Cognizant: In fastest growing Tech companies

Cognizant shines yet again on Forbes magazine’s prestigious list of “The 25 Fastest-Growing Technology Companies In America”. The magazine notes that Cognizant, ranked 7 in the latest list, is “the only company to qualify every year since [the inception of the list in] 2003”.

Custom Accordion component

 

 

 

 

 

While working on a project I had to create a custom component based on Accordion. But new component’s requirement’s were little strange.

1. The headers will have two labels. Right label and left label
2. Component might have headers / tabs with no children.
3. Opening and closing effects of the headers should be very smooth.

By looking at such requirements I was thinking how present Accordion is going to solve all those requirements though some were solved. Even extending present Accordion was not going to solve two label’s issue. I used Accordion but the some more efforts were still required.

Then I got to know about Flexlib google project and then with help of some headerrenderer classes I created this Custom Accordion component without using Accordion control.

I will be posting the code soon (needs some cleaning).

Flex 3: Adding image and text in DataGrid

This is a normal dataGrid where we insert data. But if we want to insert an image along with data in a column then it will look like this.

 

This we can do by creating a simple itemRenderer component. In this component we can design the UI as an image and a text box which will accept data from the dataGrid. A dataGrid column will specify its itemRenderer as below.itemRenderer=“components.ImageData“where ImageData is a simple component with a image and text control. The ItemData’s code goes like this.

<mx:HBox xmlns:mx=”http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml” width=”100%” height=”20” horizontalGap=”1” horizontalAlign=”center” verticalAlign=”middle“>

<mx:Image source=”{data.@image}” verticalAlign=”middle” horizontalAlign=”left” scaleContent=”false” maintainAspectRatio=”true“/>

<mx:Label text=”{data.@Key}” width=”50%“/></mx:HBox>

Here component accepts the data from dataGrid with the help of data.

Using web service in Flex

I just tried out web service in Flex 3. This example is discussed in ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook. Here follows the complete source code.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx=”http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml” layout=”absolute” creationComplete=”fnCreationComplete()”>
<mx:Script>
            <![CDATA[
                        import mx.rpc.soap.WebService;
                        import mx.rpc.soap.LoadEvent;
                        import mx.rpc.Fault;
                        import mx.rpc.events.ResultEvent;
                        import mx.rpc.events.FaultEvent;
                        import mx.controls.Alert;

                        private var webService:WebService;

                        private function fnCreationComplete():void{
                                    webService = new WebService();
                                    webService.wsdl="http://www.rightactionscript.com/webservices/FlashSurvey.php?wsdl";
                                    webService.addEventListener(LoadEvent.LOAD, onWSDL);
                                    webService.getAverages.addEventListener(ResultEvent.RESULT, onGetAverages);
                                    webService.loadWSDL();
                                    webService.getAverages.addEventListener(FaultEvent.FAULT, onFaultGetAverages);
                        }

                        private function onGetAverages(event:ResultEvent):void{
                                    textArea.text = "The averages for Flash and ActionScript are " + event.result.flash + " and " + event.result.actionscript;

                        }

                        private function onFaultGetAverages(e:FaultEvent):void{
                                    Alert.show("Fault string"+e.fault.faultString);
                        }

                        private function onWSDL(loadEvent:LoadEvent):void{
                                    webService.getAverages();
                        }
            ]]>
</mx:Script>
<mx:TextArea id=”textArea” x=”59″ y=”60″ width=”339″ height=”185″/>
</mx:Application>

Before we load the wsdl we are adding a event listener to it. So as soon as the wsdl is loaded the listener function is called and it calls a function  getAverages() from web service and it returns two values flash and actionscript which we are displaying in a text field from onGetAverages() a listener function.

Best IT employer: TCS being #1 and Cognizant being @ #11

The list of the best IT employers has been announced.  TCS has ranked the first position where as Infosys has slipped to 8th rank. The 7th annual Dataquest-IDC survey throws a lot of surprises where top five ranks went to TCS, HCL Infosystems, iGate, RMSI and Synechron.

Click here to read more.

Calculus created in India 250 years before Newton

Experts from Manchester University now believe Sir Isaac was not the first to figure out the mathematical concepts that are used in every branch of science – from chemistry to medicine to economics. They found the evidence in distinctive sequences of numbers written in an obscure medieval dialect on ancient papers from south west India.Dr George Gheverghese Joseph (pictured) identified the ‘infinite series’ – a set of numbers relating to calculus – in the texts belonging to the ‘Kerala School’ dating to around 1350.He said Indian philosophers also discovered the Pi series, essential to maths, physics and engineering.

Sir Isaac and German scholar Gottfried Leibniz are credited with laying out the principles of calculus in papers published in the late 1600s. But Dr Joseph claimed that European scientists may have taken the idea from Eastern thinkers, via Christian missionaries who visited India during the 15th century. He said: “The beginnings of modern maths are usually seen as a European achievement but the discoveries in medieval India between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries have been ignored or forgotten.“The brilliance of Newton’s work at the end of the 17th century stands undiminished – especially when it came to the algorithms of calculus.

“But other names from the Kerala School should stand shoulder to shoulder with him as they discovered the other great component of calculus – infinite series.”

He said the truth had not been discovered until now, because of lack of knowledge of the language Malayam, in which most of the texts were written.

Click here to read some more interested facts.

GMail Drive

Now there’s a updated service Gmail Drive that will allow users of Picasa and GMail the ability to expand their storage limits, but at a cost. The storage facilities will also be extended to Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

Note that a change in the Gmail.com login may cause an empty filelist. Click here to download the latest version to access files again.

Please be aware that support for this tool may suspend at any time if Google decides to block its use.

Goophone

A month after the ballyhooed launch of Apple’s iPhone, the luster is wearing off the most overhyped device of the new millennium. But fear not gadget lovers – there are whispers of a new cell phone to rock your world.

Now Google is comming up with their Goophone and they are planning to offer it for free.

Click here to read more.

RIA WAR:Apollo, JavaFX, Silverlight

The war of RIA tools has begun. For building any Rich Internet Application, multiple tools are present at our fingertips like Adobe Apollo, Microsoft Silverlight, Sun JavaFX and list goes on. 

Techie gives nice comparison between them. Click here to read the full article.

Search Engine a Personal data tracker.

Whenever we search anything on a search engines, our valuable data is trapped by that search engine. The trapped data may contain date and time your query was processed, the IP address of your computer, and a cookie-based unique ID that — unless you delete it — enables the search engine to continue to know if requests are coming from that particular computer, even if the connection changes.

 Microsoft Live Search also records the type of search you conducted (image, web, local, etc.), while Google additionally stores your browser type and language. And when you click on a link displayed on Google that may also be recorded and associated with your computer’s IP address.  While Google recently announced that it would make its search logs anonymous after 18 months’ time by deleting part of the IP address and obfuscating cookies associated with search queries, Microsoft and Yahoo haven’t yet made their retention policies public. AOL stores this data for just one month.  

The upshot: If someone were to ask one of these search engine companies to produce a list of IP addresses or cookie values that searched on a particular search term, they conceivably could. Conversely, given an IP address or cookie value, the search engine firm could produce a list of terms searched by the user of that address or cookie value.

 Though we know all these facts, we can not stop using these search engines. So just be more cautious before querying these search giants.