Anil Pai

Memoirs of a BBM Apps Hackathon Winner

2012-01-15T12:26:00.000+05:30

What is BBM apps Hackathon ?

Its a two day intensive and intimate program to exchange ideas, define, and build the next generation of app experiences with BBM (BlackBerry Messenger).

The hackathon started last year and covered the following cities. Waterloo, Toronto, San Francisco, Boston, Jakarta, Bangkok, Amsterdam, London UK. More info at http://bbmappshackathon.com/

BBM Apps Hackathon Bangalore - Jan 9,10 2012

Day 1: I was at Hotel Orchid by 8:30AM , and I realized I need to wait for an hour for the registrations to start. The shortlisting for the hackathon developers were done online. The applicant has to provide details on what kind of applications he/she intends to develop at the hackathon and also a paragraph describing the background of the developer in developing mobile applications.

After the registrations, all the participants got a folder containing the event agenda, a 4GB flash drive and a Parker pen. There were many sessions on getting started with BBM once in every two hours. Naresh from Research in Motion (RIM), Waterloo was the host and along with regular sessions, he even helped each one of us setup the Development environment. I somehow felt that the Blackberry environment setup was not as easy as I thought before. As a Mobile security analyst, I have worked on Android, iOS for a long time and recently I have started exploring the WP7 also but BB was completely new to me. Since it was another eclipse plugin and java development, I thought I can somehow manage.

As the day ended, I was ready with two BB6 9800 simulators running perfectly fine and it was even able to communicate with each other. It was a big relief that I can now chat between the two simulators. On reaching home, I went through the BBM SDK and the three sample demo which are provided for developers. By 2AM, I developed a simple application which can be sent to BB contacts asking to install the same on his/her phone. The recipient can chose to install the same or decline it. The error handling was also completed.

Day 2: Reached an hour late and missed the breakfast , and also a session. Now, I need to thank Bangalore traffic for this. It was a two hour drive in the car to travel 15kms. I decided that I need to build something based on the problem I faced today. Too many people using cars, too much traffic in Bangalore, and everyone has a smartphone. Oh yeah, our Bangalore Traffic Police (hitech city hitech maamas) also have Blackberry with them. I stuck with an idea and started building a basic prototype of the application.

Well, it was a Car Pooling application to pool the commuters. Blackberry makes uses of BBID concept, in which users can setup a trusted network of friends, and they can chat and interact with friends whenever they feel like. This is a nice concept, and it helps people to communicate in realtime. There are 100+ car pooling services available via the websites and none of them have been able to be helpful for commuters since it requires to login to website and then select some many options and finally nothing happens.

Carpooling (also known as Covoiturage) can be done in three ways. Let me quote what wikipedia says:

1. Slugging (form of ad-hoc, informal carpooling between strangers. No money changes hands, but a mutual benefit still exists between the driver and passengers making the practice worthwhile.)

2. Flexible Carpooling (expands the idea of ad-hoc carpooling by designating formal locations for travelers to join carpools.)

3. Realtime ridesharing (allows people to arrange ad-hoc rides on very short notice, through the use of smartphone applications or the internet. Passengers are simply picked up at their current location.)

Realtime ridesharing was what I was interested in and I felt it makes more sense. I did not have the time and energy to carry out more research on whether someone has already built any application making use of this concept, May be there exist some application which does exactly the same what I have thought or may not be. Till date, I have not found it, and if anyone else knows about such an app, please add a comment about the same.

It was lunch time and I had the entire design ready and started building the app. I was informed by Alan Wong (Playbook Developer Specialist from Hong Kong) that they are planning to have the application showcase event soon after the Lunch. None of them had completed the application by then, and they asked us to create a PowerPoint presentation containing 5-6 slides on what we are building and screenshots of the application. They were not very keen on seeing the entire application built within a day, what it mattered to them was an IDEA and how will that be an useful app using BBM.

During Lunch, I was approached by a Hindu Businessline journalist and I had to answer few questions on Blackberry event. Like the future of BBM apps, acceptance of Blackberry apps by the mobile user community in future over the already successful iOS an Android platform, and why I feel WP7 and BB are also good contenders in the mobile platform and what I feel as a TCS employee when it comes to BB app development.

There were totally 50+ people for the event, around 15 hacks registered to showcase their work on stage. Few were a team of 3-4 developers, though the rest of them were individual developers.

Car Pooling Application:

All the BB users will install this application on their phones via the Blackberry App World. The BB friends who own this application can also send you a request to install this application. Once the application is setup on all the devices, any user with the car starts the session and his GPS is tracked every 3 minutes and the exact location of the car is displayed on the map at regular intervals. The commuter who wants to pool can check how far the car is via the application and initiate the request for 'PICK UP'. All the users in the session will be notified of each other pickup points including the car driver.

The advantage of realtime ridesharing is that decisions can be made in realtime. Imagine thousands of cars getting carpooled at any point of the day, and people can choose which car to choose, which car is empty and check if there are any of their best buddies are getting pooled in that car. Or the extreme cases, think of every vehicle on this earth getting pooled. A Biker is ready for pooling, he starts the session and sets the destination, so is the Bus driver or even a lorry or a truck driver :).

I am not sure on Sachin Tendulkar (God of Cricket) scoring his 100th century but am pretty sure of petrol prices kissing 100 per liter in next four years. This carpooling approach will definitely cut down on fuel on a very large scale, also also is a way of 'going green'.

The Blackberry Messenger has been used by millions of people every day, and is a really nice application to stay in touch. This Car pooling app was integrated with the BBM so that users in the car and users who will be getting into the car in future pickup points can chat among themselves. Say, there is a traffic jam and any person in the car can send a chat to others saying, "I think we are caught in a Jam for next 45 minutes" and the commuter can take another car or spend sometime time on completing his pending work. In countries like United States, the Google Maps shown even the traffic situation on the map, using red and green lines. Unfortunately, in India we lack the same. BBM helps to achieve the same using people as the source of information.

Another concern addressed was the security during car pooling. Though BB network is considered a trusted network, over a period of time the network grows and it becomes tough to trust the people in it. Hence, commuters (specially women) may have security concerns relating to identity. To address this, the applications comes with a TRACK ME feature, and the commuter can set the destination path on the map. The GPS information of this commuter is now tracked on regular intervals and can be accessed by the commuter's parents and friends. Any deviation in the route map, an alert can be sent to the blackberry device of the traffic police of that area and further investigation can be carried out on the change of route using BBM chat with the commuter.

RIM's Hackathon theme was on building a social app using BBM platform, so I also proposed a design on sharing the Car pooling information on Facebook and Twitter. Jack, Jill and 20 others did a car pooling today and saved 5 litres of fuel. Also a route map on which they car pooled. This would bring an interest among Jack's friends in taking up Car pooling. This could also be a viral marketing methodology to promote the app.

After the tea break, the winners were announced by Alan Wong. I won the BBM Apps Hackathon. The detail of the winners and a small description was put up on Blackberry India Facebook page. (https://www.facebook.com/notes/blackberry-india/bangalore-winners-bbm-apps-hackathon-2012/10150485176029032).

All the developers who submitted the hack will be getting a Blackberry 7 device. The Three winners will be getting a Blackberry Playbook. I have no idea on what configuration is that Blackberry 7 device and Playbook. The RIM had logistics issue as they did not have a office in India, and I was told it will be shipped from Canada to my home address. I have been waiting for the same now :)

The event was a big hit. Just the perfect crowd for the event. Unlike the Yahoo Hack Days, where they invite 400 developers and arrange the hotel for 200 people and everything goes for a mess. The Hotel management folks and the event management folks at the reception were extremely helpful on both the days. Big thanks to RIM developers, Naresh and Alan Wong for all the help. Overall a great event and I am looking forward for more hacking on BBM platform in future. Till then, let me complete this Carpooling application with proper testing and launch it on the BB app world. :)

Scripting = Fun !

2011-12-14T17:17:00.000+05:30

Couple of months ago, my project manager made it compulsory for all team members to enter login and logout information in an internal portal . This was a direct impact of few people not timing 9 hours a day.

I do welcome such initiatives put sometimes it becomes tough to login in the morning before 9AM due to traffic issues for someone like me travelling 50 kms (5 hours) a day (includes both ways). The solution to this problem was an automated script.

Windows PowerShell scripting is so much fun. Though I have never used this before, I got hold of the clean documentation from the Microsoft site and wrote a simple VBS (Visual Basic Script) in less than an hour.

As I cannot disclose the actual portal link of our company, I would be taking Facebook as an example to demonstrate the code.

set wshshell = wscript.CreateObject("wscript.shell")

wshshell.run "iexplore.exe"

wscript.sleep 4000

wshshell.AppActivate "Internet Explorer"

WshShell.SendKeys "{F6}"

WshShell.Sendkeys "http://www.facebook.com/"

WshShell.Sendkeys "{ENTER}"

wscript.sleep 3000

WshShell.Sendkeys "username_here"

WshShell.Sendkeys "{TAB}"

WshShell.Sendkeys "password_here"

WshShell.Sendkeys "{ENTER}"

wscript.sleep 5000

WshShell.Sendkeys "%{F4}"

WshShell.Popup ("Task Completed !")

Open Notepad and save this code as attendance.vbs , and place the file in any location on your PC. Now, you need to make this script run twice a day, once at 9AM and again at 6PM and also this should not work on weekends :)

Windows Task Scheduler is one of those traditional schedulers which comes with Windows Operating System.

As shown above, you will need to create a basic task, and then load the script to run as required.

For more customization, please refer to the docs on Windows PowerShell Programming under the category: WshShell

There are chances that you will be caught if you login and logout everyday at same time, because it is practically impossible for any human being to be so perfect in life :) You can think of using regular expressions with random functions to make the login and logout in a specified duration of time. For example, login can be like 09:[00-15]:[00-59] , hence the login timestamp will look random. If you have time, please give it a try and let me know.

Yahoo Hack Day Bangalore 2011

2011-09-22T22:30:00.002+05:30

Hack #167

Face the Music : http://developer.yahoo.com/hacku/show/2011/jul/openhackindia

Hackers Hudguru: Myself, Nitin Rao, HariKrishna, Senthil Kumar

After catching up the running train on Friday night @ Chennai, I was in Bangalore on a beautiful Saturday morning to participate in the OpenHackIndia for the 3rd time. Wonderful morning meeting up so many friends after such a long time, and so many things to discuss, we kicked started off with brainstorming hack ideas.

Wi-Fi issues lasted for 5-6hrs and we decided to come up with a simple yet funny-cool application. As a 4 member team, we were able to finish this within 6 hrs and relaxed. I named it "Face the Music".

This application would take a pic of the person's face and making use of the Face API, it would categorize the expression under various moods. These moods were categorized as Happy, Sad, Angry, Blushing, Gloomy etc. Depending on the mood, the app would fetch the appropriate music for the mood from the music server which was setup by our team and played the music.

The application was demoed to Shouvick Mukherjee, VP & CEO Yahoo India R&D . He was not impressed with our idea, as we had used a readily available API for facial mood detection and moreover it was built as desktop application instead of a mobile application. We understood our mistakes and his inputs were really helpful.

Out of the 178 hacks, Top 50 of them made it to the next round and 9 winners were announced in different categories. It was a great event, and am already waiting for the next hack day. Hope to see you there next time.

Winners List : http://www.ginktage.com/2010/07/yahoo-open-hack-india-2010-winners/

Getting Started with Business Objects XI

2010-11-13T21:38:00.004+05:30

There has been lot of companies these days providing Business Intelligence tools in the market, SAS, SAP Business Objects, IBM Cognos, Microstrategy being the major ones. Now the reason for this blog is to help those who want to install the SAP BOXI on their personal laptops to experiment various cool stuffs :)

Installing the SAP BO XI on your laptop:

Step 1) Download the BO XI Edge Series one month trail version from the following site (http://bit.ly/9CHjMv). Remember the BO XI Enterprise and Edge Series doesn't have much differences to offer for a beginner.

Step 2) Install the BO XI , which you just downloaded in 5 pieces (totalling around 4.3GB) . The installation is quite simple and yeah, its always better to select Advanced/Custom Installation than the regular Express installation for simple reason which you will notice if you have tried both :-) Btw, remember to download these 2 books before installation, so that you dont screw up the installation. (SAP BusinessObjects Edge Series 3.1 Installation Guide for Windows + SAP BusinessObjects Edge Series 3.1 Getting Started Guide ). These books are shown once you start the download of BOXI, so you need not worry where to find that now.

Step 3) During the installation, you would have given the username and password for various modules like CMC (Central Management Console) same for Universe Designer and Infoview, and also Database. Remember the BOXI comes with MySql with it, so if you already have Oracle Database Server on the system, you can use the same during installation and avoid MySQL. Not a major difference for beginners but the syntax of SQL is slightly different.

Step 4) Normally after opening the CMC, you have to login. Remember the username here is 'administrator' and the password is what you specified during installation. After you login you can always change the password, and moreover also create users , edit and modify the privileges for the same. AFAIK, users can be created under the domain like LDAP, Enterprise, Windows NT etc, for detailed information on these, you can refer the two manuals I specified earlier.

Step 5) You can open the universe designer and start building your own universe :) I know its not so easy as it sounds but yeah, a beginner can always use the legacy universes which comes with the package namely 'eFashion' and 'Island Resorts Marketing' , to pull out the required tables from it and feel proud in creating a small universe of their own. After this point, you might be wondering about loops, context, fan traps, chasms etc, something which I wont be explaining in the current post.

Step 6) Finally open the Infoview(aka Web Intelligence) and start building simple reports, similarly try out Desktop Intelligence, WebI Rich Client etc .

I would be coming up with some interesting blogs on Universe Designer, Web Intelligence and CMC in the days to come, till then keep the comments rolling :-)

Yahoo Open Hack Bengaluru 2010

2010-08-15T23:05:00.004+05:30

The Yahoo Open Hack 2010 edition was held on 24,25 of Jul 2010. It was unlike the early mornings when I wake up and rush to work busy catching buses and hunting for the seats to rest. I felt the same enthuse I had when I was a student and after catching up with my PU friends from PES, moved towards Taj Residency. I was super pleased to see all my old friends, with their laptops getting ready for the hack. Christian Heilmann was on stage to hit the timer 23:59:59 and thus the Hack day begins.

After some brainstorming session, Nitin and myself planned to develop a Augmented reality application using Adobe Flex IDE. The sessions kept on rolling, like Paypal API, Nokia API etc and nobody seemed to listen to these as everyone was busy discussing and coding for the event.

The event witnessed a whooping 472 hackers (who r supposed to stay the entire 2 days at Taj and build a hack) and 106 Info geeks (who just attend the sessions on Day 1 and leave the place). The lunch was good and so was the dinner, and the hack continued and hack was in the progress. There were few media people around to interview a 12th class boy , whom I later got to know was Vikas, the entreprenuer of a company and had started his company when he was just 16, and another guy from Hyderabad from 3rd yr engineering, who owns a web domain startup with some 100+ clients around the world. It was great experience to spend time with such young turks at the event.

The hacking continued as there is 'No sleeeping' on hack nights and just coding and some pepsi/coffee. The application was completed by morning 6AM and we relaxed for some time on the bean bags. Around 11AM, we registered our hack on the Yahoo Developer site and were waiting to demo the hack.

There were 140 hacks in total. The list is here. Our app was called Boss Matrix (Number 104 in the list, or Number 16 to demo the app on stage). The time allocated was 120 seconds to demo the complete hack to the judges from London.

Hack O 'Mania , was the name of our 2-member team, and application is quite complex to explain to someone in a period of 120 seconds , and hence we dint win the prize. Most of them asked what exactly it is, and the explanation is something like this.

We call it BOSS Matrix.. in short, its Augmented Reality application of content moderation and authentication, using PaperVision3D, Yahoo BOSS API and our own customized Video API.. well, what it does is like an AR code pattern is generated ...on a card and given to different users... It can also be used as parental control , in case of a child .. when the child searches for something on internet the webcam starts and the child has to shown the card containing the pattern, and the app recognizes what the pattern is, as each pattern is unique in the world. (this is the concept of computer vision and object recognition) .. If the search is based on the explicit content, no data is retrieved.. If not, the 3D cube loads ... One cube containing 6 image results keeps rotating in space , another cube contains the videos.... Now we used the motion tracker API, tat is if the user wants to move to the NEXT 6 set of images or videos, the user has to wave his hand to the left, and so on... If he needs PREVIOUS 6, then he must wave his hand to the right in front of the webcam.... :-) We failed to demo the motion tracker in the 90 sec period and video took a lot of time to load due to bandwidth problems as IPV6 was disabled on the Day 2 :P

Overall it was a great event once again, like the previous hack day and a nice experience to be a part of such an event. Hoping to come up with some more interesting ideas and hacks for the next hack day.

