This Week I Learned - Week #138

This Week I Learned -

* Modest Maps and Leaflet are open-source JavaScript libraries for working with maps

* Ran into multiple articles & answers on Stack Overflow by Yossi Dahan, solutions architect in the Azure team, all in the same week while researching Azure topics.

* Like the other GData APIs, the Google Spreadsheets Data API has an optional JSON output. 

* The Windows Azure Data Centers map is a great way to visualize the DC locations

* Found some nice PDF ebooks online - APIs for Dummies, SOA Design Principles for Dummies, 100 SOA Questions Asked and Answered, The Pragmatic Logging Handbook from Loggly

* Google Fusion Tables lets us upload data tables from spreadsheets or CSV files, even KML

* Azure offers a free trial and it also has a service to host Azure App Services without even providing a credit card. Wonder how they let users view all the portal features but restrict them from most resource intensive features.

* Due to increasing threats and vulnerabilities, building and running web applications is no longer as easy as it used to be. Browsers too have a tough job - they have to be constantly updated to keep users secure. I recently ran into this cryptic warning (as if users could understand what a "ephemeral Diffie-Hellman public key" is) in Chrome while accessing a web page. Chrome decided that it can't let me proceed - 

Server has a weak ephemeral Diffie-Hellman public key
ERR_SSL_WEAK_SERVER_EPHEMERAL_DH_KEY
This error can occur when connecting to a secure (HTTPS) server. It means that the server is trying to set up a secure connection but, due to a disastrous misconfiguration, the connection wouldn't be secure at all! In this case the server needs to be fixed. Google Chrome won't use insecure connections in order to protect your privacy.

* The 911 call centers have databases of every landline phone number in their area, and the street address associated with each one....45 percent of U.S. households now have cellphones but not landlines, a number that’s grown steadily for more than a decade...Calls placed on cellphones bounce off of the nearest cellphone tower, which directs them to the closest emergency-call center. But calls can be intercepted in unpredictable ways. When a lot of calls are being made at once, there’s a greater chance that the towers become overwhelmed, meaning some calls will be picked up by a tower farther away....In an emergency situation, this can be disastrous.... figuring out the exact location of a cellphone—and accurately transmitting that location to an operator—is nearly impossible...cellphone carriers rely on triangulation, which locates callers by measuring the distance between the towers that pick up the call. Triangulation is accurate to a point, but it’s not perfectly precise. The process can generally pinpoint someone’s location within 100 to 300 square meters. GPS technology can help, but it’s at its most accurate when a cellphone has the location-tracking system turned on for hours on end, allowing satellites more time to calibrate where the phone is - Atlantic

* Research from the tobacco realm shows that labels with images have more of an impact than text-only labels

* Carpet area is literally defined as the exact area within the walls of your home....If you had to lay out a wall-to-wall carpet in your entire house, the area it would cover is the carpet area, whereas built-up area includes not just the carpet area but also the area being occupied by the walls of your home. Super built-up area is what we often talk about. It is a very inclusive term. It is the built-up area plus proportionate area of common areas such as the lobby, lift shaft, stairs, etc.

* There are 102 national parks and 515 wildlife sanctuaries in India.

* The Rs 4,17,200 crore Indian television industry is largely a mass market with around 12 Hindi general entertainment channels (GEC) and 250 regional channels taking the lion’s share of viewership as well as ad revenues. The Hindi GECs account for about 30 per cent viewership share, the English entertainment space’s share of 1.1 per cent.

* "some of the things that count as being civilized, making beautiful things, thinking freely and thinking new things, and keeping the rules, without which people couldn't get on together. Grown-ups call the first of these things art, the second  science and philosophy, and the third political justice and ethics." - CEM Joad