I have been working on a domain search utility for couple of days and it is ready for release. 10xwhois is an instant domain search tool built with ajax and java. If you are into domain name business, this is a must have tool.

Just type in your desired domain name and select the domain extensions you are interested in. Domain availability status will instantly appear below. For non available domains, whois service is also provided.

This tool is running on Java and is hosted on a dedicated server. Got any comments/suggestion? Let me know.

I will be attending the second barcamp organized at cochin (Thrikkakara Campus) on 3rd February. I will not be presenting anything, but just want to listen. Hopefully a lot geeks are going to turn up there. I know a couple of them through their blogs.

If you are geek, don’t miss this event. It is an ideal platform to meet other geeks (as you know finding geeks in Kerala is not easy ) You can register for the event here.

Wondering what a barcamp is? Here is wikipedia for the rescue.

In the last post, I looked at how Java can be configured on MediaTemple CentOS server. This post will show you how you can install Tomcat on your server.

1. Download and extract tomcat 6.0 binary distribution. Get the URL of the tar.gz file from http://tomcat.apache.org/download-60.cgi. From the ssh console download using wget.

wget http://apache.deathculture.net/tomcat/tomcat-6/v6.0.14/bin/apache-tomcat-6.0.14.tar.gz

Now use the following commands to extract the files.
gunzip -d apache-tomcat-6.0.14.tar.gz
tar -xvf apache-tomcat-6.0.14.tar

2. set JAVA_HOME variable to point to your Java installation.For this you need to login as root. Create or edit a java.sh inside /etc/profile.d. Add the following line in java.sh.

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_04

3. Start tomcat from bin folder. Login again to SSH using your non root user id.  The startup script for tomcat is in [tomcatdir]/bin. Change to bin and then execute,

./startup.sh

Voila! You should see the tomcat server running at www.yourdomain.com:8080/

To shutdown you can use ./shutdown.sh, but for some reason I am not able to execute it. So currently the only way to stop is to kill the Java process from SSH. Update: I got shutdown.sh working by adding -Xmx4m as JVM parameter in catalina.sh for “stop” block of code.

Now my next task is to get Struts2 sample application running on this…

I recently bought a dedicated virtual hosting service on MediaTemple. The idea was to use this server for all my future projects in J2EE and Ruby on Rails. For $50/month, this service is not exactly cheap, but I am yet to find an alternative VPS host (I am planning to evaluate SliceHost sometime in future)

By default, the server comes with Ruby 1.8.5, but not Java compiler. My first task was to install latest JDK (1.6) on the VPS server.

All dedicated virtual servers hosted by MediaTemple comes with a CentOS installation. You can check that by running the following command on SSH terminal.

cat /etc/redhat-release

I got CentOS release 4.5 (Final) on the console.

Now before you can install Java, you need to know the password of “root” user in your server. For this, create a new support request and ask MediaTemple to set your root password of your choice.

Now comes the second problem. How do you download Java binaries onto your server? One option is to download JDK on to your machine and then upload it to server. Since the file size is more than 60MB, I didn’t want to use this method.

What you need is the ability to download J2SE 1.6 rpm binaries directly to your dedicated server. The Linux command “wget” is the ideal tool for this. But what is the URL to download?

The problem with Java download is that there is no direct link available for download. In order to force license display and acceptance, Sun uses a hidden redirect to the actual download. You need to find this URL.

For MediaTemple installation, select Java download which is “jdk-6u4-linux-i586-rpm.bin” from the list at http://developers.sun.com/downloads/. Using Firefox, start the download. Immediately pause the download and then righ click on the “resume” link to get the actual download link.

Paste the URL in a text editor and then quote it by adding double quotes at the beginning and at the end of the URL.

Now from the SSH terminal, type the following.

wget <quoted url from text editor> -O j.bin

This will download the Java binary as j.bin in the current folder. Now change to super user mode by typing sudo su.