Online Hard Disk - Sky Drive Explorer !

2009-11-11T22:20:00.008+05:30

1)Working on a important MS Office( Word/Excel/Ppt) file and you save it , the next day you see tat your Hard disk has crashed !!!

2) You are being recruited by a top MNC and you have offer letter downloaded, and at the last minute you realize the file is missing !!

3) Went on a outing with friends or family, and took lots of pics . After few months, there is OS crash and you realize that all the pictures captured in last 5 years were in Drive C: !!

If you meet any such circumstances in your life, you are experiencing NIGHTMARES !!!

The solution to such a problem is Skydrive Explorer !! Its a free, easy-to-use and a very powerful extension for Windows Explorer. With SkyDrive Explorer you can make any every-day operations with your documents from Microsoft Live SkyDrive™ service using Windows Explorer, as if they were on your computer.

Moreover you don't need to install and configure any additional programs or ActiveX components. SkyDrive Explorer will organize the interaction with the online storage itself.

You can download the free Skydrive Explorer and later install it on your system. View screenshots of SkyDrive Explorer here. You can drag-and-drop the files into the SkyDrive Explorer like you are doing with the local HDD.

Remember, all you need to have is a Live Id to save the files in the online SkyDrive which offers 25GB storage. In case you want more capacity, then you can use multiple Live Ids.

Google Tech User Group Meet (GTUG-2)

2009-11-11T21:32:00.010+05:30

It was on saturday Nov 7, 2009 when I reached the Google office @ RMZ Infinity , Bangalore. The first session was almost at the end when I reached . Thanks to rains.The initial talk was on Intro to Google App engine, which I almost missed. Later followed the talk on Google Chrome extensions, Google App Scripts, App engine with java using Eclipse IDE.

The lunch was very good and the event concluded with the talk on Google Android apps, which was quite boring... Really made me feel sleepy :-)

Overall the event was a big hit, and we had a nice time taking pics at the office and it was time to return back.

Should have stayed back in home instead of attending the Win7 party launch at the evening which sucked big time. I dont understand what was the purpose of such an event :(

If you are wondering what happened on GTUG-1 which was a inaugural meet, then well I missed it coz I went to attend MoMo @ IIM, which was another mistake :-)

If you are a big fan of Google, and love developing on Google platform then this group is for you. Sessions on Google Wave and more Cloud Computing stuff to follow in the future sessions. Hope to see you there.

To know more about the event, follow #blrgtug on twitter.

Getting Started with iPod Touch !

2009-10-23T21:05:00.006+05:30

Its been a long time since I thought of buying a new music player after my Sandisk Sansa Express stopped working, within 3 months of purchase and I had no other option left than throwing it into dust bin. The credit goes to Sandisk customer care & retail centre.

Apple has always impressed me with their cool iPod collection. On 09/09/09 , the price of iPods were slashed and I had all eyes on iPod Touch 8GB priced $199 (!=12.4k in India) !

Step 1 was to get the iPod touch , from a Apple store in US and step 2 was to convert this device into a wonder gadget ( without jailbreaking).

Step 3 : iTunes !! -> Apple never gives you a CD/DVD containing the iTunes Software, so you need to download the 80MB file from apple site. (Better also download the QuickTime Player).

Step 4: Creating an Apple ID, which is an easy task but it has to be created in the right way.!! ?? If you wondering what I meant, then you need to have a look at this.

If you are trying to download even a FREE app from Apple AppStore then the first thing it will ask you will be "Apple Account Review" and which will ultimately lead you to enter the credit card information. Something which you should NEVER do.

There is a hidden technique Creating a apple app store account without credit card. Do follow this technique.

Step 5: Once you are done with the above steps, its time to add music, videos and millions of FREE apps :-) (If you are rich, also try PAID apps )

Step 6: Adding music is very straightforward, just click File->add files/folders and add all the music files you need.

Adding videos requires some conversion in terms of frame size and format. So, download the Any Video Convertor and convert all the video files to .mp4 mobile format, which is set by default.

After conversion, which will take some time you can transfer/import all the videos just like you transferred the music files.

Step 7: Its time for apps ! Go to appstore using the apple ID you had created in the Step 4 and download all the FREE apps you need. I will list some cool FREE apps at the end of this blog post.
have a look at it.

Step 8: Once the downloads are complete, plug the iPod touch 8GB and sync everthing, and also set the iTunes to sync with the iPod everytime it is connected via USB.

Some Cool FREE Apps:

Action Bowling
Beer Pong
Bounce On Lite
Checkers
Chess
Facebook
Fastlane street Ferrari GT evolution
Fileaid Finger Traffic navigator
Flick Cricket
Fling (Free)
Fring Fuzzle
Free Google Mobile
Guitar Rock
Horseshoes Pro
Hydrotilt: Lite
Hangman
Homerun Battle 3D lite
Hoopster Basketball Lite
iBowl
iFling
Indoor Squash
ipark It ! Lite
Liquid Lite
Mancala
Mortal Combat
Paper Toss
Ragdoll Blaster Lite
Real FootBall 2010
Skype Slapstar lite
Slingshot Cow
Smack it Solitaire!
Spin the Bottle
Stanza
Streetball Lite
Tap Tap Revenge
Tic tac Toe
TightWire Lite
Touch Cricket
Touch Hockey
Touch4
Tower Bloxx
Twitterriffic
Unblock Me Free
Virtual Pool Lite
Wolfenstein 3D
World Cup TableTennis Lite
3D Brick Breaker Revolution

Shiretoko Shock, 1 Billion downloads, Extend Firefox 3.5 contest !!

2009-07-03T23:08:00.005+05:30

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 was out a month ago and soon following that witnessed One billion Firefox downloads ! The students and open source communities around the world celebrated the Download Party of Firefox 3.5 (code-named Shiretoko) as Shiretoko Shock on June 30th 2009 @ 3:50 PM local time.

It was just a week ago when I heard that Firefox has finally hit 1 Billion downloads. It was an amazing news !!! :-) In case if you are wondering how much is one billion then I would say-

*A bowl big enough to fit one billion goldfish would be as big as a stadium.
*One billion stacked coins would reach nearly 1,000 miles high.
*One billion centimeters is approximately the distance from Chicago to Tokyo.
*One billion seconds is roughly 31.7 years.
*One billion kilograms is equal to the weight of 250,000 elephants.
*One billion credit cards weigh as much as fifty-two blue whales.

Well....... In case you want to show support for "1 billion Firefox downloads" and add a twibbon to your twitter profile image, check out http://twibbon.com/join/1-billion-Firefox-downloads. I already got that on my twitter profile :-) Looks cooooool..

In case if you are wondering to create a cool addon for firefox 3.5, then here is an awesome opportunity. Extend Firefox 3.5 is a developer contest to encourage development and innovation in Web experience through add-ons to Firefox 3.5.

This edition of the Extend Firefox contest began June 16th, 2009 and entries will be accepted until October 2nd, 2009.

There are lots of prizes to win and here are some categories.

*Best New Add-on
*Best Updated Add-on
*Best Shopping Add-on
*Best Game & Entertainment Add-on

Prizes include:

* MacBook Pro laptops
* Killer software from vendors like Sofa, Macromates & ExpanDrive
* Books from Manning and InformIT

and a general prize in which all contestants receive a 50% off ebook coupon from Manning publications and InformIT for book purchases on their sites, which means every contestent wins !!

All the Contest Details like How to Enter the Contest, Ideas, Developer Resources, Official Rules, Judges, FAQ etc are available at http://labs.mozilla.com/contests/extendfirefox3.5

Now get started to wining !! :-)

Integrate your Live ID with Gmail account !

2009-06-27T19:24:00.003+05:30

Its been a long time since I deployed a Hotmail server at my college, and have made most of the students switch to Hotmail to get updates from college .

Few of my friends were not that happy to switch to Live ID since they have been using Gmail ID for ages now. So, this article is for those to configure GMail so as to send and receive LIVE ID mails from their Gmail account.

This tutorial applies not only to domain @dr-ait.org but to all LIVE domains like @hotmail.com, @msn.com or @live.com etc.

Enabling Hotmail from Gmail

First go into your Gmail account and select Settings then click on the Accounts tab, now click on "Add a mail account you own".

In the next screen enter in the Hotmail or Live address into the Address field then click on Next Step.

In the next section we need to enter in the proper settings so the connections work. Enter in your username and password for your Windows Live account. Make sure the following settings are correct.

POP Server: pop3.live.com
Port: 995
Check Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail

You can also select leaving a copy on the server and archive incoming messages, these settings are per your preference and will not affect the connection. When everything looks correct click on Add Account.

Note: If you want to leave your messages in your Hotmail account, make sure to select the option for "Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server".
Next check "Yes, I want to be able to send mail as…" This will allow you to send email as your Hotmail or Live account then click Next Step.

Now you can verify or edit the name on the email or if you'd like replies to be delivered to another account enter in a different Reply-to address.

Finally Gmail will send a verification to your Hotmail or Live account.

Once you get the verification code enter it and click the Verify button and your done!

To send an email using your Hotmail account, just use the "From" drop-down when composing a new message.

Now you can Send and Receive your Hotmail in your Gmail Account!

Courtesy: howtogeek.com

Day 4: GIDS.workshop

2009-05-07T00:19:00.003+05:30

The last day of GIDS.workshop was composed of long hours of workshops.

08:00AM Introduction to Oslo By Stephen Forte

It was a nice session.I dint understand much of it, but senthil was working on it a lot with his laptop :P

10:45AM Synthsizing Data from the web By Jon Aizen

AWESOME !! THIS was the session I wanted to attend. I had developed a decent hack @ yahoohackdayindia and well, this particular workshop was what I had actually needed before, in order to win that event. :-) He started from scratch, and went on to explain the process of building cool Mashups step by step. DAPPER is the site you need to develop Mashups. The tools available are pretty easy to use. He also built a nice mashup using the Yahoo babelfish !. Liked it very much.. :-)

01:15PM Lunch

Lunch was indeed 'the best' thing on the last day. Loved it !! :P

01:45PM Test Driven Development in .NET By Venkat Subramanian

Must say,the session was quite interesting. I understood some real testing powers in Visual Studio 2008. The workshop was also good and worth it ! :P

04:15PM Coffee & Refreshments

A coffee and two biscuits :-)

04:30PM Developer De-stress Techniques By Manipal Hospital

The Manipal doctor really scared me to the core with his ppt.Well, the result was me joining the GYM the very next day. :P

05:00PM Cyrus Broacha Awards Evening By Cyrus Broacha :-)

I had a nice time laughing at his jokes. But he really annoyed some of the awardees on stage. Ha ha :-) Jokes on politicians are fine, but it doesnt go down well with some people when it comes to someone like Sachin Tendulkar ,:( Besides,a small personality contest was also arranged and the partcipants were given some tasks to perform on stage. It was good entertainment :-)

While collecting the T-shirt, I was disappointed to see that there were no lucky winners for the day and no blog winners :( I was told that the results would be announced on May 8 :-) I am hoping that I win something (fingers crossed)

Overall, the event was a BIG Hit !! I liked it immensely :-) Waiting for GIDS-2010 now :P

Day 2: GIDS.web

2009-04-24T20:28:00.004+05:30

After a superb day @ GIDS.net, it was time for some Web O Mania. :-) As a responsible citizen, I rushed to the polling booth in the morning to cast my vote and was on time @ IISc hoping for some good events.

11:00AM Unravelling the new in Microsoft Silverlight 3
By Nahas Mohammed

The session started off with Roadmap of Silverlight, and release of Silverlight 3 in the mid march @ MIX. The talk consisted of High Video and Audio empowering rich experiences, improving RIA productivity, out of the browser capabilities, design tooling in applications. The Silverlight capabilties like smooth streaming, full screen HD playback, more format choices, empowering rich experiences and IIS Media services.

The cool demo on Yahoo Japan was Awesome ! :-) Did you know sites like Hard Rock Memorabilia, Playboy , and IPL work on Silverlight technology ?!! :-o

12:00PM Deep Dive - Microsoft Silverlight Pipelines
By Pandurang Nayak

I was expecting Pandurang nayak for this session as per schedule, but it was some other guy from Microsoft. Since it was deep dive, it was more and more of talk and no demos. Overall the session was good, and liked it!

12:50PM Lunch

It was time for Pet Pooja, and I was surprised :-o There were NO queues like anacondas, and the Lunch was superb.I kept on eating and eating till I finished the entire thing.. :-) Ha ha

13:30PM Technical Keynote - Adobe India

It was the same guy, Ananth of Adobe. I had been to Adobe Boot Camp last yr, and the keynote was much the same. He talked on RIA , AIR etc.

14:00PM Crystal Reports for Web Developers
By Vijay Naig

There was no better option for me to skip this session. It was same guy Vijay, who talked on crystal reports on Day 1 for .Net talking on crystal reports for web on Day 2. Thanks to Saranya Sriram (the one who delivered talk on Microsoft Azure Platform on Day 1) for helping me understand the basics of it.. :-)

14:40PM Functional Mashups - Building Desktop Applications in Plug-n-Play Fashion
By Jon Aizen

Jon Aizen is the founder and CEO of Dapper, and his talk consisted mostly of Web 2.0, and some cool Mashups. Since I myself had delivered lots of sessions on MAshups(Microsoft Popfly) @ Microsoft couple of times and Web 2.0 ,it was still a lot of learning for me. Overall, he simbly rocked! :P

15:40PM How to Maximize your Business with Sony Ericsson
By Jens Aizen

The talk was mostly on Sony Ericsson gadgets and the one who won taught Rajnikanth's style to him, won a Ericsson phone ! woah !! The guy who submitted a nice idea for developing a cool software at the stall won another Ericsson !

16:10PM Coffee

A coffee and just one biscuit again :-)

16:20PM Building Rich UI using ASP.NET AJAX, Ajax Control Toolkit & jQuery
By Harish Ranganathan

How can I miss Harish session ? I went running searching for SD Hall, and was on time to catch a nice seat in the front. The talk was mostly on Adobe Flex Illustrator and also Flex builder. He has brought a Apple Mac to demo, it was cooool ! :-)

17:20PM Reusable Components for Building Killer RIAs
By Anirudh Sasikumar

When we decided to move to Main hall, I saw some guys showing IBM bags, t-shirts and calling them Goodies for the next event. Since the turnout was very low, we decided to stay back. The talk was mostly on IBM history, and stress management :-) A recorded podcast from respected Sadagoppan , IIIT. I had previously been to his conference during the Microsoft Imagine Cup National finals last year. After some more slides from country manager, the Quiz begun. It was all about shouting the answers for questions thrown on DeveloperWorks platform. Few people who have worked on those tools could answer them.

Around 18:15PM , all session were done and I was happy to see my name under blogging winners :-) The first prize was a 3 day all expense paid trip to Singapore :-0 OMG !! The second prize was a cool HP wireless Mouse, and It was Me :-) Thanks to Poonam Sharma, associate director for Saltmarch media. :-)

Day 3: It was GIDS.java and I heard it was also a great hit ! Couldnt make it to the event due to my final year project review at college.:(

The ppts, videos of all sessions are available for download. I will be putting up the links after the end of the summit, and some video links which you MUST WATCH. Do watch out !

Day 4: Am game for GIDS.Wokshop ! :-) I dont think you wanna miss out on Cyrus Broacha Show :-) Hoping for a more bigger and greater day @ the last day of The Great Indian Developer Summmit. Lots of Session to attend, lots of notes to make and lots of prizes to win.

If you missed out on the event , watch out for a mega GIDS post on Saturday night !!!

Day 1: GIDS.net

2009-04-23T01:38:00.007+05:30

On my way to IISc, I saw GIDS posters everywhere on the road. I was very happy when I reached the Help Desk and got my goodie bag containing all the event details. Looking at the stalls, I moved into the Main Hall.

Since there was more than half an hour for the event to start , I started networking with few developers out there.

There were 4 sessions running in parallel, like one in Main Hall, SD Hall, Hall 1 & Hall 2.
The following are the sessions I attended:

9:30AM Building RESTful applications with Microsoft Tools.
By Stephen Forte

"Alright" ... Stefan started off his talk on using Northwind Database as RESTful services.He explained some of the formats like Resource based, standard HTML, XML, JSON etc and stuff. With a glimpse of VS 2008 SP1 and its kinds like Entity Framework, ADO.net services etc he moved over to few demos. Overall, the session was quite interesting. Thanks to Stephen for making it all the way to Bengaluru from New York.

