Amazing Wireframing Tools & Apps

Web

1. Mockingbird – Wireframes on the fly
2. Simulify – Interactive, shareable wireframes, mockups and prototypes
3. Solidify – Create clickable prototypes
4. Concept.ly – Convert wireframes and designs into interactive apps.
5. ClickDummy – Turn mockups into clickable prototypes
6. Creately – Real time diagram collaboration
7. Lumzy – Mockup creation and prototyping tool
8. Cacoo – Diagrams with real time collaboration
9. Mockflow – Great design tools and collaboration services for designers
10. Mockup Designer – Basic wireframing tool hosted on GitHub
11. dub –Denim – DENIM is an outgrowth of the original SILK project, a pen-based sketching tool for designing user interfaces.
12. fluidIA  – A free open source project for prototyping open source projects.
13. Justinmind – Nice wireframing platform for web and mobile apps.
14. UXPin – It puts everything to your fingertips but is a costly tool.
15. RWD Wireframes – Wireframing tool for responsive layouts
16. Gliffy – Drag & Drop from library to anywhere on page, creating wireframes easily.
17. Wireframe.cc – Free tool for creating quick mockups.
18. Pencil Project – This is a free and easy to use open source tool for creating GUI prototyping.
19. Wirify – Converting web page to wireframe is just a click away with wirify.
20. Axure RP – Premium wireframe tool for detailed wireframe creation.
21. PowerMockup – Convert power point to wireframe.
22. JustProto – Premium tool with drag and drop feature to create highly interactive prototypes.
23. FlairBuilder – Premium tool for easy creation interactive wireframes.
24. WireframeSketcher – Instantly creates wireframes, mockups and prototypes for desktop, web and mobile applications.
25. Serena Prototype Composer – Build simple, high fidelity prototypes that look like the real thing.
26. Balasmiq – You can come up with a design and iterate over it in real-time in the course of a meeting.

Android

1. Framer – Modern prototyping tool
2. Indigo Studio – Rapid, interactive prototyping
3. Lucidchart – Simplest and most powerful flowchart software in the world.
4. Frame Box – Easy, simple wireframing
5. Mockups.me – Create and present interactive UI wireframes
6. Grafio – Grafio is a custom modifiable app.

iOS

1. LovelyCharts – Diagramming app with desktop and mobile versions
2. Tiggzi – The only cloud-based platform with visual development tools and integrated backend services
3. Realizer – Interactive presentation prototypes
4. iPhone Mockup – Free basic iphone Mockup tool.
5. iMockups for iPad – Premium wireframing and mockup app.
6. Antetype – Wireframing and prototyping desktop application for Mac.
7. iMock – Good app for creating mockups, more features could be added.
8. JumpChart – Architecture, layout and content planning
9. Mockup Builder – Super-easy prototyping and mockups
10. Live Wires – wireframe & prototype your iPhone and iPad app concepts quickly.
11. AppCooker – AppCooker is a good tool to bring iOS applications to life.
12. UI  Sketcher for iPad – Sketch, refine and share user interface ideas rapidly.
13. Mockabilly – iPhone mockups with genuine iphone behavior
14. Blocks – Create annotated HTML prototypes
15. UX Toolbox – Create, document and share wireframes and prototypes
16. Moqups – A free tool for making high resolution SVG mockups and wireframes.
17. ProtoShare – Good tool for website wireframing.
18. JustinMindPrototyper – Fantastic prototypes for web and mobile apps.
19. Pidoco – Quick premium prototyping for web apps, mobile and enterprise apps.
20. OmniGraffle for Mac – Creates excellent graphic documents.
21. HotGloo – Easy and beautiful way to create mockups.
22. Sketchypad – Easy-to-use interface for creating websites and soft interfaces.

SQL vs MongoDB Terms

SQL Terms/Concepts	MongoDB Terms/Concepts
database	database
table	collection
row	document or BSON document
column	field
index	index
table joins	embedded documents and linking
primary key Specify any unique column or column combination as primary key.	primary key In MongoDB, the primary key is automatically set to the_id field.
aggregation (e.g. group by)	aggregation pipeline

SQL Terms, Functions, and Concepts	MongoDB Aggregation Operators
WHERE	$match
GROUP BY	$group
HAVING	$match
SELECT	$project
ORDER BY	$sort
LIMIT	$limit
SUM()	$sum
COUNT()	$sum
join	No direct corresponding operator; however, the$unwind operator allows for somewhat similar functionality, but with fields embedded within the document.

R Programming

R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics.

For more information please refer to http://r-project.org

For Big Data Analytics

Who Uses R?
- Spreadsheet Users
- Programmers
- Statisticians
- Data Scientists


RStudio for R

Will update more information as I learn R...

