.NET From India

Gmail atlast

Got my GMail account atlast, thanks to Sanjay.. :-)

Could not get my most prefered id though, anandm or anand.m!!! So many people already have Gmail accounts that both of those ids are taken.. Suprising, considering it is supposed to be in Beta and not everybody can sign up for an account and all that story about it being difficult to get a Gmail account etc...

Even read somewhere that some people are trying to sell their GMail invite at EBay.

My id is m.anand @ nospam-gmail.com

WS-CDL 1.0

World Wide Web Consortium Publishes First Public Working Draft of Web Services Choreography Description Language 1.0

The first draft of Web Services Choreography Description Language (WS-CDL) version 1.0 will enable sustained and secure peer-to-peer e-business transactions over the Web. Released by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), WS-CDL will serve as a modeling tool developers can use to view the entire Web services sequence, not just the start and end points; the description language also provides an important context, or "rules of engagement," for end point languages such as Java and BPEL.

Electric Car

I saw a Reva when I was coming back home this evening. It was quite suprising becaus I have not seen too many of these small electric cars on the road. Though it was launched with a lot of fanfare on cutting down on petrol etc, it does not seem to be a success. It is environmentally friendly and cheaper to run(electricity is quite cheap compared to petrol), but then it is too small, max speed of 60kms is nowhere near ok and max distance of 80 kms on a full charge is not acceptable too.

What I would like is something like a Toyoto Prius, with a charging option. Which means I can save on petrol, when I have enough charge, but then can run on petrol when I am low on power and I am ready to pay a premium for that(environmentally friendly and lower spendings on petrol)? Using the current exchange rate Prius will cost around 9 Lakh Rs. ($20K), which I think is not an un-affordable price in India as of now.

Why are we not seeing such innovative cars being released in India???

Faster that Ctrl+Alt+Del II

Most keyboards today (especially on notebooks) have the "Windows Key" - one with the windows logo on it - as part of their standard layout. This is one of the most functional and one of the least used key around - press Windows Key + L to lock your workstation :-).

Pressing just the Windows Key brings up Start Menu (same as pressing Ctrl + Esc)

Pressing Windows Key + E brings up Explorer

Pressing Windows Key + D shows you your desktop

Pressing Windows Key + M minimizes all Windows

I could go on forever.. ;-)

Faster than Ctrl+Alt+Del

Found this in the Lockergnome Windows Fanatics Newsletter:

It's now become personal habit for me to lock my workstation. Before I get up and walk away from my computer, my fingers automatically hit CTRL+ALT+DEL and then press Enter (call me a creature of habit). Now keeping in mind that I'm all about simplicity, I can perform this simple task even quicker by creating a shortcut to lock my computer right on my desktop. Instead of four keystrokes, I can now do it in a single click and here is how:
1. Right click an empty area on your desktop. From the Context menu, point to New and click Shortcut.
2. In the Create Shortcut dialog as shown in the following figure, type the following:
drive:\ Windows\System32\ rundll32.exe user32.dll, LockWorkStation. Click Next.
3. Type in a name for the shortcut. Click Finish.

I went ahead and added an easier keyboard shortcut too, just for fun...:-)

Screensavers...

There are some cool, free screensavers lurking at Microsoft.com, check them out:

a.) Valentine's Day Screensaver - ok so I point this one out a little late, but don't let that stop you from trying it out. It is Unicode aware and allows you to use Indian Languages for the message - I tried it out with Hindi, Kannada and Tamizh and I must confess they look wickedly cool :-)

b.) European Union Screensaver - you can see flags and names of the countries part of the Europen Union whizz past on your screen. Looks neat. (Doesn't install on Windows Server 2003 - which is probably a good thing :-))

Adhoc Reporting for SQL Reporting Services

Microsoft announced that it is acquiring a company called ActiveViews, which has a product that provides ad hoc reporting solution based on SQL Reporting Services and SQL Server.

Extract from Press Release
Ad Hoc Reporting Tool To Elevate Future Of Microsoft’s SQL Server Business Intelligence Offering
Today at Gartner Business Intelligence Summit 2004 in Chicago, Microsoft Corp. announced it would extend its business intelligence (BI) platform by acquiring ActiveViews Inc., a small, privately held company based in Provo, Utah. ActiveViews provides an ad hoc reporting system that takes advantage of the power of Microsoft® .NET and SQL Server™ Reporting Services to allow users to easily unlock and explore data stored in a myriad of systems.

