Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Interesting use cases of NFC (Near Field Communication)

NFC is opening up new possibilities for mobile applications. Applications using this short-range radio technology can greatly simplify how a user gathers data from and interacts with their environment. When a phone touches, or is held near an NFC tag or another NFC capable device, the phone can exchange data with the tag or device. This data could be a link to the download of the menu from a favourite restaurant, the specifications for an electronic gizmo, or paring information from a Bluetooth headset or another phone that can be used to exchange objects: the possibilities are endless.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Good video tutorial for BIRT Reporting platform

Good video tutorial for BIRT Reporting platform.

BIRT Demo

BIRT is a open source reporting platform and its consists of Report designer and a Runtime component that you can add to your app server. It also provide a charting engine that lets you add charts to your own application.

Some of the important features provided by BIRT

Charting
Drill Down Support
Connection Pooling
Multiple Master Pages
Enhanced Cascaded Parameters
Joined Data Set
Internationalization
Export to PDF/Excel/CSV formats

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Hadoop the high-performance parallel data processing and reliable data storage technique

"I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians" - Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian

If you want a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using a simple programming model, then Hadoop will be the best option.

Technically, Hadoop consists of two key services: reliable data storage using the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and high-performance parallel data processing using a technique called MapReduce.


Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Open Source chart libraries

Good Open Source chart libraries.

JfreeChart - http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/
FusionChartsFree - http://www.fusioncharts.com/free/
JCCKit project (LGPL)
QN Plot project (BSD)
OpenChart2 project (LGPL)
PtPlot project (UC Berkeley copyright)
JRobin project (LGPL)
Java Chart Construction Kit (LGPL, works with JDK 1.1.8)
JOpenChart project (LGPL)
jCharts project (BSD-style)
JChart2D project (LGPL)
Chart2D project (LGPL)
ThunderGraph project (LGPL)
E-Gantt project (Q Public License)
MagPlot project (GPL)


I'm going to demonstrate code samples for bar chats and pie charts with JFreeChart

Note: jfreechart-1.0.13.jar and jcommon-1.0.16.jar should be available within your classpath.

1)  PieChart example....


package sample;

import org.jfree.chart.ChartFactory;
import org.jfree.chart.ChartFrame;
import org.jfree.chart.JFreeChart;
import org.jfree.data.general.DefaultPieDataset;

public class PieChart {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // create a dataset...
        DefaultPieDataset data = new DefaultPieDataset();
        data.setValue("Category 1", 43.2);
        data.setValue("Category 2", 27.9);
        data.setValue("Category 3", 79.5);
        // create a chart...
        JFreeChart chart = ChartFactory.createPieChart(
                "Sample Pie Chart",
                data,
                true,    // legend?
                true,    // tooltips?
                false    // URLs?
        );
        // create and display a frame...
        ChartFrame frame = new ChartFrame("First", chart);
        frame.pack();
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }
}


2) BarChart example...

package sample;

import org.jfree.chart.ChartFactory;
import org.jfree.chart.ChartFrame;
import org.jfree.chart.JFreeChart;
import org.jfree.chart.plot.PlotOrientation;
import org.jfree.data.category.CategoryDataset;
import org.jfree.data.category.DefaultIntervalCategoryDataset;

public class BarChart {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // create a dataset...
        double start[][] = new double[2][3];
        start[0][0] = 3;
        start[0][1] = 4;
        start[0][2] = 2;

        start[0][0] = 4;
        start[1][0] = 6;
       
        double end[][] = new double[2][3];

        end[0][0] = 2;
        end[0][1] = 5;
        end[0][2] = 1;

        end[0][0] = 5;
        end[1][0] = 2;

        CategoryDataset data = new DefaultIntervalCategoryDataset(start, end);

        JFreeChart chart = ChartFactory.createBarChart("title",
                "x axis", "y axis",
                data,
                PlotOrientation.VERTICAL,
                true,    // legend?
                true,    // tooltips?
                false    // URLs?
        );
        // create and display a frame...
        ChartFrame frame = new ChartFrame("Second", chart);
        frame.pack();
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }

}

Monday, July 12, 2010

MongoDb In Action

MongoDB is a scalable, high-performance, open source, document-oriented database. MongoDB bridges the gap between key-value stores (which are fast and highly scalable) and traditional RDBMS systems (which provide rich queries and deep functionality).

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Correct Dinner table settings


Planning a dinner and need a reminder of how to set a table and where the cutlery should be placed around the tableware? It's easy to forget how to set a table and the proper place setting of tableware and cutlery. So here's a quick refresher to help you learn how to set a table for that 'perfect' dinner setting.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Cellphone Etiquette

Everyone carries a cellphone these days and whether it’s non-stop texting or loud public calls, there’s no shortage of ways to be completely rude while using them. Here are some tips for adults and children on how to be more polite about cellphone usage.

Cell Phone Etiquette