10:40AM Visual Studio Tips N Tricks
By Bijoy Singhal

It was one of the best sessions @ GIDS.net . The session included Productive coding and Debugging. Some of the tips and tricks included Add/Remove usings, class view, class diagram, paired braces, reset window layout, find all references, incremental search, smart tags, vertical select and also conditional breakpoints, call stack, immediate window, command window etc.

This ppt is worth a download. Its better you also download the video of this session. For more info on Tips and Tricks, refer http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford

11:40AM Next Generation ALM Tools from Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2010
By Amit Chatterjee

He is the General Manager of Microsoft VS 2010 team system, and his talk included some cool demos on VS 2010 enhancements. All he wanted was 'applause' after every "NO MORE NO ____ ". The dashes can be anything... :-) It was hilarious... LOL :P

12:20PM Intro to Cloud Computing and Windows Azure
By Saranya Sriram

The hall was jam packed when I entered. But since the session was getting hotter and hotter, I dint mind standing during the entire session. The Azure Architecture was shown couple of times and talk continued on Cloud Computing. The session ended with some nice demo.

01:10PM Lunch

There was a huge queue resembling anacondas, and poor service from the caterers. When asked they claimed to be from "Chancery Pavilion" :-o ..The food was good, specially the gulab jamoon. :-)

02:00PM ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap
By Harish Ranganathan

SD Hall was quite away from the actual building. When I reached, It had just started. The session was good, which included talks on ASP.NET 4.0 , MVC, jQuery, AJAX and stuff. The new look of VS 2010 , some improved Intellisense were something worth a watch.

03:00PM Crystal Reports for .NET Developers
By Vijay Nag

By the time we reached the Main hall frm SD Hall, the session had moved a long way. Lot of attendees were at the main hall. Instead of listening to the talk, I moved on to visit all the stalls and get the stamp on the sheet for getting eligibilty for a lucky draw. Meanwhile, collected lots of resource CDs and brouchures. :-)

03:40PM Software + Services: The Convergence of SaaS,SOA and Web 2.0
By Sachin Vinod Rathi

This session included some cool demos. He also talked about Photosynth, Skydrive, Live ids and other Live and Azure services. Totally, it was a good one :-)

04:30PM Coffee & Refreshments

Just a cup of Coffee and a biscuit :-)

04:50PM Programming Microsoft's Live Mesh
By Jatin Kakkar

The session started with talk on Live Mesh services, followed by couple of cool demos. There was some problem with the Projector and Wi-Fi throughout the session, but still Jatin rocked !!

At around 6, the names of lucky winners were put up on the notice board was happy to win a Software Testing book by WROX publications. It was drizzling, but still managed to reach home by 7.

GIDS.web , here I come !

The Great Indian Developer Summit (GIDS) is back !

2009-04-21T22:22:00.003+05:30

The GIDS 2009 is back, and it will be held on April 22nd to April 25th @ IISc, Bangalore. The Technical tracks include .NET, Web, Java, Cobol .

This event was a huge success last year with 3000+ attendees and 30+ sponsors. Since it was in the second month of May, and my exams were just a few days to start I couldnt make it to the event.

This year, I was among the early birds to register for GIDS.:-) I will be attending GIDS.net and GIDS.web. The following are the sessions lined up.

22nd April 2009: GIDS.net

Building Secure Web Services using WCF
5 Hidden Gems in SQL Server
Developing for Astoria
ASP.NET 4.0
Introduction to Cloud Computing
Azure Services Platform
Visual Studio 2008 Tips and Tricks
Programming Live Mesh
Understanding ASP.NET under the hood

23rd April 2009: GIDS.web

Re-architecting the Web with HTML 5 Communication
21st Century RIAs: Using HTML 5 Communication
Agile Web Development with Grails
A Two-Pronged Approach to Debugging AJAX
What If the Web Were a Database?
Functional Mashups: Building Desktop Applications in Plug-n-Play Fashion

24th April 2009 will be GIDS.java , followed by GIDS.cobol (which includes workshops followed by Cyrus Broacha Show in the evening). The schedule of these days are available here.

The event has some of the greatest speakers like Vinod Kumar , whom I have met in the Microsoft Boot Camp, Apr 08 and Acad Dev Con , Mar 09. Raghunath Rao Thricovil & Harish Sivaramakrishnan , from Adobe who rocked the Adobe Boot camp , Oct 08 and Yahoo Hack Day, Feb 09 with the "90 sec to fame" hack. The entire list of speakers can be found here.

See to it tat you register @ www.developersummit.com for a "No-Ceremony-All-Essence Workshop" . Hope to see you there. Lets Rock ! :-)

Student-Partners gets Silverlight !

2009-04-16T20:52:00.004+05:30

Microsoft Student Partner program information and the Bio of all the MSPs around the world are available in the Student Partners Page.

The site got a new Silverlight look, last week with Deep Zoom Project deployed with Microsoft Student Partners around the world in it.

Do check out this project !

1) See to it you have Silverlight installed on your computer. If not, you can download tat 1MB/4MB file from Silverlight website.

2) Go to www.student-partners.com and click on PhotoChain

3) Now click on South Asia in the map at the right and then zoom the first pic at the top left.

You can create your own deepzoom project just like this, by downloading the DeepZoom Composer.

Me @ Thoughtworks

2009-04-14T17:52:00.004+05:30

Thoughtworks @ Diamond District was the venue for couple of events I attended in the last few months. The first one was the Geeks Night and the next was the Developer Camp 2.

30th Jan 09:

After a nice time @ Yahoo Glue Party, I headed towards Thoughtworks for a couple of sessions, XP design and security issues on web. The attendees were basically geeks like my own friends Lakshman and Samartha :-) Its it was OHT(OverHeadTransmisson) for me, I thought of networking with attendees there.

It was a tiry day, and also my session was scheduled for the weekend @ Microsoft. It was fun :-)

11th Apr 09:

It was Dev Camp 2 , #dcb2 .. Ajay and I were at the venue by 10AM and after tat we were busy deciding which session to attend since 3 sessions were running in parallel like the Bar Camp model. The room names were quite funny ... Nalanda, Guru Cool, Newtons Bath Tub.. LOL :-)

The first session we attended was on 'Securing PHP apps'. The session was quite at a very basic level, not many attendees bcoz majority poured into "Sahi" which was about automating scripts. The talk was on hosting issues, and vulnerabilities of PHP , some tips on securing them and all that .htaccess everytime :-)

The second session was on "Ext4 File system" , this had lot of slides to show. The new things in ext4, and things to ponder. The discussion went on regarding the topic, and I started twittering and Facebooking :-)

The third session was on "Coding Augmented Reality". This session was an awesome session. I wont be talking more bout this now. U can expect a blog plot on this topic soon. :-)

It was lunch time, and was happy to see co-MSPs Sneha, Soumya there. The lunch was sucking, but drank lot of Real juice to fill my stomach :-)

The fourth session was on "Open Source Licensing". As I was curious from a long time to know what this is all about. The guy wearing an Open source T-shirt started off with booting Gentoo OS, after failing a million times and looking at my Live@edu bag , he decided to continue the talk with GPL,LGPL,BSD,Shared source, Proprietary license, Proprietary closed source etc. The session concluded with Dual license and Triple License.

The fifth session and the last one we attended was on "Game Engine". This was quite fascinating as we all love games. The talk contained various types of games, from the PAC MAN game to Crysis :-)

After that, we left for BMSCE for Utsav fest. Met few frens there , watched Fashion Show and Mad Acts and back home :-)

Yahoo Purple Army Meet

2009-04-14T17:03:00.004+05:30

Yahoo were at my campus in October 2008 last year for talk on Yahoo Glue and also Santosh Pai had given me lot of good feedbacks about the Halloween Party. :-) With all this I was waiting for the next meet.It was held on 30th Jan 09, Santosh and I were at the Vittal Mallya Towers hoping for a gr8 time.

The event was hosted by Bhumika, and attendees were from various colleges of Bangalore. I had gone there hoping for a session on creating better Yahoo Glue Pages, which are basically Mashups. But the meet was not what I thought it was.

Initially it started off with introduction of every member of the Army and humming songs. I soon realized that RED was the dress code for the event, but I was in white... LOL :-)

The meet continued with playing a game , in which a sheet is put up on ur back of every person and he/she need to ask questions with his partner and guess the right personality. I was 'Justin Timberlake' .. Ha Ha.. and my partner 'Aishwarya Rai' ... big LOL !!

It was big fun @ Yahoo tat evening , the snacks arrived and we had a nice time chatting with each other. The meet concluded with prizes to the members who had created interesting glue pages, maximum glue pages , innovative pages etc in the last 4 months.

Acad Dev Con , Bangalore

2009-03-26T19:06:00.005+05:30

Microsoft and INetA(International dotNet Association) has been sponsoring for the ACAD DEV CON (ACADamic DEVeloper CONference) which is conducted by MSPs(Microsoft Students Partners) around the world.

Being myself the MSP for more than a year now, I have helped BDNS(Bangalore DotNet Student) club organise this event couple of times now.

29th March 2008:

This was the mega event, and I had a hard time campaigning not only in my college but also in colleges in Bidadi :( I was new MSP , and since the entry tickets were FREE, it was not that hard to empty the 100 tickets given :-) :-) My seniors did a great job arranging for the event. Thanks to End2End for the setup.. :-) The event saw 900 attendees from colleges around Bangalore.

The Schedule :
Visual Studio 2008 Launch, Talk on Visual Studio by Onkar Bhat, Microsoft Silverlight by Sunil Mallya, XNA Game Studio by Sattvik Chakravarthy and Quiz by Raveesh Mayya.

28th March 2009:

After a great event last year, ACAD DEV CON 09 was held on another 'Earth Hour' day. With around 1200 attendees, the event witnessed some major personalities of Microsoft including Pratima, Md.Reza, D Jadeja, Praveen etc. Few Students from Dharwad and other cities also made it to the event.

The Schedule:
Keynote by Pratima, Win7 by Reza, Office07 Tricks by Praveen,Win Embedded by Jadeja.
MSP sessions included OS Virtualization by Samartha, Silverlight by Sneha, Songsmith by Sattvik, Robotics Studio by Laksman, DeepZoom by Abhishek, Popfly by Me :-)

The event concluded with Quiz Master Raveesh asking few Qs to the attendees :-) BTW, We also had a Rock band performance from Onkar Bhat and his team... :-) :-) It was rocking :-)

All India Microsoft Boot Camp 2

2009-03-23T16:24:00.013+05:30

Microsoft All India Boot Camp was on from March 6-8 2009 @ Microsoft IDC, Hyderabad.Since the new MSPs were selected in October last year, it was time for them to meet up.

Though this camp was only for new MSPs, I got a special invite from Microsoft to attend the meet just a week before the event. Since Laksman and Raveesh had also got the invite, we all left in Airavath to Hyderabad.

Day 1: 6th March 2009

We reached Bus stand @ 8AM and were making plans for the day. Was quite happy to see Pulock waiting for us at the bus stand, and news bout Bangalore and Chennai MSPs reunion @ Kacheguda.They left for Charminar and we left for Hussain Sagar Lake.

Before entering the lake, we had a nice costly breakfast nearby, and it was time to relax. By 10AM, we left for Boating, and reached the Island of the Buddha Statue. Amazed by the historical facts, we returned to the boat.After chit chatting, we decided to leave for the Snow World, where we were supposed to reunite with the rest of them.

By 12, we all entered the Snow World and had a really nice time enjoying there. This was followed by Scary World and Wild Forest, which were quite dumb.:-)

By 2, we halted at Kamat Hotel and had a nice lunch, and reached Ella Suites ,our Guest House by 4PM. After getting into rooms, we had very less time to get fresh and were back in the Bus to IDC by 5 !

It was a great moment to enter the dream campus, the MS-IDC. The Interns test for juniors was about to begin and we moved out of the room soon after the Keynote by Pratima.

The Mad Ads was organized and 4 teams were made. There were No winners , unlike the last time. But our team , ' The Vista Bums' won the LifeTime Achievement award !! :-) ha ha

It was time for dinner, and we had a nice time networking with MSPs of India. As all Bangalore MSPs decided walking back to guest house, but Sneha, Lakshman and I were planning for
Sahithya's Birthday and later rushed in a auto to nearby place and got the cake ! It was a surprise party and after tat we did watch a movie "Yes Man". :-) Big LOL at tat movie...

It was fun until i saw 5 missed calls on my phone @ 1AM . I called back, and got to know that my best friend's dad passed out due to heart attack. It was very shocking, and was awake almost the whole night :(

Day 2: 7th March 2009

By 6AM , I got up hoping for good sessions @ IDC. We were all in the bus by 8AM and reached IDC for a nice breakfast.

The sessions were quite interesting. Some of them were on SQL Server 08, Windows Mobile, Web Security etc. I liked the Twitter app on mobile as well as the security measures on web, as both were quite interesting. Gained lots of knowledge on SQL injection.. :-)

The last one was on by Mark-Sidd-Reza and it was called " Win7-IE8-9 lifes of students"... It was quite funny and everyone were stunned at the statistics and I personally loved the WPF application.. :-)

In the evening, Microsoft had planned for a Pool side Dinner after Disco and everyone was all quite happy. When I entered , I saw almost everyone on the dance floor.. After few minutes of dance, i started capturing some videos and pics.. twas funny.. :-) The party continued, and thought of resting a bit as I was totally stressed due to sleepless night.. :(

The BDOTNET family had a nice chat during the dinner and were all set to play dumb charades. It was around 11, when the Chennai and MP folks joined us adding more fun.. :-) Btw, Aditya was all busy eating 20 plates of ice creams during this time.. :-)

At 1AM, everyone decided to move around in the garden, and we all decided to have a Round Table Conference :-) Raveesh was talking about his "Blitz", Jaya abt her new lappie, Laksman on his new startup, and Sridutt asking queries on MSP program, and around 2AM everyone decided to sleep. It was a total relief for me, since I was totally sleep deprieved..

Day 3: 8th March 2009

It was the final day of my last boot camp, and alarm must have rung @ 6AM, but I got up only @ 7:30 fully fresh :-). Thanks to my roomie, Tarun Madiraju, MSP frm Hyderbad. Though we were in the same room, he hardly met due to the tight schedule.

I was in the bus before 9AM and did reach IDC on time, for the same breakfast.. :-) I don mind eating Idly Vada Sambhar daily, I just love it ! :-)

The sessions on the final day were from MSPs only.. It started off with Masoom Tulsiani on his Popfly Mashup, followed by Laksman on Robotics, and Raveesh on Live@edu Deployment. The lunch was good, since we got to meet the top employees to Microsoft IDC. Networking Lunch simbly rocks ! I caught up with a guy responsible for Windows Genuine Activation . He shared his experiences on working on it. I did ask him bout his entry into Microsoft, what he did before and how he was in his college days. The answers were quite interesting, and he provided a lot of motivation through his inspiring sentences. We also loved watching Sachin Tendulkar scoring his 43rd century vs New zealand :-) It was (WIN)DIA... :-)

At 3, I saw many leaving back to their places and it was Good Bye time... :( Diwaagar and this chennai team were the first to go. After thanksgiving to MS ppl for such a nice event, the entire BDOTNET team and others left for the Ella Suites, our guest room.

At Ella Suites, we got another hour to chit chat with other MSPs and this is when I had the chance to talk to my roomie and other Hyderabadi folks. After tat, the bus arrived and all were ready to leave. After lot of pics on the bus, we got down to our surprise in front of the Cake Bakery in which the 3 muskeeters had come the night, 2 days earlier.. :-)

After heavy planning, we booked a BADA auto and left for Gol Konda, to kill the time till 9PM.. After reaching the Fort, some of them thought of having a 'guide' with us, since we were around 15 in number... But I always hated a 'guide' after watching "Slumdog Millionaire".. :-)

The guide promised a long tour of golconda and the entire story of Gol Konda for quite a hefty amount. We moved (video via 'our eyes' +audio by 'our guide')at the history of the fort and it was good. I also realized that, the guide I met 6 yrs ago during Gol Konda visit never told me even 10% of this.. :(

It was around 7PM, when we decided to leave for the station. But though we reached before 9PM, we couldnt find a good hotel for dinner. Without eating anything, we boarded the train. With all that shift of places, the chit chat continued till Mid night... :-) :-)

Finally, I would like to thank Microsoft for sending special invites to 3 Muskeeters :-), as we never thought we would be getting a chance to attend such a nice camp... Thanks to all MSPs, for all that fun :-)

Yahoo Hack Day India ! ->> My Best V-Day :)

2009-03-23T15:07:00.007+05:30

It was the Valentine's day , Feb 14th 2009 when I reached Taj Residency around 9AM. I took the lift and reached the Help Desk. All looking at me in surprize, tat i dont have a Hack Day I-card. Later i realized tat all attendees were supposed to enter via Staircase and not via Lift. When i asked for I-card, the guys turned back in shock and asked 'How did U enter ? '. I was LOL moment for me, and i learnt tat I have submitted my First Hack in Taj Security :-)

The Event started in parallel @ all 3 halls. The sessions on Fire Eagle, OpenSocial, BOSS Search etc were quite interesting.

