Why use QR Code in Blogs?

QR code, or Quick Response Code is a two dimensional bar code system invented by Denso, a Japanese Corporation, in 1994. Even though it being a very popularly used alternative to the single dimensional barcode system within Japan, its usage is limited in other parts of the world. The usefulness of a QR code is its ability to store much larger amounts of information and make it possible to be decoded at much greater speeds.

QR codes were designed initially to be used to track parts built in vehicle manufacturing systems or very large scale (the reason to why Denso, a popular vehicle part manufacturer invented it). But, as of today, its usefulness is found in quite different domains, contradictory to the thoughts of the initial developers. QR codes are used in applications related to mobile phones and also as means of an alternate mechanism to store URLs in a universally decodable format.

Bloggers have found it interesting to have a QR code of their blog (some prefer having the code varied by post as well, as you see in my blog), displayed on the widget bar. Fancy looking QR codes are not easy to generate. There are several popular QR code generators including the Google Chart API. Others are, http://qrcode.kaywa.com and http://www.qrcode.es. This blog uses the latter.

Benefits of using QR codes is the possibility to print the image on some form of media (paper, magazine, contact card etc.) and have a camera phone take a photograph of that image and automatically redirect to that location, using a QR code reader application along with a suitable web browser. Thus the usefulness is immense. For instance, if you have a QR code reader, sharing your favorite blog post with a friend is as simple as sending him an image of your QR code generated using the URL.

Microsoft Committers at Apache Software Foundation

Microsoft through out the past as seen by many has been a strong opponent to the Open Source community, as it being one such company who believed 100% in the commercial aspects and development of software and related infrastructure (including services, support, add-ons and extensions etc.). However, along with the drastic change of perception, where clearly marked development models and interactions of software are now void, and rather moving towards a more globalized system including involvement of varied disciplines, Microsoft too have decided to make their move into the Open Source territory.

The change might seem rapid and sudden to some, but not to those who've been having a careful eye of the recent changes in the industry (more info here). My two previous posts (Microsoft Funds ASF, and WSO2 @ Tech.Ed 2008) of how Microsoft approached true Open Source provides a solid justification to this fact. The greatest question presented by many is whether 2008 is the turning point which breaks the prolonged and greatly spoken barrier between Open Source and Commercial worlds of software.

I was amazed to see this post which introduced the first ever committers from Microsoft to the Apache Software Foundation, who'd perhaps be the first ever contributors to broader Open Source in a manner that is publicly aware. In my personal opinion this unfolds a new era in the entire industry of IT, Systems and Software. The Apache Software Foundation is also a much admired community by many due to its openness and true contribution to create a world of freedom to use software unlike most other entities that promote the same.

The entire Open Source community would un-doubtfully be looking forward to further involvement and contribution by not only Microsoft, but also several other commercial strongholds.

Does Technorati Do the Right Thing?

Technorati is an internet search engine that indexes blogs (over 100 million) and tagged social media (over 250 million), and claims to be the world's best blog index. The Technorati claims have been criticized by many and at the same time acknowledged by many as well. An open source based development team with several active developers is what keeps Technorati going despite heavy competition from search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

However, certain aspects of Technorati's model seem very much questionable. For instance, Technorati displays each blog indexed as a part of their website (http://technorati.com/blogs/..) and to a certain extent makes use of others work to increase the number of their pages, and thereby the number of visitors to their pages; improving the website's overall ranking and advertising revenue.

Another fact is that Technorati actually displays each post appearing on publicly visible blogs within their site and display some advertisements based on the content appearing on those particular pages. The advertisements displayed may be purely random, but the content appearing on the page seems to influence at least one such add appearing in many occasions. You can give this a try (make sure to check around 20-30 different blogs/posts instead of making conclusions based on a few).

Whatever the scenario, Technorati does make some amount of money through these advertisements posted on their website (either contextual or not). Also, even members (people who have user accounts) of Technorati can't decide whether or whether not to turn off these adds, and Technorati's making money out of your blog/post is beyond the control of an ordinary individual.