The ActiveViews system is designed to present a business view of the data an end user is interested in examining. ActiveViews provides users with a window into the database so they can literally explore the information. With ActiveViews technology, end users will be able to modify existing reports and build new reports from scratch in a Web-based environment. This means the end user have access to the data they need immediately.

Application Settings in Whidbey

VS.NET 2005 has a new entry in the solution explorer(VB.NET Project) called the My Application.

This serves as a single place where all properties related to an application resides, including the assemblyinfo.vb file. There is a neat designer in place to change all setting for the application.

As VB.NET and C# have diverged a lot in this release, this feature is not avbl in C#.

VS.NET 2005

There seemed to be some problem with installing VS.NET 2005 from the DVDs handed out during the MVP summit. I was always getting errors copying files half way thru the install. I tried with two DVDs, but the same problem...

Then I read this post from Totzke's blog and choose not to install Smart device support and everything went thru fine..:-)

CNUG Students

The Students Chapter of my usergroup, Chennai .NET User Group, now has its own domain.

www.cnugstudent.net

Quiet Lauch - New Marketing Strategy??

Evelyn Rodriguez blogs about this new marketing phenomena called the Quiet Launch. Maybe Blog Launch will also suit the cases she talks about..:-)

(via Robert McLaws)

Sharepoint and Google Ads

I run Google Ads on this blog, hoping to atleast make it pay for the hosting (Clickthrus seem to be pathetic as of now and I am not sure it is gonna pay for the hosting given the current earning pattern...:-) ).

Usually the Ads that show up are for blog services and I rarely see any Ads for .NET development etc, though that is the main topic of this blog. So I assumed that there were not many product companies that were using Google Ads.

A previous post on MS products had some information on Sharepoint and suddenly I find that the Google Ads being served, are from Sharepoint consulting, teaching and product companies. That really suprised me!!

Companies advertise for Sharepoint server services, but not .NET consulting Services!! And that post also had mention of BizTalk etc, but no Ads for that....

New Typepad Logo

Typepad has changed its logo..

A Security Alert

A security alert from Microsoft:

What is this alert?

- Microsoft is aware of code available on the Internet that seeks to exploit vulnerabilities addressed as part of our April 13th security updates. We are investigating the situation to help protect our customers. Specifically, the reports detail exploit code that attempts to use the IIS PCT/SSL vulnerability on servers running Internet Information Services with the Secure Socket Layer authentication enabled. This vulnerability is addressed by bulletin MS04-011.

Customers who have deployed MS04-011 are not at risk from this exploit code.

- Microsoft considers these reports credible and serious and continues to urge all customers to immediately install the MS4-011 update as well as the other critical updates provided on April 13th.

- Customers who are still evaluating and testing MS04-011 should immediately implement the workaround steps detailed for the PCT/SSL vulnerability detailed in the MS04-011. In addition, Microsoft has published a knowledge base article KB187498 at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;187498 which provides additional details on SSL and how to disable PCT without applying MS04-011.

- We expect to see additional exploits and proof-of-concept code targeting the April 2004 security bulletin release in coming days and weeks, potentially including worm or virus examples.

If you have any questions regarding the security updates or its implementation after reading the above listed bulletin you should contact Product Support Services in the United States at 1-866-PCSafety (1-866-727-2338). International customers should contact their local subsidiary.

GMail

I seem to be the only blogger around without a Gmail account...:-(

More Security Holes

Information week reports on a new security hole, this time in TCP.

Security Vulnerability Threatens Internet

(via Totzkeeeeee's Blog)

India Goes to the Polls

India went to the polls today with the phase 1 of the Lok Sabha elections happening. Around 1/3 of the 500+ seats were taken up for election today and we had a wonderful 50%+ turnout, ie. around 100 million people voted today. That is the size of the whole voters turnout of the elections in the USA...

Mainframe Crashes

I have often heard mainframers say, a mainframe never crashes and that why we don't like Windows...

Well nobody is perfect ;-)

IBM DB2 bugs take bank systems down for four days

Sound Recorder

Most of us don't even remember that small utility called Sound Receorder that ships with Windows. Here is a creative guy, who makes music with sound recorder.

(Thanks to fellow MVP Shailesh for the link)

.NET in MS Products

I got this via a Mail from Abishek, the MVP Lead for India. Interesting to see how .NET is becoming a part of most things rolling out of MS.

