Nazly [Web Log] » FOSS

Refresh Colombo October Meetup 2011

Nazly — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:01:13 +0000

The October Meetup of Refresh Colombo will be happening this Thursday, 20th October 2011 at the Royal College Union Skills Centre. We have lined up a set of very interesting topics for this month as well. A lot has happened in the Tech industry since our last meetup and to sum it up all, we will have Bud and Chanux on board to pay tribute to Steve Jobs, one of the greatest visionaries of recent times. They hope to talk about some of the great ideas and insights Steve Jobs had and how some of those ideas have transformed our lives. Bud who needs no introduction, is probably the best person to share his valuable experiences with Steve Job’s inventions.

Ima Hassen will be sharing his experiences of success, failure and lessons learnt while being an Entrepreneur. If you are an Entrepreneur or striving to be one, this talk is not to be missed. I’m quite honoured that Ima could finally do a talk at Refresh Colombo as I have been requesting him for a long time now.

Adnan Issadeen will debut a new segment where Developers and Entrepreneurs get a chance to showcase their latest work each month at Refresh Colombo. He will be showcasing his “Multiple Authorship Detection Automation (MADA)” project he has been working on.

More details can be found here.
http://www.refreshcolombo.org/refresh-colombo-october-meetup-2011/

The whole idea of Refresh Colombo is to share knowledge and experience amongst the tech enthusiasts living around Colombo. Make sure you drop in on Thursday at 5.30pm and gain the maximum out of it. We’ll try to introduce ourselves during the meetup so that everyone gets to know each other. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

July Meetup of Refresh Colombo

Nazly — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 16:14:08 +0000

In just over a year, Refresh Colombo has gained popularity among the tech community in Colombo. As I keep saying it every time, the meetups keep getting better and better. The topics for this month’s meetup have been finalized and according to the FB event page, we will have 70+ attending the event. The plans have been made to shift to a bigger room to accommodate the crowd, so don’t miss out. It’s going to be an exciting meetup.. See you at Refresh Colombo July Meetup!

Download the PDF of the agenda and Spread the word through email or simply print & paste it on your university/institute/company notice board.

Excerpt from refreshcolombo.org

Refresh Colombo is a community of web and technology enthusiasts / professionals who come together on a monthly basis to share ideas and meet like minded individuals.

Refresh Colombo events free and are open to the public. We encourage you to bring a friend or two. Hackers, bloggers, coders, geeks & geek lovers, journalists, techies, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are all welcome – you can even bring your grandma.

Date : Thursday, 28th July 2011
Time : 5:30pm – 7:30pm
Location : Royal College Union Skills Centre
Address : Rajakeeya Mawatha, Colombo-07, Sri Lanka.

Topics for the Refresh Colombo meetup:

First Look at MongoDB by Dinesh Asanka / Susantha Bathige
The session will introduce all the features of MongoDB.

Social Media Beyond Marketing by Thushara Hettihamu
The use of Social media as a tool for empowerment, information dissemination and public relations.

Future of Web Apps by Lakshan Perera
Dreaming to turn your exciting idea to a usable, scalable & buzz-word compatible web app? Then this talk is for you!

Mobile Trends: From Symbian to Android by Thejo Siva
How a vibrating brick in our pockets became an amazing computing platform.

Speak out loud at Refresh Colombo

Nazly — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 06:16:00 +0000

By now you would have heard about the Refresh Colombo meetup which happens every month. In a nutshell, Refresh Colombo brings all the technology, Internet, Web, Mobile and Social Media enthusiasts into a place where they could share knowledge and ideas. We have been live tweeting and streaming the event which allows people to take part in the meetup even though they cannot attend. The meetup has a pre-scheduled agenda with 3-4 talks by voluntary speakers so that people have a general idea about what’s in store for them. Ideally we want something like an unconference or lightning talk driven meetup but we are still in the early stages. So we are having everything in the agenda prior to the meetup.

Refresh Colombo needs more speakers from different areas of expertise. This is where you need to chip in. The whole idea is about sharing knowledge. Submit this form and let us know your areas of expertise and on which areas you can speak on. If you need any further details drop me an email. Looking forward for your response. Thanks guys!

