Naviflix was built to do one thing, and do it well: help movie buffs get to a movie they like as fast as possible. The app is now available on the iTunes App Store literally shows you what’s playing in theaters ‘near you’ utilizing iPhone’s location based technology to list movies in cinemas within proximity.

Naviflix app by Flip Interactive archtects

It comes with two tabs displaying, in alphabetical order, movies that are ‘Now Playing’, and ‘Cinemas’ allowing users to sift through their cinema of preference, or simply scroll through the long list of movies being showed (currently only in the UAE). Clicking on a listing will expand the view to display information specific to the movie including a trailer and snapshots from the movie itself.

The people from Flip Media haven’t forgotten their tweeple, Naviflix comes with built in social media support, allowing movie goers to share their experience on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Application has an excellent web version too at naviflix.com . Naviflix has its twitter updates at @naviflix as well

The service targets the mobile phone industry in the region, at this time only supporting the iPhone and a number of smart phones even promising support for the holy iPad during the months to come.

“The UAE is the region’s second-largest film market, with over 200 cinema screens, and gross box office receipts of US$74 million.” stated Dinesh Lalvani, Managing Partner of Flip Media, ” Those figures, coupled with the fact that increasingly people are accessing information through smart phones, makes mobile apps a strategic touch point to reach consumers.”

According to its creators, the Naviflix app has been carefully designed to be able to integrate with any cinema’s mobile ticketing system giving it the future option to team up with cinemas throughout the region to let users buy tickets making it get you what you want, where you want without even having to stand in line

Sources :- The Next Web.com, Flip.me

Installing Sphinx using Mac Ports

1. If you don’t have mac-ports installed, Install mac-ports downloading from their site.
2. If you not installed X code tools from Mac OS X, DVD install it – need this for compiling sources in a UNIX development way.
3. Now install sphinx using following command.

sudo port install sphinx

This will compile and install everything required for making the sphinx work.

Now sphinx is installed and we have ‘indexer’, ‘search’ utilities and a ‘searchd’ daemon.

Basic way to use Sphinx

Sphinx comes with a sample sql file to setup a sql-query based search (Simplest configuration). This SQL and a sample Sphinx sample configuration is located at

/opt/local/etc/sphinx

. Try following steps to make it running with your configuration
1. Create a directory some where in your system. In my case I created at desktop named ‘sphinx’.

 cd ~/Desktop/sphinx 

2. Create ‘test’ database in your mysql server and import the Sample SQL.
2. copy sphinx.conf from sample /opt/local/etc/sphinx to this folder.

cp /opt/local/etc/sphinx/sphinx.conf.dist sphinx.conf

3. Now edit sphinx.conf and change the database Params and paths. In my case it looks like following. Edit the queries related to your custom databases to make it yours.

source src1
{
	type					= mysql

	sql_host				= localhost
	sql_user				= test
	sql_pass				=
	sql_db					= test
	sql_port				= 3306	# optional, default is 3306

	sql_query				= \
		SELECT id, group_id, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(date_added) AS date_added, title, content \
		FROM documents

	sql_attr_uint			= group_id
	sql_attr_timestamp		= date_added

	sql_query_info			= SELECT * FROM documents WHERE id=$id
}

index test1
{
	source					= src1
	path					= /Users/lijeeshms/Desktop/sphinx/data/test1
	docinfo					= extern
	charset_type			= sbcs
}

indexer
{
	mem_limit				= 32M
}

searchd
{
	port					= 3312
	log						= /Users/lijeeshms/Desktop/sphinx/log/searchd.log
	query_log				= /Users/lijeeshms/Desktop/sphinx/log/query.log
	read_timeout			= 5
	max_children			= 30
	pid_file				= /Users/lijeeshms/Desktop/sphinx/log/searchd.pid
	max_matches				= 1000
	seamless_rotate			= 1
	preopen_indexes			= 0
	unlink_old				= 1
}

4. Create 2 folders, ‘data’ and ‘log’ inside the ‘sphinx’ directory.

mkdir data log

5. Now run the indexer with the configuration we created from the test directory.

indexer --config /<path-to>/sphinx.conf --all

This will create the indexes based the confutation.
6. Now run the Sphinx search daemon using the same command.

searchd --config /<path-to>/sphinx.conf 

If everything is fine, sphinx search engine will start with the above index configurations. If any error happens you need to check the configuration for any errors.
7. You can now test a search with ‘search’ command from terminal.

search <query> 

The results will be shown.

