pelago

Face detection in pure PHP

Technical description.

People are discussing whether it’s a complete copy of maxmind’s free database, but some are saying it’s not, either way nothing beats free.

IP address geolocation SQL database

So I was working away at localizing some pages and for some reason they all worked except tr_TR. What was the problem? The server had an outdated PHP installation with a bug that lowercases class names which ends a fatal error.

Why it it so? After some investigations I came across this bug and came to the conclusion that in the Turkish language, the latin i is not equal to capital latin i.

AWESOME!

On the heels of Ruby on Rails comes an array of MVC frameworks developed in PHP. WASP, Symfony, and Prado all look promising. The real challenge with any PHP framework is going to be building the scaffolding automation onto a proven MVC framework.

Symfony seems to be the most robust of these, but perhaps too complex for most basic web apps. Built around Mojavi, it is a fully robust framework. It’s main challenge will be in providing an easy to use scaffolding functionality that allows the developer to easily customize the resulting code.

WASP and Prado both are young and are developing the scaffolding alongside the core framework code. They could both evolve into strong frameworks.

Naturally, we at Pelago have found that there is no one-size-fits all framework. In the process of rolling our own framework, we’ve adapted the features we need from a variety of pre-existing frameworks. My guess is this will be the case for most web development shops building an app that goes beyond the basic app. I’m not saying that basic apps are bad, but i’m noticing a niche developing in the web app world. There are apps that do too much, which this new framework movement is rebelling against, and there are apps that do too little, which is all too often the aim of these new frameworks.

The success of these new frameworks will depend on providing a seamless setup experience for the basic web developer, while also allowing the more advanced web developer to customize and tweak the code to their needs.

Looking for some solid free software? Here is a good start. Ten of the better known open source resources.

Here’s an implementation of JS with transparent PNG’s to simulate an inactive window when you zoom in on an image.

The CanvasGraph.js library allows you to create graphs on the fly with the use of the HTML Canvas Tag, a tag introduced by apple. I say an SVG version would complete this project nicely.

Here’s a couple of sites using google maps API I found.

Trulia Real Estate
MapBuilder.net
smugMaps

Most news outlets are reporting on IE being problematic with spyware and virus, and recommending the public migrate to Firefox to evade such annoyances. Here is a web site that will help you get up and running with downloadable CDs you can share with your friends and family. And the best thing is, it’s free!

System and desktop applications to make your windows experience a more enjoyable one. The coolest of these has to be the multiple desktop application. Enhance and enjoy.