Make the j.bin executable for using the command chmod a+x j.bin and execute it by ./j.bin. Accept license terms and continue. You will get the Java installed on the MediaTemple DV server.

But you are not there yet! Following is the error I got when I ran “java -version” on the command prompt.

Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for object heap
*** glibc detected *** free(): invalid pointer: 0xb7e71280 ***
Aborted

On CentOS you need to do something more to get Java installed. You need to set a link to Java. Execute the following from the root privileges. Change jdk1.6.0_04 to your version of JDK download.

/usr/sbin/alternatives –install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_04/bin/java 1

After this I was able to get a sample Java program running on the MediaTemple dedicated server. Now the next step is to install Tomcat App server. That is for another day….

I recently got a brand new pc assembled. Prices have been steadily dropping for pc components and it is possible to assemble a good system under Rs. 20000 ($500) in India. In other places it should be cheaper. Check out the following specifications and price. I am not an ‘expert in bargaining’ and if you are smart enough you should get the components less than the price indicated.

1. Motherboard - ASUS M2A-VM HDMI - Rs. 4000 ($100)
This is one of the first motherboards to support HDMI. This means you can play HD-DVD or Blue-rays discs. Comes with integrated ATI Radeon X1250 DDR2 800 graphics.Another important feature is that you get dual monitor support - DVI-D and RGB. You can also with the DVI version (without HDMI) and it is cheaper by about $15.

2. Processor - AMD X2 4800+ - Rs. 3500 ($85)
This is a medium range dual core processor from AMD. Depending on your budget you can choose 4200+, 4400+, 4800+ or 5200+. Price difference among 4xxx range is rather small and hence I prefer 4800+

3. Harddisk - Seagate 80GB SATA - Rs. 1500 ($40)
I normally don’t need even 80GB since I plan to use this PC exclusively for programming and related stuff. Don’t go for higher capacity disks unless you really need it in next one year. Another option is 160GB SATA which costs around Rs.300 ($8) extra.

4. RAM - 1GB DDR2 800 (2 nos) - Rs. 2200 ($55)
These days you need atleast 2GB of RAM. So go for two 1GB DDR2 800 modules. If you are into real multitasking with eclipse in one monitor and radrails in another, you can probably go for four 1GB modules. The motherboard supports it!

5. Cabinet with SMPS - 500W Mini- Rs. 1500 ($40)
Go for a 500W mini cabinet. There are too many in the market. Go with the one which has better warrant terms.

6. LCD Monitor - 19″ WideScreen - Rs. 8000 ($200)
Here your options are between a 17″ and 19″ inch LCD screens. I think it is better to go for 19″ considering the small price difference (around 10% extra). Here some of the choices are samsung, LG, viewsonic etc. Buy it after comparing the lcd monitors since each one has his own preferences. It may be a good idea to go with the one which has integrated speakers (if you not music crazy!)

7. Keyboard,Mouse and DVD Drive - Rs. 2000 ($50)
Again too many choices to list here. Go with a medium model which is good enough for regular use.

So total price = Rs. 22700 ($565). Oops! We started with a budget of Rs. 20000. Now here comes your bargaining skills. When you are buying all these together you might be able to reduce Rs. 700 atleast. Then change your monitor to a 17″ and AMD X2 processor to 4200+. Now you have an excellent desktop pc under $500!

You can get almost all the items in this list from Amazon. Those are listed below. Of course, you cannot bargain with a Website

Unicode fonts are the best for publishing Malayalam (my native language) content on the web. But many of the popular regional sites such as Malayala Manorama and Deepika still use custom fonts which works on ISO encoding.

In Windows, these fonts are automatically supported. When it comes to Ubuntu, what you see is a jumbled set of characters. Following set of instructions will help you reading Deepika in firefox. Follow a similar procedure for other sites.

