if you are a big fan of Radiant CMS (like we are) probably you are using Language Extension for redirecting your visitors to appropriate language pages.
How about redirecting iPhone users to an iPhone-only version of your site?

Today my teammate Volkan Caliskan launched iPhone-only site of Vayen and shared me a trick that They have found with my friend Mert Yentur,

Here comes the trick for redirecting iPhone users to a specific web page with Radiant Language Extension.
open your /vendor/extensions/language_redirect/app/models/language_redirect_page.rb
then change location method like:

def location
path = nil
languages.find do |lang|
path = location_map[lang[0..1]]
end
path ||= location_map["*"] || ‘/en/’
if (@request.user_agent.include?(”iPhone”)==true)
then
path = “http://www.vayentech.com/iphone/”
end
if path =~ %r{[:][/][/]}
path
else
@request.protocol + @request.host_with_port + path
end
end

as you’ve noticed, we have only added following lines, nothing more.

if (@request.user_agent.include?(”iPhone”)==true)
then
path = “http://www.vayentech.com/iphone/”
end

Hope this trick helps radiant fans :)
thanks to Volkan Caliskan & Mert Yentur for sharing the trick.

Then next step was contributing to hunch and I pushed my topic
“Which club should I go in Istanbul?” come on not that bad topic :)
I have offered ten places according to different answers to my question sequence.
and what I discovered is reliable, fast and easy to use advanced expert system.

After I saw that it is really fun to build decision trees with hunch why not developing an iPhone App by using hunch API and registered to Hunch developer program for API key.
Before I start playing with the API, I wanted to announce my friends hunch is coming
and I’m sure you’ll like it ;)
cheers.
G.

In this article, I would like to explain an issue I faced while developing remote services for SAP in order to communicate with an electronic store.
Here is the simplified diagram of the communication.

As you see remote site posts an XML package with CURL and Php Service receives the message and runs some query in the SAP database.

In order to show non-english characters SAP database was configured for ISO Latin 5 encoding
and I was receiving the xml post in UTF-8 format. When I print the incoming xml post, I haven’t faced with any trouble it seems like everything is correct but when I inserted to db, I always get character errors.

Then we find out that, textmate is configured to use default utf-8 format so although I receive different encoded xml post, textmate is showing it correct.

In order to regenerate what happened you should follow these steps.
- Open TextEdit and write non-english characters like: “ÇçĞğŞşİıIiÖöÜü”
- While saving the file choose iso latin 5 encoding and save.
- Now open file in textmate you will commonly see “ÇçÐðÞþÝýIiÖöÜü”

what we have done to solve this problem is simply replacing the mistaken characters with correct ones.
In this article I wanted to warn you to be careful about 4 major point,

1) which encoding type you are working on,
2) which encoding type your text editor using
3) which encoding type your database is storing
4) which encoding type other application that’s sharing the same database using.

If you face that kind of encoding problems, ask yourself those 4 questions. :)
if all of those 4 is in harmony, play the service ;)
I hope it will help
cheers.
Guvener

Since Google announced Appengine, we are all excited about the upcoming news.

In this article i want to share some tips for getting started with appengine.

Seccond one is Time issue ,
Every developer who has played with pipes for  a while will recognize there are small but important details with yahoo pipes time variables. I will try to explain that issue with an example,
For instance, you requested a news rss and it returned you rss with item element pubDate like
<item><pubDate>16.02.2009 08:33:00</pubDate> …
At first sight, there is no problem with that time format yahoo will receive this and deliver you back.
But since there is no  Greenwich mean time (GMT) description in that time format, yahoo automatically assume this date is from its own region and converts date to pacific time format so return this date as US time.
If you have one source and you don’t care about the time it is ok.
But if you are using multiple sources and especially if the control of generating rss is not in your hands, you should think about this issue very carefully before your decision. Let me give another example.
Assume you received another item from a rss source like this,
 <item><pubDate>Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:26:00 +0200</pubDate>.. 
(My hometown is in +0200 GMT) 
And we already have previous item, 
<item><pubDate>16.02.2009 08:33:00</pubDate> … 
When you tryed to merge  rss items and order by date, you will see pipes will assume 08:33 as pasific time (cause there is not GMT), and order it earlier from +0200 time. 

 Third issue is updating pubDate value on RSS item
Assume you need to change pubDate element of received rss, the way for doing this is not the same way you changed rss title or description. This is more complex, you need to regenerate the item for changing pubDate.

For an example of updating pubDate and other rss elements see yahoo pipes rss element update example. 