Android Project Build and Deployment Process steps

Android Version History

Android Version History

• Alpha (1.0)
• Beta (1.1)
• Cupcake (1.5)
• Donut (1.6)
• Eclair (2.0–2.1)
• Froyo (2.2–2.2.3)
• Gingerbread (2.3–2.3.7)
• Honeycomb (3.0–3.2.6)
• Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0–4.0.4)
• Jelly Bean (4.1–4.3.1)
• KitKat (4.4–4.4.4)
• Lollipop (5.0–5.0.2)

1 Pre-commercial release versions (2007–2008)

• 1.1 Alpha
• 1.2 Beta

2 Version history by API level

• 2.1 Android 1.0 (API level 1)
• 2.2 Android 1.1 (API level 2)
• 2.3 Android 1.5 Cupcake (API level 3)
• 2.4 Android 1.6 Donut (API level 4)
• 2.5 Android 2.0 Eclair (API level 5)
  • 2.5.1 Android 2.0.1 Eclair (API level 6)
  • 2.5.2 Android 2.1 Eclair (API level 7)
• 2.6 Android 2.2–2.2.3 Froyo (API level 8)
• 2.7 Android 2.3–2.3.2 Gingerbread (API level 9)
  • 2.7.1 Android 2.3.3–2.3.7 Gingerbread (API level 10)
• 2.8 Android 3.0 Honeycomb (API level 11)
  • 2.8.1 Android 3.1 Honeycomb (API level 12)
  • 2.8.2 Android 3.2 Honeycomb (API level 13)
• 2.9 Android 4.0–4.0.2 Ice Cream Sandwich (API level 14)
  • 2.9.1 Android 4.0.3–4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich (API level 15)
• 2.10 Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (API level 16)
  • 2.10.1 Android 4.2 Jelly Bean (API level 17)
  • 2.10.2 Android 4.3 Jelly Bean (API level 18)
• 2.11 Android 4.4 KitKat (API level 19)
  • 2.11.1 Android 4.4 KitKat with wearable extensions (API level 20)
• 2.12 Android 5.0 Lollipop (API level 21)

Key Mobile Challenges

Key Mobile Challenges
- Low Processing Power
- Limited RAM
- Intermittent, Low bandwidth, High Latency data connections
- Impact on battery life

Hadoop Hive External vs Internal Table

Hive tables can be created as EXTERNAL or INTERNAL. This is a choice that affects how data is loaded, controlled, and managed.

Use EXTERNAL tables when:

• The data is also used outside of Hive. For example, the data files are read and processed by an existing program that doesn't lock the files.
• Data needs to remain in the underlying location even after a DROP TABLE. This can apply if you are pointing multiple schemas (tables or views) at a single data set or if you are iterating through various possible schemas.
• You want to use a custom location such as ASV.
• Hive should not own data and control settings, dirs, etc., you have another program or process that will do those things.
• You are not creating table based on existing table (AS SELECT).

Use INTERNAL tables when:

• The data is temporary.
• You want Hive to completely manage the lifecycle of the table and data.

Hadoop Quick Info

Apache Hadoop– Hadoop is an open source software framework which allows you to cheaply store and process vast amounts of structured and unstructured data.

Flume– A service for collecting, aggregating, and moving large amounts of log and event data into Hadoop.

HBase- A scalable, distributed, column-oriented data store that runs on top of HDFS. A short video overview of Flume.

HDFS– an acronym for "Hadoop Distributed File System"

Hive- A data warehouse infrastructure built on top of Hadoop for providing data summarization, query, and analysis. It allows you to query data using a SQL-like language called HiveQL (HQL).

HiveQL (HQL)- A SQL like query language for Hadoop used to execute MapReduce jobs on HDFS.

JobTracker– the service within Hadoop which distributes MapReduce tasks to specific nodes in the cluster.

NameNode– the core of the HDFS file system. The NameNode maintains a record of all files stored on the Hadoop cluster.

Oozie - workflow scheduler system to manage Apache Hadoop jobs.

Pig– a high level programming language for creating MapReduce programs used within Hadoop. An introduction to Pig.

Sqoop– a tool for transferring data between Hadoop and relational databases.

YARN– a resource manager for Hadoop 2. YARN is short for "Yet another resource negotiator". Introduction to YARN on the Apache Hadoop website.

ZooKeeper - Centralized service for maintaining configuration information, naming, providing distributed synchronization, and providing group services.

Visual Studio and Browser Link Feature

Announcement made today in Build 2014.

Visual Studio and Browser Link Feature

You can EDIT the Styles/Javascripts loaded in browser using the Browser's developer Tools (which we launch by pressing F12).

As you EDIT, you can see the changes made inside the Visual Studio code base and also other browsers (say chrome) getting auto-refreshed with the changes made in another browser Developer Tools.

