So it's been a couple of days since my last entry. Here's the latest news:

Mel flew from Costa Rica to Nicaragua along with Hugo Chavez who had him picked up, later joined by Ecuatorian dictator Rafael Correa and Cuban Fidel Castro's now-ruling brother Raul Castro, who in a press conference revealed that they will not back down and help Zelaya regain his position as President. There have been strong rumors that they have already deployed troops in Honduran Borders, ready to advance on their command, but still nothing solid on that.

Yesterday, Mel told the press he would be going to the UN today to expose his situation and would then come down to Honduras on thursday with a UN Respresentative, although Micheletti has stated that if he is to enter Honduran territory they would be proceeding to arrest him immediately.

These pictures a friend and myself took are from a Peace march that was merely beginning this morning against Mel's autocratic government, but was miscontinued as it was interrupted by an act of violence from those who still support Mel's communist ideals. Unarmed men, women, and children running for their lives in fear of getting hit by stones and sticks from those deranged protesters. Unforunately some of them suffered that ill fate, including some of my own friends from school and work.

My country of Honduras, where i was born and raised and typing in right now is going through a serious political crisis. Here's the situation:

For the last few months, Honduran president Mel Zelaya has been running propaganda to add another poll to the voting booths on the next elections. this poll is to vote to completely remake the Honduran constitution. Some people agree with him because they think the current laws are favorable to the huge corporations and politcal bigwigs. Some disagree because they think Mel would instead try to remake the constitution to his convenience, including trascending to a communist government, prolonging his term, some would even dare say lifelong government, since Mel is a pronounced leftist and has been strengthening relationships with Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez and Cuban Fidel Castro.

Before adding the poll, Mel needed a nationwide referendum to see if the majority of the people would agree to the poll. Congress stated that such a poll cannot be added and to run a referendum to propose recreating the constitution was breaking the law. And so, the government was tore into two where some supported Mel and the rest supported Congress. A few days before the referendum, Congress ordered the armed forces to decomission all boxes and any other equipment to hold the national survey, and so they did. However, the president was hugely outraged and rushed with a crowd of followers down to the national air base where the equipment was being held. All of those citizens that followed Mel started revolting in an uproar, screaming and vandalizing their surroundings as a sign of protest. To prevent further consequences, the armed forces decided to hand back the equipment in good faith, so long as the general public calmed down to prevent worsening the situation. Once Mel got his materials back, he retreated temporarily only to show up a few days later to call the survey...that day is today.

However, very early this morning at about 3a.m. in Tegucigalpa, our nation's capital city, supposedly under the orders from Congress who motioned to strip Mel of his power, an armed forces squadron stormed into the Presidential House to extract the President from the premises, and shanghai'd him into Costa Rican territory, where he would be rendered powerless and without any support from his party.

National news broadcasters spread wide that Mel was forced to sign his resignation before he was cast out of the country, but according to other international broadcasters, Mel declared that he never signed anything and he is illegaly being removed.

Nonetheless, back in Honduras Mel is no longer considered president and the Congress swore in its current President, Roberto Micheletti as the National Constitutional President provisionally until the next elections are held, 7 months from now.

However, there is a great dissent about the decision made by congress, some because they think Congress had no right to make that decision, especially for not consulting the public and those that are for Mel's removal, do not agree with Congress' methods. And so, many people are manifesting themselves out on the streets and against the armed forces, which are constantly patrolling the cities to keep things in order.

As a security measurement, a curfew has been set nationwide where citizens are not allowed outdoors from 9p.m. to 6a.m. anyone spotted outside within those hours will be arrested and the soldiers have clearance to use full force if necessary.

Another huge criticism made by everyone is how the government has been trying to control and censor the flow of information in the country, so much as blocking all external news channels, (meaning, no CNN, FOX, etc.) that are reporting on the subject and only letting the politically-biased local newscasters to braodcast their news, leaving some of us to stay informed only via internet, at least for the few electricity hours we had today, because even the power company cut out the power for a great deal of the day precisely to avoid having anyone be in touch with the outer world.

Personally my worst fear of all is that Hugo Chavez himself has expressed his discontent with Mel being stripped of his power and in order to help him, he is willing to send some Venezuelan troops to Honduran territory to help him retake command and overthrow Constitutional President Micheletti. Of course, Chavez has no absolute authority over Honduras and its affairs, which upsets everyone in Honduras, and possibly leading to engage the Honduran armed forces in conflict, which could lead to big "W" word. Only time will tell what will be the outcome.

