To calculate the bra size, what you need is to enter the cup size and also the band size, it’ll then show you the size you need. I think it might be handy for geeks who wanna buy nice bras for their GFs, significant others, loved ones, wives or whoever as gift for the coming Christmas, but you ain’t know what the size you shall go for.

If you wonder what the band and the cup sizes are all about, you can refer to the original version which is on the original website that Spencer built the script for. It has a detailed and pictorial explanation about the two sizes.

Spencer described his experience of building this Bra size calculator as “The theory behind bra size calculation is arcane and somewhat magical. Understanding of it does not come easily to man nor beast, so it is lucky that I, falling cleanly into neither category, have passed through pain and torment to save you the trouble.”

If you happened to work for another lingerie online store, and you were also “forced” to build one of these calculators, you’ll only need to include Spencer’s JavaScript codes as follows, and you also need the jQuery library.

The code

And apply the following to on the page that has the form for the Bra size calculation.

Please note the above calculator is meant sizes in the UK. And you’ll have to modify your own version to suit the country using the conversion chart.

The above picture shows the Robot bra that comes with cute and geeky robot icons printed, and it can be purchased online from Tillys.com.

via [Ed Spencer Blog], via [ajaxian]

The new Gears’ Geolocation API allows developers to develop web apps that can securely locate users to within 200m accuracy in major desktop browsers (Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, Opera (soon) and of course Google Chrome) in hundreds of cities around the world.

Since the Gear’s Geolocation API sends the location of a WiFi laptop user to a location-enabled web site, it’ll allow the website to return the useful information to the user. For example, a tourism website that can tell the nearby hotels or places of interest based on the user’s current location. Or a map-enabled social networking website which allows users to see where their friends are on a Google map etc.

When a user enters such a location-enabled website for the first time, he or she will be asked whether to reveal the computer’s or the device’s location to the website. Google says they protect your privacy as the API does NOT store the location nor it ties the location with any IP address or other identifying information.

The Gear’s Geolocation API was first intended for developers to develop apps on mobile phones that send location information to location-enabled services/websites. And now it’s been extended to laptop users.

In Chrome and Android, the Gears stays as built-in, which can deliver the user’s location information to a location-enabled website/service without requiring users to install a plug-in. But you need to install the plug-in in other browsers.

Google Blog via [gizmodo]

Google Gears,Geolocation,web 2.0

Technorati Tags: Google Gears, Geolocation, web 2.0

But due to unforeseen technical errors, the search engine was then brought down and I turned the domain into a blog for my lovely wife, Ms Alexia to occasionally blog about girly stuff, gadgets and celebrities’ gossip. And I’ve promised many times before that I wanted to fix the AskAlexia search engine, with a new look and design and with more features. And after spending a couple of days of hardwork. The AskAlexia search engine has been put back in shape.

If you’d ever noticed this search engine before, it had only web, image and video searches. The new version of Askalexia search engine has been added with two more searches, which are news and music search. And it’s been blended with lighter color design. But the top searched keywords has been temporarily removed on this new version. The feature allows you to select different format of documents, images, videos to search for is still retained.

The screenshot of the older version of AskAlexia search engine, managed to get it from Killerstartups

Image search on AskAlexia
The AskAlexia search is an ajax-based search engine, which works differently from traditional search engine as it works in the ajax manner, which the web page is not reloaded during your search and navigation through searched results. While I’m not busy with other projects or blogging, I’d love to explore more in the world of web 2.0 stuff and ajax programming.

Music search on AskAlexia
The AskAlexia search engine still got some little glitches to fix and various improvements to make. For the time being, I’d like to announce to all of you, hope you’ll find it little useful for finding stuff over the Internet. I personally like the new music search. Try out Ask Alexia search engine now, and your feedback and comments are highly appreciated for continuous improvements.

ajax search engine,ask alexia,AskAlexia search engine,web 2.0,web2

Technorati Tags: ajax search engine, ask alexia, AskAlexia search engine, web 2.0, web2

How will web 3.0 likely to work?
So, how will Web 3.0 work? Web 3.0 will be some intelligent web sites or web browsers that can really deliver the exact information that a user needs. Meaning it tends to understand and learn what the user wants and delivers nearly the exact or more meaningful content that the user’s looking for.

Difference between Web 3.0 and Web 2.0 (Or web 1.0)
For example, the search engines or web portals in the web 1.0 and web 2.0 eras are simply delivering a best-matched result by your input query. And most of the time the returned searched result by search engines will not give you exactly what you actually want. You’d most likely to get what you really want by following numerous hyper links of the search results, then only you’re led to the closer information after couple of hours of clicking here and there.