I appreciate yahoo pipes, it is easy to develop and maintain but have few issues with reliability and performance, in order to make sources suitable for yahoo pipes in my project, I made a proxy between yahoo pipes and news sources. (Receive news, make changes for yahoo pipes, feed pipes.)
I think pipes is a cool idea (for those who use Quartz Composer :) will understand me better. ) 

in the following days i am sure yahoo will improve pipes and make it much better.  :)
If you want to share your tips, don’t hesitate to review or contact,
Bests

Now go to your iPhone’s settings and configure wi-fi networks. Chose Http Proxy and select Manual tab. Now you will see iPhone’s text input fields for server and port. Enter your personal proxy server’s ip and port (default port of squidman is 8080 you can check it via preferences of squidman ).  

Now You can use Squidman-> tools option (Apple + T) -> Access Log  in  order to follow 

which urls requested from application. go! listen all application’s requests :) enjoy. 

Second way of sniffing the requests is sharing internet connection from your Mac and connecting this shared network from your iPhone, then simply use network utility (netstat).

Steps: Open System preferences -> Sharing -> click Internet Sharing -> start.  (since you will share your internet via airport, make sure you are connected to internet via cable).  Now connect this shared network from your iPhone and enjoy listening the network via Network Utilities.

There are many other different ways of listening application access, you should also use modem access logs or if you are a geek who likes playing with jailbreaked iphones , you may choose ssh options it’s up to you. ( we are good boys so we won’t discuss about jailbreaked ways.)

If you are facing problem, playing your media with AVAudioPlayer on Simulator.
Check your /Library/Quicktime directory.
Browse files in this directory and find  third party add-ons like Perian, DivX etc.
Move these add-ons in to another folder while you are developing with AVAudioPlayer
Now Test your Application, AVAudioPlayer should run without any problem.
Don’t forget to move your add-ons back to Quicktime Directory after you finished development ;)

 Here is a quick AVAudioPlayer usage example, 

-(IBAction)playMovie:(id)sender{

NSString *newAudioFile = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@”MusicFile”  ofType:@”mp3″];

audioPlayer =  [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:newAudioFile] error:NULL];

[audioPlayer setDelegate:self];

[audioPlayer prepareToPlay];

BOOL plays = [audioPlayer play];

}
 

Thanks to Mert Yentur, for discovering and sharing that issue. 
Bests.
G.

Now open your dashcode and choose new project then select RSS Template, 
After this step dashcode will create all necessary files for you, all you have to do changing Application Attributes and some style if you like. 
Here I have changed Feed URL to my blog feed. 

After that you will want to deploy your application to your site, that’s very easy too. Just go to “test & share” section and save to disk, then upload your deployed version with your favorite ftp application. 

Here be careful about javascript feed you provided for rss, it has to be in the same folder with your iphone compatible version. ( Remember that there are security restrictions on where JavaScript can load resources  from.  You can use a proxy for your feed as one of the simple solutions. ) 

After these step you got your web site’s iphone compatible version up and running. Now It’s time to detect device  of  your user connected to your site. It is even simpler with Andy Moore’s mobile device browser dedection file. Andy also provides you a cool function generator which creates detection function for configuring your site’s behavior when it detects different mobile browser. Check Dedect Mobile Browser page of Andy Moore

Now when you browse my page via iPhone or iPod, you will be redirected to http://iphone.guvenergokce.com

Wow, that was fast, I have developed this iphone page with detection faster than writing that blog post :)

By the way, If you want to create an iphone version  of your wordpress blog, you should find many cool css styling information that generates iphone compatible version of your blog quickly. This post’s purpose is just to give an idea of how to use dashcode and iphone dedection.
If you have better ways please recommend on comments, future is open.

First download a cool linux virtual appliance from Parallels Virtual Appliance.  
 

I recommend gentoo, it includes linux kernel headers so you  don’t have to download or configure anything before you build modules, everything is ready.

After you download and run it, check the ip with ifconfig.
In my example, It’s 192.168.2.3

Now connect to gentoo Linux with ssh.

ssh root@192.168.2.3 
password 123

After that you can start  compiling your modules and drivers, I choose writing code in mac os x with my fav text editor (textmate) then secure copy to gentoo directory Example command:
scp username@192.168.2.2:/moduleOnMac.c  moduleOnGentoo.c

After I copied my module to Linux directory, (don’t forget to create your Makefile ) I built it with,

make -C /lib/modules/2.6.21-gentoo-r4/build M=`pwd` modules

Why should I do these steps rather than developing directly on linux appliance? 
It’s a choice, of course there are many ways of doing this operation,  but rather than opening linux text editors, terminals and other interfaces I use only one mac os x terminal and textmate to make everything  done. 

Overview
This post is just for working with linux modules comfortably on Mac.
I appreciate all new ideas, please offer new ways and post links.

Converting MS Crypto API Public Key Blob to X509 and RSA for using on Mac OS X (Open SSL) . This process is a little bit complicated while processing bits. We implemented this for a private company and I think at least small diagram will give you an idea how to implement it. Hope this will be usefull for more information don’t hesitate to contact us.