Just before 1PM, I saw the co-founder David Filo entering the hall. The spoke for few minutes and Patel set up the timer, reading 23:59:59 .. 23:59:58 ....

The first thing we did was taking pics with David Filo in all possible ways.. :-) I did ask him some questions on his success, and happy to hear some inspiring words.

It was 2PM, and we rushed to the lunch, and were back on beans by 3PM. Lot of brainstorming was done, and ideas came out from everbody's mind. Finally, it was time to Hack !

After light snacks in the evening, i kept on reading more on Yahoo BOSS search, and that was my target. Thanks to Mithun Ashok, for teaching me the fundas of BOSS.

Late in the evening, Anil Patel announced some V-day Special Dance. Soon, we saw SHADOW 1 team dancing to various numbers. It was followed by Couple dance as well as individual dance, in which 'pappu(raveesh) who cant dance saala' won a iPod !

After a superb lunch, we did some chit chatting with Yahoo employees working on various platforms. Gained lot of insights into what Yahoo is currently upto.

As the night advanced, I was happy with a simple hack which was ready. Thought of adding more hacks, and creating a Mashups of hacks :-)

As it was 3AM, i moved my eyes off the laptop and realized that all my fellow MSPs and friends are asleep on bean bags. Instead of sleeping , started looking for someone who is awake and found Adarsh, new MSP from MSRIT busy hacking. I joined him and started discussing on the hacks, and but the time another simple hack was ready, it was 6AM and all were getting up, and i could hear "Good Morning" ! everywhere :-)

With some satisfaction @ 8AM , I started off with morning routine and breakfast. I was back with my laptop by 10AM, wondering what next. I thought of providing a nice UI to the hack, hence started reading about YUI. Since the hacks must be submitted before 12PM, i just added a CSS template and submitted it.

The timer was 00:00:10 when I saw Anil Patel and Chintan Shah on stage. With some talk, all left for the lunch. All of us, had a last chance to meet all the geeks out there and we did make proper use of that.

The Hack demos started, and there were totally 71 hacks. WOW !! I saw some 50s on my laptop,and was all set to demo along with Samartha who had just arrived. As the demos started , I was stunned to watch nice demos from the professionals !!

When I was preparing for my turn, I realized that my hack has some serious problems with the UI. With constant efforts, i couldnt fix it :( and hence decided not to demo my hack :(

After the Hack demos, we left for Tea and were back soon on Bean Bags. The prizes were announced and was happy to see some superb hacks specially from Mapunity and Adobe Evangelists :-)

It was Bean Bag steal time and all hackers were allowed to steal only 1 bean bag. :)

After a tough drive to home with Nitin on my bike , and 2 Bean bags I got to know that my 7th sem results were out , which made me more happier !! :-)

I would like to thank Yahoo India for settting up such a nice event, and inviting us. Also thanks to my friends Adarsh, Raveesh, Elvis, Laksman, Nitin, Vittal, Akash, Akshata who added more fun to the event.

News in January

2009-02-18T19:23:00.001+05:30

Kaspersky Internet Security , an anti virus program has been famous for quite a while now. The credit goes to Eugene Kaspersky who says after passing out in 1989, he wanted to continue his career in cryptography. He says that Cascade Virus during his times, captured his attention to work more on it. He believes in 3 things attributing to make Internet World safer. They are Education to the Netizens, Enforcement of stricter laws by the Cyber Crime Department & Protection . And the best thing is, he still uses Windows XP Operating System on his PC as he considers that to be more stable and secure than Vista ! :P

Google released its new products like Chrome browser, Andriod OS last year. After the release of Chrome, the Mozilla Firefox was removed from Google Pack and due to this it had to pay a heavy price since it fell off the Top 20 most trusted companies list. People have now already realized the 'The Big Company Syndrome', which means avoiding products from big companies to prevent monopoly in future. I feels its good, bcoz without Microsoft OS and Google Mail , life is tough on this earth ! :-)

Your PC can have 2 GB RAM , but what about yourself ??

2009-02-07T15:50:00.002+05:30

Computer Science Students have the habit of discussing regarding the memory issues in their PC. They consider having more memory in PC is an accomplishment ! Like one of my friends used to say, "Dude , I got a new PC with 4GB DDR2 RAM & Quad Core Processors and still this Windows Vista hangs ! ".

Well after being an MSP, these kinds of complaints are very common to me. I always say them i have 640MB DDR1 RAM with P4 2.4 GHz, running Windows XP Service Pack 2 and am very happy with it. He thinks, XP users are still in STONE AGE ! :-(

Today, while i was thinking of upgrading my PC to a Core2Duo and 2GB RAM, got a totally different idea, thanks to Google Results ! How much Memory do Humans have ?? I mean, how much memory do i have ? and how much memory does my friend in IIT-M or RVCE has !! Btw, do u have any memory ??? :-) Jokes apart, Desipundit says that our brain can store 1000 doodles in each cell and a further 5000 doodles in each distinct connection (that is, the wiring itself as information). If we consider all the permutations and combination of cells and wiring, we get 10 raised to the power of some-doodillion. So there, that is the limit. Few days ago, it so happened to me that i met a friend of mine XX, with his friend YY. Though i recognized both of them, i was only able to recall name of YY in less than second whom i hardly knew but not of XX ! It took my brain almost 72 hrs ( 3days) to process his image and get his name !!

Hmmm, till date no human has measured his memory capacity or have measured others memory. Aradya, a lecturer in VTU says that a human cannnot access his memory using Stack, Queues, Linked Lists or Trees Data Structures, like computers do. Its because, say if its Stack DS then you should feel hard to recall ABCDE... and numerals which you learnt in Nursery., which you dont. If its Queue DS then why is that difficult to recall your Nursery rhymes, English Poems which you learnt First in your Life.. Proabably you would like to write a complex C program now, than recalling a Social Studies Lesson. He also believes that, insight into what Data Structure a Human Brain uses can be helpful in measuring the amount of human memory.

Skyfire - the web browser

2009-02-04T11:28:00.002+05:30

Skyfire has proven to be an amazing little Windows Mobile web browser. This supports Flash, Silverlight, and full AJAX, which means you get a complete desktop experience from your phone. New to this version of Skyfire is full VGA support, which means you can now use it on the latest HTC phones, and this new version is also optimized to start-up faster, run faster, and load pages faster.

Nitin Bhandari, CEO of Skyfire in the video.

Skyfire runs not only on Windows 5, 6 but also in Symbian OS. The supported Windows Mobile Phones and Symbian Phones are listed below.

Symbian Phones:

Skyfire runs on these phones from Nokia: E61, E61i, E62, E71, N73, N75, N76, N78, N79, N81, N82, N85, N95 and N96.

Windows Mobile phones:

Skyfire runs on Microsoft Windows 5, 6, and 6.1. It supports VGA and QVGA screen resolutions. Skyfire runs on many popular Windows Mobile phones including the HTC Tilt, HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Fuze, Motorola Q and Q9, Palm Pro, Palm 800W and Samsung Blackjack II.

This free mobile web browser has lot of cool features. Check that out here.

Windows 7 Beta and IE8 RC1 is out !

2009-02-04T11:22:00.003+05:30

Windows 7

The Windows 7 Beta was out on Jan 9th 2009 , and my pals have already started using it and have given me a great feedback. Microsoft is hoping that this OS will get the same popularity as it got for Windows XP and Windows 98 and earlier OSs.

If you have downloaded the ISO image from MSDN Downloads and later realize that you don’t have a DVD to burn them , then probably you can use your USB stick (4GB or above) to install the Windows 7 on your PC. Check this video out for detailed steps.

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Installing-Win7-using-a-USB-Stick/

Internet Explorer 8 RC 1

Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 is out and it is now available for download for Windows XP, Vista and 7. If you are still using Internet Explorer 7 and wondering what new in IE 8, then i guess it would be increased speed, increased responsiveness, and overall improved stability.

Some of the new features in IE8 includes:

Accelerators

The new IE8 includes something called “accelerators” which help speed up web activities like searches, finding a place on a map, blogging, and more. These are all available just by highlighting the text you want to act on, then right-clicking. A list of accelerators will appear. Several are built-in to the browser by default and developers can also extend the browser by creating their own and offering them as a download.

Web Slices

Another big new feature is “web slices.” These are special sorts of bookmarks (sort of) that you can add to your favorites bar. When clicked, these bookmarks don’t redirect you to a new page, but rather display portions of a web page in a small but easy-to-read window that appears. They’re great for keeping up with things like headlines or weather without having to navigate away from the site you’re on.

And Private Browsing, improved inline search, and improved search bar, automatic crash recovery and tab groups.

2009-01-25T18:11:00.004+05:30

Mozilla 'On The Street' Campaign

I participated in the Mozilla 'On The Street' Campaign in the month of November 2008. It was indeed a great experience interviewing students of my college(Dr.AIT) and on the streets of Bangalore, and in malls (Big Bazaar).

I was the first to submit the video and was hoping to win the contest, but it was on 19th Dec when i got a mail from Mozilla that the top 3 vidoes around the world have been selected out of the 12 videos submitted and here is the list.

The links of all the videos and the participant's experience has been put up on the Jay's Blog , the Mozilla Campus Rep Program Coordinator.

The Top Three Winners were:

Mauricio Zepeda, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, FL.
Fazulul Rahman, Sri Sakthi College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.
Galen Weld, The Evergreen School, Shoreline (Seattle), WA

The video editing was really a pain , as i had no previous experience in creating videos. But, i am happy that every participant got a Mozilla T-shirt and some stickers :-) .Finally i would like to thank my frens iSrikanth ( aka Laksman Srikanth aka Microsoft Student Lead aka Entrepreneur) and Nitin Rao for helping me in making of this video.

2009-01-23T15:57:00.004+05:30

Welcome to Microsoft SDKs

In case, if you are wondering to get started with developing softwares then you can download all the necessary SDKs(Software Development Kit) from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/dd299405.aspx. The SDK provides you with documentation, code samples, tools, headers, libraries and lot more.

2009-01-23T14:49:00.003+05:30

BrainFck- Hav you got the Brains ??

The BrainFck language is an esoteric programming language noted for its extreme minimalism. It is a Turing Tarpit, designed to challenge and amuse programmers, and is not suitable for practical use.

The language has only 8 commands like < > + - . , [ ]

In case if you are wondering to write a Hello World program now using these commands, then it would appear something like this.

++++++++++ ( cell zero to 10)
[
>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-
] (this loop sets the next four cells to 70/100/30/10)
>++. (print 'H')
>+. (print 'e')
+++++++. ('l')
. ('l')
+++. ('o')
>++. (space)
<<+++++++++++++++. ('W')
>. ('o')
+++. ('r')
------. ('l')
--------. ('d')
>+. ('!')
>. (newline)

Howzatt !!!! ??? :-)

This program can written in short like

++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]>++.>+.+++++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.>.+++.------.--------.>+.>.

The BrainFck IDE is available or BrainFck Interpreter can be used to program. The IDE has a textbox for providing input and to get the desired output. The BrainFck programming is not that easy job, and you can get more help from wikipedia.

Last year, Shaastra 2008 - the Robotics Fest of IIT-Madras conducted the BrainFck coding contest and i heard that i went really well.

2009-01-23T14:24:00.003+05:30

Dr.AIT Student Portal - www.dr-ait.co.cc

For a long time i was wondering if there was a student portal for the students of our college to interact using forums , discussions and photo sharing. In the first week of this year, my 7th sem exams ended and i thought its the right time to start the website.

With the official college mail ids allotted to all the students of my college under the live@edu program, the site provides "Search" option to get a students mail id entering his "USN(University Seat Number) " or in case if he/she doesnt know his USN (if he is a fresher or change of branch) then by entering his "Name".

The site also has links for various contests organized by Microsoft and many other Academic Programs..

The site is hoping for more features like Forum posts and Image sharing in future. Any student of Dr.AIT interested in web designing can contact me and help me in developing it.

For Me, Year 2008 was a Tech Year !

2009-01-05T11:46:00.002+05:30

As our University(VTU) always schedules exams in the month of Dec-Jan, the new year party was not that great as the previous 2 years, but still the new year was quite lucky as i got selected in March as Microsoft Student Partner of my college.(Dr.AIT)

Soon following that was the campus recruitments and i got myself placed into TCS and Siemens ! The classes were not going on as companies were visiting our campus regularly for recruitments and instead of wasting all my time @ home, i thought it time to hunt for Tech events and be the 'Technie of the year 08' :-) .

Microsoft Acad Dev Con

Microsoft ACADemic DEVeloper CONference was held in March 2008 by the Bangalore .NET User Group. The sessions were on Silverlight, Visual Studio , XNA Game Studio . The entire event was organized by Microsoft Student Partners with financial support from Microsoft. I had a gr8 time that day, eating lot of pizzas and soft drinks.. :-)

South India Boot Camp

The very next day of my birthday celebrations followed the South India Meet @ GTSC.. Both the days, we rocked discussing ideas with fellow partners. The speakers were from diverse fields @ Microsoft, and thanks to Ajay and Deepak who made the event a grand success !! The goodies given were T-shirts, Lots of MS Press books, Key chains, pens etc..

Nokia S40 code camp

It was in IIIT, Electronic City, Bangalore that the camp was set up. After smsing all frens we were like 10 in number all geared to IIIT on our bikes. The event started with a talk on Nokia being a global leader , which was followed by a demo on building Nokia apps for S40 phones. Everyone was given a laptop to work on, but it was not a Hands on Lab as we thought earlier. After a splendid lunch, we we exposed to various JSR runtimes and different multimedia and Bluetooth APIs. Totally it was very informative , as it was totally off the topic from our curriculam.

Ambit - the student tech club of Dr.AIT

After the deployment of the Live@edu (a mail server for Dr.AIT), the principal and HOD were very happy and praised me in the Dr.AIT Staff Meeting. With such an enthuse shown by college authorities, i thought of starting a Tech Club @ Dr.AIT ! With the help of 2 more classmates it was finally inaugurated in the last week of OCtober 2008. The first session for the club was by myself on live@edu, a boon to Dr.AIT from Microsoft. The session was followed by iSrikanth's demo on Microsoft Robotics Studio. The Help desk was set up outside the audi, with lots of goodies from Mozilla, and some DVDs from Microsoft and Ubuntu.

The very next meet of AMbit was on Nov 5th 2008 when Billji was @ IIT, Delhi for the launch of DreamSpark in India. No... we din take everyone there, but the entire event was webcasted in the college lab. Thanks to our HOD and lab attendars for setting it up..

Microsoft All India Student Partners Meet !

2008-12-02T18:21:00.008+05:30

Microsoft All India Boot Camp was on in Goa on October 10th, 11th and 12th of October 2008. Student Partners across various colleges from India represented their college.

Let me tell you from scratch what happened , since this was my best trip after being a MSP. If you are wondering why am i writing this post in December , after 2 months of the trip, its because of high requests from my friends and cousins.

It was in September when we received a mail frm MS that All India Boot Camp is scheduled for Oct 11, 12. It was a happy moment and I , Lakshman were busy looking out for Buses on the net, since all the trains were full before 30 days itself. :-(

I and Lakshman had really a hard day booking tickets tat day, after the UG meet at our Microsoft Building. Running here and there, shortage of money, raveesh had to enter the scene with some money , drawing money from State bank + lots of tension since the KSRTC website showed status of 14 tickets availability and we wanted 12 tickets to be booked.

It was fun that we somehow gathered the money and the KSRTC agent's peon had to run all way to Majestic to book the tickets from Jayanagar... Big LOL at them...

Day 1: Oct 9th 2008

Everyone were supposed to be at the Majestic, KSRTC Bus Stand terminus, platform 1 .. When I reached there, was happy to see everyone there , but was surprized tat Samartha was still in a traffic jam in Chamarajpet . There was some tension but we had lot of time left.

The Airavatha VOVLO Bus to Goa was all set to Panjim, and all MSPs geared onto their seats. They looked full enthuse with high energy like the NSG commandoes ... lol :D we had lot of chit chatting and by 8 pm we were at a hotel for dinner @ a place called idehalli.. Tat name was funny.. We all had rotis and spent more than half an hour there.. Akshatha and Saranya had to run to catch the bus later... :-)

By 9pm the bus was on the way, and the chat continued, and gals were busy watching VIVAH movie... a big boring movie... but yeah, they like it... :-( Lakshman his laptop and ipod was all connected to his body like a RoboCop... :-) Sattvik, Raveesh, Krishna, Samartha soon started Geeks Meeting there and myself and Saranya started watching 9/11 conspiracy South Park Episode... :-) Lol !!

