I am working on a mini shopping cart plugin for WordPress with Paypal integration. Its been a while since I worked with paypal – so I ran into trouble. I have a couple of sandbox accounts – and the payment goes through without any visible issues. But the IPN’s notify_url was not being called no matter what I did.

And I was not the only guy with the problem – plenty of other people have it too. I managed to solve the issue – but I decided to document the process – for the benefit of the people who fall into the same trap.

Make Sure the URL You Specified is Working

Yes, its obvious – but it needs to be said. Make sure the URL you gave as the value of notify_url is a working URL. Sample usage…

<input type=”hidden” name=”notify_url” value=”http://www.yoursite.com/cart/ipn.php” />

Here ‘http://www.yoursite.com/cart/ipn.php’ is the url – make sure it works! There is an easy way to test it – just go to IPN Testing Environment and enter your IPN notify_url there. When you submit the data, you’ll know wether the script is being called or not.

Verify the Email Address of Sandbox Account

When you make a sandbox account, you have to give a email address. But if you have selected a business account, make sure that you verify that email address. Just login using the given email and go to the home tab. There should be a ‘To do list’ to the right side. Make sure you complete all the stuff(usually just 2) there…

When you confirm your email address – remember that its simulated – you don’t have to check the actual email account. Just go to the Test Email page in Paypal sandbox itself to check the mail.

Once this is done, IPN notify_url worked for me. Hopefully, this will fix your issues as well.

Its BarCamp time again in Kerala. The venue this time is Technopark campus(Trivandrum) – and the date is 3^rd of May 2009. At the moment, we have 106 attendees and 16 sessions(includes one by yours truly).

About BarCamp Kerala

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering rooted in the desire to share and learn in an open and friendly environment. It is an intense yet cool, event with discussions, demos, and strong interactions.

BarCamp Kerala is your best chance to meetup all the coolest techies from Kerala. If you are a techie of any scale, do make it to BarCampKerala!

Official Links

• BarCamp Kerala: All about Kerala and BarCamps
• BarCamp Kerala (BarCampKerala) on Twitter
• Register for BarCamp Kerala
• Attendees
• Sessions at BarCamp Kerala
• Badges & Banners – Promote BarCamp Kerala
• BarCampKerala Google Groups

Posts about BarCamp Kerala 5

• BarCampKerala 5 – This Summer! | TheAnand
• BarCamp Kerala 5 At Technopark
• BarCamp Kerala 5 @ Technopark on May 3rd – Daily SEO blog
• Maverick: BarCamp Kerala 5 At Technopark
• Me, Ma Life… | Mr. Infinite » Blog Archive » BarCampKerala 5 – This Summer!
• Awake & Dreaming » BarCamp Kerala 5 : TechnoPark
• Maverick: BarCamp Kerala 5 At Technopark
• BARCAMP KERALA 5 | Spread Firefox
• BarCamp Kerala at Trivandrum
• ???????: BARCAMP KERALA 5
• Creative Mind – Fifth BarCampKerala 3rd May

Poster Credit: Ashwin

I have already created a script to update twitter(or tweet, or whatever) from the command line. For those who are not big fans of command line, there is another method to make tweeting easier – tweeting from the address bar…

Firefox has an cool feature that lets you substitute words in the address bar – we are going to use this feature to update twitter status from the address bar. And, for that reason, this trick only works in Firefox. First, you have to create a bookmark.

• Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks…
• Select ‘Bookmarks Menu’
• Organize > New Bookmark…

Set the name as ‘Twitter’. The location must be ‘http://twitter.com/home?status=%s’. Enter ‘tweet’ in the keyword field.

Now open up a new tab and type in…

tweet Testing the new address bar tweeting method.

Now the text you entered will automatically be inserted into the textarea in twitter – but you will have to click the Update button for it to be posted. If you want to make it easier, write a greasemonkey script to auto insert the text. But be warned, there is a small security risk in doing that.

Nexty is an easy to use To Do list manager created using GTD principles. The core idea behind this software is simplicity. I wanted to make a GTD tool that is the most easy to use. So far, I have released this two times – first when Nexty was created – and then when it was available as a online service. Now, I am giving Nexty its own domain.

Features

Some features that make nexty special…

Easy to Use

Using Nexty is very simple – you can start using it without any trouble

FREE!

Its ‘gratis’ – you don’t have to pay to use it.

Open Source

Its ‘libera’. Since Nexty is published under the BSD License, you can download and modify the code to fit your need.

Calendar

See all your tasks, reminders and due dates in one centralized location.

Next Actions

Focus on one single task at a time using this feature.

Search

For Projects, Tasks and Reminders that you have created.

And the Usual Stuff…

Nexty has everything you would expect in a GTD system – Projects, Contexts, Reminders – you know – the works.

Free Software

If you are using Nexty as a locally installed application, there is no need to worry – the source is available for download – and its still in the BSD license. That will not change.

But if you are looking for a free online GTD tool, try Nexty.

Support

Further development details and announcements of Nexty will appear on its own development blog.

If you need any support for using Nexty, post a query on the Nexty Support Forum.

You can also post your suggestions there as well.

Publicity

I am trying to get some publicity for Nexty and its launch – if anyone has any suggestions about this, your comments are welcome.

As a linux user, I have come to expect the fact that servers will collapse when a new version of a distro is released. But those are big files that are transferred(the linux images will be anywhere between 600 MB to 4 GB). But in case of firefox, a 8 MB file managed to bring top servers to their knees. A testament to the popularity of firefox – although I wish mozilla had more mirrors.

If you cannot wait to get the latest version, get it from their FTP servers – they are functioning normally. But, those downloads will NOT BE COUNTED in the final tally for the world record.

