Web progamming and database development

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How to Write Your Own Facebook App in 5 Minutes

Setup your own Proxy Server in 5 Minutes for Free

There’re situations where you can’t access your favourite website because your ISP ‘accidentally’ blacklisted it somehow. Most of the time, a proxy service is an easy way to get around.

Anyway, find a nice public proxy server is difficult. And once you got it, it’s possible that it will gone away very soon. So it’s a good idea to set up your own. And it will be even better if you can have it FOR FREE :)

This video tutorial by Digital Inspiration, shows you how to create a free proxy server with Google App Engine. In short, App Engine is a Google’s service that let you run a computer code on its server, for free. So we just put a code for proxy service into our App Engine space, and we will got our very own personal proxy server.

Video Lectures of Computer Science

I found a good list of video lectures for computer science domain from Surendra Sedhai, one of my friends. Here is the link of his blog for the list of video lectures

http://sedhai.blogspot.com/2010/01/video-lectures-of-computer-science.html

Yak Shaving

One of my friends used this term during SDQI presentation and I was interested to know the meaning of it. Here are some meanings obtained from different sources:

1) Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing you to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows you to solve a larger problem.
I was doing a bit of yak shaving this morning, and it looks like it might have paid off. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving)

2) [MIT AI Lab, after 2000: orig. probably from a Ren & Stimpy episode.] Any seemingly pointless activity which is actually necessary to solve a problem which solves a problem which, several levels of recursion later, solves the real problem you're working on. (http://www.ist.rit.edu/~jxs/jargon/html/Y/yak-shaving.html)

3) "Yak shaving" is a programmer's slang term for the distance between a task's start and completion and the tangential tasks between you and the solution. If you ever wanted to mail a letter, but couldn't find a stamp, and had to drive your car to get the stamp, but also needed to refill the tank with gas, which then let you get to the post office where you could buy a stamp to mail your letter—then you've done some yak shaving. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Citations:yak_shaving#English)

10 Skills to make a perfect Project Manager

Basic 10 skills a project manager should have are:

1. A good HR manager, maintaining a cohesive team who works in collaboration; has to be a strong bonding agent in his team.


2. Focused and positive towards his team members. Should maintain a good relationship with other team members even if he doesn't like them.


3. Be confident, make yourself and other team members feel comfortable.


4. Should have excellent presentation skills since he is the person working in between customer and organization. To update, convince and win the customer about the progress of software development, the progress of implementation and the completion of project i.e. sign off from customer at various stages, the project manager has to sell himself by having marvelous presentation skills


5. Project Manager has to inculcate the leadership skills in all his team members so as to make them independent in handling adverse situations and coming out of it successfully. Also in this way he will have to burn less energies in tackling each situation.


6. Project Manager has to have strong technical skills so that his team members do not lose confidence in him or do not fool him in technical aspects of the project. Although he doesn’t have to do much of the technical work with his own hands but still having those skills to understand how his team members are doing and whether they are in the right direction, is very important during development and implementation.


7. Project Manager should be a firm believer in the Japanese term KAIZEN. He should ensure in making everyone believe that improvement has no end and is a continuous process.


8. Project Manager, along with having good presentation skills, should have equally strong communication skills too. During project lifecycle, 50% of his time is the acid test of his communication abilities.


9. Project Manager should be a strong estimator, a proactive in this regard. He should be able to estimate the progress of each individual, the skills of each member, the abilities, the show stoppers during the project, the customer delays or any other activity where an estimation is required.


10. And last but not the least, a Project Manager should be good parent, in regard to understanding himself, his team members, management, customer, other teams, peers – i.e. all involved in the project. He should have a good understanding of his words he is going to speak to his customer, the instructions he is going to give to his team members, the decisions he is going to take. He should be well aware of impact and effect of each of the activity he does during a project lifecycle.

Source: IT Knowledge Exchange

Static vs. non-static methods

You may refer to this site for the best answer:

http://www.pp.rhul.ac.uk/~george/PH2150/html/node48.html