Windows
Windows Server 2003
.NET Framework 1.1 included
.NET Framework required to use Sharepoint Team Services
.NET Framework required to use UDDI Services
Small Business Server 2003
Remote Web Workplace and the Backup Snap-in
Windows “Longhorn” – Managed API
Office
Frontpage 11 requires the .NET Framework for working with ASP.NET
Outlook Business Contact Manager – Majority of application is managed code
Office System – Sharepoint Portal Server 2.0
Requires .NET Framework 1.1, written in managed code

Server Products
SQL Server
Yukon” will natively host .NET Framework 2.0, parts written in managed code
SQL Server Reporting Services – Majority of application written in managed code
Exchange 2003 – Outlook Mobile Access is written in managed code using ASP.NET mobile controls
BizTalk 2004 - parts are written in managed code
Commerce Server 2002 - parts are written in managed code
Content Management Server 2002 - parts are written in managed code
MSN Messenger Server - Presence server and admin/config tools

Developer Tools
ASP.NET Web Matrix – Fully written in managed code
Visual Studio .NET 2002/3 - parts are written in managed code
.NET Framework 1.0/1.1 - parts are written in managed code
Assignment Manager - fully written in managed code

Web Properties
www.msn.com
www.microsoft.com
msdn.microsoft.com
gotdotnet.com
uddi.microsoft.com
MapPoint XML Web service

Microsoft Internal applications using .NET
Account Explorer
HeadTrax
Consensus
MS Contract
eSupport

Windows Media SDK

To tell the truth, I did not even know that such a thing existed. But this is quite interesting post and it does give you a managed wrapper to the SDK, if you do want to work with WM* files.

Extracting Metadata from Windows Media files

Met Sanjay

Sanjay Vyas had come down to Polaris for a session on .NET for the senior management. I was not there for the session as I had some pressing work, but met up with Sanjay later over lunch. Had an enjoyable talk with him and as usual he was singing praises over C++ :-)

VB FAQ Blog

A new VB.NET FAQ blog has been started by the VB.NET Team....

(via Panopticon Central)

http://466453.com

Do you think http://466453.com is a link to a pron site?? Well think again. That is the site to access Google's Wireless web site. They have this as it is difficult to type chars on a mobile. (466453 stands for G o o g l e)

(via Sanjay)

Another #

A new # on the block.. XUL#...

XUL# is a rendering library for XUL, written for the .NET environment.

XUL (pronounced "zool") is a technology developed by the Mozilla development team. XUL is an XML based user interface markup language. It allows you to create GUIs with the same ease as one would create a web page.

XUL#, is written in C#, and currently only renders XUL to the GTK+ and GNOME widget sets. But it provides an programmers' API to allow other widget sets as rendering targets.

(We plan to also support Windows.Forms soon.)

(XUL# has been tested on Mono, but should work on Microsoft's .NET implementation and Portable.NET.)

via Vasanth

Adding Components to VS.NET

Adding components to the toolbar is one of the most irritating thing to do with VS.NET, what with the dialog taking ages to load.

IanG blogs about a shortcut that can drastically reduce the time to add an component and also makes life easier for the developer.

MVP Summit Photos

Some of the photos I took during the recent MVP Summit has been uploaded to a new photo album I have created.

MVP Summit 2004

(Note: I have not yet labeled all the photos. Hopefully will be able to finish off everything by next week)

A Mac Trojan

I got this via email from a fellow MVP.

First Mac OS X Trojan Horse Found
http://www.spymac.com/news/index.php?contentid=288

04/08/2004 15:08 | By Ilene Hoffman
The Trojan Horse, MP3Concept (MP3Virus.gen) which affects Macintosh computers running Mac OS X was identified by Intego. Intego, a Mac security specialist, released a press notice explaining that the virus code is encapsulated in the ID3 tag of an MP3 file. An MP3 file is a digital audio file. When opened the file launches hidden code which can damage or delete files. It also launches the iTunes application, so that you think you've launched a real music file. It can also infect other MP3 files. Intego further states that the first versions of this virus are benign, (i.e. they will do no harm), but the doors are opened for more serious risks.

Intego's VirusBarrier software eradicates this Trojan horse, but costs $59.95 (US). We can assume that Norton Anti-virus, Virex and other anti-viral software will be updated as soon as possible if there is a real threat here.

There is no information on the virus on the Symantec Security Response page, nor on US-CERT (US Computer Emergency Readiness Team) or on Carnegie Mellon's . If you do a search on mp3 concept (with the space) you will find information on some PC viruses though.

This information is new as of a couple of hours ago, so other anti-virus sites may not have been updated yet with information regarding this new Trojan Horse and the extent of the threat, if any.

