As I posted here on my blog, I launched a Facebook application called "Akunbakun" which is based on the old Maldivian game by the same name. Anyway, the application was a quick 'n dirty rush job and contained a few bugs and had several features left incomplete. I have now patched up all of the bugs found so far, completed the incomplete features and added a few more features as per requests by some users.

Fixes/Changes:
- Added a link for the application to the profile links (ie. under the profile photo).
- Fixed a bug that caused the list of challenge attempters (including the winners!) to not show.
- Fixed a bug that messed up display on Internet Explorer.
- Fixed some mistakes in the texts.
- Added some features to improve user experience.
- Increased the number of attempts allowed to three.

Click here to add the application to your Facebook profile now!

Enjoy

I worked on an application for Facebook on one of the many bored-to-death days during my summer holidays spent in Maldives recently. Facebook has a decent API framework for developers and it had me hooked for while, reading through the documentation on what is possible and what is not. Anyway, my interest in it evaporated soon after I created my first app and the project was doomed to the depths of used diskspace. But now, I'm bored again and seeing that fellow Maldivian blogger Afxal had recently released a Facebook application for listing MvBlog entries, I thought I'd throw my application out for everyone as well.

I created an Akunbakun (look up the word in the Radheef) game application which I hope fellow Maldivians can enjoy when they are really REALLY bored - I can't fathom any other reason anyone would ever want to play Akunbakun, be it in the virtual world or the real world! So far, the application allows you to hide a pebble and challenge your friends to try find it. If they find it, they get to be seen on the winners list for as long as you keep that challenge active. You can add the application to your Facebook by clicking here.

Please leave your thoughts about it here or on the application page on Facebook. Enjoy

UPDATE (20/Oct/2007): I've increased the number of attempts anyone can have at any given challenge to three.

Google has a "20% time" policy that encourages their employees to spend working on creating something of their own choosing. Me, I spend a little time each day on doing something entirely, horribly and grotesquely useless. Anyway, here is something I whipped up today within a few minutes that I just had to waste while cramming for an exam in the afternoon...

The Maldives Police Service (MPS) website has a web page displaying the people on their "Wanted" list. The MPS was considerate enough to provide a (totally pointless?) facility to let people print out any of the "Wanted" person notices - a page that prominently displays the person's photo and bears the title "Hoadhaa meeheh". My interest in the page, however, is that there is a programming glitch on the page (XSS vulnerability to be precise) that paves the way for some naughty fun. This bug would have been pretty mundane and practically useless were it not on a page as amusing as a "Wanted" persons page on a country's police service website. A demo will better elucidate what I'm talking about: Wanted Notice for MAG at MPS website! (here's a screenshot).

I've created a tiny "Maldives Police Service Wanted Person Notice Generator" that you can use to generate your own "Wanted Person" listing. Copy in the URL of a photo (one of your mates?), type in their name/address/age and hit the "Generate" button. It will show a link that when viewed, crafts the page as you desire right on the MPS website. This (trick) should continue to work as long as they leave the bug unfixed.

Hmm, I hope my bum doesn't get whooped for this...

Update (19 May): They've fixed the bug and left a lovely note for me



Disclaimer: These generated links don't bring any permanent change to the MPS website and are viewable as such only by using these specially crafted URLs. Use at your own risk...

I had a few minutes to spare before I hit the bed tonight, so I tended to something I've been meaning to do for a while - making a chat room service out of Blobsy.

The chat room I implemented allows for group chats on MSN Messenger without people adding each other to their contact list and also protects the email addresses from being communicated to each other thus allowing fun chats with privacy. The service which I've called "Rannamaari" is now live on [email protected]. Just add the address to your MSN Messenger contact list and open a conversation to it.

The service is rudimentary at the moment but I am open to suggestions if anyone's interested in sustaining this. I personally think this is a great way to meet and chill on the net while preserving your identity from strangers. I plan to give the ability to make separate, private rooms on the bot - pretty much along the lines of how it works in IRC.

Enjoy!

I've been tied up past few days developing a new website for the Maldivian Students' Association-UK, as well as developing a new website Content Management System for Technova.

The new website for MSA is now online at http://www.msa-uk.org/. The website has a few more content updates to be done and is awaiting the member registration/management system to be put in place along with a few "community" tools to be also tied in.

MSA will be holding their Annual General Meeting(AGM) in London in just a few days. If you are a Maldivian student in the UK, you are welcome to pop into the MSA base anytime 22nd-24th Dec and join the activities.

According to a friend in Male', our online Radheef was featured on this week's "Fahimagu" programme by Television Maldives. I would like to thank them for appreciating the work!

The Radheef has been getting some attention lately and several people have mailed us with suggestions, comments and notes of appreciation. We understand that font rendering is messed up on some browsers and the list-as-you-type feature isn't going down too well with slow connections. Few people have requested that the radheef be made "open" so as to allow updates and corrections. There will be updates to the Radheef the coming few weeks to remedy many of the issues and also to apply a few enhancements. If you've got any suggestions or comments do drop a comment and let me know.

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