Rajan's View

Posted by Rajan Manickavasagam December 26th, 2011 News 360 Rating: 4 out of 5 I think, one of the habits we all have is reading news or other articles on the net. Generally people use their browser to read the news. This year has seen a lot of mobile and tablet apps launched in the market. One of the leading apps is of course, Flipboard. But it's available only in the iOS platform for now. In the other mobile platforms, we have apps like Pulse, Feedly and the latest entrant - Google Currents. For me, the one app that stands out is News360. Depending on your platform, download the app from your respective app store. When it starts, it shows all the latest news across various categories like World, Politics, Technology etc. But here comes the interesting part, you can personalize it by connecting your online profiles like Facebook, Google Reader, Evernote and Twitter. The app analyses all your activity and other information and then personalizes the news for ...

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net Ever since the launch of Siri on the new iPhone 4S, there has been a lot of talk about it being a competition for search engines and therefore Google. However, I hope and wish Google and Apple treat the two differently. And, here is why. I see Google largely as an 'information broker'. The search is brilliant and gets you to what you are looking for. And, if you are signed in, Google then makes the search experience more personalized and contextual. As a natural extension of the search capability, voice is already there but obviously not at the same level as Siri. With more information being created each day as well as the variety of devices being used to access the information, Google should continue to improve the core search. I think there is still a lot more to be done in the search algorithm, incorporating social signals and the different user experiences. For example, if I search for 'data visualization', ...

Here is a simple sample program for accessing a MongoDB database. In order to run the sample, you will need the following - PHP server 5.x running on IIS/Apache  MongoDB database  MongoDB driver for PHP  You could easily write the same program using .NET program and driver too. Hopefully, the comments in the program are self-explanatory. Happy coding and exploring!

Simply prawns It's been a while since I made any sea food. I thought a I will try a quick prawn curry. The ingredients are quite basic and somehow they just seem to be good enough for the prawns. Contributed by Rajan Manickavasagam . Published 01. Dec 2011 Ingredients 4   tablespoons  vegetable oil 3 sliced green chillies 1 teaspoon of ginger and garlic paste 1 sliced onion 2 chopped tomatoes 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric powder 1 teaspoon of chilli powder 300 gm prawns 1-2 teaspoon of salt (or to taste) Instructions Heat the oil in pan. Add green chillies, onions and saute them. Once the onions are golden brown, add the ginger garlic paste. Add the tomatoes to the pan. Add the turmeric and chilli powder to the pan. Keep frying the ingredients until they become like a paste. Add more oil if required. Add the prawns and reduce the heat. Cook the prawn in medium heat for a few minutes. Serve with naan/c...