Related Links

• Field Guide to Firefox 3
• Firefox 3 Available for Download on Mozilla FTP and Web Servers
• Coming Tuesday, June 17th: Firefox 3

I am one of the geeks behind Alertle. Its a web based RSS Reader. I am responsible for a good amount of the JavaScript areas of this app

Features

Single Page Application

The entire application is contained in a single page – everything is done through Ajax. I will not advice that you make something like this(its a maintenance nightmare) but I can say one thing about it – its Cool. With a capital ‘C’.

Keyboard Shortcuts

I got the idea of creating a Keyboard Shortcut Library for JavaScript when I was working on this feature.

Autoplay

You can view articles as you are viewing a slideshow if you enable this.

Feedpacks

You can bunch a group of feeds together into a feedpack – and see all the posts from such a group together.

Sharing

You can share your feedpacks with other users

Perfect for High Volume Feeds

There is one major feature that sets Alertle appart from other RSS readers – it does not tell you if a post is read or not. Yeah, first you will think its a missing feature – but its not. I have used a lot of feed readers – once you subscribe to a couple of high volume feed – like say, BoingBoing or Slashdot or something, you can say goodbye to your sanity. It creates so many new items that the only way of staying away the mess is to click on the ‘Mark all as read’ button once every four seconds. You know what I mean – I am sure you have unsubscribed from many feeds for this reason.

With alertle, you can subscribe all these high volume feeds. And there is no pressure to view all the posts.

If you are an info junkie, I can guaranty that your will get lost for hours in Alertle.

Problems

IE is not Supported

We are still working on this – and due to deadline constraints, we decided to release Alertle without IE support. So if you are an IE user, I am sorry – but What in the World are you Doing? Ditch that terrible browser and get a real browser right now!

If we can get a few people to switch to firefox before we add support for IE, I will say that Alertle gone beyond and above the call of duty to make the web a better place!

Posts don’t have a Read Flag (pun unintended)

Um., yeah, I know – this is both an advantage and a disadvantage. This will prevent me from using Alertle for all my feeds. For my must-read feeds, I will still be using Google Reader. For the high volume stuff, I will use Alertle.

Getting to Know Alertle

So, what are you waiting for? Head over to Alertle and sign up for an account. Its FREE!

But if you are still unconvinced, here is a demo…

Links

• Alertle
• Masable’s take on Alertle
• Alertle Blog
• Alertle Docs

I have seen a lot of pages that lists many icon sets…

• Icons For Your Desktop and Icons For Your Web Designs
• Quality mini icons
• 90 Free Vector Icons Set
• The Top 50 Sources for Free Designer Icons
• Top 50 Supercool Free Icon Sets
• Symbols, Buttons and Icons For Free
• More Symbols, Buttons and Icons For Free
• Free Tiny Small Mini Icons Bullets
• Icon Finder – a search engine for icons

But when I want some icons I have a better place to look.

KDE and Gnome Icon themes.

I prefer using these icons because of the following reasons…

Multiple Size Icons

Most themes provide the same icon in various sizes. The available sizes are 128×128, 64×64, 48×48, 32×32, 24×24, 22×22, 16×16 and sometimes even a scalable SVG set. Not all themes have all the sizes – but most have. I don’t have to tell you how useful this is.

Lots of Choice

KDE Look Icons page have 86 pages with 15 icon themes per page. That makes a total of 1290 icon sets. And I am not counting the Gnome Look Icons.

That’s a lot of choice. Granted, not all will be good. Not all will have the icon I am searching for. Not all have the size I way want. There will be some duplication. But its still a lot.

Free – in both sense of the word

Most of these icons uses GPL and LGPL licenses. So you can use if for your application without paying for them. You can modify them. You can share it with others. You can… you get the idea. The point is there are no restrictions.

Even if you are building a proprietary application, I think you can use the icons because you are not compiling it into the application. But I am not sure about that – if anyone reading this knows, please leave a comment.

I have to warn you that not all icons sets use these licenses – so make sure you look at the license of an icon set before using it.

Great Icons

Most of the icons are created by professional designers. Sure there are some duds among the collection – but the majority of them are good.

Some Recommended Icon Sets

Crystal Project

Nuvola

Crystal Diamond

black + white icons

Crystal Clear

And there are hundreds more for you to find out…

I have no idea why they took so long to add this feature – its ironic that Google fails to provide the search option.

Results Sorted by Date

The main complaint I have about the search feature is that the results are sorted by date and not by relevance. The below picture will make this very clear…

I would prefer that it is sorted by relevance – at least provide an option for that.

More Information

• Offical Announcement
• Google Reader adds search!

Before starting, I must say that CSS is not the most powerful solution for templating. Using a server side solution is much more recommended. But for my purposes, CSS was good enough.

(X)HTML Code

If you want to use CSS templating, your app must be semantically valid. In other words, there is no way you can theme a tag soup.

Make sure that the stylesheet used for templating appears at the last. This will make sure that all the rules in the above stylesheets can be overwritten easily. In Nexty, I have a base stylesheet, then the theme stylesheet and at the end the hacks stylesheet…

<link href="css/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="images/themes/crystal/theme.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<!--[if IE]>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/style_ie.css" type="text/css" media="all" />
<![endif]-->

PHP Code

Very little PHP is involved to creating this system – I depend on it just to change the path of the CSS Stylesheet. The code used is…

<link href="images/themes/<?=$theme?>/theme.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

The $theme variable will change if the user changes the theme.

Many other have found this problem as well. You you have actually gone through the SourceForge documentation, you will find that this issue is documented.

Nexty had this problem as well – but back then, I thought it was a problem with sourceforge’s caching mechanism. Now I know that it is an issue with their session management.

Just an FYI