UPDATE!

Here's a link to a flickr photo gallery with really nice pics taken this day

http://www.flickr.com/photos/breve/sets/72157620563359693

Following my previous entry, i'm now listing some more uses of this neat technology we call ajax :)

6:Chat Rooms And Instant Messaging

Chatting online has come a long way from the days of IRC. Chat rooms and instant messaging can now be handled in the browser completely. There are two main AJAX processes in a chat room or IM application. Think of one of them as your ears, and one of them as your mouth. Your ‘mouth’ updates the server and lets it know that you have sent a message. The ‘ears’ check with the server constantly, and updates your page with messages that have been sent by whoever you are chatting with.

Example: Meebo Chat (Uses Ajax)

Plugin: GMail/Facebook Style Chat Script

7:Slicker UIs

Creating a clean, slick user interface is a very popular use of AJAX. It allows users to accomplish more on a single page. The benefits of this are twofold: First, it makes using the web application quicker and easier for the user; Secondly, it cuts down on the number of requests you have to make to the server, which cuts down on bandwidth and load times. A free file upload service called Drop.io uses this well. Google has also really pushed the envelope of what is possible with AJAX by making desktop-like applications like Google Docs and Google Maps.

jQuery UI Library

8:External Widgets

When using AJAX, the page that is using the JavaScript isn’t just limited to the server it is located on. The AJAX can make a call to any server online. This is how a number of plug-ins for Content Management Systems like Wordpress work, and other various scripts like Google Adsense.

Example: Google Adsense

Plugin: Script for loading external content into div

9:Lightboxes instead of pop-ups

Pop-up blockers are very common place these days, and for a good reason: pop-ups are annoying. Using light boxes, which are pop-ups inside the browser window, the pop-up blocker can’t stop it, and they aren’t quite as irritating to the user. Some people use them for advertising, like on Darren Rowe’s ProBlogger.com. They can also be used for something like a login or register box, like Reddit does when you try to vote and you are not logged in.

Example: Logo Sauce

Plugin: Lightbox Plugin

10:Using AJAX With Flash

Using AJAX along with Flash is a rarely used technique, but it can be used to generate some impressive results. The flash game website Kongregate uses this to great effect. Using their API, they have their own achievement system that involves winning ‘badges’ for completing various accomplishments in games. When a badge is earned, the API in Flash sends a response back to JavaScript, which then uses AJAX to update the user’s profile with the newly earned award.

Example: Kongregate

Plugin: jQuery Flash Plugin

I hope this article has given you a lot of ideas of how you can use AJAX to improve and expand your web applications. What are some other uses you can think of for AJAX?

AJAX has gotten more and more popular over the years, and has allowed web applications to act more and more like desktop applications. AJAX can provide a lot of additional functionality that could not be accomplished any other way.

What Is AJAX? How Does It Work?

AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It is used for allowing the client side of an application to communitcate with the server side of the application. Before AJAX, there was no way for the client side of a web application to communicate directly with the server. Instead, you would have to use page loads. With AJAX, the client and server can communicate freely with one another.

Here is how the usual AJAX script goes:

1:Some action triggers the event, like the user clicking a button.

2:The AJAX call fires, and sends a request to a server-side script, using XML

3:The server-side script (PHP, ASP, or whatever) takes the input from JavaScript, can access the database if it needs to, and processes the data.

4:Using XML again, the script sends the data back to the original client-side page that made the request.

5:A second JavaScript function, called a callback function,catches the data, and updates the web page

Throughout this tutorial, we will discuss how various scripts use this routine to accomplish a wide variety of effects.

1:Login Forms

Instead of going to a login page, and then navigating back to the page you originally wanted, with AJAX, a user can type in their user name and password directly into the original page. From there AJAX will send a request to the server to log them in. The server let’s the page know they’ve been logged in, and the page you are on can update as needed. Digg has a login-system that works like this.