Day 2: Oct 10th 2008

I soon realized tat it was early morning and Lakshman has not slept the whole night as usual and his silly monkey tricks of taking photos while we were sleeping.. Bad Boy... :-) .. I had already made a plan discussing with fellow MSPs for the morning since our reporting time at La Calypso resort was 3pm.. I had told the VOLVO driver to download all 12 MSPs somewhere near Ponda, so tat we can reach Marshall Mahalasa Temple.. But we soon realized tat we are already close to Panjim.. After getting down at Panjim Kadamda Bus Stand we left for Mahalasa temple to get blessings from Mahalasa Narayani...

After neat bath and superb tiffin and gods blessings we left for Mangeshi temple, just 5 kms from Mahalasa by walk, not by Bus.. :-) After seeking the blessings of Mangeshi , we had a nice time relaxing there and a wonderful Kokum Juice.. :D BDOTNET Leads and Gals were busy with palmistry at the bus stand, and others were waiting for a bus to Old Goa for St.Xaviers Church..

By 12, we were at the St.Xaviers and some of us rested outside the church, since i had been to this church just 2 months ago with my family and cousins. After a nice Maaza drink and an instant talk by MSP leads on BDOTNET Community we left back to Panjim.

By 2, we were at Panjim and were waiting for the bus from Microsoft to pick us up... The driver was ready there and we reached the 3 star hotel, La Calypso by 3pm, On time !! ... We were happy to see our Reza and Mark there and getting our IDs and we started signing the Code of Conduct Form... :-)

I , Lakshman and Abhishek were alloted one huge room, completely air conditioned, next to the beach, with high class state of the art facilities !! We never relaxed even a single moment and
left for the Beach next to our resort.

It was nice watching stuff there :-) ... i mean the water... lol... When i was roaming on the beach with Samartha and Raveesh , i saw something flying on the beach like a vampire and OMG it was Laksman who was parasailing on the Arabian waters !! Dare devil later went on the motor boat too ..

By 6, We were all ready for the evening meeting with fellow MSPs.. As we entered, I was very happy to see the whole Indian MSP family from various colleges across our country seated and our Sesha Sai delievering a talk on Live@edu.. It was very informative and helped me deploy Hotmail server at my college later..

MS team gave a short briefing of the program for the next two days at Goa and 10 teams were made to prepare for the skit/mad ads... I was team 4 and my team consisted of Akshay(Delhi), Shivalika(Ahmedabad), Kiran (Ahmedabad) ,pundu(Warangal) and others...

We did not practice anything for the full hour and were ready for an instant Mad ad.. Our product was Doongle search !! It was really funny and i did the narrator role in the act..

The rocking moment in the Mad act was by Neha from Ahmedabad. Her slap in the skit made her win the Best actor award!! ha ha ... Our team from Bangalore, with Raveesh , Sahithya and other Pune gals won the best skit award..

Soon after that, we had a splendid dinner and after that we went to Beach again and were there till 1am, and back to our rooms late night and were into deep sleep..

Day 3: Oct 11 2008

The day has arrived and we were all bit lazy and left for the Breakfast and sessions followed later.. The sessions were good, and by 1 we were ready for the lunch and it was great talking to MSPs particularly from Chennai, Coimbatore, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Madurai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Jaipur, Kota etc...

The sessions continued , Lakshman on iRobot, Diwaagar+Arvind on XNA, and Krishna and Mayur shared his experience in Redmond , USA .. A trip fully sponsored by Microsoft for finishing Top 2 in the All India Activity points list.. I was discussing with Samartha , Arvind and other TN MSPs on their experence last night at TITOs !!! lol, i cant forget tat.... ha ha..

In the evening we all went for some shopping and Raveesh got a really good bargain...and i had a hard time conversing with the Goa people in Konkani.. :-)

Later we collected the posters and filled up feedback forms... And by 7, we were all ready and chit chatting... Its the time to Disco !!!! Initially there were none at the disco and quite boring so, we just got a stamp on our hands and waited outside hoping for people to join..
By 8, the dinner started and everyone had a heavy meal and were wondering whether to join disco or not.. But surprisingly everyone were at the dance floor and it was jam packed !!
I had a nice time there, since it was the first time i had been to a Disco floor... ha ha...
Lakshman did a nice video coverage of the Disco and i couldnt stop myself laughing watching at that... ha ha.. :-)

By 12, everyone was tired , so we went to Bar to have another round of SOFT drinks... since everyone was out of disco by then, we all decided to go the beach behind the resort.. Baga beach looked like a heaven , and it reminded me of the poet Miller's book, The Paradise Regained !!
We took photos , watched the beach dance, followed by dumb charades and lot of chit chatting among MSPs... Reza and we decided to leave since it was 3am now and we all left the beach which looked like a milk floating on the surface due to the moonlight !! It was great watching the sea in the mid night..

We all reached the reception of La Calypso and I throwed an idea of goin to Chapora Fort the next morning.. All city teams were totally tired except we Bangalore, Chennai andPune ... When others were breaking there heads on travelling to Chapora by local taxis, I went to my room and slept peacefully and by 6 , just 3 hours after tat... I saw Krishna, Sattvik, Laksman and others pulling me out of the bed.. Let me tell u, it was really hard to get up, as i was totally exhausted..

Day 4: Oct 12 2008

By 7, we were all ready and I , Akash, Lakshman, Sattvik, Reza , Bharath were all set in the Gipsy and Raveesh singing Rubaroo song .... :-) and followed the other rented vehicle, it was like a 3 bogie train... :-) ha ha ... It was not very far, and we reached the Chapora fort and the photo session started.. This location was where the Dil Chahte Movie Title song was shot... We had a great time watching the sea waters almost hitting the foot of the Chapora fort ..

By 9, we were all back to resort and jumped in the swimming pool for a while to chill out !!! Ana, Neha and others also joined soon.. and by 10, the session started on time and we were given a briefing about the activity points and Student Partner Portal..

By 1, it was time for the Lunch... and it was the last one at the Camp, so enjoyed every moment of it.. We played Board FootBall and it was awesome... OOPS !! tat awesome is a keyword coined by Coimbatore MSPs... ha ha... and by 3, we were all ready to return home.. Sad faces wishing each other good bye, and bags in everyone's hand... Our Microsoft Bus waiting to take us back to Panjim Bus stand... Since Bangalore, Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore were on the same bus, we had a nice time discussing bout our next Boot Camp !!! :-) ha ha ..

By 4, we were at the Hotel having some snacks when we saw Pune MSPs entering ... We spent some more time there, and were back on the bus by 6 and were happy to see TN folks at the last seats of the same VOLVO bus... When the bus started , we continued our habit of shouting AWESOME , later realizing tat we are out of the boot camp.. ha ha

By 7, we saw some movie being played on the bus, but none had the energy to really watch it... By9, we had crossed the Karnataka border and were at a hotel for dinner.. It was a light dinner and we were back to bus.. I and Saranya had thought of watching another episode of South Park earlier, but i was into deep sleep...

Day 5: 13 Oct 2008

By 6, we were in Bangalore blocked in some traffic in the outskirts of the city..
We reached the bus stand by 9, and TN guys left for their cousins place and we all returned home..

It was certainly one of the best trips in my life and i will never forget a single moment of that..
We were a 12 member team Myself, Aakash, Abhishek, Akshatha, Krishna, Laksman,Raveesh , Shivprakash, Saranya, Sattvik, Samartha, Sahithya... Thanks to each one of them and Microsoft Acad team for making this event a grand success...

Microsoft Student Partner Program

2008-12-02T17:33:00.005+05:30

Microsoft has emerged as a Brand Name with Windows OS being used more then 97% of Computer User Population. When the baby is born, it first see its mom and later when the same human boots a PC for the first time sees Microsoft Windows Screen.

Microsoft is the Mother of Computer Industry ! I have seen many companies sharing there failure stories in 1990s when Microsoft Windows emerged, like the one by our own Kapur and his Lotus Software(like MS Excel) ... He once said in an interview that, they(MS) were the Operating System and we could do nothing to stop them..

It has been long time now since am the Microsoft Student Partner at my campus Dr.Ambedkar Institute of Technology, Bangalore.
Check out http://student-partners.com/members/anil.aspx?

Since i have been getting questions like What is Microsoft Student Partner Program ? What is expected of a Microsoft Student Partner(MSP) ? How to get selected as MSP ? What are the benefits of being an MSP ? Is Microsoft going to recruit MSPs as employees after they pass out or in future?? uff...

The answer to all these questions is given in the following link.
http://student-partners.com/Msp/Country/ApplicationForm.aspx

The MSP recruitment for the year 2008 has ended, and new MSPs will selected in Sep 2009, so you can apply then. Those selected in Oct 2008 will be given training in March 2009.

Am Glued to Yahoo !

2008-12-02T16:52:00.002+05:30

When there was news about Yahoo been acquired by Microsoft in the mid year of 2008, I was happy to see Yahoo people in our college campus. I thought that they have come for campus recruitments !! Lol !! Come on, thatz called Heights of Optimism !!

Later i got call from Placement cell, asking me to pull students for the event from my dept since i was the Placement Coordinator for my dept. I would say am used to this experience of pulling people at the last minute from their class, or sometimes even from canteens and sports complex !!

Attending a seminar for our college students is always like volunteering yourself for getting an elephant's injection injected onto their buttocks !! Ahhhhh....... ha ha..

Yahoo India were there @ our campus to market their new product. But yeah, i din had anytime till the last minute to guess what that new product could be as i was pushing everyone inside the seminar hall along with our placement officer.

The event started , Jeff Rufus ,Bhumika along with two more people were ready, and the product was a new search engine kinda thing called Yahoo Glue.. This Glue used to display information pertaining to a certain key , by extracting data from various sources like Yahoo Image Search, Yahoo News, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Blog Search etc etc ..

It was quite interesting to watch the demo, though it was not any great innovation from Yahoo but still it was simbly the best ! They taught us how to create a glue page , how to modify an existing glue page, and some features like revision history of the page and some ways for enhancements.

Glue page was modified for MS Dhoni and I was lucky to win a Yahoo Glue T-shirt for throwing a simple question on Yahoo Glue !

Later they collected our email ids and sent us the login details to get started with developing Yahoo Glue Pages !!

I started with Yahoo Glue a bit late, since my login was blocked initially due to internal problems from Yahoo. Now i have created lot of glue pages and modified many of them, log into in.glue.yahoo.com and search for Dr.AIT, BDOTNET , MICROSOFT STUDENT PARTNERS and not to forget LAKSHMAN SRIKANTH :D !!

SUN Code For Freedom Wokshop

2008-12-02T16:27:00.003+05:30

This workshop happens every year, across India and is an initiative by SUN Microsystems to market their products like NetBeans, TomCat Sever, 3D GlassFish effects, OpenPortals etc. I had been to this event in the second week of October 2007 , soon i was back from a thrilling Robotics Fest from IIT-Madras "Shaastra " .

The competition is developing any product using SUN technologies, and the winner gets Cash prizes and USB, T-shirts for every bug found !

This workshop was on for 2 days, but there was nothing interesting which made me have a look at it again after the workshop. Gangadhar and Gogte were informative and solved many of our questions with was a sign of tremendous amount of knowledge they have acquired working on their products, specially during the end of second day in the lab.

HOLs were good, the lunch on first day was only good, and at the end of the event i realized that only i was present from my college. Did i say , 60 students registered from my college by paying 50 bucks!! Lol !!

I collected some DVDs frm the SUN CA , Trisha Maine in the evening and returned home late due to heavy thunders !

In case you want to participate in the contest, log onto www.CodeForFreedom.com

Adobe Flex Boot Camp

2008-12-02T15:23:00.004+05:30

It was on Nov 7th, 8th 2008, i had been to MSRIT college to attend Adobe Boot Camp. The competition was building a Flex application.

Day 1:

It started off well in the morning around 9am with all the registration counters jam packed with students. I was waiting for my partner who dint arrive on time, and later after an hour i joined lakshman and rushed inside, without getting my Adobe Book and Reynolds pen.. :(

The day started off with demo on Adobe products, basically flex apps, it being an open source, free download and some simple insurance application. Later others started off with mxml and other containers and i was asleep on the auditorium floor. Thanks to lakshman and akshatha for keep me awake after that.

After lunch, i was promoted to sit on a chair from the floor + some energy to listen to the demo. The demo again seemed boring, but still Raghu Rao talks woke up most of them.

The test started and i realized that am all alone again, cuz lakshman had run away to his home to kiss his new UPS. :-) ha ha.. The test consisted of 20 Questions and was really cheap at its first look, but when it indicated its +1 or -1 for every question attempted , the alarm started ringing from my sleepy brain.

Test was over and Harish , the Adobe evangelist was on stage with some O'reily books and T-shirts in his hand. It was easy to guess its quiz time !! Lots of questions were thrown apart, most of them were simple but not many could really answer. It was fun watching.. :-) Thanks to Harish for electrifying the massive crowd of over 400 !!

The time for announcement of results had come and i infact dint wanted to get selected since i had to present my paper on behalf of Dr.AIT college on "Biometrics- FingerPrint based Security System" at New Horizon College the next day. But i was IN , and was totally confused what to do next. MSRIT or New Horizon for the weekend !!

T-shirts were given to all the attendes, a very short one though for someone like me :( . It was Samartha who agreed to join me the next day at the Camp, and later i had to call my OOAD lecturer and told her my plan for Saturday. Thanks to her for cooperating.

There was some practice time given to the 100 selected teams around 7pm the same day, but everyone were exhausted and just returned home with pen drive filled with 4 applications design rules and regulations, out of which one had to be completed the next day.

Day 2:

It was a bright morning , and during breakfast we discussed the strategy for the day. I had to tel my partner a small recap of the events which occured the previous day so get him some idea and by 10am we were in the labs, though rest of them were inside by 9am :-)

We tried playing out with some code and looked at the source code of other projects like GSoc by googling on our desktop.

The Choice of applications given were:

A Video Player - something similar to Youtube with videos around the actual video etc..

A Image Viewer- This should display a set of images, like a photo album, ex:- Picasa.

A Flight Booking Application - To get flight information and design using Flex effects.

A Quiz Application - as simple as the name suggets, but design was important.

The competition ended at around 3pm and we were asked to move out of the lab to review the apps and announce the winners.

During this time, I grabbed some videos for my Mozilla On the Street Campaign after the Rajyotsava dance by MSRIT students. Lol at them !!

The results, were announced late at 7pm and top prizes were grabbed by CMRIT students, followed by some consolation prizes by Global academy, Shirdi Sai colg, BMSCE , MSRIT and others.

Finally, it was a great event, i realized the importance of XML which was the major reason for us failing to get a prize. Now, i have learnt enough XML and waiting for the next Adobe Riathon in Jan09 !

Imagine Cup 2009

2008-12-02T14:14:00.006+05:30

"I wish there had been an Imagine Cup when I was growing up. It gets people involved in seeing that software is changing the world."

--Bill Gates
Chairman, Microsoft Corp.

Microsoft Imagine Cup is the World’s Premier Student Technology Competition. Students all over the world particpate in this competation and show their skills in variety of events both technical and non technical.

The events for Imagine Cup 2009 include:

Software Design

Students are asked to create real world software and services applications that use Microsoft tools and technology. It's not just about the PC anymore - students need to think about taking advantage of mobile devices as well. Think big!

Embedded Development

The object of the Embedded Development Invitational is to unleash students' creativity in an effort to change the world into a better place. They will develop their own embedded device whose function it is to better us all.

Game Development

The object of the Game Development Invitational is to create a new game that uses both Microsoft's XNA Game Studio 3.0 and Visual Studio. Competitors' games should illustrate the Imagine Cup theme.

Robotics and Algorithm

Robots need more than gears and wires - they require highly sophisticated algorithms to interpret and interact with the world around them.

IT Challenge

Students are challenged to develop, deploy, and maintain IT systems that are elegant, functional, robust and secure.

MashUp

The object of the MashUp competition is to create a new and useful Web 2.0 application that is connected to the Imagine Cup theme.

Photography

Great photographers know a single image can change the world. In this competition, students communicate a story that explores a critical issue through a photo essay of inspiring still images.

Short Film

We all love to go to the movies but some of us love to make movies! Film making is a technical craft combined with the art of storytelling using moving images. A short film has the difficulty of conveying a message in a brief period of time while also being visually stimulating.

Design

The object of the Design Invitational is to create a solution of an innovative design for easier machines and human interactions by inspiring students to use the power of technology as means to manifest their creativeness.

