Chat tips for effective professional communication 9 October 2009

Nowadays many people uses chat tools in professional life at work place. Many time communication is not effective. Following are the tips to make it more effective.

1. Ask permission for discussion & time before starting discussion

Do you have time to discuss this?
Can we discuss this?
can we discuss for 10 minutes?
It is very important in professional environment.

2. Start day with greetings for first time in day.

Good Morning or something like that.
It makes good feel to opposite person.

3. Prepare all material require to discuss.

If require, send all documents & query list via email.

4. Messages should be clear & short, but should not miss important detail

5. Very important: Clear the context.

In which context you are talking, other person cannot understand it easily.

6. Confirm the understanding

It is important
It will save you from disaster.

7. Notify other party about delay

If you are on phone, say : moment on phone
If you are opening or checking some detail, say: moment checking
avoid delay without any explicit notification

8. Send suitable greeting at the during end of discussion like following

Thanks, Thank you
Have a nice time/day/weekend,
Sorry for delay
bye Take care etc…
This will be considered as official notification of end of discussion.

9. Correct spell mistakes in next line

**corrected spelling
wrong spelling = right spelling

10. Know timezone of opposite person.

It will help  you make decision about actions.

11. Be polite not aggressive or decisive

No need to tell this to any professional.

12. Avoid short forms of message

like lol, brb, jam etc….
This may create confusion.

13. Use messenger status, to avoid unwanted messages.

like Busy, In meeting, In office, @Work etc..

14. before ending chat session confirm the summery points

Something like:
1. 5 documents to deliver
2. 3 Emails to send
It will increase the effectiveness of communication.

15.While pasting web links. Brief the other person what this link is about.

Other person can not understand what to do with link without any information. You can not order by pasting link to messenger to open it. Give brief info so he can make suitable decision.

I hope this will help in your professional life.

Keep in mind that effective communication can make good relationship, that you can en-cash it easily.

While pasting web links. Brief the other person what it is before hand. He is not free to just click on whatever you send. He might be in a happy mood about his new born baby; You send him the link of “100 people dead in a plane crash”.. Does it make sense to him?

PHP Strange Timezone problem 8 October 2009

On my system Timezone is Europe/Berlin in php.ini

//Block 1
$z = \'2009-10-25\';
$a = strtotime($z);
$b = date(\'r\',$a); //Format date from int time stamp to string
echo $b;
//value of $b will be Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0200

//Block 2
$z = \'2009-10-26\';
$a = strtotime($z);
$b = date(\'r\',$a); //Format date from int time stamp to string
echo $b;
//value of $b will be Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100

1. When date is 25th Oct timezone is +2
2. When date is 26th Oct timezone is +1

You can see the difference in timezone caused by strtotime.
Assuming from 26th Oct, winter considered to be start & DST will be applied
in central Europe.

Now is is confirmed that, problem is caused by timezone setting change or DST.

If I keep timezone to UTC, then I can not see this problem. To overcome this issue I set timezone to UTC in my function. This behaviour seriously affects my complex program which calcultes hours.

Please let me know if you have any DST related official information. I mean when it will apply on which date.

Clock changes in Berlin

Chrome’s 1st Stable Release 9 January 2009

Google released first stable version 1.0.154.36 of Chrome on 11 December 2008.  This is version is mailly bug fix & performance optimized version.

1. It has fixed bug related to audio & video plugins. Now it has some more stability.
2. It has optimized V8. Chrome team claims V8 of this release is faster than first beta.
3. Bookmark management features introduced. Also introduced some priacy related features.

These were main points of first stable release. Stable release just after 100 days with basic features is good from any developmet team. In between first beta & first stable there were 14 releases.

Now people will think about Chrome as it has stable version. There is a challenge to come and stand equal with IE, Firefox, Safari & Opera. As Chrome is in its childhood with not much features, it may require some more time & some more new features to become mature or comperable main stream browser.

There will be many new features in version 2.

Google Chrome Beta release 0.3.154.9 2 November 2008

Google Chrome version 0.3.154.9 has been released by Google. This new version is get updated automatically. You can open About Google Chrome (from the wrench menu) to get the update at any time. 

Google Chrome

Top Fixed Issues

1. Scrolling with laptop touchpads now works.
2. Improved performance and reliability for plugins (like Flash, Silverlight, QuickTime, and Windows Media). We fixed issues with video not loading, stopping after a second, and slowing down or freezing Google Chrome (100% CPU usage). 
3. Fixed the ‘chrome has crashed’ message when you close a tab that was showing PDF using Adobe Reader 9. 
4. We no longer store data from secure sites (they use https: and show a lock in the address bar) in your history. You can still search your history for the site’s address, but not the contents on the page. 
5. Improved performance and reliability for people who use web proxies (thanks to griffinz for the fixes).

