It’s been a while, I know. I’ve held to this caricature for a long time, and I thought it was time to let it out.

Let’s all sing our national anthem. I guess we’ll sing it along with that poor guy …

This caricature belongs to my dear friend, great caricaturist and talented artist, Waleed Taher. It was published in Al-Dostour Newspaper a long time ago, I just gave it some quick coloring.

To keep it short, here’s what you need to do …

First, we need to create an ad hoc network. The iPhone needs to connect to a Wi-Fi access-point. It’s not possible to connect it directly to your laptop. So, we’ll create an ad hoc wireless network on the laptop, were other laptops and devices can connect to just as connecting to an access-point.
(The next steps are performed on Windows Vista. For Windows XP, do this and jump to step X.)

1. Make sure your wireless adapter is enabled.
2. Open the Networks and Sharing Center. Under Tasks (left), choose Manage Wireless Networks.
   
3. In the Manage Wireless Networks window, click Add.
   
4. Choose “Create an ad hoc network”. Press Next on the next page.
   
5. On the next page, enter a Network Name of your choice (as “iPhoneNetwork”). This is the network you’ll connect to from your iPhone. Choose WEP for Security Type (you can also choose “No Authentication (Open)”, but this way anyone in your ad hoc wireless network range can connect to your laptop.) Enter a Security Key as instructed, check “Save this network” and click Next.
   
6. You should get the “Your iPhoneNetwork is ready to use”. Before pressing Close, click on “Turn on Internet Connection sharing”.
   
7. Select your Local Area Network internet connection you usually use to connect to the internet and press Next. The next page should say “Internet connection sharing is enabled.” Press Close.

Now, your ad hoc network is ready.

The second step is connecting your iPhone to the “iPhoneNetwork” ad hoc wireless network.

1. From your iPhone, open Settings. Choose Wi-Fi.
   
2. Click on “iPhoneNetwork” and enter the password you defined earlier (Security Key), then press Join. It take you back to the previous screen but with the “iPhoneNetwork” checked.
3. On your laptop, you should see the “Set Network Location” screen. Choose Home or Work, no big deal.
   

You should open Safari browser and connect directly to the internet. Connect to Google or something to make sure that everything’s fine. And, yes, it’s a little buggy – you’ll sometimes have to do it over and over again!

Now you can access iTunes store or even download/update your iPhone applications directly without needing to do that on iTunes. Enjoy

So, now you see birds flying around your head and you go like, DUH?! loool

I’m sure you’ll be able to test it soon, coz they’ll get tons of exclusive business deals to bring it to the market ASAP – of course, you can test it, at a ten-times-at-least of the original price. Business sells stuff anyway, regardless how beneficial they are at the long run …

Well, even though it’s a marvelous breakthrough in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, you should really read the posted comments below the video on the TED Website …

I would really like to know what you people think about it??
Let me see your comment …

PS: Seen the tag-cloud and that folk’s t-shirt?! You’d better watch what you post on the internet about you starting from now … loool

No matter how much I train myself to the Arabic keyboard layout – it’s never like the English! I’m typing in every letter in this post without even looking at the keyboard, wouldn’t you just dream to do the same with Arabic text?

Instead, we all go for what we call, Franco Arabic, which is more like the native Arabic syntax in the technology world. Time goes by and we ended up with a generation that doesn’t know how to spell yasta6ee3 and yadtar (يستطيع ويضطر) without mixing up the letters ت, ط and ض ..

One of the most innovative solutions, was the Yamli approach:

Yamli is simply a search engine, that allows the user to type in Arabic text to search for without having an Arabic Keyboard – they call that the “Smart Arabic Keyboard”. The idea was originated by the end of 2007, when a couple of folks needed to search Google and were stuck as the laptop didn’t have an Arabic keyboard.

It doesn’t end at the Arabic search. Check out the Yamli Editor, a simple web-based editor with their Smart Arabic Keyboard – Just type in your text, then copy-paste it anywhere you wish. You could even incorporate their Smart Keyboard into your website, or add their Facebook Application to help you in your comments, wall-to-wall posts and messages.

So, where’s the catch? I’ll tell you – it’s all online!

Let’s say you want a similar service, locally on your PC or Laptop? I suggest you try 3arabik.

