Category: Computer and IT

This shows the latest computer and information technologies news, and also some related information or development by me.

Google announced Freshness Algorithm

Google recently updated its search algorithm to favor fresher results. It’s so called freshness algorithm that can return the most recent updated search results when users find something hot topics.

Google attempts to intelligently give a most up-to-the-minute results when the users search the terms of the current issue, such as disaster, or any trending topics. It knows how to return the latest information of the reoccurring event such as conference or sporting events, for example, search ‘olympic’ and yield results on 2012 instead of 1900, even you not mention ‘2012’ in your search terms.

The Twitter users tend to find the real time results while old Google search algorithm is not able to return the newer results but it is outdated. Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day, or even minutes, depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent or a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.

If your search terms is not related to trending or hot topics, Google should be able to return the most relevant results for you. For instance, you find ‘what is the best camera’, it probably give you the most up-to-date result.

Google seem realized that the different searches have different requirements for freshness. If you just want to find the historical events, it also algorithmically improve its ability to contextualize your search preferring the freshest results for some searches and not placing much weight on freshness for others.

Google updated its algorithm 500 times annually, but it just affects a small portion of search results. But this new updated algorithm said to be affecting a third of search results, some websites may will lost their ranks due to algorithm changes.

Freshness algorithm is intelligently give you the most fresher results based on the requirements resiliency.

Extending Titanium Mobile with Native Module

Views this Slideshare as “Extending Titanium Mobile with Native Module”.

Or view on http://apps.facebook.com/imgshow/q:name=slideshare,code=8107992

This simply tells us how to extend Titanium Mobile JavaScript Application API with native module, say an iOS native module written in Objective-C. It guided us on how to build the bridge between Objective C and JavaScript.

Imgshow Platform Analytic Alpha

Imgshow Platform Analytic feature is now going to Alpha stage. This feature shows the usage of Imgshow Platform in graphical chart way.

Discuz! forum that installed Imgshow Platform Plugin can see the Analytic feature in their Help Page (but currently not showed openly, just by link access). Let’s view some example pages:
http://bbs.qxinnet.com/misc.php?mod=faq&action=plugin&id=qx_imgshow:help&topic=stat 

http://www.discuz.my/misc.php?mod=faq&action=plugin&id=qx_imgshow:help&topic=stat

You also can view the site specific analytic chart, let’s see:
http://bbs.qxinnet.com/misc.php?mod=faq&action=plugin&id=qx_imgshow:help&topic=stat&page=1

http://www.discuz.my/misc.php?mod=faq&action=plugin&id=qx_imgshow:help&topic=stat&page=1

http://www.warung.my/misc.php?mod=faq&action=plugin&id=qx_imgshow:help&topic=stat&page=1

http://hsw00.com/x2/misc.php?mod=faq&action=plugin&id=qx_imgshow:help&topic=stat&page=1

Pusher showcase showing my location in real time

Just get in touch with Pusher and have a simple apps online, an apps that is able to show my location on Google Map in real time.

Use your HTML5-enabled browser such as Google Chrome, or iPhone device, and pointed to this URL http://fyhao.com/showcase/p/map.html, and then you will see my (fyhao) location on Google Map in real time.

By right, at the first time you visit this web page, you will see a text indicating “Connecting…” at the top left, it will change to “Connected” and disappeared after sometimes, depend on your device and network location. (At the time of writing, I try to use Google Chrome on Mac to access but it is damn slow, however, iPhone is very fast to connect)

After that, you may see “Updated” text fade in and fade out at the top left, indicated that the map had been updated. Now, your job is just waiting the map to be updated without refreshing the browser screen. If nothing happened, meant there is no any new updated information from me.

How it works? I will create another script to get my current location using HTML5 Geolocation API and send the location to Pusher for about 3 seconds interval, and it will immediately update your screen with my latest location. But I will not open my phone’s screen to point to this page for longer time, so you may not see any updated for certain times..

 

Conclusion

Pusher is an amazing tool to easily integrate real time feature in our web apps and mobile apps. Using the Pusher API is very easy, and there are many industry use case, see the Pusher examples here.

Notes on setup Heroku Development on Mac

Heroku is a cloud platform allows developers to deploy web applications, it provides no setup fee, there is a free limitation and it is enough for testing. It does provides us an URL subdomain to access the web application, but it also allows custom domain to be setup. Recently Facebook worked with Heroku to provide Facebook Developers easier to develop their apps through Heroku. It frees developers to worry for their server to host the apps, but let them concentrates to transform their creative idea into an interesting apps.

I had been trying to setup Heroku Development on Mac from today morning. Heroku uses Git to maintain the files uploaded to their cloud server. Heroku initially supports Ruby on Rails, but it now open to Java, PHP, Node.JS, Clojure, and many more I can’t remember here. I had been headache to setup Heroku local development, most of the time I having problem to setup Ruby and Rails on my machine, struggling with the different Ruby Version, encountered many types of errors, or on install Gem, or encountered invalid Gemfiles format…

But finally, I managed to deploy two apps to Heroku, one using PHP and the other using Java Play framework.

Here I found some info that helps on the setup of Heroku Development on Mac.

http://eddorre.com/posts/rails-ultimate-install-guide-on-os-x-lion-using-rvm-homebrew-and-pow

Must remember, every time create a new directory for an apps, must have a Git Repository been setup, and then commit the changes, before git push to Heroku.

Almost half days gone to research Heroku, I now managed to deploy simple apps to Heroku cloud, but it does provides many more features and add-ons (to extend Heroku feature) waiting me to explore, the add-ons include many types of cloud database (free for limitation use, and charge for production use, but some are totally free), SMS gateway, Pusher (A WebSockets Provider, to build real time application), cloud performance or management tools, and many many more.

Haha, it is worth on today hacking, although there is nothing big I achieved.