Read more" link. I thought this could be something to improve upon. How about some special effect like Fade In/Fade Out? You got it! I have integrated the popular javascript effects library script.aculo.us with our peekaboo posts. You

My iPhone experience

2007-06-29T22:53:00.000-07:00

After a long wait, humanity was blessed with iPhone today! I am not much of a gadget lover but I decided to visit the nearby Apple store to get a feel of this thingy. My first gadget was a Palm Visor that I bought several years back. It didn't have a color display but still i was crazy enough to carry it wherever I go, solve crossword puzzles (struggling with graffiti which would always

Did your navbar re-appear suddenly?

2007-06-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

Mine did! Looks like Blogger now adds the following line before /head tag all by itself.#navbar-iframe {display:block}As my display:none instruction was sitting before this line, it didn't come into effect. I had to move the line right after body tag as follows.You could use this method if you have the same problem. By the way, I

Hackosphere sports a new look!

2007-06-24T19:34:00.000-07:00

I thought it's time for a new look for Hackosphere. As I am going to review upcoming websites and products, the new look is a bit more professional (main content to the left, mostly white etc). If you have any comments about the look or find any problems, let me know. If you want me to review any new invite-only or private beta service, drop me a word. I plan to review the technical aspects (

Microsoft Popfly - A use-case illustration

2007-06-23T17:39:00.000-07:00

From now on, I am extending the scope of my blog from just Blogger hacks to include technology reviews also. I am planning to sign up for invite-only and beta websites/services and write posts describing the usage of the website or service (with illustrations). This is to give you an idea of what they have got to offer early enough. To start with, I am covering the Microsoft Popfly Alpha mashup

Need a favor from all those using my hacks

2007-06-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,Thanks to design guru Aditya's help, we now have promotion buttons for bvibes. So many of you have picked up my hacks for free in the past and improved your blogs. Here's a small favor that you could do for me in return. As part of my efforts to promote my new venture bvibes.com, I found out that advertising in major blogs like problogger.net costs a lot (in the order of $1000 per