I created my Klout profile almost 2 years ago. At first it was cool, as soon as I register my Klout score was 10, by default. Even throw I didn’t know what exactly does it represents, I wanted to

make it better. I invited my friends to join, few of them accepted, but they were the ones I least expected to do so. Probably they though if the invitation is sent from me it has to be good, because I’m 100% sure that they have even less clue on what is the point of Klount then me. So I started to wonder that was the think that drawn  me to Klout  and more importantly what keep me with it for two years now.

Something drawn me to Klout , and to the day I can’t put my finder on what that was. Maybe it was the fact that it uses some kind of a secret and sophisticated algorithm to determine my social presence , or maybe I just like to get a good score for myself no matter what that score actually presents. Whatever it was, it made me check my Klout score almost once every day. Silly isn’t it

So I started googling to find some more info on what is the point of Klout and Klout score, what does it mean, can it be used for some kind of analysis or a research.

First link I found was a text from : http://readwrite.com/2012/05/28/what-is-the-point-of-klout funny but the title is the same as my question. It does give some nice pointers on Klout and how it influences you and you web presence. But I also found some people that are no so fond of Klout.

In general, Klout can be useful but it can also be misleading. People can get credit for being experts in some area, but you can also get credits for being funny or sarcastic also and you cannot differentiate the two without some research. And that leads you to the point that you wanted to skip at first step.

All in all, I’m staying with Klout for the time being, I have a strong 47 score, check it out: http://klout.com/vasiljevski that is largely generated by Facebook and constant profile image changes done by my wife. As I said Klout score can mean something and also it can be totally meaningless.

Comment if you have any info about Klout and Klout score, I would appreciate it

Finally after a long time avaiting Admiror Gallery for Joomla 2.5.x has been released.

In the first week after releasing there has been more than 4000 downloads. That proves us that Admiror Gallery’s new version was big success.

There has been some improvements in image handling and a new template additions.

In Admiror Gallery 4.5, galleryView comes as a default template as most users requested it.

If you have any new feature request, suggestions, or bug to report you can do the on the official forum : http://www.vasiljevski.com/forum/index.php

There are, also, plans for porting Admiror Gallery for Joomla 3.5 when it comes out in the 3Q of 2013.

Until then, you can download the Admiror Gallery 4.5 for Joomla 2.5 from Joomla Extensions site, or directly from Admiror Gallery page

I came across a nice jQuery plugin for limiting number of char entered in input or textarea element called Charlimiter.

There is also a option for auto generated counter  or you can define your own.

Tested it and can confirm them it works briliantly in the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Opera and IE.

Anyway here is the link: Charlimiter, so check it out.

Checkout the great infographic, made by MBA Online, displaying Android market share growth  in 2012 comparing it with Apple iOS :

Well you might think why I’m writing about this simple task. Well I also thought it will be easy, but it turned out to be very annoying task.

If you keep getting a similar error message like this:

The original message was received at Mon, 17 Sep 2012 01:44:16 -0700
from localhost [127.0.0.1]

—– The following addresses had permanent fatal errors —–
<mail@gmail.com>
(reason: 553 sorry, your mail was administratively denied. (#5.7.1))

—– Transcript of session follows —–
… while talking to relay-hosting.secureserver.net

The address can be fake, just as long as it is @[domain registered with godaddy].com but it is good to setup a real address just in case.

There is a few ways to do this. The easiest way to do this is in fact really simple, you just need to add a keyword “selected” to the option that you want selected.
For example, if You have something like this:

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<select>
   <option value="1">Apple</option>
   <option value="2">Samsung</option>
   <option value="3">HTC</option>
</select>

If we want to have “Samsung” selected:

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<select>
   <option value="1">Apple</option>
   <option selected value="2">Samsung</option>
   <option value="3">HTC</option>
</select>

Pretty easy, don’t you thing so

Now next thing that we need to do is to make our <select> submit so we could arrange the page accordingly.
To do that, we need to put it inside a <form>, like this:

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<form>
   <select id="company" name="company"> 
      <option value="1">Apple</option> 
      <option value="2">Samsung</option> 
      <option value="3">HTC</option> 
   </select> 
</form>

Depending on your needs and requirements you may need some extra parameters set to the <form> tag, but for our example this is just fine
You can notice I added “id” and a “name” to the <select> tag, we will you these names to access the value at the backend.

