I am using Ant (Java based build system) for our project. Ant is an exceptionally powerful build system and should be the only build system you will ever need. You don't really need code monsters like Maven (or pile of …. as Bileblogger loves to say). With little effort here's what I achieved in few hours (aside from the obvious capability of compiling, running, building jar files etc.):
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Many like to twitter using IM (Instant Messenger) because it is very simple and fast to tweet and simple to get continuous updates on your topics of interest.

In the good old days Twitter used to provide IM support. You could use any Instant Messenger supporting Jabber (XMPP protocol) to connect to Twitter buddy (twitter@twitter.com) on Gooogle GTalk server and twitter to your hearts content. For several months however Twitter has stopped supporting IM. How can we satiate our twitter crush during their downtime? There is a way.

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Every one in my company knows about pkill, an obscure Linux command because we use Firefox (we are 100% Linux based) as the default browser. What is the relation, you ask? The answer is simple.

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First tell me what is the best way to concatenate large number of String objects? Is it a + b?

Most Java developers know not to use a + b (+ operator) because of huge performance problems, they use StringBuffer instead. In fact I did some tests in the past which confirms this folklore. However some of you may not know there is new kid on the block - StringBuilder. Read more (116 words) »

This isn't a trick question. For a long time you couldn't delete a property from java.util.Properties class. In the recent versions too Java doesn't reveal that it has added the functionality. However as java.util.Properties now extends Hashtable, you can delete a property by:

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Google has decided that boring (into) the World Wide Web is not enough and it plans to start drilling into the earth's crust.

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1. How can you hack GMail account?
2. How can you protect your GMail account from hackers?
Hackers at Defcon demonstrated a tool to hack into GMail accounts by snooping unencrypted data (man-in-the-middle attack) with cookie which Google GMail uses for everything other than login by default.

Last week Google introduced the ability to optionally encrypt any transmission to / from GMail and not just the login sequence. Previously GMail used to encrypt the login sequence only. All other data was transmitted unencrypted over the wire making such hacking possible. Every email, every article that you are reading on your GMail account is transmitted unencrypted over the web. Read more (596 words) »

Bravo Google AdSense! Every day I am losing my faith in Google technologies. How could any context sensitive technology in the whole wide world think wife sharing guide is relevant to people interested in iPhone 3G? I would rather have no ads than ads for wife sharing on my blog.

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Twitter (you can follow me here) has the annoying habit of shortening your long and meaningful url to a short meaningless jumble using tinyurl, even when the full url and accompanying text fits into their 140 character limit. For example I posted this article on how you can include multiple jar files in a single jar file in Ant build tool. Twitter automatically shortened the url to this meaningless jumble - http://tinyurl.com/5uclnr. So how can you paste meaningfull url's in Twitter without jumbling?

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Vodaphone sent the pricing for iPhone 3G 8GB and 16GB models in India and I have to tell you it is daylight robbery!

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