Some improvement in incognito window, spell checker & download behaviour of the files are some other changes.

Security fix for address spoofing in pop-ups issue released in the new beta release.

Now Google Chrome is not crashing while writing WordPress blog. Previous version was crashing frequenly. It is more stable version than previous release.  Read more about first version review.

More details on: http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2008/10/beta-release-031549.html

Firefox 3.1 16 October 2008

Firefox 3.1 beta 1 realeased on 14th October 2008.

Following are some major improvement, changes & new features of Firefox 3.1 beta1.

1. Web standards improvements in the Gecko layout engine
2. Added support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties
3. A new tab-switching shortcut that shows previews of the tab you’re switching to
4. Improved control over the Smart Location Bar using special characters to restrict your search
5. Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, web worker threads, SVG transforms and offline applications.

Web standard improvements  & CSS support will not be easily noticable to browser end user. Developer of web application need to study its support in Firefox 3.1.

Switching tab will show preview of the tabs is really good, valuable feature. Browser end user will surely get benifited.

Smart location bar using special character to restirct search is another good feature. It helps user to search URL of need by filtering unwanted URLs.

Firefox team is looking forward to implement new standards. Firefox 3.1 suppors <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, web worker threads, SVG transforms and offline applications. This features add some new base capability in the browser. This will help web application developers to develop better applications easily.

New TraceMonkey JavaScript engine is used in Firefox 3.1. Firefox Team claims it is fast & better engine. It will help to improve preformance of JavaScript based application.

Overall Firefox 3.1 has adopted many new standard. This will keep firefox on the top in future. Uasibility feature will make new fans of Firefox. As it is Beta1 end user need to wait till final release.

As of now Firefox team has published schedule upto Beta 2 which in mid Novemer. I think some stabel/final version of Firefox 3.1 will be released in December 08 or January 09 (Its all my guess). According to my expection Firefox 3.1 should be relased before Xmas.

Getting started with Amazon EC2, S3 26 September 2008

I have found some good resource about Amazon EC2, S3.

• Running a Drupal website on Amazon EC2
  This is really nice blog entry with good detail about setting up drupal (PHP+MySQL based CMS) on amazon complex architecture. It contains good detail about basic of service. Also mentioned about suggested links. Good link to do understand about amazon EC2, S3 service.
• How To: Getting Started with Amazon EC2
  Another good getting started guide about Amazon EC2. Given good detail about creating & starting AMI.
• Creating Applications with Amazon EC2 and S3
  Nice article from OnLamp to get basic overview of the starting creating AMI, starting AMI and basic management of it. Nice sort article to get basic understanding in 10-20 minutes.
• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Developers Guide
  This guide picks up where the Getting Started Guide ends and will provide you with the information necessary for creating more sophisticated AMIs, using advanced service features, and writing applications using Amazon EC2. This guide assumes you have worked through the Getting Started Guide, installed the command line and API tools as described, and have a general understanding of the service.
• Running MySQL on Amazon EC2 with Elastic Block Store
  This tutorial describes one approach to using Amazon EC2’s Elastic Block Store (EBS) as a persistent storage mechanism for a production MySQL database server, including snapshot backup and restore.
• Cloud Architectures Whitepaper
  http://jineshvaria.s3.amazonaws.com/public/cloudarchitectures-varia.pdf
• Amazon Machine Images
• Amazon Web Services Home page

Google Phone T-mobile G1 HTC Pictures 24 September 2008

Google Phone will be available in US market from 22nd October 2008. It will be launched by T-mobile. Mobile handset is manufactured by HTC. It will compete with Apple iPhone.

Update: This phone is coming to India this December.

More features detail on T-mobile site.

Links for 2008-09-21 21 September 2008

• ProgrammableWeb – Mashups, APIs, and the Web as Platform
  ProgrammableWeb gets you the latest on what’s new and interesting with mashups, Web 2.0 APIs, and the Web as Platform. It’s a directory, a news source, a reference guide, a community.
• Google Chart Creator
  Really useful flash application to create chart using Google Chart API. It is front-end for Google Chart API. Using it we can create many types of chart supported by Google Chart API without knowing the detail & technical specification of Google Chart API.
• 7 Open Source Version Control Systems Reviewed | Developer’s Toolbox | Smashing Magazine
  This article reviews some of the top open-source version control systems and tools that make setting up a version control system easy. This article discuss about CVS, SVN, Mercurial, Bazaar, Monotone, LibreSource, Git.
• Linux :: the How-To Geek
  Good resource for Linux.
• jQuery and JavaScript Coding: Examples and Best Practices | How-To | Smashing Magazine
  This article will share some best practices and examples for using the popular Javascript framework to create unobtrusive, accessible DOM scripting effects. The article will explore what constitutes best practices with regard to Javascript and, furthermore, why jQuery is a good choice of a framework to implement best practices.
  1. Why jQuery?
  2. Unobtrusive DOM Scripting?
  3. Understanding jQuery for Unobtrusive DOM Scripting
  4. Conclusion
  5. Further Reading

