Microsoft PDC 2010 highlights

There were a lot of announcements at the MS Professional Developer’s Conference yesterday. Some interesting facts from PDC from Twitter & a live blog -10 million downloads for IE9 beta - Ballmer .. Biggest beta ever.500,000 downloads of the #WP7 dev tools already - @scottgu  #azure has more than 200,000 subscriptions to date  Over 1000 apps and games already uploaded to the marketplace.DataMart is Windows Azure MarketPlaceThe WP7...

Read More

Hotmail lets you download attachments as a zip file

Did you know, you can download attachments faster in Hotmail as it packs individual files into a single zip?If the attachments are images, there is an option to view them as a slideshow without having to download those images locally. The slideshow runs using a Silverlight viewer that can also present the images in a full-screen format. Pretty cool!In its last make-over, Hotmail also introduced the Conversation threading...

Read More

Why YQL?

Christian Heilmann who is quitting his job as a full-time developer evangelist at Yahoo has made available a demo chapter from a prospective book on YQL.In case, you haven't heard of YQL, its "a technology that turns the web into a database and allows you to mix and match and filter before writing your first line of code. It also allows you to release an API without any infrastructure, knowledge of authentication and access control. In essence you can use Yahoo’s server infrastructure and processing power...

Read More

Windows 7 is 1 year old, Windows platform soon to be 25

Having sold 240 million copies so far, Windows 7 is Microsoft's fastest selling OS. The Windows platform will be completing 25 years next month. To look back at Windows history, check the Windows 1.0 artifacts that Ray Ozzie has shared at docs.com, which now provides “browser-based PDF reading” through a Silverlight-based PDF viewer.In other OS news, Google is readying its Chrome OS for the fourth quarter of 2010. Some points from the Chromium OS FAQ -Google Chrome OS is to Chromium OS what Google Chrome browser is to Chromium....

Read More

Adding new Search Provider easiest with Opera

If you search for items frequently on popular sites (like Amazon), it may be easier to use that site's native search right from the browser. All popular browsers allow adding new Search Providers to the search box but it is fastest to do this in Opera, followed by Chrome.IE8 & Firefox require an add-on to be installed for each search provider which internally uses a standard XML-based OpenSearch Description File. In contrast, Opera...

Read More

Search from browser address bar in IE, Firefox, Opera

I found out by accident that its not just Chrome that has the combined search and address bar (Omnibox) feature - the address bar in IE8, Firefox 3.0 & Opera 9.6 (the version numbers are the ones I've tested on) can also double up as a search box. You can type your search term in the address bar of any of these browsers and press the Enter key to see results from your default search engine. This doesn't work in Safari (version 4.0 on Windows) though.Its good to see browser features getting consistent across the board.Also see:Keyboard...

Read More

Impact of online reputation on job recruitments

Did you know, while only 7% of U.S. consumers surveyed believed information about them online affected their job search, 70% of responding recruiters and HR professionals have rejected candidates based on information they found online.  86% of human resources professionals surveyed stated that a positive online reputation influences hiring. (Microsoft Online Reputation Research, 2010)A Microsoft Privacy & Safety blog post offers...

Read More

When to use Sleep & Hibernate

Sleep & Hibernate are power-saving options in operating systems like Windows Vista & 7. Sleep preserves whatever you were doing in memory while Hibernate writes your settings and the content of memory to the hard disk (to a hidden system file called Hiberfil.sys located in the root folder of the drive where the operating system is installed) and then completely powers down the system. The size of the Hiberfil.sys file is approximately equal to how much random access memory (RAM) is installed on the computer.Hibernation is more power saving...

Read More

Google Labs Script Converter Bookmarklet

Script Converter is a Google Labs product that allows the user to read a web page in a script of their choice (currently 11 Indian languages, English, Greek, Nepali, Persian, Russian, Serbian are supported). For example, if the user can understand spoken Tamil but cannot read the script, they will be able to view Tamil web pages in English (Roman) script or one of the other supported languages. The online tool does not translate any content but transforms the words on the page to its phonetic equivalent in the desired script. It also supports the...

Read More

Can NoSQL replace SQL Server?

Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and Rackspace are notable sites using various types of NoSQL implementations.Michael Otey explains why NoSQL isn’t really a viable replacement for SQL Server -The term “NoSQL” was coined back in 1998, and it originally stood for Not Only SQL. So the name NoSQL is a bit of a misnomer.NoSQL databases aren’t relational at all. Today’s NoSQL databases are distributed data stores that are designed for very large-scale data access requirements. Probably the most popular NoSQL database is the Cassandra open source project. Cassandra...

