January 2010 – ParallelThoughts

Zoho Creator – Online form builder

Forms are an integral part of a website or a blog. They give a new dimension to the interactiveness . Hardly we get an app or a service to make a fluid form with less on script and more on design and flexibility. But Zoho has been an exception in this category with quick creation of forms and deploying them.

The features of Zoho Creator are :-

Zoho Creator’s Web Form Builder helps you to create online forms easily and quickly with no installs or scrips required.
Collected data can be viewd in 6 different formats – List , Summary , Spreadsheet, Calendar, Chart or a custom HTML page
An option to upload the files by a user can also be given.
Forms are created in HTML which can be accessed on mobile also.

3D wall of photos by Cooliris

Gone are the days one had to search for a good plugins to showcase ones photo collection on his blog. All those tweaking and hacking to get the right combo of colors is now not required

Gone are the days one had to search for a good plugins to showcase ones photo collection on his blog. All those tweaking and hacking to get the right combo of colors is now not required. Cooliris has brought out a new product which takes care of all the above things. Now its easy to publish ones photo collection which is on picasa,flickr, facebook and even videos on youtube onto his own website using cooliris in a 3D wall with cool Web 2.0 feel.

To embedded this kind of 3D walls follow the instructions :

1. Go to http://www.cooliris.com/express/builder/

2. Choose the source from which the photo is to shown on the blog.

3. Select the appearance with different option for buttons.

4. Select the platform onto which this needs to be embedded and copy and embed the code .

Tweeting through SMS without internet

Its a start up initiated by Mayank Sharma from Bangalore. It uses SMSgupshup service to post and send the tweets and replies resp for free from a cell with no internet option.

Wired phones were the first breakthrough in reducing the distance barrier, as man began to explore he started moving far distances and had to stay in tough. Mobile helped man achieve this. It helped man become mobile. As he still evolved, he invented a new concept called Twitter. Initially he was happy to tweet sitting in front of computer. Soon he realized that he wanted to tweet being mobile and Voila !! he found out a new service called SMSTweet.in

Having personally used it for past few weeks after the SMS war had started between the service providers, it turned out to be an amazing concept and that too a free service. Its a start up initiated by Mayank Sharma from Bangalore. This application uses SMSGupShup’s platform to receive and respond to users SMSes and Google App-Engine as the server to run. With Mobile operators introducing free SMSs, its a boon for the tweetfreaks to use this service more than ever before.

You can register for this service in two ways i.e,.. OAuth or via sms .

1. Click on the ‘Sign in with twitter’ button on the front page of smstweet and click yes to allow this app to access your tweeter account details.

2. Just send an sms ‘REGISTER <twitter username> <twitter password>’to 09220092200 (Mumbai) or 09243000111(Bangalore). Once the confirmation is recieved you can start tweeting.

In order to tweet after the registration, Just send ‘TWT <your message>’ to 09220092200(Mumbai) or09243000111(Bangalore). You will get a reply which the latest reply message received by you.

WordPress Home page install tweaks

One of its great USP is to install the WordPress software in sub folders (www.example.com/folder) and yet have it running in the root folder (www.example.com).

WordPress is a famous open source blogging platform which offers numerous options to tweak and customize its features. One of its great USP is to install the WordPress software in sub folders (www.example.com/folder) and yet have it running in the root folder (www.example.com).

Below is a small tutorial to try this out :-
1. Install the WordPress with its famous 3 click install at www.example.com/folder.
2. Copy the index.php and .htaccess files from the WordPress directory (www.example.com/folder) into the root directory of your site.
3. Edit the index.php file with a txt editor and replace (‘./wp-blog-header.php’) with (‘./folder/wp-blog-header.php’). Basically it points the index file to the one installed in the folder directory.
4. Login to the Dashboard and click on “General Settings”
5. Change the Blog address (URL) from www.example.com/folder to www.example.com.

You can download the latest version of WordPress >> Download