3arabik is a keyboard layout, that maps your English letters to Arabic ones; so you just press the keys in English, and it will type in the Arabic letter for it – just like Franco Arabic. Meaning ا is “A”, ب is “B”, ت is “T” and so on ..

Just to imagine, let’s say you want to type my last name for instance, “Shaker”, you need to press “s” and it will type س, “h” transforming it to ش, then “a”, “k” and “r” for ا, ك and ر – giving you شاكر.

It’s for free. The website has the installation instructions, and the keyboard mappings (if you don’t get it by intuition already). A friend of mine just sent me the link last week. It’s great honestly, but I’m till not used to it yet coz my Franco Arab is perfect as in reflecting correct pronunciation. So I always write “Shaker” wrong coz I press “e” by mistake. However, you’ll get used to it sooner or later ..

I also loved their Flash loader .. loool

– Top Image: from the ilovetypography blog

It really is, LOL. This isn’t an important post, don’t proceed …

You just don’t listen, do you?

It’s been a long time since I last blogged, and even the last post was later than its content. Even the Problem-of-the-week thing, didn’t even keep us of-the-month!
Blogging needs a “mood”, and that’s –unfortunately- not that available anymore as much as before, due to the seems-to-become-daily time-squeeze I’m suffering right now …

I’ve changed the blog theme as well; I liked the old, black one more – it was elegant. This one’s nice too, I hope it’s more readable. I like the new Windows Live Writer by the way, in case you’re interested …

Let’s hope I try to keep it up some time. A few posts are coming up next as a come back .. ta-ta-ta-taaa!

– Caricature Above

We got engaged on the 22nd of November, 2008. Strange enough to mention that the past few months have witnessed more than 6 engagements and 2 marriages! LOL

CONGRATS to everyone, and ourselves … :huh
We’re asking for your prayers …

And may all those who aren’t, get engaged, and those who are engaged, get married, and those who are married, have children …… etc.

God bless you all …

Anyway, the past problem was of medium difficulty, but there’s a trick that could make your life much easier. Do you know what a permutation is? This is a permutation problem. A definition of permutation is that a permutation of [ABC] is simply [ABC - ACB - BAC - BCA - CAB - CBA] .. all possible arrangements of the three letters. Think of our problem the same way, you just need all possible arrangements for the three characters corresponding to each number. Easier? Thanks to Abdalla Gamal for making our lives easier.

So, similar to the ACM problems, we’ll solve the standard permutation problem, where we get to print all possible arrangements of a set of digits. Then, we transform that to our problem.

Let’s start with a permutation of 5 digits (producing 01234, 01243, 01324, 01342, etc). The idea behind the following recursive code is based on holding two arrays: visited and solution. For each position of the 5 positions, we mark one of the 5 digits as visited (by setting visited[x] = true where x [0-4]), place it in the solution array, then try to place 4 more digits by calling the same function with one added to an index (position). The problem now becomes a permutation of the 4 left digits, and so on …

#include <iostream>
using namespace std; 

bool visited[8];
int solution[8];
int count = 0; 

void Permute(int i)
{
    if(i >= 5)
    {
        count++;
        for(int j=0; j<5; j++)
            cout<<sol[j];
        cout<<endl;
        return;
    }
    for (int j=0; j<5; j++)
    {
        if(!visited[j])
        {
            visited[j] = true;
            sol[i] = j;
            Permute(i+1);
            visited[j] = false;
        }
    }
}
int main()
{
   for(int i=0 ;i<5 ;i++)
        visited[i] = false;
    Permute(0);
    cout<<"Count: "<<count<<endl;
    return 0;
}

Now comes the transformation time!
The only difference now is that we won’t be marking a digit, then permute the left N-1 digits. We’ll be marking a character of the three characters that correspond that digit, try complete the rest of the string, then after the recursion is done, we unmark it, and move on to the next character, and so on ..

