DreamLab

Ashish Revar

Filed under root

– Download Ashish Revar as PDF –

Teacher | Designer | Life-Long Learner

What I like the most is creating new things like no one before.

Due to my work and studies I’m connected to ambitious and exciting goals and people which motivate me to go on.

My motto is using love and passion to reach true glory and power.

Currently I live in Rajkot, India and works as an Asst. Professor at Marwadi Education Foundation.

My special interest and expertise evolve around Grids and Clouds, Conventional Software Engineering, Adhoc Networks, Web Designing & Development, Document Engineering, through my everyday work on this platforms.

Please note that I mostly speak open minded so try not to get upset.

Visit my space: www.dreamlab.co.cc
Check out my about.me profile!

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Sep04

SoundCloud: Online Music Station

Filed under Cloud Computing, Tech Solutions

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SoundCloud is a platform that puts your sound at the heart of communities, websites and even apps. Watch conversations, connections and social experiences happen, with your sound as the spark.

How it works

1. Visualize Your Sound

The SoundCloud waveform not only makes sound look good, it makes it social. Record on the fly or upload something you made before and see how the shape of your sound starts a conversation.

2. Share It Anywhere

Your sounds are free to go anywhere on the web with SoundCloud. Share privately to your family, publish to social networks or embed your sounds on your site.

3. Connect With Over 100 Apps

In the App Gallery you’ll find over 100 apps for desktop, web and mobile all built to amplify your SoundCloud experience. Create, capture, share and interact with sounds in brand new ways.

Go for it

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Apr12

Transparency Comes to Load Testing via the Cloud

Filed under Cloud Computing, Tech Solutions

– Download Transparency Comes to Load Testing via the Cloud as PDF –

By Patrick Lightbody, Director of Product Management at Neustar

The importance of online presence continues to grow exponentially. More and more of our personal and professional endeavors are conducted online. Because of this, the ability to ensure a good experience for our online friends and customers also is increasing rapidly.

At its core, load testing is nothing more than ensuring your online presence is ready for the number of visitors you expect. It’s simple to explain, but historically it’s been anything but simple, or easy to afford. Typically load testing was priced according to the number of concurrent visitors you wanted to simulate, and the more traffic you simulated the more the price went up.

However the reality was the cost of the test to the provider didn’t increase nearly as much as the cost presented to the customer. There was a big markup for large tests. What the emergence of the cloud has done is make it easy for the customer to see the actual operational cost of the test, exactly what cloud resources need to be tapped, and to have those passed through with no markup. For example, you can visit the Amazon Web Service EC2 pricing page and see for yourself that they charge $0.085 per hour for a small virtual machine.

I have been greatly encouraged by how this pricing model has caught on, since it lowers the barrier of entry and offer quality load testing to a much broader market. I was recently involved in a load test in preparation for a Super Bowl commercial for an upcoming startup. Using the power of cloud computing, we simulated half a million concurrent visits and transferred over 20 terabytes of data in less than an hour. In the process we spun up over 2,000 virtual machines in the cloud!

Recently, some load testing vendors have modified this pricing approach, and have the customer deal directly with a cloud provider for the operational costs. On the face of it, this seems like a benefit — after all, why not DIY if you can? But in reality, this approach is inefficient and rarely works for even medium-sized load tests.

Here’s why — cloud providers are (quite logically) reluctant to provision significant resources on an ongoing basis unless there is a compelling track record of usage. And the load testing needs of most customers are very episodic. Let’s use Amazon as an example.

The largest number of servers Amazon will provision on demand is 20 servers. Beyond that, the customer must negotiate and convince Amazon that more servers are needed, and that they will consistently need that number of servers. For the large majority of load testing customers, this is not the case. And even if it was, they do not need the added time and complexity of direct negotiations with cloud infrastructure providers.

The best solution for customers is for load testing providers to continue to transparently pass through cloud costs, but also to continue negotiating on behalf of their clients with the Amazons on the world. I know how well the approach works — my company handles load testing for over 800 companies. And because our pricing model passes through the cloud computing costs, our customers can be assured they are getting the best possible value, allowing them to focus on optimizing their site.

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Apr01

Webmetrics : The Best Load Testing in the Cloud

Filed under Cloud Computing, Tech Solutions

– Download Webmetrics : The Best Load Testing in the Cloud as PDF –

To understand the load testing in Cloud, I performed several tests with different platforms and I found WebMetrics best. Below is the summary and some of the benefits of the same.

When it comes to on-demand, you need a solution that’s flexible and easy to use. Webmetrics On-Demand Load Testing is easy to set up, easy to deploy, scalable and precise. You can test at your convenience – anytime day or night.

WebMetrics offers the only solution with real browser users for testing. This makes your life simpler – requiring less scripting and no rewriting.

Virtual Users are available as well, so you can choose between a combination of virtual users and real browser users, to best meet your testing needs and budget.

Webmetrics On-Demand Load Testing services are powered by BrowserMob.

