Product – Page 3 – cuteprogramming

Exploring Azure Search

December 26, 2016December 27, 2016 by Chun Lin, posted in Cloud Computing: Microsoft Azure, Experience, Product

Last year, Riza shared about his small little algorithm to do smart auto complete in WPF in Singapore .NET Developers Community March meetup. Riza has his project for this, SmartSuggestions, available on Github. What it does is that it will prompt user for smart suggestion of typos and find the similar words for suggestion.

meetup-riza-smart-suggestion — Riza Marhaban is sharing his SmartSuggestion algorithm to the audience during the community meetup. (Photo Credit: Singapore .NET Developers Community)

I find his program to be very interesting. In fact, I did a similar task when I was working in Easibook as well. By calculating the Levenshtein Distance of user input and the records in database, the small JavaScript code I wrote is able to suggest the places even user keys in the place name wrongly.

Soon after Riza’s talk about his SmartSuggestion, I read the announcement of general availability of Azure Search from Microsoft team.

Azure Search

Azure Search is a fully managed search-as-a-service in Microsoft Azure. It offers scalable full-text search for the program. Hence, with its help, developers do not need to re-invent the text-searching capability in their programs and websites.

Azure Search currently provides two ways of querying text. One is using Simple Query Syntax where user can do keywords searching, phrase searching, suffix searching, etc. AND/OR/NOT operator is also available for use.

Another way of querying will be Lucene Query Parser. What interests me the most in Lucene Query Syntax is the use of Damerau–Levenshtein Distance in its Fuzzy Search, which does more than the Levenshtein Distance that only allows insertion, deletion, and substitution operations.

Try It Out!

In order to try out this feature, I have decided to create a demo program to test its functionality.

In this program, I use the event data from the .NET Developers Community Singapore to demonstrate how Azure Search works. To do this, I have to integrate with the Meetup APIs in this program.

Currently, this demo application covers the following features in Azure Search.

Create Azure Search index;
Data upload;
Keywords query in both Simple Query Syntax and Lucene Query Syntax.

Here are some of the screenshots of querying using Azure Search.

For example, if I’d like to find out what the talks covering topic about Visual Studio are, I can just simply search by “visual studio” as a phrase, as shown in the following screenshot.

azure-search-phrase-search — Phrase Searching in Azure Search

Or let’s say a user wants to search the meetup events about “Xamarin” but he doesn’t know its correct spelling is either Xamarin or Zamarin. So he can do a Fuzzy Search by keying in “Zamarin~”. Take note of the tilde “~” symbol at the end of the word. It means the search of the word will be done using Fuzzy Search.

azure-search-fuzzy-search — Fuzzy Search in Azure Search

Holiday and Coding

Christmas is a public holiday in Singapore. Since Christmas is on Sunday, I get a day off on Monday. So besides taking a rest in my room, I did a quick research on Azure Search. It’s kind of fun because it helps me to learn new things which I don’t have chance to explore during work.

With Azure Search, we can now search with our minds at east. (Image Credit: Re:Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu, KissAnime)

Anyway, I have uploaded my demo program project to Github. Feel free to check it out!

IBM Connect 2015: SoftLayer and Bluemix

September 13, 2015December 11, 2016 by Chun Lin, posted in Cloud Computing: Bluemix, Cloud Computing: SoftLayer, Event, Experience, JavaScript, Product

IBM Connect 2015 - SoftLayer - Bluemix

With different challenges emerging every other day, startups nowadays have to innovate and operate rapidly in order to achieve exponential growth in a short period of time. Hence, my friends working in startups always complain about the abuse of 4-letter word “asap”. Every task they receive always come with one requirement: It must be done asap. However, as pointed out in the book Rework by Jason Fried from Basecamp, when everything is expected to be done asap, nothing in fact can be really asap. So, how are startups going to monetize their ideas fast enough?

To answer the question, this year IBM Connect Singapore highlighted two cloud platforms, SoftLayer and Bluemix, which help to assist startups to build and launch their products at speed.

IBM Connect 2015 at Singapore Resorts World Sentosa

SoftLayer, IaaS from IBM

SoftLayer is a very well-known IaaS cloud service provider from IBM. Currently, SoftLayer has data centres across Asia, Australia, Europe, Brazil, and United States. William Lim, APAC Channel Development Manager at SoftLayer, stated during the event that there will be two new data centres are introduced for every two months on average. In addition, each data centre is connected to the Global Private Network which enable startups to deploy and manage their business applications worldwide.

