The Google URL Shortener API has been released this week so I came up with a short snippet that generates short goo.gl URLs. The script is quite simple, you can paste it in your theme’s functions.php file or create a plugin out of it, so without further ado: function googl_shortlink($url, $post_id) { global $post; if (!$post_id && $post) $post_id = $post->ID; if ($post...
Review: Nexus One, Android & Software Freedom
The first time I mentioned I wanted a Nexus One phone was on January 21st, 2010. That’s almost a year ago and I was ready to trade in my iPhone for a Google phone. This Christmas I made myself a present and got that Nexus One from some “not so legal” Internet store here in Moscow. I guess they’re (Nexus One & Nexus S) not yet or ever will be certified for the Russian...
How to Track Your Social Links with Google Analytics
Quick and easy one. See the links to my social profiles on your right? I’ve been displaying those for years, but I never knew if they were ever clicked on, and if they were, which ones are the most popular ones? Perhaps I have to get rid of some of them, and make other brighter to get more attention? Or maybe simply switch places and keep the most relevant ones on the top left? After...
App Engine: JSON Objects in the Google Datastore
Following up on my previous post about Python Objects in the Google Datastore where I’ve shown an easy way of storing any python object inside the Google Datastore by pickling it. Pickling works fine and it can literally store functions, classes and class instances in the datastore which is great, but as I discussed earlier, JSON could work too, so here I’ll introduce a similar...
Getting Cached Favicons From Google's User Content
I don’t know how legit this is but I’ve discovered a way of getting all the favicons you want in a sweet PNG format from Google’s server which seem to serve from cache. All you have to do is use the following format in your image src attribute: Where DOMAIN_NAME is the domain you’d like to receive your cached icon for. In case a domain doesn’t have a favicon or is...
Google Unveils Nexus S and Android Gingerbread
I couldn’t go without posting this great video of the new Nexus S phone from Google. Boy I love Google’s video marketing! And Nexus? Ah, I’m still excited about Nexus One and now bam! The new generation Nexus S phone is out, and Gingebread! Holy shmoly, Android’s taking over the world ;)
Read more at the official Google Mobile blog: Introducing Nexus S with Gingerbread
App Engine: Python Objects in the Google Datastore
Howdy! Hope you’re all good and getting ready for the upcoming holidays! I’ve been writing Google App Engine code last month more than ever before. I finally got to a file and data structure that I myself can understand. Hopefully we’re all aware that the Google Datastore is not relational and that most of the frequently used data types are supported: StringProperty...
Installing Python 2.5 on Ubuntu Linux 10.10
If you’ve been working on App Engine and you’ve noticed that some stuff works on your development server but not on your production, it may be related to the different versions of Python. Latest linux builds including Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 come with Python 2.6 pre-installed, but Google App Engine still runs Python 2.5 (an issue has been created to add Python 2.6 support, make sure...
Foller.me Has Got a New Home: Google App Engine
That’s right, Google App Engine! For those of you who don’t remember, Foller.me is a Twitter app I wrote back in 2009. Honestly, I never realized back then that performance is an issue until the day I got featured on Mashable. More about it in a previous post. If you’re not familiar with Foller.me, I’ll explain it here in a couple of words: Foller.me is a web application...
Video: Google Developer Day Moscow 2010
Hurray, the video’s out! Damn I love when Google posts videos about their events, they’re always so exciting! Didn’t find myself anywhere in the shots, but I did find some of my friends. Not to keep you waiting any longer: Never knew barcode readers are able to parse data from an iPhone screen, that was amazing. For those of you who missed out my short review of the event:...