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
using namespace std; 

#define SIZE 10
// Uncomment these two lines if you want to print to a file
// instead of printing to the console screen ..
// ofstream fout("output.txt");
// #define cout fout  

char dict[SIZE][3] = {
    {'a', 'b', 'c'}, // 0
    {'d', 'e', 'f'}, // 1
    {'g', 'h', 'i'}, // 2
    {'j', 'k', 'l'}, // 3
    {'m', 'n', 'o'}, // 4
    {'p', 'q', 'r'}, // 5
    {'s', 't', 'u'}, // 6
    {'v', 'w', 'x'}, // 7
    {'y', 'z', 'A'}, // 8
    {'B', 'C', 'D'}  // 9
}; 

char sol[8];
bool vis[SIZE][3];
int count = 0; 

void Permute(int i, char* number)
{
    if(i >= strlen(number))
    {
        count++;
        for(int j = 0; j<strlen(number); j++)
            cout<<sol[j];
        cout<<endl;
        return;
    }
    int t = number[i] - '0';
    int j=i;
    {
        for(int k = 0; k<3; k++)
        {
            if(!vis[t][k])
            {
                vis[t][k] = true;
                sol[i] = dict[t][k];
                Permute(i+1, number);
                vis[t][k] = false;
            }
        }
    }
} 

int main()
{
    char number[SIZE];
    cout<<"Enter up to "<<SIZE<<" digit phone number: ";
    cin>>number; 

   for(int j = 0 ; j<strlen(number); j++)
        for(int k = 0; k<3; k++)
            vis[j][k] = false; 

    Permute(0, number);
    cout<<"Total: "<<count<<endl;
    return 0;
}

WINNERS FOR THIS PROBLEM:

• TeCNoYoTTa
• Metal_
• Mohamed Hesham
• Tasniem Seliem
• Amal Hussein
• 5olio

Thanks everyone

Anyway, let’s move to the problem – another Microsoft interview problem. Sure you’ve all seen how phone pads hold three letters of the alphabet for every number you can press (except for 1 and 0). Check the photo below to know what I mean …

The problem is simple. The input is a distinct, seven-digit number. The required output is all seven-character strings that could be generated from this number. For the sake of the problem, assume we have a different phone-pad layout as follows:

0: a, b, c

1: d, e, f

2: g, h, i

3: j, k, l

4: m, n, o

5: p, q, r

6: s, t, u

7: v, w, x

8: y, z, A

9: B, C, D

So, for a three-digit number [012], these are all possible combinations of strings generated from such number according to the above dictionary:

[     012     ]
adg adh adi aeg
aeh aei afg afh
afi bdg bdh bdi
beg beh bei bfg
bfh bfi cdg cdh
cdi ceg ceh cei
cfg cfh cfi

Results will be treated the ACM way this time – results comparison. No code submissions. I want the results for the number:

0267451

I want the full output: All generated strings …

Don’t post that HERE in the comments!

Post only the number of strings generated, then paste the strings anywhere and send me the link or email them .. Only if the number of strings is correct, I will check the results!

Find the problem solution here …

Original post from the acmASCIS.net website:

Ready for the challenge?
Still up to the game?

The acmASCIS Steering Committee announces launching the acmASCIS 2008-Online-Contest starting next Monday, the 15th of September, 10:00 am (Cairo) for three consecutive days (15th, 16th and 17th of Sept).

We will send you the problem set, and contestants should email back their solutions to Asmaa Magdi, our judge for this contest (as described below in point 3).
An online Scoreboard will be maintained so you could check your results and the judge’s replies. (Once the contest starts, check this post again to find the link to the Scoreboard).

Till then, please make sure you read the Rules and Regulations for the contest (Sections 2, 3, 4 and 5).

Important Notes:

1. Scoreboard will be updated at 16 Sept 00:00 am and 17 Sept 00:00 am. The Final Scoreboard will be updated at 18 Sept 00:00 am. A link to scoreboard will be sent to you at the begining of the contest.
2. Deadline for sending submissions will be 17 Sept 10:00 pm.
3. PEs (Presentation Errors) will passed for this online contest (i.e. replies will be AC, WA, RE, CE and TLE only!). Please, maker sure you read Section 2 of Rules and Regulations for further details.
4. Submissions should be sent to judge@acmascis.net with the subject [Online Contest]. Do not forget to mention your name and year in the first submission you make. Use the same email address for all submissions.
5. During the contest time, no one is allowed to ask about the problems or send code privately to debug it. Be professional!
6. You can know the judge’s reply to each of your submissions only at the time of scoreboard updates.