With Global Private Network, SoftLayer users won’t be charged for any bandwidth usage across the network. Yup, free! Bandwidth between servers on the Global Private Network is unmetered and free. So, with this exciting feature, startups are now able to build true disaster recovery solutuion which requires file transfer from one server to another.

William Lim sharing story about Global Private Network.

What excites me during the event is the concept of Bare Metal Server. With Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), users do not get predictable and consistent performance especially for I/O intensive tasks when their applications are running on virtual-machine based hosting. In order to handle I/O intensive workloads, IBM SoftLayer offers their users a new type of server, Bare Metal Server.

A Bare Metal Server is a physical server which is fully dedicated to one single user. Bare Metal Server can be setup with cutting-edge Intel server-grade processors which can then maximize the server processing power. Hence, for those startups that would like to build Big Data applications, they can make use of Bare Metal Server from SoftLayer to perform data-intensive functions without worrying about latency and overhead delays.

Bluemix, PaaS from IBM

As a user of Microsoft Azure Cloud Service (PaaS), I am very glad to see the Bluemix, PaaS developed by IBM, is also being introduced in the IBM Connect event.

Amelia Johasky, IBM Cloud Leader (ASEAN), sharing how Bluemix works together with three key open compute technologies: Cloud Foundry, Docker, and OpenStack.

One of the reasons why I prefer PaaS over IaaS is because in a startup environment, developers always have too many todos and too little time. Hence, it is not a good idea to add the burden of managing servers to the developers. Instead, developers should just focus on innovation and development. In the world of PaaS, tons of useful libraries are made available and packaged nicely which allows developers to code, test, and deploy easily without worrying too much about the server configuration, database administration, and load balancing. (You can read about my pain of hosting web applications on Azure IaaS virtual machines here.)

After the IBM Connect event, I decide to try out Bluemix to see how it’s different from Azure Cloud Service.

The registration process is pretty straightforward. I started with the Web Application Template. In Bluemix, there are many programming languages supported, including the latest ASP .NET 5, the new open-source and cross-platform framework from Microsoft team!

Many web development platforms are available on Bluemix!

I like how Bluemix is integrated with Git. It allows us to create a hosted Git repository that deploys to Bluemix automatically. The entire Git setup process is also very simple with just one click of the “Git” button. So every time after I push my commits to the repository, my app will be automatically updated on the server as well. Cool!

Bluemix enables us to deploy our web apps with Git.

You can click on the button below to try out my simple YouTube related web app deployed on Bluemix.

Bluemix is underlined by three key open compute technologies, i.e. Cloud Foundry, Docker, and OpenStack. What I have played with is just the Cloud Foundry part. In Bluemix, there is also an option to enable developers to deploy virtual machines. However, this option is currently beta and users can only have access to it if they are invited by IBM. Hence, I haven’t tried their VM option.

Finally, Bluemix currently only offers two regions, UK and US South. So for those who would like to have their apps hosted in other parts of the world, it may not be a good time to use Bluemix now.

YouTube RePlayer is now hosted on Bluemix.

Entertainment Connected to Android

February 2, 2015February 2, 2015 by Chun Lin, posted in Android, Experience, Java, JavaScript, Product, Windows Live SDK

GCL Project + Android + OneDrive

It has been two months since I completed Entertainment Connect for Windows 8 platform. Entertainment Connect is an application that is able to play those MP3 and MP4 media files stored in your Microsoft OneDrive storage.

Soon after I completed the application for Windows, I found out that more and more of my family and friends were buying Android phones. Thus, I decided to build another version of Entertainment Connect for Android.

Entertainment Connect is now available on Android devices!

Today, I would like to share what I had learnt in developing my first personal Android app which makes use of Microsoft Live SDK for Android.

New IDE: Android Studio

I have been using Eclipse for Android app development in my work. Coding with Eclipse is not easy. Luckily, Google just released Android Studio, an official IDE built specifically for Android with much powerful GUI designer. In addition, due to the fact that Google encourages developers to migrate to Android Studio, I decided to try it out.

Android Studio with the login page of Entertainment Connect.

