• Do you often forget wishing your friends on their birthday?
• Do you always want to be the first one to wish your friends on their birthday?
• Do you wish anyone would remind you of your friends birthday when you want to wish them?

If answer of any of above questions is YES then I am sure you are going to love our application SMSTorta which sends SMS alerts on your mobile reminding you of your friends' birthday everyday at 12:00. You even don't need need to add your friends' birthday. Just add this application in your facebook and it will take your friends' birthday from your profile itself.

Using this application is very easy you just need to grant access to the app and provide your mobile number on which you want to receive the alerts. Once you are subscribed we send daily alerts on your mobile at 12:00 with names of your friends who has birthday on that day.

On SMSTorta you can not only subscribe through our facebook application but also add birthdays by sending SMS on +918239797978. You just need to send SMS as "ADD dd/mm friend_name" to +918239797978 and your reminder will be set.

I hope you will like our application. We would love to have your feedback to make this application better.

Developed by : Mittal Patel and Sidhharth Jain

For advertisement and partnership inquiries please email at admin@mittalpatel.co.in

Update: We had to shut down this application as TRAI has changed their regulations and Facebook is asking for Secure connection (HTTPS) to host the application. If anyone is interested to fund/promote this application then do contact me. We can re-launch it!

Last month facebook rolled out many new features to enhance the communication between users and indeed the video chat and the other features are great but I am seeing that people are complaining a lot about new facebook chat bar. The main reason is that we can’t view all the online users in the chat bar. Rather it displays some friends randomly and it would be impossible to view all the users as there is no scrollbar and our computer screen height is limited :-). I have seen some friends getting frustrated at this and so I was looking for some solution which can resolve this problem and found out one. Below I am describing how to get old facebook chat in Google Chrome and Firefox. This is a third party script so you will be able to install it on chrome and firefox only.

1. Old facebook chat in google chrome

It’s very easy to enable old facebook chat on google chrome. You just need to go to http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/107159 and click on Install on right side top of the page.

It will give alert to install the script as it is a third party script. Just click on continue.

And then it will ask you to confirm that you want to install this script. It will access the data from facebook site. Click on Install.

And you are done. You will see a confirmation message that the script has been installed successfully.

Now open your facebook account in new tab and you would see the old facebook chat bar you were dying to get back.

2. Old facbook chat in firefox

To install the script in firefox you will require to install GreaseMonkey script first. To install grease monkey go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/ and click on “Add to Firefox” button.

After it is downloaded it will ask for the confirmation whether to install the script or not. You can click on Install Now.

Once the GreaseMonkey add-on is installed on firefox you can now go to http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/107159 and click on Install on right side top.

It will install the script and you will get old facebook chat in FireFox too. Quite easy, isn’t it? If you like this then do share on facebook with your friends.

I never watched such a huge celebration of any festival or any achievement in history of India till yesterday. All of the cricket fans gathered on the streets to celebrate the much awaited victory of India. The crazy crowd showed the love towards cricket and their hero by shouting, screaming, yelling, dancing and cheering. It was one of a kind. People gathering on the roads voluntarily and showing such a tremendous enthusiasm was something we could not expect frequently. And why wouldn’t they do it? It has been 28 years since we won the last world cup and finally the moment came for which billions of people were waiting since long. We got to watch some nerve-wracking matches and we lost few of the matches too but the performance of all the players as an individual and as a team was best till the day I have seen. Every player contributed well in their respective field of bowling, batting or fielding and made us reach to this historical victory. Dhoni and the team have brought smiles and tears of joy to billions of people. They gave us a proud moment to cherish throughout our life and in future I would proudly say that I have witnessed this triumph of India.

Another big reason for this crazy celebration was our love for the little master Sachin Tendulkar – the most famous Indian alive – the greatest batsman cricket history has ever seen. Everyone wanted the team to win world cup as it would be the last world cup for our beloved Sachin and in his career of 20 years we never won the world cup earlier. Contribution of Sachin in Indian cricket is un-paralleled. It wouldn’t be too much to say that many people watch cricket just because Sachin is playing and in this world cup he has fulfilled the expectations of every Indian by playing well and scoring highest run from India in the tournament.

