Programming

InfoBox – free text entry password manager and information store

Programming 0 Comment

When I was running IT services business at Uconomix, I had to store information about a lot of projects at any time for various clients. The server IP, login page url, database details, passwords, access tokens, API keys, PIN numbers and what not. At first I used to dump it all in word or plain text files under each project’s folder but that wasn’t very efficient and not safe either because it was all plain text. I needed a place to store it all at one place. I tried with password protected word files, access database etc but nothing was as simple as I wanted.

What I really wanted was a dump bin where I can copy paste stuff from an email about access details of a new server and find it quickly the next time I need it. There have been tons of password managers available, I am using spb wallet myself on my mobile and computer to store my credit card information and all. But I didn’t want to use that for storing my project related information because all those products were very structured and fields based. There were fields for a server url a username and a password. My case was unique. I had a server url, multiple accounts, smtp details, ftp details, url to phpMyAdmin and it’s login details – lots of stuff. I basically wanted free form text entry so I developed InfoBox.


That was back in 2008. I developed it and it was good enough for my own use and I have been using it since then to store all my programming related info. Now I have decided to release it to the world as a freeware. It’s very limited in features. You can create Boxes and Boxes contain Info. I had added basic formatting options a while back and that’s it. I just added some embedded banners for uMark and PhotoJoiner and released it. It’s a portable app so you can run it from a pen drive and put your Box anywhere you want – pen drive, Dropbox folder or a network share.

InfoBox uses SQLite to store the data. Every box is essentially a password protected SQLite database.

Download it and let me know what you think.

How to combine panorama photos together? Use PhotoJoiner.net

Programming, Technology, Uconomix 0 Comment

Lot of cameras have a panorama mode where you can take several photos which can be combined to make a long photo that covers a very wide viewing angle. But not all camera have option to actually join those photos together. You may also want to combine some photos to make a collage or a strip of photos so what do you do?

Presenting PhotoJoiner.net – a free web app to join photos together. Upload a bunch of photos, select whether you want to join them horizontally or vertically, set a margin between photos and the colour to fill the margin with and you are done. Download the joined photos with the click on a button.

Check it out.

uMark for Mac launched

Programming, Uconomix 0 Comment

Finally after working on it for over a year, we launched uMark for Mac fulfilling one of the oldest demand from our customers for uMark.

I had released original uMark for Windows back in 2005 and since then it has gone through a lot of changes. I had ignored the software for a couple of years but it kept selling and finally when I decided to quit the software services business last year, I decided to concentrate fully on uMark. Few days back we had launched an online version of uMark at uMarkOnline.com that allows watermarking one photo at a time and now we have uMark for Mac. Next up is uMark 4 for Windows and then uMark for iPad and Android tablets.

The programming credit goes to Arokkia! :)

uMark for Mac can be downloaded from http://www.uconomix.com/Downloads.aspx

PS: The awesome screenshot has been created by using place it by breezi

Add a watermark to photos online without installing any software

Programming, Uconomix 0 Comment

uMarkOver the last weekend I built a free online version of uMark – my photo watermarking software. Now you can go to uMarkOnline.com and quickly add a text watermark to a single photo without installing any software on your computer. It will work in any browser that supports HTML 5 Canvas. So it won’t work on Internet Explorer version 8 or prior but works just fine in IE 9 and latest versions of most browsers – FireFox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. Works just fine on most mobile devices as well include iPhone, iPad and Android.

So make sure to bookmark www.umarkonline.com and use it next time you want to add a piece of text on an image.

For more options like adding watermarks to a bunch of photos at once, to add more secure watermarks like tiled watermarks and multiple watermarks and stuff there’s always uMark which is now free in it’s basic mode.

Fundamental problem with Indian IT industry

India, Programming 23 Comments

The biggest problem is that the people who write code at the root level just aren’t interested in programming.

I run an IT services company so I know this by experience.

People who come for interviews for the position of a programmer just aren’t interested in programming! That’s a big deal for me.

A typical interview of a fresh graduate goes like this -

Me: So you want a job of a programmer. Why?
Ans: Because I have done my BE in Computers OR I like programming

Me: OK so you like programming. Tell me about the programs you have written.
Ans: I have written this xyz app during my college project…

I interrupt

Me: Don’t tell me about your “academic” projects. Tell me about any programs you might have written during your spare time.
Ans: Ummm, no I haven’t written any programs apart from my projects..

Me: Why?
Ans: Didn’t get time / Don’t have computer at home / Don’t have .Net/C++/Java at home… / Didn’t get a chance….

Me: Sigh….

Once I asked an aspiring programmer to define who he thinks is a programmer. His answer – “A programmer is someone who creates software as per client’s requirements”
I was like “Okay!!! Does it always have to be for a client?”
The guy replied, “No it can be for internal company requirements as well”
Me: “So it means that a programmer always creates programs when someone asks him to? Can’t a programmer write some program just for himself? Just for fun?”
The guy said “Yeah he can…”
Me: “It’s just that YOU won’t write a program for yourself right?”
Guy: “Yeah I don’t need to”

Sigh……

Creating computer programs is not a job. Majority of the people aspiring to be programmers won’t write a program until they are FORCED to by their college or by their employer. And that is NOT good.

I would say 90% of the people opting for this profession are doing it just because it has easy money. Easy money and a very convenient way of getting out of India.

And when people do something without having a real liking or passion for that thing, it shows up in the quality of the output.

You can teach people syntax of C++ and SQL and PHP. But you can’t really teach people to think creatively. Think of a solution for a problem. And certainly you cant teach someone to love their profession.

A lot of times I read articles about why companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Cisco, Sun, Apple don’t come from India. This is one of the reasons. Not many Indians who take up IT as a profession love the tech. And those who do end up in the Silicon Valley and help build tech giants there. Yes we do have some small product startups from India but nothing on the level of companies I have mentioned.

And this thing is worrying not just for startups who are trying to build something great but even for IT services companies! Missed delivery dates, buggy code, unhappy clients are all a result of that.

Know Latitude/Longitude of any address in the world

Fun, Programming , , 0 Comment

I have been using Google maps in quite a few projects off late. getting lat/long co-ordinates of addresses for test purpose has always been a tedious job, so I just put together a small application to find the Latitude, Longitude values of any address in the world using Google maps API.

The Find Lat/Lon app is at http://uconomix.com/LatLon.aspx

Here’s a screenshot of the app:

Meaning of the “Dim” keyword in Basic

Programming 0 Comment

Visual Basic is my favourite programming language. And sometimes I used to winder what does the Dim in a variable declaration stand for. I had read about it sometimes back but I did not remember much, today I Googled up a bit and found the meaning.

Dim stands for Dimension. It was used for declaring the size of an array.

Dim Arr(100)

So here we are declaring an array with the size of 100 (Actually 101 because in Basic it goes from 0-100 as against 0-99 in any other C based language like Java or C#)

The same keyword was extended to declare scalar(single value) variables e.g. Dim i as integer

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