1. Install the custom font. For Deekipa, Malayalam font can be downloaded from http://www.deepika.com/font.htm. Download this to a folder and then using terminal go to the folder. Now copy the font to /usr/share/fonts,

sudo cp mlkr0ntt_TTF.ttf /usr/share/fonts

2. Refresh the Ubuntu font cache. For that run the following command,

sudo fc-cache -fv

3. Close all firefox sessions and reopen firefox. Go to www.deepika.com. Now from the firefox menu select the following,

View => Character Encoding => Western (ISO-8859-1)

Now you should be able to see some Malayalam characters!

These days flash player is a must have plugin for browsers. Without it you cannot a lot of video sharing sites such as YouTube. By default Ubuntu doesn’t come with flash player since the Adobe flash player is proprietary. So I did,

jayson@jayson-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Everything went smooth till the last step where I got,

Download done.
md5sum mismatch install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz
The Flash plugin is NOT installed.

It turns out that Ubuntu does a MD5 checksum check on the packages it install. Unfortunately Adobe changed the flash player installer sometime in December. So what to do?

The solution is to manually install flash player. Ensure that you close all the browser windows before doing this.

# get the flash player tar
wget http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz

# extract the tar file
tar xvf install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz

# run the installer
cd install_flash_player_9_linux
./flashplayer-installer

# specify the firefox folder during installation
/usr/lib/firefox

Thatz it. Now you can watch flash videos on Ubuntu!
This also shows why it may be better for your grandma to stick with Windows!

I recently uninstalled Windows from all my machines and installed Ubuntu on them. There are two reasons for this,

1. I don’t want to buy a new Windows license whenever I buy a new machine. I already have spent over Rs. 10K on Windows licenses and is not ready to pay again!

2. Ubuntu supports all my hardware out of the box! Even WiFi cards(NetGear) and WiFi adaptors (Dlink DWL-G122)  are supported when you boot Ubuntu.

It has been a smooth transition. One of the things that I enjoy a lot is the Pidgin IM client. Now I can login to all my IM accounts at once. Hence I got in touch with old friends on some of my old IM accounts!

Here is quick re-cap of what I did,

• Booted using the latest ubuntu release - 7.10.
• Deleted all existing partitions on my 80GB disk.
• Created a root partition of 6.5GB and a swap partition of 1GB. I kept these partitions below 8GB since on M2N-MX motherboard, grub is having problems booting from a partition over 8GB!
• Installed the following software using apt-get - Java 1.6, Aptana IDE, unrar, Lyx, Ruby1.8.6 and Rails2.

If you planning to buy a computer component or thinking of assembling your own PC, here is a Website which can be quite handy!

Delta Peripherals in Chennai has a cool Web page which lists down the computer component prices in India (Chennai). I have been tracking this for sometime and it appears to be kept upto date. You can use this list to plan your purchases. It also ensures that your friendly neighbourhood computer dealer cannot fleece you!

Recently Dreamhost had DNS problems and my site was not available for almost 12 hours. But I managed to update my site even when the DNS server was down! The trick is to tell your browser that you know the IP address and there is no need to do a DNS lookup. Following example assumes that you use Windows system.

First search for a file named “hosts” inside your windows installation. It is typically located under “c:/SYSROOT/system32/drivers/etc”. Open this file. It looks something like below. Note the entry for “jaysonjc.com”. Substitute your IP and domain name here.

There are two ways to find your IP address. One way is to use services such as Host2IP. You can also find your IP address from the Dreamhost panel. Look for IP in panel->manage domain->DNS

Please note that domain to IP adress translation is not static. This means your IP address can change! So use this technique only when you know that DNS server is down. Once it is back online, delete the entry from hosts file.
 

Recently I came across a requirement to enable single sign on between two different Web applications running on different machines but on the same domain. WebSphere does provide out of the box support of single sign on, but figuring it out took a lot of time for me. So I have written this step by step guide so that you don’t have to go through the torture again!

All the screenshots in this guide are taking from Rational Application Developer (RAD). I could configure everything except “roles to groups mapping” directly from RAD’s console. For configuring “roles to group mapping” I had to export and deploy the application from an EAR file.