I have registered for most of the Imagine Cup Competation Categories and started active participation now. Its time for you to register and win.

Use Referral code: anil , while registering for the Imagine Cup and later u can send your referral code to your friends and get additional points.

Note: Please Keep this chain of referral code going. Its time for all of us to win.

Mozilla On the Street

2008-12-02T13:23:00.003+05:30

I got selected as the Mozilla Campus Rep in the month of September, and after that i participated in the Mozilla On The Street Campaign and made this fantastic video..
Check Out and Comment !!

Some of the questions which i asked were -

What's Mozilla? What do you think Mozilla stands up for?
Have you ever heard of open source or open standards? Why do they matter?
Have you heard of Firefox?
When did you first hear about Firefox? From who?
Do you know who makes Firefox?
Do you use Firefox?
What specifically do you like about Firefox?
Has Firefox improved your life?
What did you use before you switched to Firefox?
What made you want to switch?
Have you told others to switch to Firefox?
Do you use Add-ons and which are your favorites?
How would you make Firefox better?
Why is Firefox free?
Have you seen the Firefox crop circle?
How would you express your feelings about Firefox ?

For more Mozilla On The Street Videos,
Check out http://MozillaOnTheStreet.blogspot.com

Stop sending mail you later regret

2008-10-07T22:33:00.002+05:30

Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like lets go to a movie this weekend, and later realize that i have got my exams after that. Lol !! Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today Google is launching a new Labs feature Mail Goggles.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?

By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you're most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it's active in the General settings.

Hopefully Mail Goggles will prevent many of you out there from sending messages you wish you hadn't. Like that late night memo -- I mean mission statement -- to the entire firm. Ha Ha ...

My First Photosynth

2008-10-04T07:54:00.002+05:30

Hi .. Check this out !!

This snapshots for the synth was taken by me @ IIT-Madras, Shaastra 2008 Fest !!
Also thanks to my friends Lakshman, Naveen, Samartha and Krishna for their support.

Bar Camp Bangalore 7 !

2008-09-12T12:50:00.003+05:30

So guys the Bar camp Bangalore 7 (BCB7) is finally all set for 13-14 Sept 2008.The venue is IIM-Bangalore. This is the first time am attending the event , so am fully thrilled.So, let me tell you what this is, read on...

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

The first BarCamp was held in Palo Alto, California, from August 19-21, 2005, in the offices of SocialText. More info about Barcamp .

BarCamp locations

Venue

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB)

Turning up early is recommended, like around 8 AM.

Directions to the venue

Check out the directions from any part of Bangalore to IIM-B under this link.

http://barcampbangalore.org/wiki/BCB7_Venue

BCB7 Schedule

BCB7 is scheduled on 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM for both 13 and 14th Sep, 2008.

Sessions

Technology:

Firefox VS Chrome: Open Discussion.
Challenges of Delivering Rich Media, Dynamic Transactions and Applications over the Internet.
Desktop application designing and prototyping.
Introducing Social Commerce.
Performance Engineering of Web 2.0 Applications.
Next Generation Networking.
Introducing OWASP.
Introducing feedJoint.
Google Open Social.
Breaking Google Open Social Applications.
Shindig - OpenSocial Container.
Python 3.0 - Where we break all your code.
Firefox indic localization.
Torrent (P2P) in Digital Multimedia Distribution.

Business

Mac, iPhone, Leopard and Beyond.
E-Learning: The Reality and the Future.
Live Web Casting.
The Power of Excel.
Three Success Stories in going from bootstrapped to Venture funded.
VC vs Customer: Open Discussion.
Tracking Technology Trends.
Mobile VAS in India - Key statistics and a peek into the future.
Wireless Telecom - Challenges and Opportunities.
Make Money blogging - sponsored Content A-Z.
Bridging the Industry - Academia Gap through Facilitated Project Management.

Society

EmpoweringIndia.org - Compiling Candidate Affidavit Data - Building a Vibrant Polity.
Cycling to work.
Craft Industry in India.
RSI - What a Pain in the Wrist.
Election Watch and Transparency in Politics.
The Vedic Inventive Principles.
What is Indian English?
Alternate Life Commune.
Essentials of Astrology, Palmistry and Other Occult.
eGovernance: Status, Issues, Challenges and Opportunities.
Comparison between Traditional and Modern Match-making.
Finding a House in Bangalore: Open Discussion.
Open Discussion : Your Experience of Bangalore's new airport.
Laugh Out Loud.
TELL dot BLR: Be an SMS journalist: vent, rant, rave, call.

Arts & Careers

How can U make the best use of undergrad life.
Personal Photography: Soul Searching.
Commercial Photography: Soul Selling.
How to Stitch that Fantastic Panorama.
Ten Photographs I Love.
Post processing photos using open source tools.
Working on your dream project with a day job.
iReboot - Experience your dream job.

Okie Guys, cya on 13th Sept @ 8 AM, IIM-B.

Microsoft Gurus to take on Apple’s Genuises.

2008-09-08T22:26:00.003+05:30

Microsoft Corp. plans to deploy its own customer-service representatives at retailers like Best Buy and Circuit City to help people with their PC purchases. The world's largest software company plans to have 155 "Microsoft Gurus".

Use your talents to help people discover how to use their PC in new and different ways. Show people how they can use technology to do things they never thought they could do. Answer questions and offer solutions to customers that surpass their expectations.

For More details, browse through MSWindowsGuru !

Configure Microsoft Office 2007 to save files using the old Office 97-2003 format

2008-09-08T22:08:00.003+05:30

One of the most common questions is: 'why Microsoft Office 2007 files cannot be opened by Microsoft Office 2003 or XP?'. That's because this version uses a new file format called Office Open XML. This new format offers a series of advantages, including a smaller file size compared to the format used by the old versions of Microsoft Office. All Microsoft Office 2007 file extensions have an ''x" at the end: '.doc' is now '.docx', '.xls 'is now '.xlsx', etc. By default, older versions of Microsoft Office cannot open files created with version 2007.

However, there are ways to save files created in Microsoft Office 2007 using the old formats. In this article we will describe them for you.

Cool 3D browsing on Firefox

2008-09-07T13:15:00.001+05:30

PicLens is a free download created by Cooliris. With PicLens, you can fly through YouTube videos, Facebook pictures, Google Images, and more on an interactive 3D Wall interface. PicLens transforms your browser(available for other browsers too) into a visually stunning experience for finding and viewing online photos and videos. The “3D Wall” lets you effortlessly search and zoom your way around thousands of images, videos, news feeds, sports feeds, and more. See our demo at http://piclens.com/demo

ONCE YOU’RE IN PICLENS, YOU CAN:
1. Scroll the 3D Wall by dragging your mouse across the screen.
2. Zoom-in and out by clicking an image or by using the scroll wheel on your mouse.
3. Toggle between full-screen mode and the 3D Wall (Full screen 3d browsing).
4. Jump to the corresponding webpage of the image by clicking the globe icon.
5. Watch the latest news, sports, and entertainment feeds.
6. Search popular websites including YouTube, Google, Flickr, Amazon etc..
Some other cool features :

Shop Amazon– The 3D Wall transformed image search. Now PicLens launches online shopping! into the 21st century. Browse and buy seamlessly just like window
Discover– MSNBC, ESPN, movie trailers…Get the latest news, photos, and video feeds.
Return to PicLens– An essential for playing with pictures: toggle in and out of your desktop, the browser, and PicLens!

Latest version : Beta version 1.8 at http://piclens.com/beta
Or check out the mozilla Addons page

Source: Mozilla Firefox 3

Internet’s biggest security hole discovered: Exploits BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)

2008-09-05T23:23:00.000+05:30

Two security researchers have demonstrated a new technique to stealthily intercept internet traffic on a scale previously presumed to be unavailable to anyone outside of intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency. The tactic exploits the internet routing protocol BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) to let an attacker surreptitiously monitor unencrypted internet traffic anywhere in the world, and even modify it before it reaches its destination.

The demonstration is only the latest attack to highlight fundamental security weaknesses in some of the internet’s core protocols. Those protocols were largely developed in the 1970s with the assumption that every node on the then-nascent network would be trustworthy. The world was reminded of the quaintness of that assumption in July, when researcher Dan Kaminsky disclosed a serious vulnerability in the DNS system. Experts say the new demonstration targets a potentially larger weakness.

“It’s a huge issue. It’s at least as big an issue as the DNS issue, if not bigger,” said Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, noted computer security expert and former member of the L0pht hacking group, who testified to Congress in 1998 that he could bring down the internet in 30 minutes using a similar BGP attack, and disclosed privately to government agents how BGP could also be exploited to eavesdrop. “I went around screaming my head about this about ten or twelve years ago…. We described this to intelligence agencies and to the National Security Council, in detail.”

Need for Speed Undercover

2008-09-05T22:00:00.002+05:30

Q: What is it?

A: The upcoming latest release of the Need for Speed game franchise by Electronic Arts (EA); Need for Speed: Undercover.

Q: What's so special about this?

A: Siiiick cars (not just game-like replicas, but the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution really is the Lancer Evolution, as is the Audi RS4, etc.), cop chases, ridiculous graphics, and live-action sequences to really get you into the storyline. We all know I love cars, so for me this is huge!

Q: What gaming platform will it be on?

A: Xbox 360™, PLAYSTATION® 3, PLAYSTATION® 2, Wii™, PSP® (Playstation® Portable), Nintendo DS™, PC-DVD.

Q: Which platform will it work best on?

A: Obviously the Xbox 360!!! OK, I may be a bit biased because that's what I have... ;)

Q: What will it cost me?

A: $59.99 US, so start saving... I know I am.

Q: Any live-action shots or trailers?

A: You bet, check out the Media Section on NFS: Undercover's web site.

Q: Alright enough already! When does this sucker come out??

A: Chiiill, it's coming November 17, 2008. Just go pre-order it if you can't wait to do something.

Q: Will it help me pick up chicks?

A: You bet! Just tell all the ladies you drive a Porsche GT2, but they have to come back to your place to see it. 30% of the time, it works every time.

TRAI wants more transparency, announces full talk time on recharge

2008-09-03T01:11:00.004+05:30

TRAI, the messiah for prepaid users in India have come again to the rescue. Come September 15th, a new set of regulations have to be followed by the service providers which aims to give the subscribers an upper hand. The major highlight of the announcement was that prepaid subscribers across all service providers (new and existing) will get full talk time on every recharge.

Only an administrative fee not exceeding Rs. 2 per recharge and applicable taxes will be deducted from the recharge amount. Lifetime customers can also shift to a plan with lower denomination without paying any additional charges.

Other regulations are:

Subscribers to get full talk time on talk time recharges, barring an administrative fee which shall not exceed Rs.2 per recharge and applicable taxes.
Subscribers to automatically get the benefit of straight tariff reductions without any preconditions of any explicit action by the subscriber, for example, sending SMS etc.
Customers in existing lifetime plans can migrate to new lifetime plans with lower entry fee without having to make additional payment or recharges.
Lifetime customers need not recharge more than once in 6 months for remaining connected.
Customers to get key tariff information in vernacular language also at all the retail outlets of the service providers and their franchisees.
No change in mobile number when subscriber change tariff plans or move from prepaid to postpaid or vice versa.
Blackout days (customary/festival days on which free/concessional calls/SMS are not available) limited to a maximum of 5 days in a calendar year. Such days to be pre-specified and no subsequent alteration or addition permitted.
Promotional offers to be streamlined.

The offending iPhone advert

2008-08-28T20:46:00.001+05:30

A television advert for the iPhone misled consumers, the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled.

Two complaints to the watchdog noted that the advert said "all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone".

But the ASA said because the iPhone did not support Flash or Java - two programs that form part of many webpages - the claim was misleading.

Apple had argued its claim referred to availability of webpages, rather than their specific appearance.

The iPhone employs a web browser called Safari, which is built on freely available software. Many webpages, however, employ small software programs like Flash and Java to display graphics and animations.

Those programs are proprietary software, and Apple opted not to enable them on the iPhone. The result is that pages viewed with Safari may look different to those same pages viewed on other browsers.

The ASA said the advert "gave a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone".

It must therefore not be aired again in its current form, it said.

"Because the iPhone doesn't support Flash or Java, you couldn't really see the internet in its full glory," said Olivia Campbell, a spokesperson for the ASA.

"They made a very general claim that you can see the internet in its entirety, and actually that's not quite true - so we've upheld."

Apple said it did not want to comment on the ruling

Barack Obama: Top Twitter

2008-08-28T19:48:00.002+05:30

As per Twitterholic, Barack Obama, the US presidential candidate is the top twitter user. As of now, Barack Obama has 69,153 friends and 66,428 followers.

A look at the numbers suggests that Obama has more friends than followers !

Full Release of Photosynth now available !

2008-08-21T22:52:00.002+05:30

I was happy to see the full release of Photosynth, available now at photosynth.com. Photosynth takes a collection of regular photographs and reconstructs the scene or object in a 3-D environment. For those of you who have seen the videos or tried tech preview, you could experience synths that were made in the lab and get a feel for what Photosynth is and how it works. But now, for the first time ever you can create synths from your own pictures and share them with your friends. Explore great synths from others or create a few of your own.

Don’t know where to start? Check out these great synths available today:

National Geographic did an a great synth of Stonehenge. Normally you are not allowed inside the center ring of Stonehenge, but their photographers got special permission so you can experience it here. Can you find the rabbit living at the base of one of the stones?
Ever wanted to check out a Ferrari 575 Superamerica up close? We snuck into the local dealership and shot a synth just for you.
You don’t need to go to all the way to London to see the London skyline—you can see it right here at Legoland
Imagine stumbling across a guy proposing to his girlfriend right in the middle of K.R.Market, Bangalore. Now imagine making a synth of it.

While there are plenty of interesting synths to check out already, the best ones will come from you. If you need help creating a killer synth, check out photography guide for some tips. Or just watch the short how to synth video which gives you a quick overview of the best way to take pictures that will make a good synth.

Because Photosynth is so new, you will probably run into an occasional bug or hiccup. Whether you have a brilliant idea or find a bug, report them.

And be sure to keep watching this space, where they share what they have learned about making great synths, talk with some members of the Photosynth team, provide synthing suggestions for advanced users and point you to some of the cooler synths that people are building.

Former New York Jets Quarterback Joe Namath once said “When you have fun, you can do amazing things.” We sure hope you have as much fun using Photosynth as we’ve had building it.

Intel flash-based “Turbo Memory” to accelerate Windows

2008-08-21T22:21:00.000+05:30

Intel’s newest version of Turbo Memory is trying to do what Windows doesn’t do: transparently optimize Windows for flash memory storage. At the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, Calif. Intel will be demonstrating its latest version of Turbo Memory based on flash memory to accelerate application performance in Windows.

Intel is trying to address a longstanding shortcoming of Windows: its inability to take full advantage of flash storage devices. “There are issues related to taking full advantage of the speed of a (flash drive),” said Troy Winslow, marketing manager for the NAND Products Group at Intel, in an interview at the Flash Memory Summit.

Intel is offering a “dashboard” for Windows that allows the user to choose and control which applications or files are loaded into the Intel Turbo Memory cache (based on flash memory chips) for performance acceleration. Intel calls this “User pinning.”

Custom pinning profiles can be created to pin applications or files that match the user’s activity, according to Intel. Data intensive programs, gaming, digital media editing and productivity software are examples of applications that will see the most benefit, according to Intel.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (exe)

2008-08-21T22:18:00.000+05:30

This download installs Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. SP1 addresses issues that were found through a combination of customer and partner feedback, as well as internal testing. These service packs offer Visual Studio and .NET Framework users improvements in responsiveness, stability and performance.

More info & download….

Be a proud owner of Microsoft Surface, Order now!

2008-08-21T20:31:00.002+05:30

It appears that the Microsoft Surface train is ready to leave the station. Besides posting new “Marketing Guidelines” to the Microsoft Download Center, the Redmond behemoth has also posted the “Microsoft Surface Order Form”, and it appears that there are no limitations on who can buy one. So for a measly $12,500, you can own a multi-touch computer in a coffee table. Or, you can just wait for Windows 7.

Is Microsoft responsible for Olympics BSOD?

2008-08-19T22:37:00.000+05:30

For those who do not have an idea what I am talking about, let me tell you about the best part of this year’s Olympics opening ceremony. When Chinese athlete, Li was coming down after lighting the olympic torch, nearly everyone noticed the biggest Blue Screen of Death ever, projected on the stadium’s roof. According to the news sites, it was there for nearly an hour, but was noticed only when a broadcast camera showed up its image. Few of the viewers in stadium has also capture pictures of same. Since then, every where in any technical forums, discussion is going on, about the same. Everyone is blaming Microsoft for the fault. But is it seriously an issue that should be dealt by Microsoft only. Lets check out.

