phpbb3 released!

after so many months of long gap and the hard work of team members of phpbb, the team has released phpbb3 version last december. It has arrived after so many betas and then 8 release candidates.

The latest phpbb has all the latest features which are to be present in a forum software. The look and feel is too good. It is sure to give competition to VBulletin script and Invision plus boards which are proprietary softwares.

The version 3 is named as olympus. It has many many features which we dint even imagine. Unlike old versions, this version is very easy to upgrade. And the display of the board mostly uses CSS and javascripts. Very importantly it has bot management functions. Due to the session ID's, many search engines found it difficult to index the pages. Now the search engine spiders can crawl on the pages better.

And there is a temporary suspension feature. Warning messages to spammers and violators. Report post feature comes as a good feature for moderators who find it difficult to find abusing posts between the large forums. And the user layout can be shift to right or left side.

The new feature list can be found on phpbb website www.phpbb.com . It is a loooooong list. And the extra modules will come out soon. And there is no need for many many modules. Because the features of those modules has already been integrated in the core release! For example, the build search tables (database tables of Mysql) is an option already available in admin panel. And avtar controls are now enhanced i heard.

And the templates... many templates have already come out. But we have to wait till march time to get all our regular templates to be compatible with phpbb3. And i heard there are some enhanced features for modifying or customizing the forum.

I am installing the latest forum on my site now. Let me see how it works :)

phpbb3 gold released

after so many months of long gap and the hard work of team members of phpbb, the team has released phpbb3 version last december. It has arrived after so many betas and then 8 release candidates.

The latest phpbb has all the latest features which are to be present in a forum software. The look and feel is too good. It is sure to give competition to VBulletin script and Invision plus boards which are proprietary softwares.

The version 3 is named as olympus. It has many many features which we dint even imagine. Unlike old versions, this version is very easy to upgrade. And the display of the board mostly uses CSS and javascripts. Very importantly it has bot management functions. Due to the session ID's, many search engines found it difficult to index the pages. Now the search engine spiders can crawl on the pages better.

And there is a temporary suspension feature. Warning messages to spammers and violators. Report post feature comes as a good feature for moderators who find it difficult to find abusing posts between the large forums. And the user layout can be shift to right or left side.

The new feature list can be found on phpbb website www.phpbb.com . It is a loooooong list.

I am installing the latest forum on my site now. Let me see how it works :)

Content management system

A content management system is a software which allows a person to manage a website’s content in a systematic and easy way. Gone are the days when websites were created using individual html files.

Now I am going to tell you about my experience using content management systems. First of all, I did not have any idea about CMS. Then My friend told me about Joomla. It is available for free under GNU license. I started using Joomla on one of my site. But to learn using joomla was the biggest task.

I took some 3-4 days reading the online joomla forum articles about the terminologies of joomla and other things. I did not even know that modules existed. At first time I did not use any modules. Somehow I took some 2-3 weeks and built the site using joomla.

Drupal:

Then started the problem for me. I did not have any ideal gallery built in joomla. I had to depend on some gallery modules. But they were not at all useful for me.

At this stage, I heard about drupal. But my friend told me that drupal was difficult to learn. I took some 2-3 days reading some tutorials on their site. But I did not give it a try. Finally I realized that joomla was not offering me anything better. I finally decided to shift to drupal.

When I changed the servers, I installed drupal and started testing it. It was quite easier than joomla and the admin control panel was too good. I can tell you that the admin panel of drupal is one of the best one’s I have seen. If you do not know how to navigate or want a specific function, you can use the slash search on mozilla firefox and type the term. You will get it. Asking how it works? There is a long list of the controls available. And a description is also given in it. Hence it is easy to search what you want.

Modules of Drupal:

There are hundreds and thousands of drupal moduels developed by the community. Each one is so good. I think you should naturally use at least some 10-12 modules to make a standard site. Modules which we cannot live without are XML site map which was developed under the funding of Google summer of code. And the flash tools module, image module and many more. And the themes are good and you have a long list to select from.

Drupal I feel is the best way to manage a site’s content. And you get blogging and community featured by default. Drupal is a database driven software. You need a Apache environment for drupal to work best.

Microsoft server comes along with a CMS software which can generate asp pages. I have no better idea about it. You can go through wikipedia article about the comparision of CMS software. Best article on web for CMS reference.

My mobile phone

Right now I am using Sony ericsson w200i walkman phone. Earlier I used Nokia 1108 phone. I then started using sony ericsson. Ever since I was thinking of changing my phone, I wanted to have a walkman feature in it. But during those times, walkman phones were very costly.

So I had even decided to buy I pod of transcend if I cannot afford apple I pod. But I am now satisfied that sony ericsson mobile is what I expected. Excellent quality of music. Up to 1 GB expandable memory (Micro SD card). The interface and graphics are excellent. Games are good. But I need a couple of better games.

But the annoying feature is the phone book which is not compatible with old phones. And another drawback is the sms features. I took more time to get adjusted with the new sms features. And the number of sms stored in inbox is not more than 40. Hence this was a drawback feature I feel.