1. Enabling WebSphere security

Check out the following screenshot which shows the settings I have selected under Security->Global Security.

a) LTPA is required when the Web applications are on the different machines but on same domain.

b) I used a custom user registry which checked the users against a database. A more common approach is to use LDAP.

2. Click on the “custom” link under user registries in Security->Global Security. Following settings were selected on this page.

a) userid and password given is a valid user id in the database.

b) MyUserRegistry implements com.ibm.websphere.security.UserRegistry interface and is copied to the “classes” folder inside WAS home folder.

3. Click on “LTPA” under authentication mechanisms. Single sign on can be enabled by clicking on the “Single Sign On” link on the right.

The above three steps completes the “Global Security” setup on WAS. Now we will configure JAAS for applying this security at the Web application level.

1. Configure web.xml of the application. This involves protecting Web resources using security-constraint entry. Following is a sample entry,

    <security-constraint>
        <web-resource-collection>
            <web-resource-name>Protected Area</web-resource-name>
            <url-pattern>*.do</url-pattern>
            <http-method>DELETE</http-method>
            <http-method>GET</http-method>
            <http-method>POST</http-method>
            <http-method>PUT</http-method>
        </web-resource-collection>
        <auth-constraint>
            <role-name>operator</role-name>
        </auth-constraint>
        <user-data-constraint>
            <transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
        </user-data-constraint>
    </security-constraint>     
    <login-config>
        <auth-method>FORM</auth-method>
        <realm-name>MyApp</realm-name>
        <form-login-config>
            <form-login-page>/logon.jsp</form-login-page>
            <form-error-page>/logonError.jsp</form-error-page>
        </form-login-config>
    </login-config>

2. Implement a login page for application which conforms to WAS standards. Following is a sample page,

<html>
  <title>Login</title>
  <body>
  <form method=”post” action=”j_security_check”>
     Enter user ID and password:
     User ID: <input type=”text” size=”20″ name=”j_username”>
     Password: <input type=”password” size=”20″ name=”j_password”>
     <input type=”submit” name=”login” value=”Login”>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

3. While deploying bind web.xml roles with groups from UserRegistry. For simplicity you could also attach the entire role to “any authenticated user”.

Some common errors and their solution,

1. When I start RAD after enabling Global Security, it is in “starting” mode forever!

Open soap.client.props in base_v6\profiles\default\properties folder and add the userid and password fields as shown below. The userid/password must be the same as the one given on “custom user registry” page.

com.ibm.SOAP.loginUserid=test
com.ibm.SOAP.loginPassword=test

Run the following command on the command as shown. Replace the cell name and node name with the values on your machine. This reconfigures FileTransfer application with authentication.

D:\Rational\runtimes\base_v6\bin>wsadmin wsadmin.bat -profile redeployFileTransf
er.jacl -c “fileTransferAuthenticationOn machine97622Node01Cell machine97622Node01
 server1″ -user test -password test

2. I am getting the following error,

Authentication failed for user: com.ibm.ws.console.security.ConnectToRuntimeException: null nested exception is com.ibm.websphere.security.CustomRegistryException

This means that custom user registry is not loaded. Ensure that you restart RAD after copying custom user registry class. Also ensure that custom user registry class is under classes folder (base_v6\classes on RAD)

3. I have an error which is not listed above?

Check the trace.log inside base_v6\profiles\default\logs\server1 folder. This should give a lot of information about the underlying problem. If you are still unable to resolve the issue, contact me!