I enjoyed the match with my room partners and there was some tension when Sehwag and Sachin fell earlier but deep down our hearts we all had a feeling that finally we’ll win. And awesome performance by Gambhir and captain didn’t let us down. Everyone started dancing with joy as we won and later we joined the crowd on street.

I am really very happy to be a part of this celebration and I will never forget this day of my life!!!

[Checkout the videos of celebration I have uploaded on YouTube channel.]

First of all, let me confess that I really enjoyed attending my first Drupal meetup and I was glad to see other Drupal enthusiasts there. As initiated by Gaurav, the first Drupal meetup of Ahmedabad was planned on 25th December at Cignex Technologies Pvt Ltd. The main agenda of meetup was to discuss about Drupal 7, day to day life with Drupal and networking with other Drupal developers. Me, Jinit and Dushyant from Regius IT Solutions Pvt Ltd., Gaurav, Dheeraj, Aruna, Dhara, Swati, Nisha, Priyanka and Dayana from Cignex, Samay from Entourage solutions and Bhavin from Joshi Consultancy Services attended the meetup. I must mention that a real Drupal enthusiast Bhavin Joshi travelled all the way from Rajkot to Ahmedabad just to attend the meetup and showed his passion about Drupal.

In the meetup, after basic introduction, Gaurav gave us a tour of Drupal 7 and the significant difference points of Drupal from version 6 to 7. In general Drupal discussion a very interesting case study of one large project was discussed by Dheeraj and it did enlighten others about the security and performance aspects of Drupal. Over snacks we discussed on how we can spread awareness about such event among college students and Drupal newbies who can be benefitted by other's knowledge. It was very nice to see that everyone showed quite a lot of encouragement and interest to take this further and contribute towards Drupal community.

To conclude we have decided that we'll be planning such meetups more frequently now, mostly once a month and we will create a Google group to stay in touch with fellow developers. The group is created now and you can join at Gujarat Drupal User Group. And the Drupal 7 release party is also arranged on 7th January,2011 at Cignex. If you want to join the party then please sign up here.

Finally, I am thankful to Gaurav for such a nice initiation and Cignex to provide a platform for meetup. We'll meet again soon !

Last week I got a new iPhone 3GS, 16GB and was so excited to install all the applications and games I keep reading all about surfing the net. So I tried to connect app store and download applications but I was required to login with my apple id. So simple I thought, I tried to create an id but it asked for Credit Card and I really didn't want to give my credit card information so had to step back. I heard one of my friends was also trying to register but wasn't successful. So I Googled a bit and found out very easy way to register without providing CC information.

To do it just follow the steps below:

Open iTunes and go to App Store and select any of the Free apps displayed on right side. You MUST select Free app from here.

Now on the application page click on Free App download and it will open a dialog box to sign in or create a new account. Click on "Create New Account" button.

And on next page click on Continue... Then accept the Terms and Conditions without reading :D and click on Continue... Now you will be asked to fill account details and your date of birth. Fill the form with your email id and other required details and again click Continue...

And on the next page, you will be surprised to see one additional option in Payment Method. You will see payment method "None" select it, fill the form and click on Continue...

Now your account is registered and you will receive account activation email on your mail id you provided. Activate your account and you would be ready to use it download amazing applications and games from App Store.

Enjoy iPhoning... I am lovin' it... <3

Whenever a PHP developer starts to explore open source CMS (Content Management System) one will always start with Drupal and Joomla. Both the CMS are very popular, appreciated, robust and extendible. Still one will have to decide whether to go with Drupal or Joomla to build specific website.

Many times I am also asked with the same question by clients or other developers and I always reply that it’s always advisable to decide based upon the requirement of the project. Both the CMS are distinct and have got unique specialities.

Below I am mentioning few points that I found are difference between Joomla and Drupal

• Joomla has got better Administrative control panel, while in Drupal there is nothing like adminstrative panel, when you login as an admin you will find more controls and more menus.
  
• The design part is better in Joomla. The sites built in Joomla will look better with lesser efforts. Many beautiful, attractive templates are available for Joomla.
  