Azure Web Jobs

Announcement made today in Build 2014.

Now we can run Web Jobs as part of Windows Azure Websites and run as background jobs (calling queues, etc...)

Need not spin up a new VM or new cloud services to run the background jobs, instead create Web Jobs as apart of Windows Azure Websites.

Rethink - 2 in 1 User Experience

I liked this video explaining about “Rethink Navigation for 2 in 1s”

- Explaining Easy, OK, Hard to hit areas on Mobile, Tablets & Touch screen laptops.

Check this link for a 5 minutes video explanation à http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/2-in-1-user-experience?utm_source=Smashing_Magazine_Noupe&utm_medium=Banner_Ads&utm_campaign=2-in-1_UX_Campaign

Research Analysis

Positioning of the main Navigational elements of your App on these device variations

Commerce Server 10.1 Setup on Windows Server 2012

In this blog post i am documenting the steps required to install and configure Commerce Server 10.1 on Windows Server 2012 machine.

List of downloads i did from http://commerceserver.net/

Launch CommerceServer-10.1.67.0 setup file (note: version may vary in future).

Splash screen of Commerce Server 10.1 installation

Accept the Licence Agreement page

Installation in progress

Installation in progress

Commerce Server Configuration Wizard. Click Next

MSCS_Admin DB configuration

Add a new user "CS_RunTime"

Configure Staging Service to run with CS_RunTime user

Commerce Server Configuration summary

Commerce Server Configuration - In Progress

Commerce Server Configuration - Completed

Commerce Server Setup - Completed

Post installation of Commerce Server 10.1 on Windows Server 2012 we can now see in the Metro UI following apps are added

Docker Overview

In this post, I will document the learning I had with Docker.

Container History

- Linux Containers

• Open VZ 
• Single patched linux kernal ability to use architecture kernel version of system for executing the container
• Linux V-Server
• Virtual Private Server implementation. Created for adding OS level virtualization to the linux kernel itself.

What's a Container?

• OS level Virtualization.
• Kernel of OS allowing multiple isolated user space instances instead of one. 
• Like real server from point of view of operator.

What is Docker?
Docker is an open-source project to easily create lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers from any application. The same container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop can run at scale, in production, on VMs, bare metal, OpenStack clusters, public clouds and more.

Technology behind Docker 

• Developed using Google's Go language
• with Linux kernel using cgroup & cnames (namespace)
• AUFS union filesystem
• LxC (Linux containers)

TB typed more...as i learn...

Android Layouts

In this blog post, i am documenting at high-level the leanings i had on the Android - Layout Types

• Linear Layout (Aligns its child elements in single direction one after another)
• Horizontal Layout
• Vertical Layout
• Relative Layout
• Align's child elements relative to its sibling or parent. Help to avoid nested linear layouts.
• Frame Layout (Allows child views to put on top of one another child views)
• Table Layout (Aligns elements in Row & Column format)

More TB typed...

Powershell commands

This post i am documenting some of powershell quick reference scripts

Get Members of a command
c:> get-service | gm

Get-help CMD-NAME
Example:
c:> get-help start-service

Get-process -name "Name"
Example
c:> get-process -name "outlook"

Get Process - physical directory path
PS C:\Windows\system32> get-process outlook | dir

Directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14

Mode                LastWriteTime     Length Name
----                -------------     ------ ----
-a---         3/31/2011   4:08 PM   15933792 OUTLOOK.EXE

c:> get-service -filter * | select -Property name, @{name='ComputerName',expression={$_.name}_

Backbone.js overview

Backbone.js is a library of tools that helps to build client side rich web applications.
Providing
- Models with Key-Value binidng
- Custom Events
- Collections with a rich API of enumerable functions
- Views with declarative event handling
- connects it all to your existing API over a RESTful JSON interface

Client-side backbone.js application
- Router(s)
- Views
- Models
- Collections

JSON data

Server
- RESTful endpoint

Pros
- Fast
- Highly interactive

Cons
- Cannot be indexed by search engines (without extra work)
- Difficult to test (as client side application)
- Security Issues

SPA - Single Page Applications
- Improved User Experience
SPA on Client Side
- User interface
- Logic
- Page Generation

SPA challenges
- Lack of tooling and experience
- SEO
- Working with different browsers

Backbone.js
Routers helps simulate Page changes, support page history and bookmarking.

More ToBe typed....

JavaScript Frameworks

JavaScript based UI Frameworks

• Twitter Bootstrap
• Zurb Foundation
• Sencha Touch
• Kendo UI
• jQuery Mobile
• Enjyo.js
• app-UI
• Moobile
• Chocolate Chip UI
• Dojo Mobile

JavaScript Libraries that help in implementing Architectural Patterns

• Backbone.js
• Knockout.js
• Angular.js
• Ember.js
• Ext.js