So, in either the web 2.0 or web 1.0 era, you’ll need to spend lots of time to search, make your own analysis and comparison to get the exact information that you want. The major difference in web 2.0 and web 1.0 is, web 2.0 has public-contributed and multiple-resources-contributed information, which should be higher in terms of chances to lead you to the exact result.

Web 3.0 delivers the exact information you need in seconds, like you super personal assistant
In web 3.0 – the next generation of web, it’ll be getting very precise in delivering you the exact information that you want. It’d be like your personal assistant, who knows practically everything about you, understands you. Eventually a web 3.0 compliant web browser or web app will just let you sit back and it’ll find all the answers for you.

Taking an example that you’re planning for a vacation, and you have limited budget of below $3,000, but you want a nice place to stay. With the current web 2.0 era, you’ll need to perform couple of searches on Google, then land on several discount travel websites, do your own research, make the comparison. Huh! All this will take you at least several hours to get what you actually want. But in web 3.0 era, it’ll be able to perform all these comparisons and analysis for you automatically and presents you only the final information that you want in seconds.

Web 2.0 web apps will be the building blocks of Web 3.0
Web 3.0 will be based on the current web 2.0 websites as the building blocks. As current web 2.0 websites are providing APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), letting others to grab and share its data and services. Since web 3.0-complaint web app will be such an intelligent one that can understand a user and deliver highly meaningful result to the user, then it’ll need to pull all resources and data from those many web 2.0 websites, so it can make the comparison and analysis for you.

Powerset – a closer to Web 3.0, semantic search engine and a Google killer?
A better search engine, which is a step closer to web 3.0 that provides semantic search result is said to have surfaced to let the public to test run its beta on Monday. This new semantic search engine is claimed to deliver more meaningful search result than Google does, which is a product of the new start-up Powerset. Although the Powerset search engine still has very limited index in its search databank, but it’s expected to reach what its rivals, Google and Yahoo have after a month of its launch.

via [Buzz Corner], Powerset – a Google Killer?

Powerset,web 3.0,web 2.0,web3,semantic web

Technorati Tags: Powerset, web 3.0, web 2.0, web3, semantic web

The available online payment services or gateways such as PayPal, Google Checkout, or Amazon Flexible Payment Service all charge you a 2-3% (plus $0.30) as the transaction fees. The transaction fees are actually passed on by them from the credit card companies. And in most cases, merchants or vendors would also wanna pass it on to the shoppers by marking up the products 2-3% higher. But these days, selling online is getting more and more competitive, which would force merchants to swallow this little loss that lowers pretty much of their profit margins. Don’t look down upon the small percentage of loss only, it contributes as much as $5 billion a year loss in the United States alone.

Noca, the new online payment service, a startup by ex-Visa employees, virtually eliminates the transaction fees as they’re providing their own online payment services instead of relying on credit card companies. The move by Noca is aimed to attract more vendors to go online. And they also seek to provide the consumers with more rewarding and secured shopping experience.

Noca also has few other services such as implementing the micro payments, aiming to cater for online payment for all sizes of purchases. And they put more emphasize on the micro payments made through Facebook.

Noca has also launched two Facebook apps to support its micro payments, which are the OneClick Pay and HelpYourWorld. The former is for sending money to friends, such as sending digital checks which needs only your acc and routing numbers instead of using a credit card, which should be more secure. The latter, HelpYourWorld, solicits $1-at-a-time donations for a series of causes, it benefits greatly from Noca’s lack of transaction fees (especially the standard fixed one of $0.30). Noca hopes that many other Facebook applications with similar micro-payment needs will use its APIs to implement its payment service.

Besides, Noca also aims to provide strong and flexible incentives through cash back schemes, frequent flier miles, and the ability to designate a part of your payment to a charity of choice. And they promise of making their services much friendlier than others like PayPal, such as giving more comprehensive transaction history to consumers etc.

Noca is striving towards in becoming a credit card company by itself, providing best services for both the vendors and consumers.