• To build complex and scalable site I would prefer Drupal because it has got hundreds of readymade modules plus it's relatively easy to build complex functionalities in Drupal.
• A new beginner might find it easy to work with Joomla rather then Drupal but many of the developers/programmers lean to Drupal after they get enough familiarity with both.
• In Drupal, PHP code can be written on pages or any content you are creating. In joomla this facility isn't available. If you want to add code then you will have to edit the component files.
• Content categorization is lot better in Drupal then Joomla. I found only 2 level of content categorization in Joomla that is not at all sufficient for any content based site. May be additional component might offer categorization of content in Joomla but in Drupal it is very nicely managed by Taxonomy Module (available with Drupal core).
• Joomla has got in built WYSIWYG editor for content adding/editing while in Drupal you have to install WYSIWYG editor as a module.
• Regarding performance, I would say that it will depend a lot on how big your site is and in what manner have you configured your server and your CMS (Drupal/Joomla).
• Community is much more helpful in Drupal rather then Joomla. You will find help/support very faster in Drupal forums.

So here is what I think about Drupal and Joomla. Please let me know what are your opinions regarding both. Please add your views in comment.

Last week, for one of my projects, I had to access a database which was hosted on remote server and there was no phpMyAdmin installed on that server. As I am an avid user of phpMyAdmin and quite familiar with it, I wanted to access the remote database server using phpMyAdmin only. I knew that phpMyAdmin does give a facility to access database on remote server and it was just a matter of configuration to make it work. When we access http://localhost/phpmyadmin it connects to the local mysql server by default.

To make it connect to other servers you can follow the following steps:

Go to phpMyAdmin directory in your server installation (c:\wamp\phpmyadmin, in my case)

Open config.inc.php file and find

$cfg[‘Servers’] = array();
$i = 1

Below this the configuration of localhost would be provided. All the details of the localhost is given by
$cfg[‘Servers’][$i][‘variable_name’] = ‘value_of_the_variable’;

Many of the variables are defined like that.

Find the value declaration for localhost (mostly the last one would be $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowDeny']['rules'] = array();)

Then below this line we need to add the details for the another server we want to connect. We don’t need to repeat all the variables declared for localhost. Only those which are required should be declared for the server we are going to add.

We’ll have to increase the count $i and then give values.

Provide appropriate information for the server above.

Now change the value of $cfg['ServerDefault'] to 0. So that when you will open phpmyadmin it will ask you to select the server.

If you will set $cfg['ServerDefault'] = 1; then by default localhost will open.

If you set $cfg['ServerDefault'] = 2; then by default remote database will open.

Did you find this helpful??? No-> Sorry to waste your time and efforts of reading. Yes -> Glad to know that :-)

Recently I got a new Dell Studio 1555 laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium and this time I chose to try out Vista rather than replacing it with Windows XP. (It is running slow but still I am happy with its graphics and user interface. )

Coming to the point, after installing Yahoo! Messenger I tried to log into chat rooms and I could get into chat rooms but Voice option was disabled. Then once I went into a conference and again voice option was disabled and it was popping up the error “This computer does not support the required audio compression format.” Now this was something new for me. I am a chat bug for last 4 years and I never encountered this error so I was bit surprised to see that.

Finding the error, the first thing I usually do is search about it on Google and I did the same this time too. I could find that I was getting the error because required audio codec, DSP True Speech, was missing. Actually, Windows Vista has deprecated this codec and Yahoo! Messenger still uses it for Voice chat so it was obvious to get an error.

Problem was identified. Next step : Find the solution. Again, go to Google! Search for DSP True Speech download and got thousands of link. I was lucky to find
http://www.bytescribe.com/downloads/tsp_codec_install.exe in the very first effort. I downloaded it, installed it and restarted my lappy. Wooohhhhh !!!! After re-boot the voice chat was enabled and I could enjouy it in the Chat rooms and Conference as well.

Enjoy this if you are facing the same problem in Windows Vista

Problem : “This computer does not support the required audio compression format” Yahoo Messenger Voice chat error. Unable to use Voice chat feature in Chat rooms and Conference.

Solution : Install DSP True speech codec for vista.

Link to download codec : http://www.bytescribe.com/downloads/tsp_codec_install.exe

Conclusion : Enjoy voice chat!!! ;-)