Read More

SharePoint in Pictures

The SharePoint Developer Documentation Team has launched a new blog called SharePoint in Pictures with the intention of  providing visual SharePoint developer content on a weekly basis. Illustrations & diagrams make information sticky. This is a great idea that should be extended to other MS products as well.This diagram from that blog neatly summarizes features present in the different editions of Sharepoint 2...

Read More

Words that leave Google Instant speechless

2600 Magazine has compiled a list of objectionable words that Google Instant has blacklisted. Several volunteers have submitted blacklisted words or phrases and the current count of such entries stands at 445. If you run a website that allows user submissions, you may face the possibility of visitors posting swear words and content that is not family-friendly. To censor user comments, you can take advantage of the above mentioned compilation of black-listed words to validate against. This kind of filtering is a work perpetually in progress.While...

Read More

Inside: Google on National Geographic channel

Trivia from the "Inside: Google" program that I got to see last week on National Geographic channel in my part of the world (India) -Google has plans for taking the cloud to the sea. It has a patent for a "water-based data center"Their offices have whiteboards everywhere & a lot of note-taking is done electronicallyGooglers don't just get free food at office but also services like free laundry & haircutsMany of the popular Google products like Google Earth, Docs (Writely), YouTube, Blogger are acquired...

Read More

Thrilled to be renewed as a ASP.NET MVP again

I thank everyone who made it possible for me to win the Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award in the ASP / ASP.NET category again for my community contributions. As I mentioned earlier, the best part of the award is that you get to hobnob with folks passionate about Microsoft technologies - authors, speakers and other technical community leaders. I was among 1014 MVPs worldwide who were re-awarded...

Read More

Desktop shortcuts for Google Docs document, Outlook New Mail Message

Whether you need a desktop shortcut to a frequently accessed Google Docs document or a quick way to compose a new Outlook mail message, creating one is similar & simple.1. Right-click the desktop and choose New | Shortcut.2. In the Create Shortcut dialog box, enter mailto: as the item to launch for the Outlook new mail message or the URL of the Google Docs document for which you need quick access....

Read More

Comparison of Microsoft Data Access Technologies

Deciding which data access strategy to choose is not always an easy job. Here's a compilation of articles that discuss this topic -This Infosys whitepaper presents a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of ADO.NET, LINQ, Entity Framework & WCF Data Services. There is also a comparison of Entity Framework & NHibernate. Excerpt - ADO.NET offers best performance amongst its peers (LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework, WCF Data Services) C# guru, John Skeet's post in StackOverlow on the pros and cons of LINQ (work...

Read More

Got tough IE questions? Check EricLaw's blog

Eric Lawrence is a program manager on the Internet Explorer team & best known as the creator of Fiddler. He has also developed several IE addons & browser-related tools.I have found his blog posts to be insightful. His answers to difficult questions asked on forums are informative & comprehensive. Here's a compilation of his posts that I liked most -The Performance Impact of META REFRESHForcing Internet Explorer To Forget To Not RememberUnderstanding Session LifetimeUnderstanding Cookie ControlsFriendly...

Read More

Read proxied, mobile-friendly web pages with Google Mobilizer

Google Mobilizer is a free service that can:display stripped down mobile-friendly version of web-pagesbypass corporate firewalls & allow access to blocked sitesoptionally hide images so that pages load faster, especially on a slow connectionTo get started, click on this Google Mobilizer URL - http://www.google.com/gwt/nGoogle Mobilizer will not mobilize a page if the page is already a mobile page, or the website has chosen to opt out of allowing us to "mobilize" their pages.Auto Google Mobilizer is a Chrome extension automatically...

Read More

Simulate Modem speeds with Fiddler

In the Pluralsight Silverlight 3 Fundamentals video course, the instructor suggests a tip to test a custom progress bar by mimicking a slow web server on the local computer. This can be done by generating modem speeds with Fiddler, a HTTP proxy, using the menu option Rules > Performance > Simulate Modem speeds. The speed can also be customized. This technique is more convenient than using the System.Threading.Thread.Sleep method to create an artifical delay with code.Firefox Throttle plug-in also allows you to cap download/upload...

Read More