Tuesday, April 6, 2010

How to access online Wall Street Journal for free

Access to Wall Street Journal online edition cost $1.99 per week. With few tweaks to your browser setting you can access every story in WSJ for free.

How does it works?

WSJ charges its user for online content, but it exposes all content to search engines for free. So that search engines can index it content and give better placement in its search result which eventually gives more readers to WSJ. To get this thing working you just need to trick wsj that you are Googlebot.

Follow following steps to enable WSJ access.
1. Install FireFox 3.x version.
2. Install Firefox pluginUser Agent Switcher from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59
3. Restart Firefox and choose select user agent as GoogleBot from Tools->Default User Agent->Search Robots

Thats All... you are all set to access WSJ for free.
Now when you visit wsj.com, website will treat you like google robot and allow you to access all the content for free.

If you are interested, you can learn more about User Agent. With manipulating User agent you explore different dimension of web and get iphone/mobile/ipad version of website on your desktop.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

ABC of Facebook Application

Facebook offers a great platform and userbase for developing your cool app, but on the other hand their documentation is useless specially in Java side. I can' find words how badly it is written !*&@*&#*#.
When I development of my first Facebook app, I struggled a lot. I could find much more information in people's blog rather than on Facebook website.

I'll cover few of topic which will app development little simpler.

Facebook Session Demystified
Once user click on your application canvas link Facebook call your callback URL and pass this response to user browser. In this call authentication token is NOT added in the request your server receives. If you need authentication token you need to forward request to following URL


http://www.facebook.com/login.php?api_key=YOUR_API_KEY&v=1.0

Don't worry users will not be asked to login again. Facebook will create an authentication token, append it in your callback URL and send request to this URL.

Now you have authentication token. Store it in HttpSession; your will need it soon...
I a second we would try to fetch user friends list using FacebookRestClient class. I am using Facebook java apis hosted at http://code.google.com/p/facebook-java-api/
Use the stored authentication token to create instance of FacebookRestClient as

FacebookRestClient fClient = new FacebookRestClient(YOUR_API_KEY,YOUR_SECRET_KEY);
String fbSession = fClient._getSessionKey();
long fbUserId = fClient.auth_getUserId(token);

After this step most of the things are simple. Use various methods of FacebookRestClient to perform various actions e.g. getting User friend list.

List fList = fClient.friends_getAsList();

Store fbSession in HttpSession and use it in following request to get handle of FacebookRestClient in following way


FacebookRestClient fClient = new FacebookRestClient(YOUR_API_KEY,YOUR_SECRET_KEY,fbSession);


In next few post I'll try to cover more topics about Facebook Api including Feeds, notifications and more.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Lipstick Economy

National Public Radio is reporting when US economy is moving towards recession, lipsticks sales are off the chart. Why?? Because when people are not doing very good they need a little boost and since they can't go for $100.00 perfume they go for next best thing a $20.00 Lipstick.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Playing avi files from PS3 Hard Drive

I was trying to do it since long time.
I was able to stream avi to PS3 using Nero Media Server, but some time it use to give me troubles like skipping frames and jamming for some time.

Yesterday I tried to copy avi file to PS3(You have to copy it by using nero media server) and then play it from HD and surprisingly it worked. Actually PS3 dose support avi playback from hard drive but surprisingly Sony never revealed this feature.

I think you need to enable Divx playback in PS3 setting since it uses Divx codec to play avi. Also it will show avi clip as Divx under Video.

I would try to add video later today.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Is US Really a Free Market?

People says US is a free market. Everything is decided by market, from price of crude oil to the price of aspirin sold in gas station. Government does not interfere or doesn't control price of any commodity. The job is government is to provide competitive and equal environment to all players in business. Sounds good...isn't it?

Yesterday's news that Feds are cutting interest rate by half percent caught my attention and made me thinking that why govt doesn't let market decide what interest rate prevail? Is it against US govt open market statement?

If your are not familiar with stock market or collage level finances you must be wondering how does it matter to you? When interest rates are changed, it affects every single persons life in country whether you know it or not. How? lower interest rate means you get lower returns on you saving, and that is just tip of iceberg, if returns are low in saving people save less and spend more . Lot more money become available in system. More money means higher inflation and price will go up and every one feel the heat. So why govt does that? The answer is simple, to fuel the economy. When bank saving becomes less attractive due to lower interest rate, people invest more in stock market, buy goods and spend their money. So its not surprising when ever feds declare rate cut you see triple digit gain in stock exchanges index.