The first point made by those criticizers is that why didn’t they used Linux, or Mac, instead of Windows. The obvious reason is the simplicity offered by Windows, over other operating systems, which is an advantage when there are so many of peripherals connected.

Next question obviously is why only XP, and not Windows Vista. For that, Olympic organizers committee said, that after so much of negative reviews of Vista, they didn’t felt like it will be worth going. Even Microsoft is against using XP, as it definitely is outdated, by today’s standard. Although Vista is resource hungry, but being far more stable now, it should have been the choice for opening ceremony.

Are we sure that XP version used in Beijing was not pirated, as China is well known for its piracy only? For that question, the answer is No, XP wasn’t pirated as it would not have been possible to use this many peripherals with normal XP, so the XP used should have been the one for Embedded Systems, which is by far not yet pirated.

Techies also asked, why it doesn’t restarted automatically in case of Fatal error, as in case of normal PC usage. Obvious answer is that XP version used was for Embedded Systems, so the user should be quite aware of basics of troubleshooting, hence showing up the troubleshooting information is necessary.

So, the fault definitely was not from Microsoft side, as they have shipped the right thing to the olympics committee. The fault definitely lies in some other hands. The fault must have been from drivers. But which driver actually failed, is not yet known. One reason as stated by some techies is that display drivers cause this kind of errors, most commonly, as they run in kernel mode. That’s why they should have used Linux or Mac. But still Linux or Mac would have failed in that case, the only difference is the information shown on the screen would have been replaced by some stupid animation, or the system would have simply restarted.

Restarting seems a good option here, as the Olympics committee officials just needed to run those projectors and LCD’s, they are not supposed to debug. But should Microsoft have provided the patch to simply restart the system, in case of failure, or a new OS for that matter. Obviously No. They are not supposed to write a new patch specifically for an event. May be Olympic committee should have asked them for that patch.

And why not some one saw that screen for nearly an hour, and restarted the system. That’s a human fault obviously, from organizer’s end. Even though the system didn’t restarted automatically, some one should have taken care of that. And then, its because of faulty drivers and not because of XP’s architecture. So, why is everyone blaming Microsoft for something they don’t even have any relation with. May be this is the price that Microsoft is paying for being the best in OS market.

Live Mesh: The potential is limitless !

2008-08-19T21:27:00.001+05:30

The potential is limitless says Live Mesh team, but if you’re wondering “how many folders and files can you put in Live Mesh today? What’s the maximum file size and how many people can you invite into a folder? Is there a limit to the number of devices you can add?” The Team expects these numbers to go up with subsequent service updates.

Here’s a quick summary of the upper bounds:

* Size of all contents in a single Live Folder: 10GB (of course there’s still the 5GB quota which limits how much you can synchronize with the Live Desktop)
* Individual file size: 2GB
* Items (file or folders) per Live Folder: 100,000
* Members per Live Folder: 200
* Number of Live Folders per user: 200
* Number of devices per user: 100

However, there’re some limits on the file/folder type you can share or synchronize. Live Mesh also blocks files that have the following file extensions: .bak, .gfs, .lnk, .pst, .sav, .tmp and .wlx. You are also not allowed/supposed to share files containing obscene or copyrighted material. Copying or sharing unauthorized materials, including materials that you did not create or you do not have the rights necessary for use, is a violation of the Windows Live terms of use.

More info: Microsoft Copyright Notice and FAQ

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo sued for “Sex Selection Ads” in India

2008-08-19T21:04:00.000+05:30

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo were issued notices by India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday, following a complaint that they were promoting techniques and products for the selection of an unborn child’s sex through advertising and links on their search engines, reports Hindu. There is a deliberate attempt by these companies to target Indian users with advertisements that claim to help in the selection of a child’s sex, said Sabu Mathew George, the petitioner in the case, in a telephone interview on Thursday.

The three companies were unavailable for comment, despite repeated phone calls to Yahoo in Bangalore, Google in Hyderabad and Microsoft in Delhi. The advertisement of products and techniques to aid in the selection of an unborn child’s sex is an offense under India’s “The Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act”. In India, at least 900,000 unborn girls die each year through feticide, said George who is a social activist associated with organizations fighting for the rights of young girls in India.

Source:→ PCWorld

Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008 (Windows Fiji) leaked to torrents.

2008-08-19T21:02:00.001+05:30

Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008, labeled as codename Windows Fiji, throughout the development process, has been released to manufacturing in mid-July 2008. The pack has been leaked to torrent websites and is now available for download from peer-to-peer networks.

The installation process of Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008 is specifically tailored to OEMs, and is not designed for end users. The gold version of TV Pack 2008 has to be installed on a clean installation of Vista SP1 Home Premium or Ultimate, on which Windows Media Center was never launched. The PlayReady PC Runtime has to be deployed on top of Windows Fiji, followed by KB951685 (The video playback application stops responding when you watch video or Live TV on a Windows Vista-based computer) and KB950754 (Noticeable problems occur in the video when you use the DirectSound renderer on Windows Vista). After the integration of Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008, Windows Media Center will evolve to Build 6.1.1000.18273.

Source:→ Softpedia

Automatically Hack Gmail Accounts

2008-08-18T19:55:00.001+05:30

Recently a tool has been presented in Defcon hackers’ conference in Las Vegas, that automatically steals the IDs of non encrypted sessions and this tool is very useful for breaking Gmail user ID. When Users login into Gmail account, Gmail Server sends Cookie (A text file) to your browser. This file helps Gmail server to know that you are authenticated. This Cookie will log-in you in for 2 week unless you press sign-out or delete the Cookie. Even though when you authenticated using SSL, after that you are also not secure because the result return by the Gmail server is unencrypted connection.

Every time you request anything from the Gmail server like an image, your browser sends this Cookie file to Gmail server and any attacker can easily get this Cookie file by applying any network sniffer tool. After this attacker get your Gmail session ID and using this Session ID attacker can easily logged in your Gmail account without the need of any Username and Password. People using Gmail from public places, cybercafé and public wireless hotspots are more likely get rid by this type of attacks.

Always use https://mail.google.com because this will access the SSL version of Gmail. it will be persistent over your entire session and not only during authentication.

Microsoft Celebrates 10th anniversary of Microsoft Research Asia

2008-08-18T19:44:00.001+05:30

On August 12, 2008 Microsoft celebrates 10th anniversary of Microsoft Research Asia. Bill Gates also present in Hong Kong to celebrate this occasion. In past 10 years Microsoft Research Asia grown from dozen of people to an organization. Microsoft Research Asia employee more then 350 researchers and engineers, has welcomed more than 2,500 interns, has awarded over 250 Microsoft fellowships, has published over 1,500 papers for top international journals and conferences, and has achieved many technological breakthroughs.

Over 200 innovations from the lab have been transferred to Microsoft products, including Office XP, Office System 2003, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Xbox, MSN, Windows Live and our company’s latest releases ¨C Windows Vista and Office 2007. In addition, technologies from the lab have been adopted by international standards bodies such as MPEG4 (error-resilient video transmission), IETF (TCP/IP header compression), and ITU/ISO (video-compression technology).

Microsoft Research Asia focuses on following five research areas

Natural User Interfaces enable users to interact with a computer using speech, gestures, and expressions.
Next-generation Multimedia allows people to search for and to be immersed in interactive online shopping, education, meeting, and entertainment activities.
Data-Intensive Computing explores the new infrastructures, algorithms, tools, and applications to collect, analyze, and mine results for data-intensive business in both the consumer and enterprise sectors.
Search and Online Ads take Web search and online advertising to the next level by applying data-mining, machine-learning, and knowledge-discovery techniques to information analysis, organization, retrieval, and visualization.
Fundamental Computer Science includes areas such as theoretical computer science (theory), systems, networking, and machine learning that will have an impact on multiple applications and products.

Access Orkut from any Symbian S60 Phone

2008-08-18T19:09:00.004+05:30

Google has optimized Orkut for Symbian Series 60 (3rd edition) mobile phones. New Orkut now works on Nokia’s Nseries (N95, N82, N72 etc.) and Samsung’s SGH models. Google has also added more features including photo uploads, picture galleries, click-to-call, and quick friend searches. The good news is that for using all these new features there is no need to download any other special software.

If you have a Symbian Series 60 GPRS enabled mobile then go ahead type http://m.orkut.com and start enjoying all these new features

Source : Google Mobile Blog.

SQL Server 2008 Released In India !

2008-08-12T20:40:00.001+05:30

Microsoft SQL Sever 2008 - RTM is out now, and the place was India. SQL Server 2008 will store more data in a compress form, it also features performance optimization in query, search, synchronize, report, and analyze.

Microsoft feels that "SQL Server Resource Governor" (introduced in 2008) will help users get more control over their data regardless of the storage location. SQL 2008 also features new data types such as spatial data. SQL 2008 provides better connectivity with third-party apps from companies like Oracle, and adds new integration points with Office, a new custom report builder, easier encryption interfaces and policy-based management features to enforce compliance.

SQL Server 2008 comes in 7 different flavors

Compact
Express
Standard
Workgroup
Developer
Enterprise
Web

Perhaps most outstanding feature of SQL Server 2008 is an Internet-designed database (Bye Bye for MySQL), Microsoft says that better features, scalability and pricing was required for all hosting solutions, and they are doing just that.

Best thing about SQL Server 2008 is that pricing remains identical to 2005 editions. Whats more if you already have SQL 2005 License you get SQL 2008 for free.

The SQL Server 2008 is available to MSDN / Technet subscribers and is available for download from August 7, evaluation copy is already available.

Microsoft Midori (iVirtualize ! )

2008-08-12T20:32:00.003+05:30

Virtualization technologies will rule the world of tomorrow, no more desktops and huge centralized servers, client machines with just a screen and input devices, high bandwidth cable and everything on central servers. Sounds good, but then is that possible with current internet infrastructure?

It is the basis of Hindu philosophy, each born has to be rest in peace.

Internet will soon be history as it can not take toll of the high-data bandwidth and requirement of heavy web servers.

So what alternatives are there for those software giants who are dominating desktop space, like Microsoft. The answer comes as Virtulization technologies.

Microsoft is prototyping a new operating system that will be a component based non Windows - operating system. It is assumed that in next 20 odd years, Windows client operating system will becomes obsolete, and Microsoft is gearing up for the change. With the incubation of a project codenamed Midori, Microsoft is reserving its current space in the new web world.

Midori means green in Japanese, Microsoft Midori is an evolution from Microsoft Research's Singularity operating system project.

Microsoft Midori boasts of creating Software-isolated processes, this will reduce the inter process communication and hence complexity created due to shared components. So technically the softwares will talk directly to operating system. By this I can anticipate that future version of Microsoft .Net (or whatever it will be called then) will be an integral part of the operating system, which will use shared component to execute similar set of tasks.

It is also revealed that Microsoft Midori will be a Internet-centric (web) operating system. This will not require colossus hardware but a light shell type hardware and minimum disk space. This will also ensure that there will be no conflicts in hardware-software coupling which is the everyday issue today. Most of the component will be downloaded and used as and when required basis. With Microsoft's new Hyper-V hypervisor, the software giant has plans to make virtualize applications available everywhere. It is also believed that Hyper-V will replace Microsoft Virtual PC in short span. Hypervisors the new term for virtual PC, and Hypervisors will be the center of attraction in Microsoft Midori. Hypervisors will identify all required component and will lease it to a specific application and for a specific role. Microsoft is aiming big here and wants to fight small evolution of Google Apps and likely applications with a OS level capabilities.

With every "Shift" there are "Transitional" questions,

If Microsoft can do what it claims, how much effort is required for this said transition, everyone understands (and felt) the pain while migrating from COM to Microsoft .net, even today there are more application in VB/COM/Excel then there are in .Net. Who would pay the price to migrate this apps to Midori's Internet Centric Application Framework.

But there is a hope, if Microsoft can deliver Midori as they say, then I personally think it will be the biggest revolution in PC Industry.

Courtesy: Microsoft News

How to prevent your PEN drive from VIRUS!

2008-08-11T22:19:00.002+05:30

Hi Friends, i found this article very interesting. Many of your PC/laptop's normally gets virus because of Pen Drives or USB devices (Even PC's who are not connected to network ). Some Virus like Ravmon Virus , Heap41a worm which are not detected by anti virus normally spreads mostly by the Pen Drives . In such a case what can you do to prevent your PC from getting infected with Virus that spreads through USB devices or Pen Drives ?

You can protect your PC by just following the simple steps below . It won't take much time.

* Connect your Pen Drive or USB drive to your computer .
* Now a dialogue window will popup asking you to choose among the options . Don't choose any of them , Just simply click Cancel.
* *Now go to Start--> Run and type cmd to open the Command Prompt window ..
* *Now go to My Computer and Check the Drive letter of your USB drive or Pen Drive. ( E.g. If it is written Kingston (I:) , then I: will be the drive letter ..)
* *In the Command Window ( cmd ) , type the drive letter: and Hit Enter ..
* *Now type dir/w/o/a/p and Hit Enter
* *You will get a list of files . In the list , search if anyone of the following do exist
* 1. Autorun.inf
* 2. New Folder.exe
* 3. Bha.vbs
* 4. Iexplore.vbs
* 5. Info.exe
* 6. New_Folder.exe
* 7. Ravmon.exe
* 8. RVHost.exe or any other files with .exe Extension .
*
* If you find any one of the files above , Run the command attrib -h -r -s -a *.* and Hit Enter.
* Now Delete each File using the following Command del filename ( E.g del autorun.inf ) .
* That's it . Now just scan your USB drive with the anti virus you have to ensure that you made your Pen Drive free of Virus .

Evolution of C#

2008-08-11T00:30:00.001+05:30

In this video, Alex Turner walks through how the C# language has evolved between version 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 for working with data structures. Nice Video, watch it !

Original video source

Have u heard of F# ??

2008-08-11T00:12:00.003+05:30

Do u know C# ??

when someone asks this question, i say "yeah, somewhat the basics ". And today i heard it as F#
and i thought "Wat the F #!?" is all about.

Combining the efficiency, scripting, strong typing and productivity of ML with the stability, libraries, cross-language working and tools of .NET.

F# is a programming language that provides the much sought-after combination of type safety, performance and scripting, with all the advantages of running on a high-quality, well-supported modern runtime system. F# gives you a combination of

interactive scripting like Python,
the foundations for an interactive data visualization environment,
the strong type inference and safety of ML,
a cross-compiling compatible core shared with the popular OCaml language,
a performance profile like that of C#,
easy access to the entire range of powerful .NET libraries and database tools,
a foundational simplicity with similar roots to Scheme,
the option of a top-rate Visual Studio integration,
the experience of a first-class team of language researchers with a track record of delivering high-quality implementations,
the speed of native code execution on the concurrent, portable, and distributed .NET Framework.

The only language to provide a combination like this is F# (pronounced FSharp) - a scripted/functional/imperative/object-oriented programming language that is a fantastic basis for many practical scientific, engineering and web-based programming tasks.

F# is a pragmatically-oriented variant of ML that shares a core language with OCaml. F# programs run on top of the .NET Framework. Unlike other scripting languages it executes at or near the speed of C# and C++, making use of the performance that comes through strong typing. Unlike many statically-typed languages it also supports many dynamic language techniques, such as property discovery and reflection where needed. F# includes extensions for working across languages and for object-oriented programming, and it works seamlessly with other .NET programming languages and tools.

For further information, read about F# in more detail, download the F# distribution, read the getting started pages (a guide to installation and running your first program), go to the F# Manual, and learn about the growing F# Community.

Microsoft demos robotic receptionist

2008-08-11T00:08:00.003+05:30

Microsoft plans to use this robot receptionist to handle the task of reserving interoffice shuttles for its employees.

Microsoft's receptionist of the future is a robot.

Chief Research and Strategy officer Craig Mundie on Thursday demonstrated a software-based robot that uses a combination of visual and voice recognition as well as speech synthesis to handle basic tasks. Microsoft itself plans to use the software robot to handle shuttle requests in its own buildings, which typically have a pair of receptionists to handle visitors and shuttle requests.

In a video, two Microsoft employees approach the robot, who said (in a rather robotic voice) "Which building do you want to go to?"

After checking that she heard the visitors correctly, and double-checking both workers want to take the same shuttle, the robot declares: "It should be here in four minutes."

"This is what a natural user interface is all about and it won't be just a receptionist," Mundie said. "This is just the tip of the iceberg."

Courtesy: News.com

Have you carried out the Mojave Experiment ?

