Posted September 10, 2009 at 2:30 pm by Akshay
Google Docs offers an undocumented feature that lets you embed PDF files and PowerPoint presentations in a web page. The files don’t have to be uploaded to Google Docs, but they need to be available online.
Here’s the code I used to embed the PDF file:
<iframe src="http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf&embedded=true" style="width:600px; height:500px;" frameborder="0"></iframe>
but you should replace the bold URL with your own address. As I mentioned, the document viewer works for PDF and PPT files.
Some other sites that offer similar features: Zoho Viewer, PdfMeNot.
Posted June 30, 2009 at 1:45 pm by Akshay
Did you know that Google has an officially supported JSON feed of search results? Google half-way cancelled their SOAP API a while ago, but they now offer a parametrized URL that returns a JSON data set. Google says this REST approach is useful for “Flash developers, and those developers that have a need to access the AJAX Search API from other Non-Javascript environments.” This may be even simpler to use than the SOAP API. Here’s an example query:
http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&q=Paris%20Hilton
This URL format can also be adjusted to grab results from video search, book search and so on. While the URL has the word AJAX in the string and this is officially part of the Google AJAX Search API, this has nothing to do with AJAX per se, as the URL can be called from other environments, including the server side. All you need is a JSON library to parse the results (JSON means JavaScript Object Notation, though it also doesn’t require JavaScript). The Yahoo Search API already utilizes a similar approach, though it can return XML as well. The complete documentation of this Search API can be found on the Developer’s Guide of Google AJAX Search API hosted on Google Code
Posted June 12, 2009 at 6:51 pm by Akshay
At first there was good old email with petty 5 Mb inboxes. Then we moved to crowded chat rooms on Yahoo. All that seemed as stone age, when came a host of interactive web applications like Blogs and Social Networking applications. Initially Orkut, then Facebook and then micro blogging thru Twitter. Have you ever wondered what could be the next big Web 2.0 trend?
The answer is ‘Collaboration’. Yes, collaboration not only in its own sense, but also a collaboration of all the trends and technologies mentioned above. I know the word ‘collaboration’ sounds too ‘enterprise’ and not at all ‘social’, but as always web has once again taken us by surprise here. What I am referring is not too far fetched. Big boys like Google and Yahoo have already stepped in this domain and grand releases have already been done. Yes, check out Google Wave and Zimbra (by Yahoo, but not much talked about yet) to understand what am pointing at. Google Wave is a new tool for real-time communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year. An official 90 minute video demo is already out for a sneak peak into this new wonderland. Don’t have 90 minutes? Have a look at my detailed post on Devil’s Workshop with 30-60 second clips highlighting the best parts of Google Wave.
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Hi, My name is Akshay Raje. I am a self taught freelance web designer and developer. I love travel and am a great movie buff too. This blog is about my projects and experiments with web technologies. 