Once all the above is working, it will be easy to use any of the client libraries for PHP (or PECL), Python, Ruby or Java to search from a web or desktop based environments. Sphinx provides options to run multiple indexes and search on selected indexes, thus allowing one daemon to use with multiple type of searches.
Sphinx can index data from an XMLPipe, this is best for creating configurable search indexes from very dynamic datasources like a CMS or CRM.

Mumbaikar iPhone application by Flip Media

Wow…We did it. After months of hard work, our first iPhone application, Mumbaikar, is now available at the Apple app store. The application is an interactive map with everything and anything you need to know about Mumbai, from geotagged restaurant, blogs and store listings to events and neighborhood crime alerts

on Blog Post at Flip Website .

You can install the application from this link

Here is the simple steps on how to do it.
1. Install ‘Picasa Image Express for WordPress’ plug-in – download from plugin site. Only limitation of this plugin is, it cannot show the unlisted albums from picassa.

2. Install ‘Light box Plus’ plug-in from http://www.23systems.net/plugins/lightbox-plus/. You can do more interesting stuff with this.

Some of my configuration you can see from following screens

I find out Shiretoko recently it works amazing,

Shiretoko Firefox Mac

Download it here

Porticus for Macports

Setting up Porticus for the first time – snow leapard

1) Install macports, downloading the dmg – checkout Macports website for updates

2) Install Porticus downloading from  Porticus website

That is it. It is realy usefull tool to try free software on mac. Feels like one of the software package management GUIs Linux users enjoy

Unofficial Dubai Metro website

Check the press release from Flip

Dubai–With residents eagerly awaiting the launch of the Dubai Metro, Dubai’s biggest infrastructure project, Flip Media today unveiled Mydubaimetro.com, a non profit portal designed and developed to provide residents of Dubai with a practical and usable guide to all things related to the Metro.

The one stop shop website offers key information and helpful tools such as a journey planner and fare calculator, information about each station stop as well as downloadable pocket maps.

“We saw a gap in the market where people, including ourselves, were curious and hungry for more information about the Metro,” said Yousef Tuqan Tuqan, CEO, Flip Media.

Dinesh Lalvani, Managing Partner of Flip added, “We’re bringing the best of web and technology to help people discover not only the basic information about the services available, but also help connect with fellow commuters. The idea is to make the metro not just about the destination but also about the journey and experience.”

The community portal gives users to post comments, blog and share photos and useful tips about the metro.  The website is scalable, allowing for the addition of new technology and tools.

I am very proud of this, as one of developers of this website and the Technology behind it, The Navisite CMS .

We are watching the event live at www.macrumors.com and Engadget live blogs. We discussed and enjoyed the new updates.

here is some photos from the event

WWDC Get together in Dubai

WWDC Get Together in Dubai by shuffle magazine

Shuja in WWDC get Together

Me in WWDC get Togeher in Dubai

Lucky Draw at WWDC Get Together

REVOLUTION OS

To see more on this video see www.revolution-os.com/

The Code

More information is on www.code.linux.fi/

You can see a lot more videos of linux by doing a Google search – How Linux powers some of the hollywood films studios, high end mission critical servers and supper computers, almost any type of microprocessor based electronic devices etc. Linux is nothing but the open knowledge of a “Computer system”, and how it works.

Meetup started with number of new guys introducing themselves. It was fun and some “jokes are thrown on the table” . @tarekkassar was live tweeting from the meetup. ” If you love open-source, join #uaelug, all people here will be your friends ” – he said on twitter.

After the meetup it was very clear to everyone that why we use linux and what is the importance of this Operating system. Some topics we discussed was about how you use a computer in its maximum possible ways, that cannot be achieved using propitiatory systems. It explained how to make computer to do more stuff than, just following some ready made “products”. Experts explained how we take challenges and do understand how software really works.

Here is some photos from the meetup taken by @smshuja

Guys at UAE Linux meetup

UAE Linux meetup

Guys at linux UAE linux meetup

Hacking Wireless at UAE linux meetup

Tarek kassar live internet update from uaelug meetup

I am in uaelug

You can see more photos of uaelug at meetup group.