2008-08-10T23:44:00.004+05:30

As an MSP, giving session on Vista is not an easy job. Most of them complain saying tat Vista is just not better than XP. Initially some of my frens were big fans during the release of Vista , in last year. The first thing they did was grab the copy of Windows Vista from a Torrent Site, and which was followed by Heavy DVD burning and Distros in full zoom ! Though i was not an MSP at that time, i still loved to have a look at it as every other guy in my college.

I still remember the first Vista installation also happened (Pirated Copy) in my collegs in our C plus plus lab. The Aero Desktop was the one which captured the students hearts and made them fall in love with Vista.

I was amazed looking at its graphics and other stuff, and i was happy that Microsoft has done it again ! Days went by, Compiz was the buzzword in the college campus, couple of students even thought that the end to Vista 's Aero Desktop has arrived.

As usual, i had a look at the Compiz desktop and i fell for it. And as time keeps moving, the Vista popularity deteriorated in the campus and it was Show time for Linux. (One's loss is another's gain).

As i am an MSP now, i was looking out for something which will help me take a session on Vista at college. As a coincidence, i entered the Mojave site and was thrilled !

I know there are many guys just like me, who havnt installed the Microsoft Vista on their desktop and still satisfy themselves by looking at the possibilities of Compiz Fusion.
(I bet most of you havnt heard of Silverlight! )

The last thing, i would like to tell everyone is to carry out the Mojave Experiment in your PC.
The statistics in the site, shows what happened to Mojave Experimenters after the experiment.

Check out !

Go Mobile !

2008-08-10T23:38:00.002+05:30

Cell Phones is the next step in innovation.

I always believe that the innovation can happen in Country like India, in devices which everyone can use. The first thing, which comes to my mind is the Cell Phone. More than Half the Indian Population nowadays have that magic gadget. Majority are illiterates, most of them dunno how to send simple text messages, or make use of basic features which their cell supports.

The solution that comes to our mind for the next step in innovation can be accomplished with Cell Phones. Moreover, SMS can be the way.
These are some of my ideas.

*Teach Every person alphanumerals (Govt can take do that easily).

*Use Language convertors to send msgs in any Indian Language.

*Make use of MOBs(group msging), we can have a better Mob than smsgupshup, inactiv, Mytoday etc. Smsgupshup now provides gupshup APIs, really cool !

*See that the SMSs r free to send and deliver.

*The next step can be Free GPRS in India, which will happen soon.

I have suggested some ideas, using Brainstorming Technique and the intension was to make you think on this innovation. Do Imagine, and your comments are always valuable.

Sending SMS messages via Communicator

2008-08-10T22:54:00.002+05:30

I found this in one of the blogs in MSN site.

If you are using PIC (Public IM Connectivity) in OCS, you can send SMS messages to any capable phone in North America, via AOL's SMS Gateway simply by sending a message to an E.164 normalized phone number.

IE: +16128591899 and appending the AOL domain name, aol.com.

While this is fairly useful by itself, for it to be extremely useful you'd have to take advantage of this via one of the UC APIs. For example, you could use the UC AJAX API and Speech Server to send a SMS message to caller confirmation details of their call OR maybe you create an IM bot with UCMA v 1.0 that sends a transcript of the chat to the user’s SMS device. The possibilities are endless...

Debugging a Windows Blue Screen of Death

2008-08-10T22:40:00.003+05:30

By Daniel Pearson in Channel 9

Daniel goes through the four key reasons why BSODs happen, how Windows allocates memory and how developers need to be careful when setting kernel mode memory. He then goes through a real-world example of a faulty device driver and how to debug and diagnose issues. Daniel also shows how to read and write data to an application process, like Notepad using WinDbg.

Original video source

Building NBCOlympics.com with Silverlight

2008-08-10T22:35:00.000+05:30

NBCOlympics.com is one of the most ambitious projects on the web and one of the largest Silverlight applications today. Eric Schmidt takes us on a technical tour of how the site works and how it was built with Silverlight 2 and Windows Media.

Original video source

Watch Olympics on NBCOlympics.com

2008-08-10T21:32:00.002+05:30

Microsoft is into the Olympics in a big way through our partnership with NBC on NBCOlympics.com, the official online home of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing! And Live Search is ready to help you find everything you want during the games.

Feeling competitive? We’ve made it easy for you to find out if your country is ahead or behind – just search for “Olympic medals” and you'll get up-to-the-minute tallies by country:

Check it often to watch those medals add up!

If you just want to see a specific country or sport, you can do that, too. Try “Medals for Portugal” or “Medals for Swimming” and you'll get the latest counts as they happen:

It isn’t always about who is winning, although those heart-wrenching stories of hardship leading up to victory make some Olympians more popular than others. If you don’t want to be left out of the conversation over lunch, check out Olympic xRank. Not only will you know who is hotter than the torch but why.

On the other hand, if you hear an athlete’s name or want to find out why you keep seeing their face on your co-workers' monitors, try our Athlete Answer. Enter “Michael Phelps” and we give you everything you need in a neat little package:

Speaking of news, we’ve pulled it all together for you with our new Olympic News scope. We look for stories – articles and videos – across all the sources we can find and constantly provide the freshest, most relevant stories for you. If you just want to get right to the videos of the events and athletes try video search.

And we're not done! In our last blog post, we introduced you to our new homepage. It's gotten great reception and we wanted to do something special during the Olympics, so we'll be updating the image twice a day with great shots from the Games.

We hope your team brings home the gold from Beijing!

Gmail advanced search is here !!

2008-05-15T12:10:00.003+05:30

Advanced search operators are query words or symbols that perform special actions in Gmail search. These operators allow you to find what you're looking for quickly and accurately. They can also be used to set up filters so you can organize your inbox automatically. Some of the most useful operators are listed below.

You can also use advanced search operators by clicking on Show search options beneath the Gmail search box.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=7190

BEWARE ! Now mobile phones can be hijacked and cloned.

2008-03-24T16:27:00.003+05:30

New Delhi: Double roles are not relegated to filmdom, for now, even mobile phones can be duplicated. Police have sounded alarms on dangers of mobile cloning.

If you have received a huge phone bill for calls you've never made, chances are you're a victim of phone cloning.

As a victim, Anand Prakash said, “I received a number of calls saying I had given missed calls but I never did.”

That's what happens when tech-savvy thieves duplicate your phone's identity. It's surprisingly easy, especially for CDMA phones.

First, download software from sites like www.cracktorrentserials.com and cellphonehack.com. Then feed the phone’s Electronic Serial number (ESN) and mobile identification number (MIN) into the software. Finally, digitally imprint those numbers onto another phone.

Some men were recently caught cloning phones. In business for the last four years, they sold each cloned handset for Rs 5,000-7,000.

People could make STDISD calls, spy on your conversations and even rig terror attacks using your number.

The only way to protect your phone is to not let it out of your sight. Nor should you give it to unauthorized people to repair or else your cloned phone could end up being sold at places like Delhi’s Ghaffar Market.

More Information, click here.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace Beta Now Available !

2008-03-23T21:37:00.000+05:30

Microsoft Office goes online with the release of free public beta this week. As the name suggests, ‘Microsoft Office Live Workspace’ works like an online extension of Microsoft Office and enables users to create, share and access their documents from anywhere.

Documents can be opened and saved directly from Word, Excel and PowerPoint while tasks, contacts and events may be synchronized with Outlook and people can be invited to view, comment on and edit what you upload.

The key features are as below.

Anywhere Access :

Save 1000+ Microsoft Office documents in one place.

Access them from almost any computer with a Web browser.

No more flash drives or sending yourself documents via e-mail.

Share with Others :

Invite people to your workspace.

You control who can view, comment, and edit your documents.

Stop manually merging versions from multiple people.

Extend the Office Experience :

Open and save files directly from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Synchronize contact, task, and event lists with Outlook.

No need to learn a new program.

It’s a beta so don’t expect full functionality while accessing your documents. It’s a great step into the fast-moving trend of free online sharing and collaboration sites. The interface is clean and ad-free, which makes it easy to use.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace is certainly worth looking at, since it doesn’t cost you anything, and probably worth using if you remember its limitations: that you can’t edit documents from a public computer that doesn’t have Office installed, and that you can share files only with friends and colleagues who have Windows Live accounts.

If you wish to sign up for the beta, you’ll need a Windows Live ID. At this time, Microsoft Office Live Workspace Beta works with Internet Explorer and Firefox only.

Microsoft Extends Online Storage To 5 GB !

2008-03-23T21:34:00.000+05:30

Microsoft has increased the online storage of Windows Live Skydrive to 5 GB, which is five times it’s previous limit of 1 GB. It’s certainly going to get Skydrive a lot of users.

With your SkyDrive account, you get that 5GB of storage for personal folders accessible only to you, shared folders accessible to your friends, and public folders open to everyone (which can be subscribed to via RSS). Details on SkyDrive limitations and usage are sketchy, but it looks like individual file sizes may be limited to 50MB.

On top of the extra storage, Windows Live Skydrive is now out of beta, and is now available in the following additional countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey.

Make YouTube Videos Load Smoother and Faster

2008-03-23T21:26:00.001+05:30

It gets irritating when you’re watching a video on YouTube and it suddenly stops playing. I don’t know how many of you have experienced it but sometimes I’m able to play videos from YouTube without any interruption but sometimes the video would just stop and freeze there. I tried playing it on different browsers, stopped any programs that require internet connection but the problem won’t go away.

Thankfully I found a fantastic video accelerator tool that is able to help stream YouTube faster and smoother by reducing buffering problems and video interruptions. SpeedBit Video Accelerator works like a charm. It’s able to reduce YouTube video freezes and buffering problems as well as accelerates any YouTube video. It also supports sites including MySpace, Metacafe, DailyMotion, Stage6, 5min etc.

It includes extra features such as a search feature for finding videos around the web right from your desktop and also automatically bookmarking videos that you’ve accelerated for easy replays. It’s a must use freeware for those having slow internet connection as well. I recommend this software to everyone.

Windows Vista SP1 Released

2008-03-23T20:19:00.003+05:30

So it’s official. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 has been released to end users for download.

Me and my friends have been using Windows Vista SP1 for a while now, and I can honestly say, it makes Vista the Windows OS you want on your desktop. Faster file copies, less UAC prompts and other good stuff.

Read all about it on the Vista SP1 Overview page.

Or just Download it from these links:

Microsoft Downloads: Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (x32)
Microsoft Downloads: Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (x64)

Remember, most Computer Science students have access to Windows Vista completely free of charge. So if you haven’t already loaded it, or you were waiting for SP1, now is a great time to try it out.

“Dream Spark” -->> Time for Free Microsoft Products !!

2008-03-23T20:05:00.002+05:30

Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates last month unveiled a software giveaway that will ultimately provide millions of college and high school students around the world with access to the latest Microsoft developer and designer tools at no charge to unlock their creative potential and set them on the path to academic and career success.

The Microsoft DreamSpark student program (http://channel8.msdn.com) makes available, at no charge, a broad range of development and design software for download. The program is now available to more than 35 million college students in Belgium, China, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S. Broad global coverage, as well as an expansion of the program to high school students around the world, potentially reaching up to 1 billion students worldwide, will continue throughout the next year. Gates will share details with students and faculty at Stanford University as part of a U.S. and Canada college tour that kicks off today.

“We want to do everything we can to equip a new generation of technology leaders with the knowledge and tools they need to harness the magic of software to improve lives, solve problems and catalyze economic growth,” Gates said. “Microsoft DreamSpark provides professional-level tools that we hope will inspire students to explore the power of software and encourage them to forge the next wave of software-driven breakthroughs.”

Microsoft DreamSpark is available to all students whose studies touch on technology, design, math, science and engineering. Students of today are more technical in their everyday lives than ever — representing both their personal interests and what is expected of them when they arrive in the workplace for the first time.

For full article, click here

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1

2008-03-23T19:27:00.001+05:30

Many of you may have heard the recent announcements regarding Internet Explorer 8 and it’s change to now render in Standards Mode by default.

Well here is your chance to get a preview at that, and start seeing how this is going to impact your development in the futre. When Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7, it broke a lot of sites, simply because the developers were too lazy to test beta versions with their products. Make sure you test it out before it is released.

Apart from rendering in standards mode by default, IE8 includes some new features that are:

Activities

WebSlices

Favorites Bar

Automatic Crash Recovery

Improved Phishing Filter

You can download the beta at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/Install.htm

Girl born four years after her father's death

2008-03-23T18:36:00.000+05:30

London: Her father was not there to jump with joy when she was born. Nor will he be there to sing lullabies to her, to play with her and watch her grow up. Yet Jaimie-Rose Roberts, born four years after her father's death, would always remain a Daddy's girl.

Her mother, Lisa Roberts conceived from the frozen sperm of her late husband James Roberts, who died from cancer at 33. Last week, she gave birth to a baby girl after IVF treatment that doctors warned had only a 20 per cent chance of working.

James was diagnosed with a cancerous leg tumour and was warned that treatment would leave him infertile so he had his sperm frozen for future use and signed over ownership to his wife.

His tumour, however, spread despite the chemotherapy treatment and he died in October 2004.

After waiting for a few years after her husbands death, Mrs Roberts felt strong enough to go through with the IVF treatment.

Doctors had told her that only one of the 10 resulting embryos was viable, dramatically cutting her chance of becoming pregnant to just 20 per cent.

''I used our savings of more than 4,000 pounds to cover the cost because I couldn't think of anything in the world better to spend it on. I know James would have approved of that,'' the Daily Mail quoted her as saying.

Anil Pai Messenger

2007-09-16T20:12:00.000+05:30

hi frens,
bored of using GTALK, YAHOO MEssenger, and other Instant messaging clients.
guys, its time to change. click on the title "Anil Pai Messenger", and download Anil Pai's Instant Messaging service, and get Started.
and yeah, all these are available for FREE of cost!!!!
so, keep CHATTing!!!

VirtualLab 5.5.12.488

2006-10-28T14:49:00.001+05:30

VirtualLab rescues lost and missing data from a variety of data-loss scenarios, including loss from formatting, partition damage, virus or directory destruction, and a myriad of other data-loss problems. It even recovers accidentally deleted files from the Recycle Bin. It works on all Windows file systems, including FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS. It will rescue data from hard drives, camera cards, ZIP and Jaz disks, floppy disks, and other devices that Windows can assign a drive letter to, even if Windows operating system cannot see the device. It also offers support for deleted e-mail recovery, damaged and quick formatted CD/DVD media, and camera cards.

Internet Explorer 7.0

2006-10-27T22:58:00.001+05:30

All Microsoft Internet Explorer loyalists rejoice!

For, Microsoft has released the newest avatar, Version 7.0, of your favorite browser. IE 7.0 has features that assist you to surf the Web in a better and secure way.

Tabbed browsing:

With IE 7, you no longer need to open several windows to browse different sites. In a single window, you can open multiple tabs and display a different site or a page in each of these. To switch from one tab to another, you simply have to click a tab of your choice. And it's easy to identify a tab - IE displays the first few words of the title of the page in the tab.

RSS Feeds:

Use IE 7 to read RSS news. This browser saves you the trouble of downloading and installing separate RSS Reader software, which means you save both on your effort and hard disk space.

Web Search:

Did you wish for a search feature built right into the browser? IE 7 fulfills your wish! You can search the Web without having to make a trip to your favorite search site. To search, just use the search box in the Address bar. Type the keywords in the box and press Enter. By default, IE searches Windows Live and displays the results.

Phishing Filter:

Fake sites that look similar to say that of your bank or credit card company, lay treacherous traps that could deceive you to reveal your personal information, such as password or PIN. Phishing sites usually send an e-mail in a way that makes recipients believe that it came from a genuine source, for example, an e-commerce site.

Pop-up Blocker:

Are you tired of the pop-up windows that sprout over your main window? Get a firm handle over these annoying displays with the Pop-up Blocker feature of IE. It gives you a good control over which pop-ups to block and which to allow. You can even see blocked pop-ups should you wish! How to make the settings for the Pop-up Blocker? Click the Tools button, Select Pop-up Blocker, and then Pop-up Blocker Settings.

Add-on Manager:

While add-ons like ActiveX controls, toolbars, and browser extensions can improve your web surfing experience, they could cause problems too. IE has an Add-on Manager to facilitate you to view and control the add-ons. With this option, you can enable or disable add-ons. You can also delete ActiveX controls.

Favorites Center:

A one-stop solution to organize and find Web pages easily. The Favorites Center gives you a quick access to Web pages, RSS feeds, and recently visited Web sites.

Bandwidth Monitor

2006-10-26T21:27:00.002+05:30

Bandwidth Monitor Pro

Do you ever wonder how much bandwidth you are using?
How fast you are downloading or uploading?
Or if you're closing in on your monthly transfer limit?

If so Bandwidth Monitor Pro is the utility for you!

*Detailed logging

*Always control

*Highly customizable

*Advanced alert system