Noca – online payment service

via [Buzz Corner], Source [TechCrunch]

online payment system,payment gateway,online payment,Google Checkout,PayPal,web 2.0,online merchant,e-commerce

Technorati Tags: online payment system, payment gateway, online payment, Google Checkout, PayPal, web 2.0, online merchant, e-commerce

Some usage of Javascript code of Webkit’s API is as follows:

via  More on Webkit blog

JavaScript,JavaScript API,Javascript client-side database storageWebKit API[/tag],API

Technorati Tags: JavaScript, JavaScript API, Javascript client-side database storage, API

While googling around what could have happened to that domain name, I also found couple of guys also had this bad experience before on Josh’s SEO blog. It tells that the domain name has been stolen. And they seemed to have answers that the company behind for this stealing act is UltraRPM.com aka MetaPredict. Yes, the WHOIS result that I got showed the registrant of the stolen domain name is MetaPredict. It seems to be MetaPredict is the kind of company which possibly makes use of SpyWare to infect Internet Explorer or possibly Firefox too (My colleague used Firefox to check the domain name instead of IE), to steal unregistered domain names that you have done WHOIS lookup check or even typed on the address bar of Internet Explorer.

I haven’t got much clue why UltraRPM.com is stealing those unregistered domain names. Guesses are they probably wanna test the domain name whether it’s potential for high traffic and monetizable. And will hold the domain name for 5 days only, as there is a 5 days of grace period to go for a refund if they returned it, after they’ve found that the domain name doesn’t carry much value. Or they’re simply con man, selling newly registered domain information or email accounts to others. Anyway, to avoid this happens to you, always make sure your PC is free from SpyWare by always having an up-to-date virus and spyware scanning pattern. Perhaps, those free plug-ins for your browser also not safe to have. It could be some of them are hijacking your privacy or keystroke and send the information back to their server. Or another alternative, forget about your Windows PC, and use Linux and Firefox only. I wish the stolen domain name could be returned after 5 days. Anyway, it isn’t a domain name related to any big brand that could possibly bring in high traffic.

domain name,spyware,domain registration,MetaPredict,UltraRPM.com,stealing domain name,anti-spyware,Internet Explorer,Firefox

Technorati Tags: domain name, spyware, domain registration, MetaPredict, UltraRPM.com, stealing domain name, anti-spyware, Internet Explorer, Firefox

Pretty close to Java syntax and DB security is well taken care.
The very first app that I built is hosted here (posted on AjaxApp.com earlier on), which is a very simple app that consists of three simple parts. These three parts are a form for adding simple record that consists of only a name and an email field, a record listing section and also the record searching section, which you can search using SQL wildcards such as %, * etc. These three parts are making use of the local database API, one of the three components introduced by Google Gears to store data locally i.e storing data at the user’s local hard disk using SQLite database engine. I’ve been a database and Java programmer for quite some time. I found programming using local database API of Google Gears is definitely easy to pick up. Especially its syntax and handling is very close to what Java’s java.sql.PreparedStatement offers, which the SQL injection is well-taken care of.

Usefulness of Local Database API for developers
Of course, the intention behind the entire Google Gears not only for the local database API for storing data locally. The local database API is useful for certain applications which allow data to go offline and sync back to the server online when there is Internet/network connection or necessary. And it provides the easy way for developers to store data locally instead of using other dirty methods such as cookies handling etc. Of course, it provides much easier and robust way to store and retrieve data. And no doubt, another great is the speed of the app if data can be stored locally first, without needing the long wait of user. (Data sychronization with the online server can be quietly done using async JavaScript that makes use of the worker pool)

Google Gears offers application to go offline and great worker pool for threads
Google Gears with its three great APIs, the LocalServer, the local Database and WorkerPool together are simply best for building applications that provide an option for the application to go offline when there is no network or Internet connection. And it also allows the synchronization of data back to the server while there is network or Internet connection. This can be done asynchronously, such as periodically detecting of network connection and sending data to and flo to the online server, using the worker pool threaded processes, without affecting any other actions that the user is focus on. (Please note that the synchronization part will consist of AJAX to communicate with online web services written in server-side technology such as JSP, Java Servlet, PHP, CGI, Ruby, ASP, ASP.net, Perl etc)

What apps are suitable to have offline option?
As pointed out by Google Gears team, not every app is suitable to have an offline option. For example, an app that needs the life data every second from the online server, such as an stock pricing ticker, a chat application are not suitable to have an offline option. In real life, what I could think of for the time being, those apps needing offline option are such as follows:

1. An enterprise web portal application that offers the staff to query the inventory and issue sales order or invoices, is suitable to provide an offline option. Which it can allow the frequently travelling sales personnel to take the app offline and have a local copy on his laptop hard disk and sync back to the server while he/she manages to get network or Internet connection.

2. General applications such as online word processing, email, calendaring applications etc. The offline option would be useful for frequent travellers, which you can be productive too even though you don’t get network and Internet connection. And the data will be automatically synchronized to server when the next time the app is launched again with a network or Internet connection detected. Of course, there are lots more, just need to twist you brain.