Working with Microsoft Live SDK

Yesterday, I just received notifications from Live SDK Github saying that the team was going to support and migrate to Android Studio. Finally. When I started this project, the Live SDK only supports Eclipse ADT.

It is very easy to include Live SDK to the project in Android Studio. Firstly, I need to download the Live SDK. Just download the whole project via ZIP is enough. The project consists of some useful samples which teach us how to properly use the SDK.

Secondly, I need to add new module under Project Structure.

Thirdly, I just choose the “Import Existing Project” option which will import the Eclipse project (Live SDK) as a module.

Import existing Eclipse project as module.

Finally, to make my application being able to use the Live SDK, I need to create introduce a module dependency to my app module, as shown in the screenshot below.

Introduce module dependency between app and src (Live SDK).

That’s all. If you would like to know more details about adding SDK in Android Studio, please checkout a post in StackOverflow about the import of Facebook SDK.

Can It Be More Complicated?

When I did Entertainment Connect for Windows 8 using WinJS, to create a media player, I basically just used the following codes.

var playerContainer = document.getElementById('playerContainer');
videoPlayer = document.createElement('video');
videoPlayer.id = videoStaticUrl;
videoPlayer.controls = "controls";
var videoSource = document.createElement('source');
videoSource.src = videoUrl;
videoSource.type = 'video/mp4; codecs="avc1.42E01E, mp4a.40.2"';
videoPlayer.appendChild(videoSource);
playerContainer.appendChild(videoPlayer);

With these few lines of code, I can already get a working media player with all the controls, such as play, pause, progress bar, etc.

However, this is not the case in Android app development. I am using VideoView. Hence, I also need to build my own play/pause functions and progress bar.

Also, I realized there was a bug if I switched from playing video file to audio file on VideoView. The image part of the previous video will stay even though the audio starts playing already. Hence, I added the following few lines of code to reset the background image of the VideoView so that the image of previous video will be “erased”.

videoPlayer.setBackgroundColor(Color.TRANSPARENT);
if (availableMedia.get(position).getmMediaFileName().toLowerCase().endsWith(".mp3")) {
    videoPlayer.setBackgroundColor(Color.BLACK);
}

Loading the thumbnail of media from OneDrive is also a headache in Android.

In Windows 8 app, after adding the items returned from Live SDK to a collection, I can easily bind the items to the template easily. After that, the thumbnails will be automatically shown on the screen smoothly.

<!-- Template of the list items to show available music/videos -->
<div id="mediumListIconTextTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template" style="display: none">
    <div class="mediumListIconTextItem">
        <img onerror="this.src='/images/default-video-preview.png';" class="mediumListIconTextItem-Image" data-win-bind="src : picture" />
        <div class="mediumListIconTextItem-Detail">
            <h4 data-win-bind="innerText: name"></h4>
            <h6 data-win-bind="innerText: duration"></h6>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

In Android, I have to create a background worker to retrieve the thumbnail with the following code. Then sometime when I scroll the list, the thumbnail won’t be updated immediately. Also, I need to use some tricks to make sure the correct images are displayed on the list view.

URL thumbnailUrl = new URL(imageView.getTag().toString());
HttpsURLConnection imageConnection = (HttpsURLConnection) thumbnailUrl.openConnection();
imageConnection.setDoInput(true);
imageConnection.connect();
InputStream inputStreamOfImage = imageConnection.getInputStream();
return BitmapFactory.decodeStream(inputStreamOfImage);

Building Android App Is Fun

Yes, it is fun. However, it’s slower than Windows 8 app development. It’s just too bad that not a lot of my friends really go Windows Store to download desktop apps. So I have no choice but to build Android version of my app also.

I will try to publish Entertainment Connect to Google Play soon after I have fixed my debit card issue. Currently, I still encounter problems on paying developer registration fee with Google Wallet. Oh well.

Meanwhile, feel free to read rest of Entertainment Connect (Android) code on Github: https://github.com/goh-chunlin/EntertainmentConnectAndroid.

Travelling with Easybook.com: Four Young Developers in 2D2N Malaysia Trip

December 15, 2014December 15, 2014 by Chun Lin, posted in Event, Idea!, Product

I’m working in Easybook.com, a rapidly growing MNC with headquarter in Singapore. Easybook is currently a tour agency with the largest online coach ticketing website in Malaysia and Singapore.