Get your Emails back in Thunderbird after Ubuntu upgrade

Nazly — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 08:09:01 +0000

Due to the unavailability of proprietary drivers for my VGA card since Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), I have been using Hardy as I couldn’t give up on working with dual screens. Though I tried upgrading when ever there was a new release, I had to revert back since neither proprietary driver nor out of the box support was available. As of late I was desperate for an upgrade and decided to work at least with a single screen and installed Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat). But to my amusement the dual screen support was available out of the box and with the help of Mili, I was able to set it up and I’m one happy fellow since yesterday.

The upgrade was somewhat smooth, I was expecting some minor glitches since there is a quite a big difference between both releases. I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 10.10 mounting my previous /home partition to restore my settings and data profiles. Unfortunately my emails and settings were missing on Mozilla Thunderbird.

While I browsed through the hidden folders .mozilla-thunderbird and .thunderbird existed on my /home partition. Bit of googling revealed that version 2 of Thunderbird used the .mozilla-thunderbird folder to store profile info while version 3 uses .thunderbird folder.

Getting the emails and setting back to Thunderbird is quite easy. Just followed these steps..

Close the running Mozilla Thunderbird application.
Take a back up of .mozilla-thunderbird folder, just in case if something goes wrong.
On the terminal run the following command
```
thunderbird -profilemanager
```
Delete the default profile. (In the pop-up window I clicked Don’t Delete Files. Yet deleting the files won’t do any harm since this is a fresh installation.)
Click ‘Create Profile’ and give the new profile a name. eg: ‘default’.
The important part is to click “Choose Folder” and specify the path to the existing Email folder under .mozilla-thunderbird
Click Finish.
Click ‘Start Thunderbird’ and you will have all your emails and settings.

That’s it..!!

Come to Refresh Colombo tomorrow

Nazly — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 06:58:13 +0000

In my personal opinion the last Refresh Colombo meetup was the best we had so far. But I get even more excited when I look at the topics lined up for tomorrow. It’s that time again where all the tech enthusiasts around Colombo meetup to share knowledge and ideas. Refresh Colombo November Meetup will feature some of the high profile names in the tech/geek community. The meetup is open to public and the entrance is free. You just walk-in. Don’t forget to bring a friend or two. Spread the word!

Date : 25th November 2010
Time : 5:15pm – 7:30pm
Location : Royal College Union Skills Centre
Address : Rajakeeya Mawatha, Colombo-07, Sri Lanka.

Topics for the Refresh Colombo November meetup:

The benefits of Web Standards to your visitors, your clients and you!
by Chamara Peiris (CEO of Xiteb)
WSO2 : Being more than just the ordinary
by Devaka Randeniya (Director, Sales at WSO2)
Creating Games in Sri Lanka and the Optimistic Entrepreneurial Spirit
by W.G.T.Fernando (Managing Director of GTS)
Adopting Social Media in Local Companies : The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
by Milinda ( Social Media Junkie at Dialog Axiata )

Chamara’s blog post ‘Catch me at Refresh Colombo November Meetup’ and Milinda’s blog post ‘Refresh Mili, I mean Colombo’ are clear signs how excited they are about the meetup.

Don’t miss out! See you all tomorrow..!

Follow @refreshcolombo on Twitter
RSVP on the Facebook event page

WordPress Security @ Refresh Colombo

Nazly — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 05:34:07 +0000

The Refresh Colombo event yesterday evening was one of the best meetups we had so far and I would like to thank everyone for coming and making it a great success. Special thanks goes out to Chandika and Naveen for their very informative talks which would have definitely made a big impact to all who were present there. I got the honour of doing a session on WordPress Security and got a lot of requests to share the presentation slides. So here it goes. Click Here to download it.

You can follow InduNan who live tweeted from the event. Thanks to Thilina and Malinthe for live blogging from the event. Photos will be uploaded to Refresh Colombo Facebook page soon. See you all at the next event.

Refresh Colombo October Meetup

Nazly — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 05:17:31 +0000

Refresh Colombo October Meetup will be happening tomorrow (28th October 2010) at the Royal College Union Skills Centre from 5.15pm onwards. There are quite a few interesting topics lined up this time. I will be doing a session on WordPress Security. Shazly will be showcasing his Nokia N8, most probably the first and only N8 in Sri Lanka right now. Naveen will do a presentation on “Social Media Engagement – A Practical Insight”. And we will have the Creately team in the house talking about their journey so far and their product. I’m quite excited with the topics lined up.

