YLike: A hackday project (Pankaj Kumar's Weblog)

YLike: A hackday project

You can get the details, including an introductory video and installation instructions, on Ylike page. What I want to talk in this post is the story behind the hack.

Like most early online communities, the graduating class of 1989 from IIT Kanpur has a Yahoo! group: iitk-89. It was created way back in 1999 and was quite active till a few months ago. We discussed stuff that our most other friends would find uninteresting. Some one will send a link to an article that he (there were girls in our batch but they rarely participated) liked or found outrageous and then a heated discussion will ensue. Sometimes we collectively solved mathematical puzzles. It was fun.

But then a dispute arose about an off hand comment made by one the members. Without going into details, I'll only say that this incident polarized the group and the nature of discussion became very different. At this point, one of the members wondered: "it would have been nice if Yahoo! allowed a simple form of expressing likeness/dislikeness of posts". Posting response to a message you disagree with takes too much energy, is seen as an attack and is delivered as email to everyone in the group. A click to express agreement or disagreement which is then aggregated and shown as count to only those who visit the group pages would be milder and much more effective. Think of this as simple yes- or no- nodding of head during normal conversation. These are cues that get picked up and changes the conversation in subtle ways before it gets to heated and loud verbal exchange.

I kept thinking that adding a capability like this would be very beneficial to the Yahoo! group communities. So when the opportunity came this month in form of Yahoo! (internal) hackday, I coded up YLike, a hack that adds like and dislike buttons. With a little bit of extra work, I was able to make it work on my personal server and make it available to others. Visit Ylike page and give it a try. If you are a member of iitk-89 group then you can even see my votes for some of the recent messages.

Posted on March 27, 2011 10:35 PM | Permalink

Comments (2)

Kevin Buchs

Pankaj,

I was searching the web for a "Which" command for Windows/DOS and found your 2004 posting, http://pankaj-k.net/weblog/2004/11/equivalent_of_which_in_windows.html . I started with that as a basis and extended it to try different extensions in pathext shell variable. I just thought I would share it back with you. I'll try to paste it here. I don't like that FOR loop, but that seems to be the best that can be done.


@echo off

rem --------------------------------------------------------

rem File: which.cmd

rem Description: Windows equivalent of Unix which command

rem Author: Pankaj Kumar

rem Copyright 2004 Pankaj Kumar. All Rights Reserved.

rem License: This software is available under GPL

rem ---------------------------------------------------------

rem  If filename given as argument does not match, try with various

rem  executable extensions (pathext shell variable). This assumes that this 

rem  script, which.bat, is found in your path.

setlocal

if "%1" == "" goto noArg



set fullpath=%~$PATH:1

if "%fullpath%" == "" goto notFoundPlain

echo Found in PATH: %fullpath%

goto end



:subr_Test

set fullpath=%~$PATH:1

if "%fullpath%" == "" GOTO :eof

echo Found in PATH: %fullpath%

exit /B -1

:notFoundPlain

for /f "delims=; tokens=1-26" %%a in ( "%pathext%" ) do (

  if [%%a] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%a

  if [%%b] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%b

  if [%%c] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%c

  if [%%d] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%d

  if [%%e] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%e

  if [%%f] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%f

  if [%%g] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%g

  if [%%h] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%h

  if [%%i] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%i

  if [%%j] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%j

  if [%%k] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%k

  if [%%l] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%l

  if [%%m] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%m

  if [%%n] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%n

  if [%%o] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%o

  if [%%p] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%p

  if [%%q] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%q

  if [%%r] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%r

  if [%%s] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%s

  if [%%t] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%t

  if [%%u] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%u

  if [%%v] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%v

  if [%%w] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%w

  if [%%x] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%x

  if [%%y] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%y

  if [%%z] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%z

)

IF %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 0 goto notFound

goto end



:noArg

echo No Argument specified

goto end



:notFound

echo Argument "%1" not found in PATH



:end

endlocal

Posted by Kevin Buchs | June 7, 2011 3:50 PM

Posted on June 7, 2011 15:50

Kevin Buchs

Pankaj,


@echo off

rem --------------------------------------------------------

rem File: which.cmd

rem Description: Windows equivalent of Unix which command

rem Author: Pankaj Kumar

rem Copyright 2004 Pankaj Kumar. All Rights Reserved.

rem License: This software is available under GPL

rem ---------------------------------------------------------

rem  If filename given as argument does not match, try with various

rem  executable extensions (pathext shell variable). This assumes that this 

rem  script, which.bat, is found in your path.

setlocal

if "%1" == "" goto noArg



set fullpath=%~$PATH:1

if "%fullpath%" == "" goto notFoundPlain

echo Found in PATH: %fullpath%

goto end



:subr_Test

set fullpath=%~$PATH:1

if "%fullpath%" == "" GOTO :eof

echo Found in PATH: %fullpath%

exit /B -1

:notFoundPlain

for /f "delims=; tokens=1-26" %%a in ( "%pathext%" ) do (

  if [%%a] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%a

  if [%%b] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%b

  if [%%c] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%c

  if [%%d] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%d

  if [%%e] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%e

  if [%%f] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%f

  if [%%g] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%g

  if [%%h] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%h

  if [%%i] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%i

  if [%%j] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%j

  if [%%k] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%k

  if [%%l] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%l

  if [%%m] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%m

  if [%%n] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%n

  if [%%o] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%o

  if [%%p] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%p

  if [%%q] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%q

  if [%%r] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%r

  if [%%s] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%s

  if [%%t] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%t

  if [%%u] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%u

  if [%%v] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%v

  if [%%w] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%w

  if [%%x] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%x

  if [%%y] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%y

  if [%%z] NEQ []  call :subr_Test %1%%z

)

IF %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 0 goto notFound

goto end



:noArg

echo No Argument specified

goto end



:notFound

echo Argument "%1" not found in PATH



:end

endlocal

Posted by Kevin Buchs | June 7, 2011 3:50 PM

Posted on June 7, 2011 15:50

Pankaj Kumar's Weblog

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YLike: A hackday project

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