New Google Maps

Google Maps today is quite a great tool for what it’s supposed to do now, and you can navigate from location A to location B. Month back, I really enjoy the apps when I was in Europe. I get into a place that never been before and still can enjoy travelling with the help of the great Google Maps.  But things will never been so complete if Google enhance the maps to cater what a traveller needs. I got my feeling that Google Maps will be more advance with shop’s review because it bought Zagat and also getting better with street view and so on. And it finally here, today I am going to talk a little bit of New Google Maps.

I requested for New Google Maps preview since they introduced it in Google I/O, and it finally granted me to have a look on the great new Google Maps.

Here is the new look of Google Maps:-

Some of them name it your maps as it will collect your data and you can save all the information into this so called “your Maps” meaning that Google will create a specific maps under your name and you can then utilize the maps for your own data and the maps will adapt to the things that interest you, including restaurants you've been to, ones that you might like and what your friends have done. 

A new and smarter search box is the first thing you should use to search for direction or a point that you want to search. The box will give you some suggestion based on your browsing data:- 

Just search any keyword that you require and it will show up some of the location base on the area you searched. 

You can get more information from the info card below the smart search box and it will include Zagat ratings, reviews from your friends and quick entry points to photos of the venue from Street View, both inside and outside of the venue: Review will link directly to Google Plus location. 

It integrated with Google earth and allow you to switch between Maps view and Earth view and this time they have better view with photo sharing view which combined from public shared photo and allow you to have a look on the destination you want to go. 

The most interesting features that always keep me coming back to Google Maps is directions, and I am impressed with they even have information for KL which i think previously I don't see anything good in here. :P

I think i am getting excited with this New Google Maps now, and keep playing around with the new features and layout. 

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Automated testing

Ok, when you see this word “automated testing”. It should be referring to we get the testing automated, that’s it! What a simple way to describe the concept. I would say to describe the word can be in one or two sentences, but to implement the concept might take about few months.

Why automated testing? Yeah, and everyone knows how important is testing and without testing I don’t think you might be comfortable to push the changes to live and get it running. The principle of automated testing is that there is a job or program that runs the software being tested, by feeding it the proper inputs, and then checking the output against the output that was expected. It should be automated and yes it is automated. Which means you will need to just develop a test suite with your complete program and get it tested every times you push the changes to the environment.

I used to say good programmers know how to minimize error, and I think good programmer will make mistake as everyone make mistakes. The big difference between a good programmer and a bad programmer is that the good programmer uses tests to detect his mistakes as soon as possible. So, good programmer will have good discipline attitude and continue to discipline in any area. But I believe not every company can have luck to get a group of good programmer to work in a team, that’s why we need some protection before we publish it to live. Automated testing will be part of the solutions to avoid some costly mistake release to production and you have too much to pay back the clients or customers.

Actually the goal of using automated tests is to get the team minimize mistakes that harm the production program, I think you will see reduction in defects once you start implementing automated testing suites.

I am in the mid of testing php automated testing environment, looking forward to get some feedback from my blog post and hope to share with everyone on how I get my own up and running. Ciao!

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Why PHP and MySQL?

Years back when PHP was not OOP, many debates about hard to maintain this pieces of code and very hard to understand or develop using this programming language. Now it is not the case as PHP is a scripting language designed specifically for use on the web, with features that make web design and programming easier.

MySQL used to be maintained by a group of people now been purchased by some cooperation to get it development more underway. MySQL is a fast, easy-to-use RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) used on many websites.

If you are first enter to the web application programming and wonder why most of the programmers chosen PHP and MySQL to be the pair for building dynamic web applications. I can really list out some of the advantages in here.

MySQL and PHP as a pair have several advantages:

• They’re free. Yes!!!! They’re free! It is hard to reject this choice when it cost you nothing to run a business huh..
• They are easy to use, which mean easy to understand and there are lot of ready tools which just download and run type installer for running these 2 together
• They are used to building web. PHP is mainly as a web programming language and MySQL is more than that, but I think most of the web hosting company is using the pair for web hosting component.
• Fast! And yes, they are fast! And I am serious about it because if you can implement a good database structure and coding. Combined both they provide one of the fastest way to deliver dynamic websites.
• PHP and MySQL communicate well with each other; PHP has some built-in features to communicate with MySQL. This allows you have little knowledge on technical part but still able to get them work together.
• Both are open source, this mean we can customize it by our way of operations. But I do think you have to understand how to customize it. :P
• Since it is open source, there will be a wide base of support available and because it is free, they will have large user bases and many tutorials can be easily found by looking for Mr. Google. And because they’re often used as a pair, they always have people who can help you on using both as a pair in dynamic web application development.

So, any doubt on your decision for web programming languages and databases? 

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Twitter bootstrap

What is twitter bootstrap?

As you can see from the taglines: - Sleek, intuitive, and powerful front-end framework for faster and easier web development.

Wow! It explained!

Ok, let’s have some details description if it doesn’t. Twitter Bootstrap is a toolkit/framework to develop web apps and sites in faster way, as it includes basic CSS and HTML for creating Typography, Tables, Forms, Navigation, Alerts and lot more. It includes scaffolding section which including responsive 12-column grids, layouts, and component. It is includes 13 custom jQuery plugins. That is the reason why it becomes so popular nowadays.

Bootstrap was made to not only look and behave great in the latest desktop browsers (as well as IE7!), but in tablet and smartphone browsers via responsive CSS as well.

After all the craps, how to kick start using this powerful framework?

Go to http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/ and click on Download Bootstrap button, and you will get a bootstraps.zip file in your Downloads folder.  Double clicks on it and you will see a folder in this zip file.

File structure: -

bootstrap/

  ├── css/

  │   ├── bootstrap.css

  │   ├── bootstrap.min.css

  ├── js/

  │   ├── bootstrap.js

  │   ├── bootstrap.min.js

  └── img/

      ├── glyphicons-halflings.png

      └── glyphicons-halflings-white.png

Copied from http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/

Extract it into your development folder and start using it as your front-end framework.

I can say you have to go through the example and some tutorial to get yourself familiar with this framework, happy coding everyone! 

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Google chrome overtake Internet Explorer

This is not new news for people who keep track on the browser movement, and I think this is showing how Google serious on getting things improved.

Chrome's share of the market rose to 32.8% in the week ending May 20, while Internet Explorer's share of the market dropped to 31.9%, according to new data from StatCounter

And Chrome is going strong from there with 33.78% today, while IE’s share of market is 32.63%, according to data from StatCounter for now.

I have to agree on with google chrome come in we have never surf the web in boring way, it come with some of the plugin that contribute to the market share as well. It makes surfing activities become more interesting to keep track on what I suppose to do, and also give me some control on the things I want to control with available plugins.

IE will try to fight back anyway, but I think they still have way to go as their plugin is not a much as what chrome have and old version like IE9, 8 and 7 have some complication when come to develop their plugins. I had try it before for IE plugin development, it take me some times to get it done.

I hope IE will push their web browser improvement as web becomes one of the strong channel for user to access data from anywhere. 

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