Now for the fun part, let’s add some basic PHP code and bring our example to life.

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<?php
 
(isset($_POST["company"])) ? $company = $_POST["company"] : $company=1;
 
?>
 
<form>
<select id="company" name="company">
<option <?php if ($company == 1 ) echo 'selected'; ?> value="1">Apple</option>
<option <?php if ($company == 1 ) echo 'selected'; ?> value="2">Samsung</option>
<option <?php if ($company == 1 ) echo 'selected'; ?> value="3">HTC</option>
</select>
</form>

And that’s it. It has no real use, but it is good to get a grip of how the things work.

Hope someone finds this useful, and also that someone can contribute and make the examples better.

Googles 13th Birthday

A click on the doodle takes visitors to a search result page on Google. Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google Inc in September 1998 with four computers and an investor’s $100,000 bet on their belief that an Internet search engine can change the world.

The company though filed for incorporation on September 4, 1998, and Google.com domain was registered on September 15, it officially celebrates its birthday on September 27.

As Google enters its 13th year, the company faces increasing legislative scrutiny and increasing competition from social networking giant Facebook. Google Inc has evolved to become a dominant and potentially anti-competitive force on the Internet, US senators remarked at a recent congressional hearing.

“Google is in a position to determine who will succeed and who will fail on the Internet,” said Republican Senator Mike Lee, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel. “In the words of the head of the Goggle’s search ranking team, Google is the biggest kingmaker on Earth.”

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

The new Google Android 3.2 SDK also known as Android Honeycomb 3.2 is specially designed for tablets with a very good adjustment with the different size of screens.

For developers, the Android 3.2 platform is available as a downloadable component for the Android SDK. The downloadable platform includes an Android library and system image, as well as a set of emulator skins and more.

New user features

• Optimizations for a wider range of tabletsAndroid 3.2 includes a variety of optimizations across the system to ensure a great user experience on a wider range of tablet devices.
• Compatibility zoom for fixed-sized appsAndroid 3.2 introduces a new compatibility zoom mode that gives users a new way to view fixed-sized apps on larger devices. The new mode provides a pixel-scaled alternative to the standard UI stretching for apps that are not designed to run on larger screen sizes, such as on tablets. The new mode is accessible to users from a menu icon in the system bar, for apps that need compatibility support.
• Media sync from SD cardOn devices that support an SD card, users can now load media files directly from the SD card to apps that use them. A system facility makes the files accessible to apps from the system media store.

New developer features

• Extended API for managing screens supportAndroid 3.2 introduces extensions to the platform’s screen support API to give developers additional ways to manage application UI across the range of Android-powered devices. The API includes new resource qualifiers and new manifest attributes that give you more precise control over how your apps are displayed on different sizes, rather than relying on generalized size categories.To ensure the best possible display for fixed-sized apps and apps with limited support for various screen sizes, the platform also provides a new zoom compatibility mode that renders the UI on a smaller screen area, then scales it up to fill the space available on the display. For more information about the screen support API and the controls it provides, see the sections below.

Source: Android Developers, latesttechworld.com

This is a common problem for people with 1920×1080 resolution monitors. Quick Launch icon are just too small. You can fix this by right click on an empty space in Taskbar and uncheck “Lock the Taskbar”.

Note: If it is already unchecked skip this step

Now go to the Quick Launch drag handle and right click exactly on it.

Just select “Large Icons” and icons in Quick Launch bar will be increased. After that you can check “Lock the Taskbar” option if it was checked prior.
Easy, isn’t it And it’s very helpfull to have large icons in Quick Launch bar.

Google bought Android from Android Inc. in 2005, and that was the begging  of Android history. Today Android OS is the best-selling mobile platform, dethroning Nokia’s Symbina from top position. Major advantage of Android OS is the wide variety of apps  (applications) that extend the functionality of device running on Android OS. Latest version Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) bring the following improvements :

• UI refinements for simplicity and speed

• One-touch word selection and copy/paste

• Faster, more intuitive text input

• Improved power management

• New ways of communicating, organizing

Also there are new features for developers, like enhances for gaming, new form of communications, and much more.

So the question remains, will Android remain only a mobile-based OS, we will just have to wait and see.