This year, we successfully recruited many young software engineers from different countries. Most of them had never been to many interesting places in Malaysia. Hence, in order to help the newcomers in my team to understand more about local express bus industry and places in Malaysia, I suggested to have a short trip to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.

Purchase the Coach Tickets

After we had decided to visit Kuala Lumpur, we went to our website to book 2-way coach tickets to and from Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

Easybook.com is a very convenient one-stop booking for travelers to plan an entire trip from beginning to end in Malaysia. By simply keying the origin and destination as well as the travel dates, we could find out the coach services suitable to us.

Search coach trips in Easybook is very simple.

After that, we proceed to book hotel rooms. Easybook.com is an affiliate agent of Agoda. Hence, we can search for the hotel rooms in Easybook.com too!

Easy Payment

Easybook.com provides many ways for customers to make payment. AXS Station is one of them. By scanning the barcode of the coach receipts that we got from coach booking steps, we could easily make payment in any of the AXS Station located in Singapore.

Easybook customers can now make payment in AXS Station in Singapore. — Easybook customers can now make payment in Singapore AXS Station.

The Midnight Journey from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur

We checked-in at the coach counter located at Boon Lay after work. We presented our order summary printed from Easybook.com website to the counter staff. The counter is installed with Easybook system as well. Hence, the staff is able to easily validate our tickets and inform us the correct coach plate number with the help of Easybook waybill. Soon, the staff brought us to board the coach waiting outside the counter.

Coach counter staff is using Easybook system to validate our tickets.

After the journey of 5.5 hours from Boon Lay, we reached the first drop-off point in Kuala Lumpur, Terminal Bersepadu Selatan (TBS). It was around 4am. So, the entire terminal was very quiet. After that, the coach continued its journey to its last stop in Kuala Lumpur, Berjaya Times Square.

We reached Berjaya Times Square 30 minutes later. Most of the shops, except 7-Eleven, were not yet open. The street was very quiet with only few of us walking and chatting.

Visit to Kuala Lumpur City Centre

It’s very easy to travel in Kuala Lumpur city area. You can choose to travel by bus, taxi, LRT, train. Or, if you are as young as us, then you can walk from one attraction to another!

We decided to have the famous Bak Kut Teh as our lunch. We took LRT because the restaurant selling Bak Kut Teh was quite far from our hotel. The Bak Kut Teh in Kuala Lumpur has totally different taste from the one we always find in Singapore. The soup is herbal soup, instead of peppery soup.

After lunch, we visited many attractions in the city, such as Petronas Twin Tower, KLCC, Dataran Merdeka, Kuala Lumpur City Gallery, and Petaling Street.

Masjid Jamek, one of the oldest mosques in Kuala Lumpur.

Lok Lok, one of Malaysia local delights is available near our hotel. — Lok Lok, one of Malaysia local delights, is available near our hotel.

Our Product Is Everywhere

Even the tissue paper we use is from Easybook! — Even the tissue paper we use is from Easybook.com!

Our returning trip was on Sunday afternoon from TBS to Singapore.

When we just walked in the the TBS lobby, what we could see was a big advertisement of Easybook.com.

In 2014, we successfully integrated with TBS system. Hence, now our customers can actually easily check-in and collect ticket at TBS.

When I was walking outside the terminal, I saw the KTM Berhad train station, Badar Tasik Selatan, located just beside TBS. That reminded me the KTM Berhad train booking which was just implemented on our platform last month. Hence, our customers can easily book the train tickets on Easybook.com and then earn some loyalty points.

After we check-in at the coach counter in TBS at 12:30pm, we boarded the coach at 1:30pm to go back to Singapore.

Easybook.com advertisement is very obvious in TBS.

Train services, such as KTM Berhad, is available in TBS as well. — Train services, such as KTM Berhad (train ticket provider on Easybook.com platform), are available in TBS as well.

Easybook.com

I think technology has the capability to make our life better. That’s why I like building software applications. Thus, it’s very important for developers to experience the changes their software brings to the society themselves.

In this trip, we have witnessed how our system improves the workflow of bus operators, how our application helps travelers to plan their journey easily, and also how our website introduces attractions in both countries to the world. I am amazed by what we have achieved so far.

With just IT system and tour, it is already almost endless what we can do. So, what is our next goal? =)