Flexible Solution

Because their service utilizes the Selenium open source toolkit, you can easily transfer over your existing scripts for testing. Plus, the MySQL export feature allows you to download data into your database for further analysis and reporting.

Save Money with Load Testing in the Cloud
Webmetrics On-Demand Load Testing is based in the cloud, and able to generate massive amounts of simulated traffic from a huge pool of IP addresses – at the best possible price.

Get Started Today and Run a Free Test
See for yourself. Learn more and sign up to try out a free load test. Once you’re in upgrading your account to increase capacity and run additional testing is a breeze.

Benefits

1. Run tests anytime, day or night
2. Choose between Real Browser Users, Virtual Users or a combination to suit your needs
3. Selenium open source toolkit
4. Export MySQL
5. Real-time reporting and screenshots of load issues for fast debugging
6. Object-level detail reports
7. Easy-to-use, with painless scripting
8. Fast setup – start testing in minutes, plus run a free test immediately

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Apr01

Website Performance Metrics Tool/Monitoring

Filed under Tech Solutions

– Download Website Performance Metrics Tool/Monitoring as PDF –

I searched a lot to monitor the performance metrics for the website. How to acquire the data related to reliability and availability for the same. So I did a small test using Neustar Webmetrics. Here are the details and other result for that.

Neustar Webmetrics is a leading provider of collaborative web performance management solutions. Webmetrics website monitoring and testing services are used by companies that want to ensure online performance, competitive advantage and a positive end-user experience.

Webmetrics Monitoring services enable companies to track, identify, solve and prevent web performance issues before customers are impacted. Webmetrics tests, monitors and measures the performance of web sites, web applications, web services, network services and streaming media to ensure 24/7 uptime and performance integrity. To meet customers’ unique requirements, Webmetrics offers both Basic and Enterprise Monitoring, with agents located in over 100 major cities worldwide.

Webmetrics Load Testing services test your sites and applications against heavy loads or inputs to find the point at which they fail or performance degrades – providing real-world validation that your web applications are ready to go. Webmetrics offers both Full-Service and On-Demand Load Testing to meet customers’ unique needs, including the only solution with real browser users for testing.

Webmetrics Innovations

• First to offer native sharing of monitoring data across customer accounts
• First to use Watir open source language for monitoring
• First to use Selenium open source language for load testing (through BrowserMob)
• First to develop a self-service Watir script recorder
• First to offer self-service web services and API monitoring
• First to offer real browser users for load testing (through BrowserMob)
• First to use baseline agents as a method for issue identification
• First to combine analytics with monitoring data
• First to have footprint of agents in 100 major cities

I have created a free account for 15 days which gives me the complete report/statistics for my website.
To access the reports click here

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Mar31

Microsoft Office: Equation editor

Filed under Tech Solutions

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I was working on a research paper, which I need to create only in MS Word. Paper contains a lot of mathematical equations which was painful till I find the equation editor for Word. To enable this editor I have used following procedure.

On the Insert menu, click Object, and then click the Create New tab.
In the Object type box, click Microsoft Equation 3.0.

If Microsoft Equation Editor is not available, you may need to install it.

How?

Click OK.
Build the equation by selecting symbols from the Equation toolbar and by typing variables and numbers. From the top row of the Equation toolbar, you can choose from more than 150 mathematical symbols. From the bottom row, you can choose from a variety of templates or frameworks that contain symbols such as fractions, integrals, and summations.
If you need help, click Equation Editor Help Topics on the Help menu.

To return to Microsoft Word, click the Word document.

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Mar18

The Cloudy Issue of Privacy

Filed under Cloud Computing

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I recently watched the documentary Revolution OS on Netflix. The thing that struck me about this 2001 chronicle of the history of Open Source, GNU and Linux (apart from how surprisingly dated everything looked, from computers to clothes) was that some of the issues covered by the documentary are even more topical today, ten years later.

The battle over whether source code should be regarded as a common good or not is interesting in itself and will rage on for the foreseeable future. But in 2011, a different yet related issue has moved to the forefront: The matter of privacy. Do we need it? Do we care about it? As we rely on the Internet for just about everything we do in life and work, and an increasing share of our data is being uploaded and stored in the so-called cloud, what we definitely can’t do is ignore it.

The interesting thing is that when it comes to privacy, the “freedom fighters” and the business world appear to have taken their stances in a reverse position. For example, Richard Stallman (founder of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation) is a harsh critic of cloud computing, and is known throughout the industry for his almost obsessive approach to the preservation of privacy.

Meanwhile, those same private enterprises that are so set on putting their code behind lock and key appear to be taking a rather more laissez-faire attitude. Perhaps the most famous example is Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook who announced last year that privacy is “no longer a social norm”.

On closer examination, this isn’t such a strange thing. Businesses have a lot more to gain from having access to people’s information—given up willingly, of course—than has, say, Richard Stallman. Not because businesses are bad, but because it’s the nature of the beast; If you rely on selling something, be it directly or through advertising, you are going to want to know as much as possible about your customer’s interests, habits and financial standing, for example.