Prepare, excerise, and stay tuned!
Let the better ACMers win …

You’re building a website, and at some point, you decided that you want to show some RSS feeds to a couple of blogs or other websites. The options are limited between buying a good looking solution, or getting a free, ugly one, that usually bares the name of it’s creator website – which doesn’t seem appealing at all, especially that 90% of the time the reader doesn’t match your design!
So, here’s a quick tutorial that shows you how you could build your own RSS reader in Flash ..

• Open Adobe Flash CS3 and create a new Flash File (ActionScript 3.0).
• Create two layers in your time line: AS, that will hold our ActionScript, and Components, where we’ll be placing our visual components and displays.
  
• Select the first frame in the AS layer, and hit F9 to bring up the Actions panel.
• Start by creating a new URLLoader object. Next, create a URLRequest object and pass the link to your target RSS Feed in the constructor – I’ll be using my blog’s RSS Feed in this tutorial, so I’ll pass http://alaashaker.wordpress.com/feed/. If you click this link, you should see what data you’ll be receiving in a readable format (not in XML, as we’ll see in a moment). This what appears in any RSS Reader you use.
  
• Add an event listener to our URLLoader that listens to the Complete event. Then, simply load the URLRequest object using the load function.
• Create an XML object and set it ignoreWhitespace property to true.
  
• Create a event handling function for the Complete event we’ve just created. Inside, assign the data we’ll be receiving from our URLLoader to our XML object, and trace that to make sure things are coming in OK.
  
• Hit Ctrl+Enter to test the movie. You should be getting this: Notice that RSS contains mainly a channel tag, which in turn contains a few item tags. Each item contains a title, link, comments-link, description and content.
• Time to set some places to show the data. Select the first frame in the components layer. Open the Components panel (Ctrl+F7) and drag a List and TextArea from under the User Interface node to the stage. Using the Properties panel below give each Instance Names of liLog and taLog respectively.
  
• Back to the Actions panel and the AS layer, frame 1. Let’s fill the List component, lilog, with the titles off the XML we’ve just received. Put in a for-loop that pulls the item from the channel tag inside our XML. Add that to the List component as labels using the addItem function and the curly braces.
  
  Dive into the XML to the channel tag, then index the items with the iterator, item, we’ve just created, and pull the title out into your List component.
• Test the movie (Ctrl+Enter). You should see this ..
  
• Similarly, you can access any other member tag inside the item tag. For instance, we can modify our addItem function to the following:
  
  Here, I’m accessing the pubDate tag, and using the function substr to bring me only the first sixteen characters – the publishing date.
• Now, it’s time to write an event handler that handles the change event for our List component. Create a function, selectLog, to handle that change event and add it as an event listener to the List component. Inside the function, just set the text property of our TextArea component to the description tag of our RSS item.
  
• Test the movie and you should see the taLog TextArea component filled with the descriptions of the selected blog items in the List component.
• One more thing to do, setting a TextFormat object for the styling. Simply, import the StyleManager, create a TextFormat object, fill its properties and call the setStyle method to set it up.
  
• You’re done!
  
  Now that you’re here, all what’s left is to integrate that into some design scheme that suits your website or perhaps a little skinning to the components …

Here’s the whole code, so you could easily paste in the Actions panel:

var rssLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
var rssURL:URLRequest =
         new URLRequest("http://alaashaker.wordpress.com/feed/");
rssLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, rssLoaded);
rssLoader.load(rssURL);

var rssXML:XML = new XML();
rssXML.ignoreWhitespace = true;

function rssLoaded(evt:Event):void {
	rssXML = XML(rssLoader.data);

	for(var item:String in rssXML.channel.item) {
		liLog.addItem(
                  {label: rssXML.channel.item[item].pubDate.substr(0, 16) +
				": " + rssXML.channel.item[item].title } );
	}
}

function selectLog(evt:Event):void {
	var list:XMLList =
                rssXML.channel.item[evt.target.selectedIndex ].children();
	var item:XML;
	for(var i = 0; i		if(list[i].name() == "description")
		{ i++; break; }
	item = list[i].children()[0];

// This will display the short description ..
// The second uncommented line displays the whole post ..
// taLog.htmlText = rssXML.channel.item[evt.target.selectedIndex].description;
	taLog.htmlText = item.toString();
}
liLog.addEventListener(Event.CHANGE, selectLog);

Edit: If you’re having sandbox issues, please read these comments below (here, here and here). Thanks to Kris and Kevin for helping out.