Sankho Mallik's Web Log.

If you’re an iPhone snob like me, you find yourself talking to anyone you can about the latest apps from the store, that new case you saw on the iPhone Blog, the funny / jealous looks people give you on the street thumbing your iPod app around, etc etc.

After glorifying in it’s awesomeness enough, someone will eventually say to me “yeah, but it has shit for battery life.”

And here’s the shocker: I disagree. I’m fairly satisfied with my iPhone’s battery life. And for that matter, I’ve always been satisfied with my cell phone batteries for as long as I’ve had cell phones in my life. Same with laptop batteries. What do these rechargeable batteries (usually) have in common? They’re Lithium Ion batteries.

Bottom line: Lithium Ion batteries DO NOT have to degrade in battery life. All you have to do is take better care of them. And all THAT requires is 3 easy changes in your life, and the habits you develop in charging your batteries.

Check past the jump for these 3 steps and a quick explanation.

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I was working on a site recently and a client wanted an image linked to a feedback form. But everytime I linked an image, it gave a nasty blue border around it! Check below the break for the simple tip!

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Skip the boring stuff, and figure out how to make ringtones here.

A few years ago when my friend got some fancy smart phone, I was immediately jealous of the fact that he could easily use his MP3’s as ringtones. As a (barely) post adolescent with a need for musically identification, the ringtone market for phones sucked. I was lucky enough to have M.O.P.’s “Ante up” as my ringtone for a few years. It generated a lot of dirty looks, but I was never able to find another ringtone that was quite as obnoxious. The jealousy incurred upon hearing my friend’s phone play 2Pac’s “I aint mad at ya” was depressing to say the least.

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Update – check out the post at AmpTools, if you’re using a copy of Zend Framework version 1.7.8 or above – the below code may not work for you.

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Recently on a project I was developing using the Zend Framework, I needed to validate a form using a CAPTCHA image.

CAPTCHA example image

For those who don’t know, CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Ever been to a website and seen an image like the one to the right? Basically, it’s a way to make sure a human is filling out the form and not just some robot. How? Robots can’t decifer what words *might* be from an image – only a human can.

Zend Framework has a set of great classes included to take away a lot of the headaches involved with setting up a CAPTCHA system. The one I use is Zend_Captcha_Image, which creates an image for you and sets up a Session so you will be able to validate all information appropriately. Problem is, there’s little documentation out there on this.

The best example I found was on Robert Basic’s Blog. My only gripe about it was that it used Zend_Form.

Zend_Form is a great class and all, but if you’re like me, you don’t like using it because you give up the control you get over Form creation + validation. It’s a great way to skip writing HTML for a form – but what if your client wants a very specific design attached to their form? Then Zend_Form becomes a hassle to design to a specification. And yes, Zend_Form makes validation easy, but what if your client wants to set up very specific validation messages? Again, Zend_Form becomes more trouble than it’s worth. Yes, it is flexible enough as a class to edit it any way you want, but I feel NOT using Zend_Form will ultimately make your forms more flexible.

So, beyond the break, I’ll show you everything you need to know to use Zend_Captcha_Image WITHOUT Zend_Form! If you’d like to learn the implementation using Zend_Form, please visit Robert Basic’s Blog.

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About two years ago, when the concept of “Social Networking” was all the rage, I had quit Facebook, in the middle of my college career of all times. I had done this, to a degree, because I had wanted to feel like a maverick, which is somewhat humbling to admit. What’s even more humbling to admit is the primary reason I had left Facebook, which was that I’m not that social of a dude. Sorry, world!

About a year and a half ago, I began my current lifestyle of “web developer,” working for business people in startups that loved to throw the words “Social Network” in whatever business plan/pitch they were using to spread their idea. I would warn anyone who would listen that they were throwing around buzz words of an idea destined to fail.

Why was I so unconvinced of “Social Networking?” Because it wasn’t making any real (see: advertising dollars) money for their companies, be it Facebook or MySpace. Not enough money to ever match the investments made to either of them. Lo and Behold, a few months later the world recognized what I had forseen.

My friends would then ask me what I think companies like Facebook and MySpace needed to do in order to (surv/thr)ive. I had responded that they wouldn’t; that eventually all of these social networks would be too much for the average user to take, and they’d simply get sick of logging into different website and remembering different credentials etc etc.

What the next step was, I told my friends, was for someone to make identity ubiqutous throughout a user’s internet experience. That is; grant the user the ability to float from one .com to another without losing their identities, and without requiring them to log-on to different sites constantly.

This was about a year and a half ago, and over this year, Facebook has released it’s Connect platform, Google has Friend Connect, MySpace has MySpaceId, all looking to do what I thought they were gonna do in the first place.

So if you’ve gotten this far in my very young blog, you’ve discovered one reason for it’s creation:

The next time some shit pops off on the internet, I’ll have HARD EVIDENCE that I had already forseen it’s happening.

Yes, I’m a very petty person.

The next post will be on the future of Identiy and the Internet.

So I was walking out of the locker room of the Coles gym @ NYU the other day, and I saw a girl who worked for the gym, as made obvious by her wearing a purple shirt no one would wear unless they had to.

She was loading a vending machine with Gatorade, something my dehydrated body craved at the time. But that’s not all I wanted.

I wanted revenge.

My “education,” while yes, partially made more expensive by my lack of effort in class, has cost WAY more than it’s worth. Yes, NYU’s a fine university, but everytime I see an ad on the subway for the school, all I can think is:

“This ad cost millions of dollars. Somehow, my money went to a subway ad for a university which is already extremely competitive and world renowned.”

I mean, what the fuck NYU? What good is that ad really doing for the university? All these flat screens popping up over the university piss me off too.

But the bottom line is, until they make my tuition cheaper, I’ll still be motivated to say things to working college students filling up vending machines such as:

“Look, I don’t know why, but I really get a good feeling out of stealing from the University. Would you mind looking the other way?”

She looks at me, looks down the hall, and then looks the other way while I snatched a free Gatorade Rain, purple rain.

Score one for me, one for my faith in humanity, and take one away from these penny snatching bastards at NYU.

ed note: In the future, most posts will be about the internet and stuff. Promise.