What I see as a worrying trend is that as businesses continue to tout the message that privacy is a thing of the past, something for paranoid fuddy-duddies to worry about but of no real concern to the trendy and modern, people may start to tweak their behavior to account for this.

The notion that if you have nothing to hide you should have nothing to worry about may not be entirely healthy. Not because it’s better if people do have something to hide, but because once we begin to act and think as if everything we do is going to be watched by the world at large, we may inadvertently start to dampen down thoughts and ideas that would otherwise get a chance to hatch and grow in the relative safety of the private sphere. At the risk of coming across as hopelessly old-fashioned and uncool, I am not entirely sure that’s a good thing.

Concept by: Carolina Smith

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Walk, Don’t Run to the Cloud

Filed under Cloud Computing

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For business organizations small and large, developing and maintaining a functional and scalable computing infrastructure can be a costly and labor intensive endeavor.

The latest panacea to sweep the IT industry is nebulously referred to as “Cloud” computing services, and has left companies both large and small struggling to find a way to leverage this hot new technology.

Traditionally, IT managers and planners are resistant to change, preferring battle tested solutions and directly managed infrastructures. This attitude is not without merit, as any company that has suffered a mission critical technology failure can attest to.

Integrating a whole new approach to the design and implementation of network and computer services will require technology managers to relinquish many of their preconceived notions of technology delivery. They must learn to accept a shift away from managing hardware themselves, and towards managing the services and feature sets they deliver.

Getting to the Cloud

It’s certainly true that the notion of an on-demand, flexible computing structure offers a means by which any company can achieve agility in the technology sector, but the reality is that adoption of the technology is likely to be far slower than the media would have you believe.

Confusion over implementation, service availability and regulatory compliance requirements are introducing hurdles into the process that for now, many companies don’t seem to want to tackle. As a comparison, virtualization technology, which forms the basis of cloud rollouts, is already widely deployed in the IT world.

Gartner Research indicates that by 2012, as much as 48% of installed applications will be running in a VM. This widespread adoption would seem to lend itself well to the migration to cloud services, given the similarities of the two concepts, but it may prove to be a significant stumbling block in itself. Companies who have invested their IT budgets into building their own virtualized infrastructure may be hesitant to readily tackle a whole new migration just yet, instead preferring to maximize their recent investments before moving on to the next big leap.

The Hybrid Theory

In response to the concerns of the market, vendors such as HP and VMWare are promoting the concept of the hybrid cloud, which essentially allows an organization to continue to utilize their existing infrastructure, while developing new platform rollouts and migrating some existing technology to an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud in their provider’s datacenters.

The idea maintains that a company could seamlessly and securely link their private resources with a highly scalable external cloud provider. Picture it as a proverbial ladder to the cloud; an evolution of current practices rather than an entire rewrite of the current playbook.

This solution could potentially ease the transition to fully cloud based services while allowing greater control of sensitive data, applications and mission critical services. In choosing a hybrid approach, a company could offload as much or as little of their I.T. needs as they choose at a pace that suits their particular business model. Even if only used as a test bed for product development, cloud infrastructure allows rapid deployment of services and equally rapid takedown when demand for products changes.

Thinking Forward

Most industry planners estimate a service lifecycle of approximately five years for server hardware and other support infrastructure, and following the recent rush towards virtualization, a mass migration to the cloud seems unlikely in the near term.

For all of the hype, this may be a blessing in disguise, as it will give providers ample time to refine and clarify their offerings to the marketplace. In addition, the delays may allow for regulatory agencies to update compliance requirements to account for cloud services, and for providers to develop and implement concrete safety and security measures to allay the fears of IT managers and their corporate handlers. For now, the industry will continue the slow march to the cloud, charting many individualized routes along the way.

There’s little doubt that the economy of scale associated with the cloud will eventually overwhelm whatever obstacles remain in the coming years, but in the meantime, slow and steady may truly win the race.

Concept by: James Cohen

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Mar14

LaTeX: Images with .eps,.jpg,.png and .pdf

Filed under LaTeX

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We can set images (graphics) anywhere in a LATEX document, although in most cases of formal documents they will occur in Figures.
To use graphics, we need to use the graphicx package in preamble:

\usepackage{graphicx}

This enables the command \includegraphics which is used to insert an image in the document. The command is followed by the name of your graphics file without the filetype, for example:

\includegraphics{tree}

1. For standard LATEX with dvips, graphics files must be in Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) format: this was the publishing industry standard for portable graphics for many years, and no other format will work portably in standard LATEX.
2. For pdfLATEX, graphics files can be in Portable Network Graphic (PNG), Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG), or PDF format, and not EPS. This means if you want to use both standard LATEX as well as pdfLATEX, you need to keep your graphics in two formats, EPS and one of the others. This is why you should avoid including the filetype in the filename you give with \includegraphics: standard LATEX will assume EPS, and pdfLATEX will look for PNG, PDF, or JPG automatically, in that order.

Sample Code:

\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=3cm]{forest}
\end{center}


For details of all the arguments, see the graphicx documentation on the package.

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Mar05