Why this is wrong is a good question. Some bloggers do allow use, re-use or re-distribution of posted content for commercial purposes. But, some don't. There are blog licenses specifically designed to enforce this requirement. The Creative Commons Non-commercial licenses are a good example. These licenses restrict the use of posted content for commercial purposes (read section 4.b of this license which is one of the least restrictive variants).

But, as of today Technorati still does not have a mechanism where they only advertise based on content appearing on blogs that allow use of content for commercial purposes. The correct way to go would be therefore to refrain from advertising on all blogs until they come up with a scheme that is intelligent enough to account for this requirement or pay compensation to affected bloggers. But, sadly Technorati is not doing it in the correct way, and thereby violating the free-right of a blogger to enforce a license that does not allow use of content for commercial purposes.

The Better SharePoint...

Microsoft SharePoint is a browser based document management and collaboration system, that rules out traditional content management systems with its investment in the powerful interaction with Microsoft Office. SharePoint in general refers to a family of products that include, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Microsoft Search Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), and Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer(SPD).

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) provides the base infrastructure that facilitates and enables the usefulness of other SharePoint family of products. The best part of WSS is that it is built upon a IIS 6 (Internet Information Server) - SQL Server - ASP.NET 2.0 infrastructure and integrates seamlessly with the .NET framework. Which means that any .NET based developer at his/her option can enhance the capabilities of WSS at their option.

WSS is formulated by a ring of services provided around some core platform services. Ian Morrish explains the WSS 3.0 Architecture in here. Among the ring of services provided are:

1. Collaboration
2. BI
3. Business Processes
4. Portal
5. Content Management
6. Search

However, these basic services can easily be extended or supplemented by enhancements or additions, by exploiting the flexibility of the WSS Architecture. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Microsoft Search Server are implemented on top of WSS and add more functionality upon the existing core. Microsoft Office Forms Server is another product that exists within the WSS based application line of sight.

The Better SharePoint comes with further extending the infrastructure to tailor corporate requirements that expose multi-divisional, geographically dispersed, large organizational information infrastructures, under a single system that provides all necessary document management and collaboration requirements. Typical systems enable employees, customers, and other interested parties interact through highly customized business systems based on SharePoint family of products.

One Year of Contribution to Axis2/C

It is quite hard to understand how fast time advances, as it has been like yesterday to me, when I made my first contribution to Axis2/C, in the form of reporting a bug on the manual (you can find the ticket here). If you are interested in understanding what I meant in this issue: I reported, the file found in here was missing, an year back.

It is quite interesting to see how I gradually got on track with Axis2/C development activities. But, to be honest I haven't been doing much ever since I started my final year at the University. I'm looking forward to re-join the contribution camp as soon as I find some free time, which is somewhat a scarce resource these days.

Axis2/C recently began its third year. More information is found on Samisa's post made here. It is quite nice to see many new names appearing on the mailing lists, and also several new contributors joining the project. A special thanks to the two participants of GSoC 2008 who worked with Axis2/C.

When I started working with Axis2/C the project had merely completed its 1.1 release and was looking forward to further additions before the next major release. It was during this era I started working on a improved scheme for HTTP Authentication on Axis2/C. A more detailed description of what it is all about is found in here. My contributions to Axis2/C helped me become a committer to the Web Services Project at the Apache Software Foundation.

Afterwards, during the latter part of my internship at WSO2, I worked on implementing support for RESTful Services on Axis2/C. This was one of the major additions to the project. I also contributed fixing a number of bugs and added few other improvements as well. Thanks to ohloh, you should be able to see some of my commits to Apache Axis2/C in here.

Many thanks to all those who helped me and supported me with my work on Axis2/C, and also to many others who were major factors that influenced my contributions to the project. Today, Axis2/C is perhaps the best and fastest Web Service engine written in C, supporting both SOAP and REST over a magnitude of transport protocols. Axis2/C is also the basis of other popular WS projects at WSO2 including WSF/PHP and WSF/C.