Tamil New Year day

April 13th was Tamil New year day. So I went off to spend two days with my parents to celebrate the new year. Me and the team here in office are going out on a small two day tour over the week end to Munnar. So this is proving to be a week filled with travel...:-)

Pictures from the MVP Summit will be up hopefully by today evening my time....

A Belated Tamil New Year wishes to the readers of this blog

Task Scheduling

If you've ever done "admin" kind of work you've probably had to schedule jobs to run at specific intervals. There are two ways of doing it - the AT command and through Control Panel -> Scheduled Tasks -> Add Scheduled Task wizard. Unfortunately, the two use a different set of APIs to schedule jobs - AT uses the NetScheduleJob* set of Win32 APIs while Add Scheduled Task wizard uses the new ITaskScheduler APIs. As a result, the jobs you schedule using the Add Scheduled Task wizard are not visible when you use the AT command (the other way round is true, i.e. if you schedule a job using AT, it will be listed under the Scheduled Tasks folder in Control Panel). Windows XP (and Windows Server 2003) introduced a new command line application - SchTasks that alleviates this problem to some extent in addition to providing plethora of new options that AT didn't. Run SchTasks /? from command prompt for more information.

Be aware that WMI (Win32_ScehduledJob) uses the NetScheduledJob* set of APIs so you won't be able to enumerate your jobs added via the Add Scheduled Task wizard when using WMI. Here is a snippet showing enumeration of scheduled tasks by using WMI from managed code:

using System;
using System.Management;

class X
{

public static void Main()
{
SelectQuery query = new SelectQuery("Win32_ScheduledJob","");
ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(query);
foreach (ManagementBaseObject job in searcher.Get())
{
Console.WriteLine("{0},{1}",job["JobId"],job["Command"]);
}
}
}

One last bit on scheduled tasks - for each task that you schedule (irrespective of how you do it), you'll see a corresponding .JOB file in the %WinDir%\Tasks folder. If only these were XML

Back in India

I got back late yesterday night after a tiring journey back - 12 hour journey from LA to Taipei...:-(.

Since this blog always had stuff from me, there was no mention about the author in any of the posts. This created some confusion when Deepak started posting. So now I have changed the templates to have the name of the blogger in each of the posts....

A thing you thought MS Word couldn’t do (or wouldn’t do):

1. Start Word
2. Type a hex number, say:
   002A
3. Press Alt + X. Viola! You get the character corresponding to the number – e.g. in case of 002A, you’ll get *.
4. Btw, the other way round works as well! Type a character, move the cursor just before it and press Alt + X. You now get the ASCII (hex) value of that character. So A gives 0041, B gives 0042 and so on!

The feature exists to allow you to input foreign language characters without actually requiring you to install the native keyboard/IME and therefore works for characters beyond the 255 ASCII range as well.

A few Guest posts are on the way...

I have invited Deepak to put in a few techy posts in this blog as he would like to keep his other blog non-techie.....

From the Summit...

20+ hours on the flight does nothing to improve your concentration levels...:-)

So it was a good thing that I landed on Saturday night and the events on the first day, Sunday, did not tax my mind.

Met up with Scoble and Scott Hanselmann and a lot of other in the afternoon. The evening party was cool and the Asian and Eastern China MVPs had a special get together.

Blogging will be irregular or completely absent, but then if something important does come up, it will be up in the blog too.

Managed Mount Points

Brad Adams posts about a .NET program that simulates Unix style mounting of drives. Only approx 50 lines of code.

Ultra Cool....

MVP Summit

I am starting off for the MVP Summit@Redmond tonight. Have a 18+ Hours journey ahead of me now...:-)

You may be seeing very few post in the next 1 week as I try to force my brain to absorb all that new technology that is going to be on display..:-)

And hope to meet all those, whom I know only via Blogs, in real life.

My Namespace

There has been quite a bit of talk going around about the My Namespace that makes its debut in the Whidbey version of VB.NET. This is not really a wrapper, but rather like a macro. This makes it very easy to do stuff, that is hidden inside 5 levels of namespaces...:-)

The problem I see in the My namespace, is currently I am unable to find a easy extension point for it. That is, what if I want to add another element to the My namespace, like a Barcode reader. So I can do My.BarcodeReader.GetCode etc..

Google Mail

Google is doing beta testing a new mail service, Gmail. The announce on April 1st does make we wonder. Sanjay IMed me with the URL yesterday. Newsweek article

Gadget Geek

I found this post which even talks about a car that runs MS Automotive.. That guy sure is a 100% gadget geek..:-)