Friday, March 16, 2007

View Website as Graph!!

After one particular frustrating and boring day at work, I went on an Internet-browsing spree(equivalent of window-shopping in the real world). I came across a lot of new concepts, some surprising and others weird..

Just stumbled across this amazing site. If you give your website address, it parses it and loads it as a Graph!! The program executes an applet to render the graph. It slowly builds the graph and it looks as though a colourful Hydra is spreading its tentacles and stretching itself. You can have a look at this site by clicking here.

My site looks like this:

System Requirement: J2SE Ver 1.5.
Link Courtesy: VishnuPrasad
Related Links: Author | Processing | Traer Physics | HTMLParser

Monday, March 12, 2007

Want to know where your bus is? SMS `Yelli Iddira'

When techies and tech companies have gone hi-tech in India's Silicon Valley, why should BMTC be left behind? A first of its kind in India, BMTC has started a revolutionary SMS initiative called YI to track Volvo bus where about. YI is a short form for "Yelli Iddira" which translates into "Where are you?" and you can ask this of the Volvo buses v356C and v335E by sending an SMS. And you will get an instant reply of the whereabouts of the bus.

Currently, the service is available on two Volvo routes — V356C between Kempe Gowda Bus Station(KBS) and Electronic City(EC) and V335E between KBS and Kadugudi via ITPL. To avail oneself of the facility,one has to send an SMS from the mobile phone in the following manner — YI Volvo Route Number U or D to 9945634666. For example, YI 356C U to 9945634666.

But there is one problem. There is one 356C plying out of KBS every 20-30min. And the total journey time from KBS to EC is around one to one-and-a-half hours depending on the traffic on 356C's bus route. Bus Routes info can be found here: ಕನ್ನಡ and English. If you SMS YI 356C at, say, 9.30am, the bus which started from KBS @8am would have almost reached EC, the one started @8.30am would be near Madiwala/Silk Board, the one which left @9am would be near Wilson Garden/Dairy Circle whereas another would just have left KBS @9.30. Whereas the SMS should give info regarding all the 4 buses, it gives the whereabouts of only one bus. So the yardstick for deciding which bus will be included in the SMS is not clear. The same happened to me one day. I SMSed @9.40am from Madiwala and the SMS said v356C is near Wilson Garden, and lo! another bus is in Madiwala( much to my delight!!).

All in all, a truly commendable initiative by BMTC and hope it will be extended to all the other volvo buses soon. And who knows, we may also be able to know where our regular BMTC bus is, in not so distant future!!!

Your comments/thoughts are welcome.

Information regarding the firm that developed this software can be found here.

Related Links:
Nidhi's Article on Volvo
Volvo Bus Routes |ವೋಲ್ವೊ ಬಸ್ ಮಾಹಿತಿ| The Hindu Article
For more Info Regarding the SMS Alert: YI