To understand how feds works we have to go in past. In early nineteenth century all the money in market used to backed by gold in govt reserves. So even govt need more money, they couldn't just print that until they had sufficient gold reserves to back it up. As industrial age arrived, people felt that gold backed economy is inefficient and can't meet demand of new growing economy. So govt decided to remove gold backed currency restriction. With this new power is was in govt control to print what ever money required without backing it with actual gold.

This was very good step for businesses and rapidly growing economy. But extra money in market also could create high inflation and destabilize economy. To avoid this problem govt introduced regulatory bodies, who's whole job is to make a proper money balance, which affects liquidity and inflation, in the market. Fed(Central Bank) works as regulatory body in US.

To regulate money in market Fed has different instrument in their hand. They can either print more money, which generally happens whenever govt budget goes in deficit, or they can change interest rate to move money from one section of market to another section.

So in ideal sense US market is not totally free but rather regulated, which is quite necessary to maintain proper liquidity and inflation in 21st century largest economy in the world.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Google Map can't locate Mountain View (Google Headquarters)


Today I needed to go to Mountain View from my office in San Francisco downtown.
I called my friend, asked his address and typed following address in Google Map's driving direction section:

Start Address: 795 Folsom St San Francisco
End Address: 900 Highland Way, Mountain View, Ca 94041

Surprisingly, Google Map located end address of mountain view in somewhere in San Bernardino near Los Angles, around 400 mile away from its actual location.


Surprised with these results I tried same address with Yahoo Maps, Yahoo found Mountain View correctly but didn't gave me direction till Highland way. At end I tried same query with Ask.com and it told me that it could not find that street.

I called my friend again to confirm his address and found out I mis-heard the street name first time. After correcting the name every site it correctly.

I was most surprised with the google result, even though I had given the wrong street name, I had given everything else correctly even mountain view zip code. In the Google's result there were no indication that something is wrong with street name or address.




Till now I used to think that Google has done wonderful job with human language interpretation technology to understand users queries in its search technologies, but today's experience will force me to reconsider my decision.
What is ironic with this experiance is that Google has its headquarters in Mountain View, Ca

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Why can't we travel faster than light

Why can't we travel faster than light ??? As all we know that it is not possible Because Einstein said so.... I was trying to find out some common men explanation from the internet and came across to different explanation for this problem:

  • One explanation tell that as matter move faster and faster it becomes heavier and heavier and to accelerate it by speed of light it will take infinite amount of energy.
  • Another way to explain this is with the help of 4th dimension. As all we know space can be represented by 3 axis; X, Y and Z and when you traveling from point A to point B the distance between them can be figure out A and B coordinates.
    Einstein suggested another dimension, a 4th dimension for time and with the help of some complicated mathematics(Which I was not able to understand) he proved following relationship
Speed in Space + Speed in Time = Speed of Light

So as per this relationship if somehow you can manage to travel faster than light in space time will start moving backward( Wow I have just figure out way to build time machine only part left is to build a rocket which can move faster than light)
So even when you are not traveling in space( or even on earth) you are always traveling at speed of light in 4th dimension.

Don't worry if you think your inter-galactic travel is going to take millions of year for your holiday vacation to our closest galaxy (say M31) scientists have good news for you. Faster inter-galactic travel can be achieved with wormholes

Sunday, September 2, 2007

BlackBerry for Sale

There are rumors that Microsoft and Research In Motion, makers of BlackBerry are talks for possible acquisition. RIM share touches all time high on last Friday.


If these talks end into success than it might be the largest acquisition in Microsoft history. On Friday RIM market cap crossed 47.5 Billion. If everything goes smooth than whole this acquisition may cost up 55 Billion to Microsoft.
This acquisition can give Microsoft great edge over competition, since BlackBerry has penetrated business user market across the globe. On the other hand Micrcosoft Windows Mobile is not that successful, although you can find them in some of Motorola Q and Plam Treo smartphones.

Another reason to believe in this rumor is that Microsoft is in immense pressure from Apple's iPhone and possible launch of Google phone. If Microsoft want to maintain its grip on mobile market this seems a logical move.

In the separate press release Microsoft and Research In Motion denied to comment on news saying its their general policy not to comment on speculation and rumors.

BigFlick's Big Plan

Reliance ADAG has announced to launch BigFlicks.com with plan to operate online and retails store to rent bollywood movies to Indian community in india and abroad. The business model seems similar to US Blockbuster Inc .
Additional to online and retail sale/rental, company is offering to providing download service to all new Bollywood releases on same day of release. More detail can be found about investment can be found here.