Pagination is required when you develop a listing screen which has thousands of records. The best way to implement pagination is to leverage features available on the database. In an Oracle database you can use RANK() function. On a DB2 database you can use ROW_NUMBER() function. Following example shows how to implement pagination on a DB2 database,

SELECT * FROM
  (SELECT a.customer_name, ROW_NUMBER() OVER
    (ORDER BY a.customer_name) AS RN FROM customer a
    WHERE a.customer_status=’ACTIVE’
  )
X WHERE X.RN BETWEEN 0 AND 100

This method won’t work if you are using AS400. On AS400, the only way seems to be iterating through the entire result set and then picking up records needed for the screen. For example, if you want to show records 100 to 200, start from 0, ignore upto 100 and then populate records from 100 to 200 and then stop. Obviously this means that if the resultset is huge and if you navigate to the last page, it might take a lot of time.

Blogging guru Darren Browse is currently running a group writing project called “Top 5“. He is offering $1001 for the best blog post on “Top 5″. With the rise in the value of rupee, $1001 is not worth much, but still will fetch a decent laptop. So I decided to give it a try.

Top 5 ways to love your wife

1. Listen to her - This is one of the most important things that husbands normally miss. Listen to your wife and it is something guaranteed to improve your family life! Here is a tip - don’t pretend to be listening, trust me, it won’t work.

2. Express your love - It is something which is easily overlooked in our busy life. But expressing your love is so much important for the warmth and closeness of a married life. You know, sex is good for your health and mind

3. Share responsibilities - There is a saying that “a man is incomplete until he is married”*.  Giving your wife responsibilities is an effective way to show that you trust her. Also help her in taking care of babies or in kitchen work.

4. Respect her - “Respect” has an unique property. You give it, you will get it back. So if you expect respect from your wife, first show it to her!

5. Surprise her - There are a lot of ways to surprise her. Throw a surprise party, go on an unplanned vacation or just buy her a simple gift. The smile on her face is worth a million bucks!

After writing this I have decided to change what I planned to buy with Darren’s gift. I would probably buy an all paid family trip to singapore

*- the complete quote is “A man is incomplete until he is married. After that, he is finished.”

In this article I will show you how you can convert your Windows XP machine to run linux distributions such as Debian without risking your partition table! You would be wondering what I mean by “risking your partition table!”. Well, last week I had installed Ubuntu on my Windows PC and it had replaced Windows boot loader with Grub. After a while I decided to remove Ubuntu. I opened up the disk administration tool in Windows and re-partitioned the disk to free up the space used by Ubuntu. Then I realized that my Windows system won’t boot anymore! I had use the “Windows recovery disk” and then issue a “fixmbr” to fix my system.

This week I decided to try out Debian and this time I decided to install it on a virtual PC running on top of Windows. This has many advantages. First, there is no risk of corrupting your partition table. Secondly, you can easily add or remove more distributions. Thirdly, your WiFi may not be recognized by Debian net-install, but NAT translation by VMware ensures that WiFi is accessible as ethernet! Another advantage is that you can easily switch to Windows if you want to watch TV on your “Windows only” TV tuner card!

There two leading virtual pc softwares in the market. Microsoft virtual pc and VMware server. Both these are free! I prefer VMware since almost any OS works on it.

Download Debian

You can download Debian ISOs which range from 30MB to 12GB! I decided to download 30MB network install ISO, which is a very minimal ISO.  If you use this, the components required for a base system will be downloaded during installation through an ethernet network available for your virtual machine. Also ensure that you download an ISO suitable for your hardware. For me it was an amd64 version(64 bit AMD processor).

Installing VMware

You can download latest version of VMware server from here (about 150MB).  You would also need to register to get your free serial key.  VMware asks for this key at the last step of configuring a new OS!

When you startup VMware, first you get “connect to host screen”. Select “localhost” since you are not trying out remote hosts.

From the File->New Click on “Virtual Machine”. This is used to configure a new virtual machine to run a different operating system.

1. Select “custom” for virtual machine configuration.

2. Select “Other linux 2.6.x kernel 64-bit” as the guest operating system. If you are not using a 64-bit system,use “Other linux 2.6.x kernel”.

3. Now select the file and directory for the new OS. Ensure that you select a disk which has enough space for the new OS.

