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Textoo Pro ; in the works

July 17th 2011 : Textoo Pro now in the apple app store. Download it here : http://textoo.in

July 10th 2011 : Textoo v2.0 renamed to Textoo Pro

Release of Textoo Pro has been postponed to July 15th 2011 due to app store codesign issues.

Here’s a sneak peek into the brand new version of Textoo Pro – the iOS app which lets you send free real SMS to any mobile phone in India and other countries.
Based on the numerous feedback emails we have got, we have tried our best to incorporate all the enhancements into this version.

A brand new custom designed UI with retina support
With an intent to keep the UI similar on both iOS and android versions, the entire UI was rewritten by avoiding the use the standard components provided by apple SDK as much as possible. The UI design was inspired by Apple’s iBook application and each page was designed to work well on both portrait and landscape views with support for retina and non retina displays. Animations and transitions were added to boost the look and feel of the app.

free sms iphone appNative support for group messages and multi select contacts Continue reading “Textoo Pro ; in the works” »

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Kaun banega crorepati game (kbc2) (download the game)

Update as of 5th June 2011 : Source code for the game has been published on this page. Now you can change the game as you wish, using Swishmax (www.swishzone.com)

Update as of 20th Dec 2010 : I have been noticing quite a lot of visitors reaching this page through google search.  So drop in a comment if you would like me to add any new features onto the game.

This was a simple game I created using SWiSH in 2005. The questions appear randomly with no logic for the levels of difficulty and the “Phone a friend” lifeline is a dummy lifeline with no real purpose. You should check out the game here. The game was hosted on a free domain kbc2.be and also on openflash.be initially which got a decent amount of hits. Those domain names dont exist anymore, so I have published it here. You can download the source code and read the instructions below if you like to edit the game to suite your needs.

Click below to play the game


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Rating: 7.8/10 (4349 votes cast)
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Rating: 7.8/10 (4349 votes cast)

KBC flash game source code

I have also noticed a few visitors to this blog searching for terms like “kbc game source code”. I am not sure whether anyone want to modify the existing flash game to accomodate new lifelines or game rules.
Anyway, you can download the source code for this game and a sample questions database (20 questions only) using the link below. You will need Swishmax v3 to open the .swi source file and edit program logic. If you just want to edit the questions and answers database, you can edit the core.kbc file in the zip archive.
If you modify the game using this source code and publish it elsewhere, you should retain an always visible text which reads “thekirankumar.com”

Download the game

How to add your own questions or edit the questions in KBC ?

The questions database (core.kbc is included in the KBC.zip package) contents are as follows :

&totques=183&
&ques1=What is capital of India?&
&a1=Bombay&
&b1=Delhi&
&c1=Calcutta&
&d1=Madras&
&ans1=2&
&ques2=Who is known as the father of the nation?&
&a2=Lal Bahadur Sastri&
&b2=Mahatma Gandhi&
&c2=Bal Gangadhar Tilak&
&d2=Rajiv Gandhi&
&ans2=2&

The first line &totques=183& in the file can be changed to specify the total number of questions you have in your database. If you plan to put only 20 questions, change the line to &totques=20&

The first question is in a variable called quest1, the second on quest2 and so on…
Similar naming for options . Variables a1,b1,c1,d1 will contain the text for the options for question 1. a2,b2 etc for question no 2

Answer is specified as &ans1=2& where the value 2 says the answer for question number 1 is option b (i.e, the variable b1). Similarly ans1=3 means that the answer is c.

Hence, by editing the core.kbc file using an text editor, you can modify/add new questions to the game.

You can access the source code of the flash game by opening the KBC.swi file using SwishMax. Post the URL of your version of the game as a comment in this page, I would love to see them.

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Photoshop poster design

This page is a showcase of my photoshop designs which were made for different events at my college (NITK). The


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Rating: 8.3/10 (29 votes cast)

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Multi user avatar chat based flash website for Incident 09

