The Maldives Airports Company has rolled out a website (http://www.fis.com.mv/) where real-time flight arrival/departure information is available. It's about time they did that and I am sure many people will find it very useful.

I wrote some code yesterday for Nattu, who is currently developing a new website for Haveeru News, to get the data from the Flight Information Services (FIS) website and display it on the Haveeru website. Haveeru has access to an XML feed of the data with more fields available than that shown at the FIS site. The script I wrote implements a class that parses the XML file and provides easy access to the flight information via the class properties.

Sadly, the XML feed is not (yet) available to the public and so today I modified the code so that it works by scraping the publicly available data on the FIS website. The code implements an object called "flightinfo" that can be used in any of your PHP applications and the data displayed as you please. I've included a demo sample file as well.

- Download the flightinfo script

I was moving the sites we had on our server when I found the tab-delimited file I used to import data into the Online Radheef I launched sometime ago. The data it contains is extracted from the original Radheef software published by the National Centre for Linguistics and Historical Research. There ARE mistakes in it contents - partly a reflection of the mistakes in the texts in the original Radheef and partly errors that had creeped in when I had extracted and formatted the data.

Anyway, I am putting up the data for grabs. It can be used for many a purpose - Dhivehi spelling checks, reverse word lookup by word definition etc. Feel inspired, make something useful and share!

- Download the Dhivehi Radheef in CSV format ( 907Kb, zip )

Have fun.

Here is something I conjured up in the minutes of freedom after "work" last night. It is what I would call a widget - a WebSMS widget. The idea for the application came after a blog reader by the handle Vayfarer emailed me asking for advice on implementing a "Gadget" for Google personalised home. Anyway, two and a half hours later, I had this baby all wrapped up just as I wanted it.

This "widget" can be added to your blog or website. You will be able to host this widget on your own server when I release the source code, until then you are welcome to use the service based at the Technova server. The widget supports skinning the widget with your own CSS files and so can be made to fit the look of your blog and/or website. I will be releasing the source code for the project soon - right after I flush any major bugs that crops up the coming few days.



I've also made available a "gadget" package for adding the WebSMS widget to the Google "personalised home".



Here is live demo:


Interested in getting one for your blog/website or adding it to your Google homepage? Click here to go to the widget's homepage at Technova.

Have fun.

PS: Other SMS related stuff that I've released previously include, a SMS Sender program which you can run on your Windows/Mac/Linux computer and a WebSMS tool for phpBB forums.

Blobsy 2 just had another release checked out today. This latest release - Blobsy 2 RC8 - is, as usual, available at the Blobsy website.

I've fixed a few bugs in this latest release that hindered optimal performance and a few more that prevented desired functionality - including one that prevented the bot from starting conversations by itself. I have also updated the included Demo handler and added another handler to demonstrate the conversation starting abilities more clearly. This has been something that users have been whining for quite a while. Good that I got around to doing this finally

Microsoft has recently allowed bots on its network. It is even running a bot development competition called Invasion of the Robots. They are offering cool cash prizes for the best bots. This is probably a move to promote the new Live Messenger series.

Anyway, I intend on updating Blobsy to the functionality introduced/updated in Windows Live Messenger. Blobsy will be updated/rewritten to be compatible with MSN P13, the communications protocol used by Live Messenger. The rewrite will probably see day light as Blobsy 3 sometime next month.

We all love MSN Messenger don't we? Here is something I made a few months ago to "brighten" up Messenger chat conversations: animated emoticons of our *ahem* beloved *ahem* leader. To use them, just right click on the picture, save it to your computer and load it up in MSN Messenger.

Enjoy!

I decided to add dhivehi songs to my music playlist recently - started listening to them a bit. However, since I didn't have any dhivehi songs on my hard drives, I was left to scour the internet. Luckily, there is a Maldivian website that boasts an impressive amount of dhivehi songs on its pages - GNAtoll.com. The site seems to be a portal aimed primarily at the people of Gnaviyani atoll (a.k.a Fuahmulah).

Since the above mentioned site stocks quite a lot of dhivehi songs, many people seem to use it to get their fix. Copyright issues and the related legal mambo jumbo aside, this is quite handy when you are abroad (or broke) and want to get hold of some or even a particular song. Sadly, the site does not allow one to directly "download" songs and instead plays the songs via a webpage embedded music player. This forces one to visit the site everytime to listen to the song. I can't be bothered with all that hassle and I suspect many of you can't be either. So I wrote a few lines of code in a hurry to have the site crawled to get the direct links to exactly 546 songs - all ready to be downloaded off the site and onto the computer!

Anyway, I thought I'd share the list. It has the song name and the associated download link to the song. Click here to download the list

Enjoy!

It is easter holidays for me at the moment and I seem to have more time on my hand than I can spend engaged in "productive" activities. So, in a moment of boredom this morning, I programmed a Dhiraagu telephone directory lookup application for Windows Mobile based Pocket PC and Smartphones.

The program allows you to search the entire Dhiraagu telephone directory. The directory data comes bundled with the application and allows for quick and cheap directory lookups to be performed right on your phone. The directory includes landline numbers as well as mobile phone numbers. This is like the ultimate phone book! The program should run fine on pocket pcs and smartphones running Windows Mobile 2003 and later.

The application does require .NET Compact Framework to be installed. That shouldn't be a problem to Windows Mobile 2003 SE and Windows Mobile 5 devices as they comes with the framework preinstalled. The application takes up about 8Mb on the device, so make sure you install the program onto a SD card or whatever expansion storage supported by your device. The program can be installed simply copying the provided CAB files onto the device and executing them on the device.

Note: Windows Mobile 5 comes with application locking so that only digitally signed applications are allowed to install and run. You will need to remove this locking mechanism to allow your device to run the directory software. Here is a guide to removing application locking.

Download:
- Pocket 110 v1.0beta2 for Pocket PC (WM 2003/SE, WM 5.0)
- Pocket 110 v1.0beta2 for Smartphone (WM 2003/SE, WM 5.0)

Screenshots:

Feel free to download and spread it. Drop a line in the blog comments if you have any suggestions, comments or just want to thank me (or whatever...)

Enjoy!