4. For access rights, you can decide to make it private (accessible only for your userid) and accept defaults for the startup/shutdown options. You will need to change it if your account doesn’t have administrator privileges.

5. Allocate 50% of your total RAM for the new OS. I have 2GB total RAM and allocated 1GB for Debian.

6. Use NAT for networking and create a new virtual disk and accept defaults (SCSI). Allocate enough space of the virtual disk. I have 8GB for Debian.

Now you need to configure the downloaded Debian ISO as a CD Drive so that Debian installer will start when you boot up your new virtual PC. For this edit the new virtual PC and change the CD configuration as shown below,

Now start your new virtual PC from VMware. Now you should see the following Debian boot console.

Follow the prompts and complete the Debian installation. Debian will download the required components by connecting to internet. If you don’t want this, you can use the complete Debian ISOs (instead of the 30MB business card version).

After installation, the first package I installed was the command line internet browser “lynx” by issuing the command,

apt-get install lynx
 

I think text-link-ads will have to find a new business model soon. It appears that Google is taking the issue of paid links very seriously and according to this Matt Cutts article, you can now report paid links appearing on a Webpage!

In another post, Matt Cutts talks about the disclosures required if you are going to place a paid link. Basically provide a machine readable disclosure (rel=nofollow) and a human readable disclosure.

As you can guess from my previous articles, I am a strong advocate of rel=nofollow. As a leader of search engines, Google has the responsibility to clean up the paid link menace in its early stage itself. This is the only way to ensure integrity of search index.

The explosion in online advertising and the huge interest generated by blogs have begun to pollute the search results of google and other search engines. In fact “how to make money online” seems to be the most searched term these days. I am not against “making money online”, infact I am trying to atleast cover my hosting expenses via Adsense! But I think search engines should strive for achieving this simple statement - “Content is the King”.

It is a shame that other search engines doesn’t support rel=nofollow. 

One of the little known Google tools is the Google Trends.  Surprisingly rich amount of information can be derived using this tool.

Google Trends shows the relative volume of keyword search in Google Search. You can provide a list of keywords separated by comma and then see comparative search volume over a period of time.

I started my post saying that Google Trends can give you amazing level of insight. Combined with regional information, it can give insight into social aspects of human life as well!

In my experiment, I used these keywords - peace,love,life,kindness,sex. Anyone can guess which is going to be the most searched term. There is no surprise there. Here is the Google Trends chart,

Now I did a comparison of search volume across United States and India. Here are the search volume graphs,

Noticed the huge difference? What is your conclusion? I have no comments!

Lastly I did a search for sex for all the regions. Here is the top 10 regions.

From this study, I derive the following formula,

Sex Interest = Sex Suppression * Population * Sex Co-efficient where Sex co-efficient is a universal constant. When Google gives out the actual volume figures, we will know this constant!

When I wake up, I check my Gmail account for emails. Then I scan website feeds on Google Reader to see what is happening on the online world. After that I scan latest news from Google News.

If I have any doubts about anything I straight away go to Google Search. Infact I have set Google Search as my homepage.  Whenever I need an image related to a topic, I do a Google image search.

My friends contact me over Google Talk. Once Yahoo messenger was the IM I used, but not anymore.

My various “todo lists” are now on Google calendar. I maintain various pieces  vital information (passport number, contact numbers etc.) in Google spreadsheet. I rely on Google Adsense to finance this blog.

So if tommorrow Google disappears, I will have a tough time! Let me be clear, I am a big fan of Google. Their products simply kick ass and I am impressed by the way they have adopted Ajax in everything.  But the reliance on Google for everything is frightening…

I came across the story of a small company who had gone out of business simply because their pages disappeared from Google Index (Possible reason? - trying to game google!). For example, 80% of the visitors to this blog come from Google search!

Another problem is the fact that the Made for Adsense (MFA) sites are getting smarter. Instead of just copying content, they are also building links. The net effect is that the original site which actually authored the content will be flagged as spam and may get removed from Google Index! It is a hard job that Google has in their hands!

