Reading Excel Spreadsheets with PHP

PHP is yet most powerful language when it comes to deal with different data formats like SQL Results, XML Files etc. To improve the functionality of PHP, we use extensions. There are many extensions/packages which let us to read more different types of data formats. Today, we will be using one of them, i.e. phpexcelreader.

PHPExcelReader comes with two files oleread.inc and reader.php. We will need to include reader.php in order to use the package. For the sake of "simplicity", I have made some changes in example file and data. Grab it here:

Yahoo! Status Checker

Update: Sorry, doesn't work any more.

Yahoo! Status Checker is a mini web tool used to check status (online, offline) of a yahoo user. You need to enter Yahoo! ID or Email which you wish to check, into the textbox and press Go!. It'll shows status and also avatar of that user. To save the avatar right click on avatar image and choose "Save Image As" in Firefox. Under the avatar, there are few links like View Profile, Send a Message etc. which are used to interact with user or to know more information about the user.

If it shows that user is online, but in your messenger list it is still offline, that means user has set to appear invisible to you through stealth settings. Currently, I am working on it, to add more features to it. Hope you guys find it useful.

Payar Kinu Kehnde Ne - Jag Jeondeyan De Mele

Fortunate are those who are able to live the rest of their lives with whom they first fall in love with.

Few days back, I saw "Jag Jeondeyan De Mele" movie and came across a beautiful song "Payar Kinu Kehnde Ne" by Harbhajan Mann and Shreya Ghoshal. Currently, I'm totally addicted to it. Even I'm listening, while writing this post. :)

As the title says, the movie defines

CurrentStatus Wordpress Plugin

As you may have noticed a little box on the left sidebar of my blog home page(currently not available), which displays my current status and mood. While creating this blog, I came to know that it is good to have your current status on blog, so if you not going to post any new stuff, you can tell to your reader that to you are going to have a break now. ;)

So, I searched for related plugin, but didn't quite get the exact thing I want. Then decide to make one new on my own. This is my first try on wordpress plugin, so I want to share it here, hope folks found it usefull.

Firstly, Download the CurrentStatus plugin. Unpack it and upload the directory currentstatus to your wordpress plugin directory (wp-contents/plugin/).

Track Geolocation of visitors: PHP and IP-to-Country Database

Geolocation is a geographical location of peer computer connected with some network i.e. local, or internet. That location can be anywhere in the world. When a computer gets connected to any network, a unique IP address is allocated and assigned to it, which uniquely identifies its identity on that network. IP address is a 32-bit number which is divided into 4 sections, each section is separated with a dot, and contain any number from 0-255. An IP address is very sensitive and complex to grab it all. It contains all the required information like network, location, host of the computer.

Webmasters and Bloggers are always interested to see whom visiting there site, where they came from, etc. There are some free tools on web to track your visitors. Google Analytics and Statcounter are two most popular and accurate tools for visitor tracking. They extract information like region, city, country, referral, ISP, etc from an IP address and provide us processed information in form of graphical components like chart, graphs and pie.

If you are interested to make such tool or you want to use it in your own way, here is the procedure to do it.