I was very inspired by the Red Interactive agency’s website which allowed the website visitors to talk to each other in realtime with an option to customize their avatars. So I wanted to use my skills and create something similar for my college website. The initial idea came up with was to model the entire college campus in 3D and allow the user to navigate around the campus along with them being able to go through the event details. I had also thought of having interactive elements in the 3D map which shows a miniaturized version of the cultural fest happening inside the 3D space. But as I was the only person who was working on it and also considering the average internet bandwidth available around that time in India, I decided not to plug in very heavy graphics onto the website. I started off by designing the main building of my college using Google sketch up and rendering it with a photorealistic plugin called vRay. The initial results were very impressive. With the crude rendering of the image, I started working on Flash CS3. Till then, I had only worked on Swishmax, which was a stripped down version of Flash. But Flash CS3 didnt prove too difficult given the fact that I never had to use much of drawing and keyframing tools present in flash and had to use only the actionscript features.
I started off testing the feasibiity with just a small ball as an avatar whose position can be moved through the keyboard arrows. The position of this ball was broadcasted using raw XML sockets to a PHP based server listening on port 8080. And every flash client connected to this PHP server received the coordinates of this ball. After doing a real run on NITK network, the concept proved successful. After this, I went on download some human characters for Poser 5 and exported frames which show the human characters to be walking. The simplicity of Poser in working with human models proved to be a blessing as I had the still frames oif the animation ready within a few days. Then these frames were imported onto Flash and separate swf files which showed the human model to be walking were kept separately and then imported onto the main flash movie and placed in front of the 3D background map.
After this, multiple human characters and multiple 3D background were done using the same method and all integrated into the main movie using some actionscript and the final movie was ready. A quick demo to some of my friends showed that the website would become an instant hit.
Along with the main flash site, I had to set up a way to add text content onto the website using a simple HTML admin page.
The final website was hosted on the local NITK student server and a WAN port 80 was mapped to LAN port 8080 on the local server so that no firewall can intrude in the communication between the client and the server. The final result was a major success and was one of the best websites made for a cultural fest in India.

Some stats :

15000 visitors out of which 10000 are absolute unique visitors, 22000 pageviews, 15 GB data transferred, 800 event registrations on the website

Later on , some additional features were integrated into the site like :

  • ALICE chat bot to give standard replies to questions asked during chat
  • Integration of phpbb login with the flash website so that user logged in on phpbb forum is logged in the flash site also
  • Integration of google SMS channels to send out bulk SMS, moderation of chat messages using Google talk
  • Some interesting things in the backend : (which you probably wouldnt know even if you used the website)
    The chat avatar character was assigned based on the IP. If the IP address was in the range for girls hostel , a female character was assigned, If it was from the boys hostel block, a male character was given. Otherwise it was totally random.
    The ALICE chat bot was trained to answer hundreds of questions like “What is Incident”, “When is Incident” etc and would respond to commands like shut up, keep quiet etc. It would also detect when someone would try to use abusive words and then ask them to kindly restrain from repeating it.
    Someone or the other person would always stay online to moderate the chat messages being broadcast and ban users who spread hatred on the group chat.
    To aid in modelling the 3D maps, I had to go around the campus clicking photographs on my phone from different angles for different buildings and then model them on sketchup. There were plans to model every building , but the plan never worked out due to lack of time.

    Some technical details :
    The flash client in the browser connects to the PHP based socket server running on port 80 on the NITK student server and communicates using raw XML sockets. The PHP server separated the users into different rooms(based on the map chosen) and forwarded the messages in realtime.  Running it on port 80 ensured that firewall intrusion was minimal. A chat bot (based on ALICE chat bot) was integrated into the map. Moderators could see the activity of any room by adding a jabber user ([email protected]) to their google talk list. The text content on the website was managed using a simple CMS like page.

    Click to view the demo of my work
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    Rating: 8.8/10 (16 votes cast)

    (to be done)

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    Textoo: An application to send free SMS using SMS gateways (India,UAE,Kuwait etc)

    Update : 17th July ’11
    Textoo 1.0 is no more supported. Textoo Pro has reached the app store. Supports more gateways and has a lot of bonus features. Android version of Textoo is also being worked on. Click here to know more.

    Update : 22nd Sept ’10
    A new page has been setup here for the app. More info on this app with be posted on this page from now on.

    Update : 15th Sept ’10

    Apple has approved my enrollment into the developer programme. I am now expecting the approval process for the app to complete soon.

    Update : 13th Sept ’10

    The application is complete. I am now waiting for apple to approve my enrollment into the developer program so that I can release the app on app store. In the mean time you can have a look at the screenshots below. The app will support multiple gateways and the user will select a particular account to send the text message. The app also has a update feature to download the new gateway lists. Stay tuned for the developer API to add your own gateways to the application.

    Update : 9th Sept ’10

    This is taking longer than I thought, and I have put in more features than I had planned initially. Changing ETA to 13th Sept ’10..

    Aug 26th ’10

    I am now working on the creation of a mobile phone application for Android and Iphone which will allow you to send free SMS using the PHP API which I created a month back . This is the domain I never explored before, so will take a bit longer to come up with something useful. Hopefully, I can finish it by the end of this week, so that mid of next week, I can release it here. Follow me on twitter(@kiransmile) to stay updated on the latest posts.

    This is a mobile application for iPhone 4 and Android 1.6 which will allow you to send SMS messages to India, UAE, Singapore, Kuwait etc using the free web based SMS gateways like 160by2, way2sms etc. Of course, you will need to register on the respective gateway websites to get an account, afterwhich you push in the accoutn details into the app using an easy to use interface. Afte

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