Today I upgraded Internet Explorer from version 6 to the latest version 7. The download requires genuine windows validation 3 times! Apart from that that 20MB download went smooth.

This review is based on my experience of using IE for just one hour! IE 7.0 simply rocks! The interface is sleek and the performance is unbelievable (for a microsoft product, that is  :-)) . Here are some of the interesting features of Internet Explorer 7.0,

1. Improved screen rendering. Now reading a webpage seems easier probably due to enhanced anti-aliasing.

2. Minimal, but effective UI - The UI is similar to Windows media player and is quite intuitive. All the frequently used features are easily accessible.

3. The tabbed browsing - This was probably the only reason I was using Firefox. IE 7.0 contains this feature and is better than Firefox when it comes to opening new tabs (new tab appears just near the old tab)!

4. Reduced startup time - I have a 1GB, 1.8GHZ machine and IE 7.0 starts in a flash!

Another noticeable feature is the Live search which appears on the right of URL field. It is quite tempting to use it instead of Google, nice try Microsoft!

So overall, I am very much pleased with IE 7.0. If you are using IE 6.0, I recommend immediately upgrading it to IE 7.0 (If you have genuine windows  :-))

Here is a cool trick which allows you to run more than one instance of Google Talk. I found it quite useful since I could keep my wife’s ID also logged on all the time.

Right click on the Google Talk shortcut and then add “-nomutex” as a parameter in the target field. The diagram on the right should clear any doubts you have! Voila! now everytime you click on Google Talk you get another session.

These days Twitter is everywhere and there seems to be a global conspiracy to promote it. In case you don’t know what Twitter is, welcome back to earth!

Twitter is a global community of people answering just one question - “What are you doing”? You can create an account and then start sending your current status using either mobile, instant messengers such as Google talk or direct from http://twitter.com/.

This process of sending “what you are doing right now” is called twittering! If you want to see what someone else is doing, you can add him as a friend and you will get updates on what he is doing right now!

Another interesting feature is the ability to embed your current twitter status on your Website or blog. For example, in my site on the right side bottom you can see my current status!

I usually update my twitter status from Google talk. But these days twitter bot is down most of the time. Using SMS on mobile is ruled out since it costs around Rs. 5 per message! So the only option left is to use the Website which obviously is cumbersome.

It is probably one of the most addictive, useless and time wasting concept man has invented! But I have put together a list of twitter tips, tricks and tools for all the Twitter maniacs out there

Twitter based Websites

Twitter badges - Twitter provides a set of Javascript and Flash badges using which you can display your or your friend’s current status.

Twitter timeline - Official Twitter where all the latest public updates are available.

Twitter commands - Official list of all Twitter commands you can use.

Twitter API - Want to build something based on Twitter? Try the Twitter API.

Twittervision - This is a combination of Google maps and Twitter. You can see live twittering which will popup on the map. Very addictive! They have added a digg type “like” and “dislike” buttons for each twitter that is shown.

Twitter search - Search Twitter for stuff. Looking for links? Try searching “tinyurl”.

Twitterholic - Catch the most popular Twitters based on followers, friends, updates or favorites!

Twitter Tools

Twitterrific - This is a Mac client for publishing and reading twitters.

Twitteroo - This is a Windows client. The main advantage is the automatic shortening of URLs.

Twapper - This is a mobile client for Twitter. Use it if you don’t want to be flooded with SMS messages.

Twitter Firefox Search Plugin -  Post updates to Twitter right from your Firefox search bar!

Tweetbar - This is a Twitter sidebar for Firefox and Flock.

Twitter tools - Twitter tools plugin for Wordpress if you are too lazy to create badges.

Twitter hacks

Binny has written a shell script for twittering. This is based on Twitter API.

RSS to Twitter - Here is a PHP script to feed RSS to Twitter!

Is there anything I missed? Let me know, I will add it here.