The next thing I wanna try on Google Gears

Of course there are plenty of stuff need to be explored and learned before I can use it to build serious apps. Such as the security, the ability for the local SQLite to store blob type data, the ability of it to handle file upload. I’d continue to enhance my first Google Gears app, to make it to have the option for taking the page offline by making use of the LocalServer API and also the intermediate data layer that handles storing data locally and synchronization of data back to the server database. And some apps that I wanna build that are currently in my wish list by using Google Gears are an online PIS (Patient Information System), a small online inventory or an web-based email client that provides offline option etc. I’m gonna have one section on TechChee to present them here once I’ve got each running. And I’ve just dedicated a new category for the Google Gears here, for future info update, tips and development of Google Gears. Thanks for bearing with me for this lengthy post. Hope it doesn’t bother you too much and the next few posts shall continue on gadgetry.

Google Gears,Google,Google API,JavaScript,AJAX,API,Web Programming

Technorati Tags: Google Gears, Google, Google API, JavaScript, AJAX, API, Web Programming

The plugin is about 700K for Firefox 1.5 and above and also Internet Explorer 6.0 and above. It comes wth 3 developer APIs. These 3 APIs are for handling 3 different tiers of application development. Which the first tier is to handle the creation of data objects to store application information locally, the second tier is the database tier that is made up of SQLite relational database and the third tier enables asynchronous JavaScript applications to synchronize data in the background without overburdening the browser. I’ve downloaded the plugin, which I’ll explore it later and will start posting here once I’ve got some results.

Google Gears,Google,Google API,Google Gears API,Web 2.0,ajax,javascript

Technorati Tags: Google Gears, Google, Google API, Google Gears API, Web 2.0, ajax, javascript

JavaFX basically contains two major components, they are the JavaFX Mobile and the JavaFX scripting. Simply by its name, you’ll know that JavaFX mobile is meant for mobile developers to develope applications for mobile devices, but it is available via OEM license to carriers, handset manufacturers and others seeking a branded relationship with consumers.

The JavaFX script will be the answer to simpler-syntax scripting for developing content and media rich applications (Rich media and highly interactive content) that include set-top boxes, mobile, desktop and enterprise web applications. JavaFX script is claimed to fit any size or complexity of GUI. In rich content web app development, JavaFX will be the strong competitor to AJAX and the Microsoft’s SilverLight. Furthermore, Sun has declared that JavaFX to be opensource. It looks like JavaFX has created lots of buzz over the blogosphere, as it’s successfully secured the 6th position in the top searches of Technorati, as shown in the screen below.

As a long-time Java developer both for the GUI and web applications, I should get myself prepared for next move in Java, i.e picking up JavaFX. Although I’ve trained myself even up to the stage that I can code Java by simply using a Notepad without the need of using any features-rich Java IDE, JavaFX will be my next move in order to meet today’s demand. My learning progress and experimented work will be posted on my other less-active blog, AjaxApp.com.

javafx,JavaFX mobile,JavaFX script,Java,web development

Technorati Tags: javafx, JavaFX mobile, JavaFX script, Java, web development

Other than TechChee, I did start another development blog earlier on, which is supposed to be under a sub-domain of TechChee, i.e dev.TechChee.com. Due to my overly busy schedule, this blog didn’t get frequently updated. In order to fulfill this overdue request, I’ve decided not to continue on the development blog, but to include two more categories on TechChee here, they are “Web Development” and also “Opensource Tips”. In such a case, it’ll be less taxing and very much easier for the maintainance for me, who is handling this blog single-handedly both for the posts and design. This decision shouldn’t be too much affecting the current theme of TechChee, which still makes it topics center around “technology” and “gadgets”. The main topics of TechChee still remain the same, i.e shop online and gadgets. The posts for these two new categories will only be in the ratio of one out of five of those gadgetry posts as usual. Which means, if I post about 5-6 posts about gadgetry a day, then, perhaps, I’ll write one post either in the category of web development or opensource tips. So, TechChee’s readers, hope you won’t get too surprised if you’re seeing posts about more technical stuff such as programming and web development in the coming blog posts. The topics that will be covered under the two new categories, “web development” and “opensource”, will be as follows:

1. Linux or General opensource stuff

2. PHP

3. Java

4. AJAX/DHTML/JavaScript

5. Apache

6. MySQL

7. Oracle or more to be decided later.

There will be no sub-categories for the time being to differentiate further which of the above for any posts that fall under the two new categories. I’ll only tag them to differentiate it.

Web development,PHP,MySQL,Apache,Linux,Java,Programming,Ajax

Technorati Tags: Web development, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Linux, Java, Programming, Ajax