Example: Digg.com (top of page)

Plugin; jQuery Form Plugin

2:Auto-Complete

Google was one of the first major companies to start using AJAX, and Google’s search suggestion tool was one of the first ways they used it, and one of the first auto-complete tools made. When typing into the Google search bar, it starts to use AJAX to get common results from the database on each keystroke. Auto-Complete is great for forms where you have a lot of possible inputs, and making a select drop down would be too long and cumbersome.

Example: Google Search

Plugin: jq autocomplete

3:Voting and Rating

Social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit let the users decide the main content of the site by voting on content that the users like. They use AJAX to handle all of the voting, so that the users are able to voice their opinions on a number of stories quickly and easily.

Example: Reddit

4:Updating With User Content

One of the things that made Twitter so popular was their simple and easy-to-use interface. When someone makes a ‘tweet’, it is instantly added to their feed, and everything is updated. Recently, Twitter has started using AJAX with their ‘trending topics’ pages. Every few seconds, the page lets the user know that more tweets have been made about the subject, giving them up-to-the-second updates.

Example: Twitter

5:Form Submission & Validation

Forms have always tricky to work with, but AJAX can make them a lot better for the users. AJAX can be used in a variety of ways, from the auto complete mentioned above, to validation and submission as well. Some sites use AJAX to check if a form meets certain requirements, such as password strength, or if something is a valid email or URL.

Example: 10 Cool jQuery Form Plugins

Source: http://www.noupe.com/ajax/how-ajax-works.html

Apple rarely directly addresses the size of its installed base. In its financial reports, Cupertino will talk up units sold and the percentage of growth. But to rally the troops at the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday, the first flag raised was of Mac growth.

Phil Schiller, senior vice-president of worldwide product marketing, took the stage, telling the crowd that there were many reasons for the excitement and anticipation surrounding the developer conference. One big one could be seen in the chart projected behind him.

He pointed to a chart showing the first 5 full years of Mac OS X, from 2002 to 2007 which went from about zero installed base to about 25 million.

Of course early on right after the release of Mac OS X, much of the growth was the transition from the Mac OS to Mac OS X. However, since the introduction of the Intel-based Mac hardware and the rise of the Apple Store, sales have picked up. And then there’s the “halo” effect from the iPod and the collapse of Microsoft’s Vista transition.

However, Schiller didn’t go into details. He wasn’t offering a history lesson.

“It shows great, steady growth of adoption of Mac OS X — this isn’t shipments, it’s actual active users,” he said simply. “But something incredible has happened over the past 2 years,” he continued.

In an animation, the scale of the chart suddenly shot upwards, from the 25 million top, and like a skyscraper, shot to 75 million in 2009. So, over the past two years, the installed base of Mac users has tripled.

Of course, these are the customers of the gathered developers’ software. The installed base is an important number to this group.

I was encouraged about this figure. I have understood that Macs have been growing but it’s not often that the incremental unit reports are put together to let us see the big picture. The chart drew a big round of applause. This was something that Mac developers needed to hear up front.

There has been some concern in places in the recent quarters with a decrease in sales statistics compared with the previous year. Some of this was a decline in net Mac sales — according to the last 10K filing from late March.

On the other hand, Mac unit sales increased by 3 percent in the first half of fiscal 2009. (And in case anyone thinks that Apple isn’t a computer company anymore, Mac sales totaled 35 percent of the company’s total profits, the report said.)

A reminder from the 10K report about the importance of Mac developers’ confidence:

With respect to its Mac products, the Company believes the availability of third-party software applications and services depends in part on the developers’ perception and analysis of the relative benefits of developing, maintaining, and upgrading such software for the Company’s products compared to Windows-based products.

This analysis may be based on factors such as the perceived strength of the Company and its products, the anticipated revenue that may be generated, continued acceptance by customers of Mac OS X, and the costs of developing such applications and services. If the Company’s minority share of the global personal computer market causes developers to question the Company’s prospects, developers could be less inclined to develop or upgrade software for the Company’s products and more inclined to devote their resources to developing and upgrading software for the larger Windows market.

The Company’s development of its own software applications and services may also negatively affect the decisions of third party developers, such as Microsoft, Adobe, and Google, to develop, maintain, and upgrade similar or competitive software and services for the Company’s products.

Mac OS X Leopard, which became available in October 2007, includes a new feature that enables Intel-based Mac systems to run Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems. This feature may deter developers from creating software applications for Mac OS X if such applications are already available for the Windows platform.

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=4100