Atherton man trades his 2 mercedes car for scooter,smart car & hybrid car

It’s interesting how people go full throttle on “change” in life.

Blogged with MessageDance using iPhone | Reply On Twitter

August 6, 2008 | Filed Under Daily-Life | Leave a Comment

Apple’s new push notification service API

http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/07/31/apple-hands-out-push-notification-service-api-to-developers-background-apps-ftw/

This should open up interesting transaction model for application developers. But this is a two-edged sword, cuts both ways. On one end applications can provide more real time information , to the point notifications which can serve like a virtual assistant to iPhone users. On the other end if not used right this can potentially be a spam/annoyance.

I’m sure API will mandate developers to provides user options to decide if device owners want application developers to push notifications or not. Depending on how important the app is users can drive the destiny of this interesting feature.

Blogged with MessageDance | Reply On Twitter

July 31, 2008 | Filed Under Business, Communication/Technology, Daily-Life | Leave a Comment

AOL Radio is one of the best apps on iPhone appstore

Truley satisfies the basic need of listening to diversed music from around the world. The best part is surprise element of discovering new music. Sometimes “surprise me!” is better than “I’m looking for…” Sent from my iPhone

Blogged with MessageDance using iPhone | Reply On Twitter

July 24, 2008 | Filed Under Daily-Life | Leave a Comment

How to avoid SSL verification on Ruby SOAP calls

Problem

You will get following error when you are making SOAP calls to external web service using ruby's SOAP library

OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError: certificate verify failed

code might look something like this

driver = SOAP::RPC::Driver.new("https://<your soap end point>", "<soap URN>")

driver.add_method('<method>',"name", "password")

…..

Solution

Just add following line to your code (right before you make a call to end point )

driver.options["protocol.http.ssl_config.verify_mode"] = nil

Above line turns off the SSL verification while making soap calls.

Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail | Reply On Twitter

July 22, 2008 | Filed Under Daily-Life | Leave a Comment

Sprint Samsung Instinct vs LG Vu vs iPhone - Long Version

Touch screen smartphone war is on. Check it out. 3 latest and best smartphones side by side. He said "iPhone is a winner" but iPhone has its own issues.

Blogged with MessageDance using YouTube | Reply On Twitter

July 18, 2008 | Filed Under Daily-Life | Leave a Comment

Split second photography

Creative piece of work. Check it out.

Website Snapshot

Split Second - The Morning News

An online magazine, published weekdays.

Blogged with MessageDance | Reply On Twitter

July 9, 2008 | Filed Under Daily-Life | Leave a Comment

Is San Francisco considering going “Double Decker” for local commute ?

Double Decker buses are vital part of mass transportation for cities like London and Bombay for ages. You travel in them and it's a fun feeling all together. Back home it was the most important means of commute apart from local trains.

Last year I was in London and I enjoyed traveling in these buses once again. Interesting part of this commute was hopping on brand new of these puppies from old design buses. Bottom line you got to travel in them to enjoy.

Photo : on the way to Piccadilly Circus

Looks like these double deckers are making their way into mainstream transportation in cities like New York, San Francisco, Seattle. Which is a shift from being tourist focus to daily commute. If you consider pure upside of these buses.

They can carry twice as many people in the same living/moving area of the bus.
Fuel savings; if not 100% , should add to "Save the Earth" effort overall if you calculate per person fuel consumption for a regular bus vs double decker.

But on the flip side city authorities will have to do some infrastructure changes for these buses to run everywhere. e.g San Francisco overhead live wires for current local transportation needs to be readjusted or redesigned. The most important no-no that might keep the city from pursuing this would be San Francisco's notorious hilly streets. Think about driving these buses up California street or Gough street. Moreover San Francisco has tried these buses on some its routes last year.

New York is already planning to get these double decker's back on selected routes.

Wired has story on this.

Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail | Reply On Twitter

June 18, 2008 | Filed Under Daily-Life | Leave a Comment

Recap time - This week in Ruby

Last 10 tweets from @rornews

http://antoniocangiano.com/2008/06/16/this-week-in-ruby-june-16-2008/ This Week in Ruby (June 16, 2008) at 06/17/2008 03:20 AM

http://betterlogic.com/roger/?p=326 rails error log at 06/10/2008 09:21 PM

http://www.railsonwave.com/railsonwave/2008/6/9/spread-out-the-good-novel Spread out the good novel at 06/10/2008 09:21 PM

http://thegnollinthemachine.blogspot.com/2008/05/rail-sand-box.html Rail sand box! at 06/10/2008 09:21 PM

http://blogs.sun.com/divas/entry/my_rails_learning_path_flash My Rails Learning Path: Flash Pitfalls at 06/10/2008 09:21 PM

http://www.flex888.com/2008/06/10/actionscript-framework-ruby-on-rails-jumpship…. ActionScript Framework Ruby on Rails = JumpShip at 06/10/2008 09:21 PM

http://blog.elisehuard.be/2008/06/links-on-a-sort-of-summery-tuesday/ Links on a sort-of summery tuesday at 06/10/2008 09:21 PM

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/RubyInside/~3/306418999/pool-party-poolparty-ruby… PoolParty: One Ruby Gem = Easy EC2 Computing Cloud at 06/06/2008 11:20 PM

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/RubyInside/~3/306366813/microsoft-arax-ruby-ajax-… Microsoft’s Latest Bad Idea? ARAX - Ruby-powered AJAX at 06/06/2008 09:20 PM

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/RubyInside/~3/300901062/pragmatic-screencasts-904… Active Record Screencasts: The Pragmatic Programmers Get Into Screencasting at 05/30/2008 04:40 AM

Blogged with MessageDance | Reply On Twitter

June 16, 2008 | Filed Under Daily-Life | Leave a Comment

Does Robert Scoble knows Enterprise as much as he knows Consumer Web 2.0 World?. dahowlett said:

@Scobleizer but that doesn’t mean to say you know about the enterprise world - does it? and Scoble’s clarification in return. Good try from but not good enough.

→ Last 7 conversations between @Scobleizer and @dahowlett

@dahowlett And, who is doing video on cell phones inside the enterprise anyway? Like Qik or Kyte does? at 06/15/2008 12:19 AM

@dahowlett Like this isn’t a low blow? Dude, I ask plenty of good questions about enterprise with appropriate people. at 06/15/2008 12:18 AM

@dahowlett I guess you haven’t seen my videos with Rackspace’s CEO or Sun Microsystems CEO. I’m not always concerned with consumer stuff. at 06/15/2008 12:17 AM

@dahowlett Translation: no one will give you an interview except for 1938media and his puppets. at 06/15/2008 12:13 AM

@dahowlett And on Tuesday, I’ll be interviewing CEO of Salesforce.com. Say hi to the puppets! at 06/15/2008 12:12 AM

@dahowlett Well, I’m learning fast about enterprise. While u were interviewed by puppets I was interviewing head of Microsoft Office. at 06/15/2008 12:11 AM

@dahowlett So you’re saying the first one to do cell phone video on the Blackberry will win? at 06/14/2008 11:59 PM

Blogged with MessageDance | Reply On Twitter

June 14, 2008 | Filed Under Daily-Life | Leave a Comment

3G and GPS is on new iPhone

11:38 am	GPS support now integrated into the iPhone.
11:38 am	3G has great battery life on iPhone. 300 hours of standby, 2G talk-time now has 10 hours (as opposed to 5), 5 hours of 3G talk-time (most phones only have 3 hour 3G talk time), 5 to 6 hours of high-speed browsing, 7 hours of video, 24 hours of audio.
11:37 am	Now demoing an email download. The email attachment took 5 seconds to download on 3G and 18 seconds on EDGE. 3 seconds on WiFi.
11:36 am	2.8X faster. Approaching WiFi speeds (WiFi scored 17 seconds). When compared to other 3G phones (Nokia N95 and Treo 750), the iPhone is 36% faster — and better looking.
11:35 am	How does the iPhone 3G tackle the challenges? 3G = faster data downloads, perfect for Safari and Mail. Comparing download speeds between 3G and EDGE. 3G finished in 21 seconds. EDGE finished in 59 seconds.
11:33 am	Apple has learned so much with the first iPhone. They have taken everything they've learned and more and created the iPhone 3G. Even thinner, black plastic back, solid metal buttons, same gorgeous display, camera, flush headphone jack, and dramatically improved audio.