Drop in to Refresh Colombo tomorrow, it’s free and open to anyone. Make sure to bring along your friends as well. You can RSVP on the FB event page and check the @refreshcolombo Twitter stream for updates. See you all tomorrow..!!

Refresh Colombo

Nazly — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:41:44 +0000

A bunch of tech enthusiasts have got together in organizing a meetup for the techy/geeky crowd in Colombo. It was organized in quick time and is scheduled to take place this Thursday. Its totally an informal meetup where we get to share our ideas. Most of the sessions will be much similar to a Lightning Talk. Though few topics have been chosen already, anyone will be welcome to do a lightning talk related to technology. The event is open to public and entrance is free. But your RSVP on the FB event page will help the organizers to get a head count as the seating is limited. So do drop in to meet individuals who think and act like you

Refresh Colombo

Refresh Colombo is a community of web and technology enthusiasts/professionals who come together on a monthly basis to share ideas and meet like minded individuals.

Refresh Colombo events are open to the public. We encourage you to bring a friend or two. Hackers, bloggers, coders, geeks & geek lovers, journalists, techies, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are all welcome – you can even bring your grandma.

This month’s presentations :

Samir Husain – CEO of Cenango USA will be presenting on “Transforming Sri Lanka into ‘Silicone Island’ – Asia’s IT innovation hub”

Buddika Siddhisena – FOSS evangelist will be presenting on “The Open Source Opportunity”

Aloka Gunasekara – SEO Specialist will be presenting on “Introduction on Search Engine Optimization”

Indrajit Samarajiva – Creator of kottu.org will be presenting on “Blogs and Social Media”

WHEN - June 17, 2010 at 5:30PM

WHERE - The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce ( No. 50, Navam Mawatha, Colombo-02. Sri Lanka )

For more information Contact Milad – 0772257225 or Email info@refreshcolombo.org
Visit our website at http://www.refreshcolombo.org/

lkgeeks.org back with new looks & ideas

Nazly — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 08:35:53 +0000

When I planned to revamp lkgeeks.org some where around the end of last year, I wanted to make it happen within a month. But things got bit dragged and new ideas came in and now I have almost taken it to the next level. The website has been re-launched. You can check the site out at www.lkgeeks.org. There is a dedicated Twitter account and a Facebook fan page to connect all the Sri Lankan geeks. A new Twitter List has been created, so the Twitter Feed on lkgeeks.org will be based on this list.

While the initial idea of aggregating the blog posts and tweets of Sri Lankan geeks still remains, lkgeeks.org will provide more interaction among the geeks in Sri Lanka. From being connecting everyone virtually, it has gone a step further up by trying to get all of them physically together to share knowledge and experience. While this is a challenging task, lkgeeks.org has taken up this challenge to arrange workshops/meetups which will be free or at an affordable price (to cover the cost). The workshops will be conducted by our own local experts in their relevant field. The topics will be based on the latest emerging technologies which will be a great way for the Sri Lankan geeks to start adopting to it. Topics/date/time/venue will be announced soon.

So keep checking the website, follow lkgeeks.org on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook to be first informed. Let me know your thoughts and comments as it will help in a great deal to improve on what I have built so far.

Ubiquity – Connecting the Web with language

Nazly — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 05:54:42 +0000

Couple of days back I heard about Ubiquity, an experiment by Mozilla Labs to connect the Web with language that would make Web tasks much more easy and fun to deal with for an average user. I installed Ubiquity and I'm already fascinated by how certain painful day to day tasks can be done easily by combining few commands. The initial version, Ubiquity 0.1 comes with loads of features including working with maps and insert maps to anywhere you want, translate on-page, search google, search wikipedia, digg, twitter, lookup and insert yelp review, get the weather, syntax highlight any code you find, convert a URL to tinyurl and the list goes on. Its definietly a worther try.

Make sure you go through the Introduction to Ubiquity which has most of the information you need to know about Ubiquity. Don't forget to watch the video which explains how easy it is to do certain Web tasks using Ubiquity.

Also read the Ubiquity 0.1 User Tutorial which has some nice tips on how to use Ubiquity and also has some valuable information about how to extend Ubiquity by adding new commands.

Have fun..