Apart from these, there is a metronome for beats generation. And there is a piano to check the music scale (or pitch), there is a guitar which generates chords. This is useful for a musical passionate like me.

The camera has still and video featues. BGA camera, even then good quality.

But this model of sony is a best phone with affordable price. Its price in India at present is somewhere around 5000 rupees.

Microsoft shift key

The other day I held the shift key continuously. And it suddenly made a beap, and it told me that it would activate a toggle key setting. I don’t remember the exact word. But something like sticky keys. The keyboard started acting very abnormally. And then I did not know what to do. Somehow on a blog I found a help article regarding this. And it said that I have to hold both shift keys together to de activate that settting. Finally I came out of this annoying feature. Unfortunately this simple solution (holding both shifts)of coming out of this setting was not provided in Microsoft help! But it explained about the sticky keys feature in a lose unclear manner. So all of you, next time, do not hold shift key for long periods!

My love with photoshop

I started using adobe photoshop since 2001. Those were the days when I got my PC freshly. And I had seen some image manipulations on times of India newspaper. And I wanted to do something like that. I did not have any knowledge about which software to use. I asked my computer admin to install that software which allows photo manipulations.

He installed me photoshop 4 I feel. Then I started using photoshop. I had no idea about image formats, sizes, quality or any other things. I just started importing some film actor’s images and started experimenting. I could not learn anything worth in the starting days. The features I was not good with. I would want to do some action. But I dint know how to perform it. At times, the history brush tool annoyed me. I dint know the real use of eraser. Then the history brush was replaced by eraser. I realized the use of layers.

By some one or two months, I was somehow ok with painting on the photos and adding text on the photo. Later in next 4-5 months, I accidentally discovered the layers effects which are now termed as layer style. In old photoshop, we had very less effects and less options.

Then I upgraded to photoshop 5 where I got many more functions. Then came a significant version of photoshop 6. There was a new feature called liquidify. And there were many added layer effects. And the terminology for render layer was changed as rasterize layer.

Now I am using photoshop 7 which I feel has better brushes. And one more feature which caught my attention was the extract feature which can extract the object from its backgrounds. Surely a great tool for those who mix photos. Now I use photoshop for almost everything. For improving the quality of my photos to getting photo prints, banner making, greetings, wallpaper creation. Creating favicon. Creating png icons. Photoshop is the best tool on earth for photo manipulation.

Corporates kill creativity in bollywood

There was a boom in Bollywood some 6 years ago. This was due to the expansion of the markets. The markets opened up to England and America due to the increase of Indian population in those areas. And more than the increase in population, the Indian people in those places wanted to watch hindi films.

But they did not have access to it. Yash Raj films were the first people to attract the NRI audience by making a NRI based story DDLJ (dilwale dulhania le jayenge). Then the film ran very well in India. The VCD’s and VHS were very well marketed in other parts of the world. But the markets truly opened up when kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham was released. It was released in many places outside India. (Now they are releasing DVD ) . And also satellite rights now fetch lot of money.

Due to the difference in value of tickets outside India, this acted as an advantage to the Indian producers. And with the markets doubling, they could recover the money very easily. And with the opening up of multiplexes in all metro cities, the film makers can recover their amount in a week.

This profit motive brought many corporate into film making to bollywood. The first entrant I think was the Pen video people. And they were followed by others. I think the biggest entrants were the eros and edlabs. Now almost one out of 4 films belong to eros and adlabs. And now Adlabs has been acquired by reliance. And reliance also holds BIG fm. Hence adlab’s songs are coming across all Big fm’s of major cities.

Big fm has been used by reliance to advertise its reliance phones and its mutual funds and insurance policies.

With all these corporates flowing in, they are not bothered about creativity. It has become common or adlabs , eros and Yash Rajs to sign in an artist for 3-4 films together. Dint you see Rani Mukherji repeatedly in Yash Raj Banner. And priety zinta doing Kal Ho Na Ho, Salam Namaste. And saif ali khan doing Kal ho na ho, Hum Tum, Salam Namaste etc. And latest Konkona sen doing aaja nachle and even laga chunari me dag. And Kunal kapoor doing aaja nachle and laaga chunari me daag.

When the actors have already been signed by the producers, where is the scope for the director to choose the correct actor to the role. And the director has to weave the story to suit those actors!

And now the formula seems to be.. sign a person who is riding high due to media hype. If there is no media hype for that person, go pay some money and create media hype for him! And make a hip hop type of song. And make a glamorous video with all types of African and American models and remix it. Play it repeatedly on Mtv. The main intention is to create a hype among the people unnaturally. Then release the film. Even if the film is worst and it runs for one week, it gains the money spent.

And if the film runs for 3 weeks, it is a hit! How can we consider Don film to be a hit? And now the definition of hit has changed. If the film sustains for 3-4 weeks at a theatre, it is a hit!

This doesn’t mean that creativity has completely died in bollywood. Some small film makers are making good efforts like Khosla Ka Gosla and Nagesh kukunoor movies. And the film Life in A metro was a totally different movie starring shilpa shetty and directed by some person I don’t remember his name :)