Gmail/Gdata Contacts & Group via Proxy 17 September 2008

In last few days I got chance to see Gdata API. This is nice. I tried to retrieve Gmail Contacts via Proxy server in PHP code using Zend Gdata libriary. Actually Zend Gdata libriary do not have Contacts object like it has for other Google service like calendar, Youtube etc… But Google contacts can be accessed via Zend_Gdata classes easily on direct internet connection but It has some problem with Proxy connection. It can be solved by providing proxy connection parameters while creating Zend_Http_Client object like following:

$httpProxy = array(
       'adapter'      => 'Zend_Http_Client_Adapter_Proxy',
       'proxy_host'   => 'my.proxy.com',
       'proxy_port'   => 3128
);
$clientProxy = new Zend_Http_Client('http://raiyaraj.wordpress.com/', $httpProxy); 

//Client authentication
$client = Zend_Gdata_ClientLogin::getHttpClient($email, $passwd, 'cp', $clientProxy, 'My-ContactFetcher-0.1'); //cp for contacts

Above code help to do some client authentication via proxy server. But If we use $client object make request to retrieve feed data then it gives some errors saying ‘Can not connect to tcp://google.com:80′. Now it seems we have already provided http proxy detail to $clientProxy object, why it is giving error. But http proxy detail needs to provide again before making request to retrieve feed data. Code is like following

$client->setConfig($httpProxy);

Above $client object can be used to call following functions.

Google contacts can have group so to retrieve associated group of contact. First we need to retrieve all groups & its ids. Because only id of group is stored with contact. Following is code to retrieve all groups & its ids.

function getAllContactsGroups($client,$mail)
{
       $scope= "http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/groups/".urlencode($mail)."/";
       $gdata = new Zend_Gdata($client);
       $query = new Zend_Gdata_Query($scope.'full');
       $query->setMaxResults(10);
       $feed = $gdata->retrieveAllEntriesForFeed($gdata->getFeed($query));
       $arrGroups = array();
       foreach ($feed as $entry){
		$arrGroups[$entry->id->text] =  $entry->title->text;
       }
       return $arrGroups;
}

Following is code to retrieve all contacts. This code also finds its group id, that is retrieved with contact entry. At the end it prints contact name, its email & its group name.

function getAllContacts($client, $email)
{
	$arrContactGroups = getAllContactsGroups($client,$email);
	$gdata = new Zend_Gdata($client);
	$query = new Zend_Gdata_Query('http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/default/thin');
	$query->setMaxResults(10);
	$feed = $gdata->retrieveAllEntriesForFeed($gdata->getFeed($query));
	$i =1;
	$arrContacts =  array();
	foreach($feed as $entry){
	$name = $entry->title->text;
	$parts = $entry->getExtensionElements();
	$contactGroup = '';
		foreach($parts as $p){
			$element = $p->getDOM();
			switch($element->tagName){
			case 'email':
				$email = $element->getAttribute('address');
				break;
			case 'groupMembershipInfo':
				$contactGroup = $element->getAttribute('href');
				break;
			default:
				continue;
			}
		}
	echo $i++.") ".$name."=". $email ."=". $arrContactGroups[$contactGroup]."<br/>" ;
	}
}

Links for 2008-09-14 14 September 2008

Some good links about GData Zend Framework authentication problem

• ClientLogin Authentication for Zend GData
  Nice article about understanding of ClientLogin Authentication for Zend Gdata. Nice detail explanation makes understanding easy & clear.
• HowTo: Use the Zend Framework GData Google Data API on GoDaddy servers – InfoDabble
  GData authentication API has problem using it with proxy server. This article focus on this problem & provides solution for same. Some special treatment is requiere while accessing Google Data services from proxy server. This ariticle shows solution for the same.
• Google Group: GData Zend Framework authentication problem
  This is a Google group which discuss about Zend Gdata authentication problem. Some important point addressed in the discussion.