.NET From India

Travelling in the US

I am now in Redmond for the Annual MVP Global Summit. I flew in from Copenhagen to Washington DC, spent the weekend with one of my friends who lives there and then flew over to Seattle Tacoma.

It seems to be becoming more and more tiresome to travel in the US. The day I was to fly to Seattle, I arrived at the airport around 2 hrs before the departure of my flight. There was a complete confusion at the United ticket desk, with no pointers to where people had to check in there was long queues where none were necessary. When I finally had checked in, there before me was a huge set of queue for security. There was actually 4 jampacked, worm like queues.

It took me almost 50 mins to 1 hour to actually get through security and then after taking one of those shuttles to reach my gate to be told that my flight had just left..:-(

Then I had to take another flight later in the night to Chicago and then from there to Seattle. Landed in Seattle at 12:30 in the night. Luckily, one of MS evangelists in Washinton DC, Andrews had also missed that Seattle flight and took the same detour as me. He gave me a lift till my hotel, DoubleTree in Bellevue.

The Summit gets going from tomm. Expect a few technical posts from Redmond, based on what happens in the Summit.

How Microsoft can 'kill' Google

An interesting article in the Register

How Microsoft can 'kill' Google

Photos from Sweden

I went to Malmo in Sweden over the last weekend. I have posted some of the photos to a new album.

The Deluge is On

I talked about how Firefox is starting to feel the heat in a previous post. Today Neowin points to a new security hole in Firefox and one that affects only Linux/Unix and not Windows.

Opera goes Free

Well, the only paid browser out there goes free and ad-free..

Opera announced today that it was going to remove Ads and the license fee. Opera had a free version, which had Ads and you need to pay a license fee to remove Ads.

I have downloaded Opera and this is the first time I am trying Opera a go. It feels quite responsive and gives me tabbed browsing.(I have got used to tabbed browsing since I run IE7 at home and I find FireFox not as responsive).

But I do like IE7s way of just clicking a new tab and using it. Opera has a new tab button that I need to click and the tabs do not look as good as the IE one.

But the great advantage is that Opera runs on Win 2K, while IE 7 runs only in XP and above. With XP and Vista at home, I run IE 7, but at office I use Win 2K. So now I can run Opera at work..:-)

FireFox feeling the heat?

With all that hype of no security problems in FireFox, the recent spate of security issues have kind of poured cold water over the hype..

A recent zdnet blog post actually goes on to say that the number of security problems in Firefox over the last few months are a lot more than IEs over the same period.

So as Firefox becomes more popular, the more attractive it becomes for the hacker and the more the problems..

Vista - Three weeks Later

I have been using Vista as my main home OS for a little more than 3 weeks now. The experience has been quite good compared to the PDC build of last year. The OS is more responsive and a lot more stable. I have had around 4 BSODs in the 3 weeks of usage, but that seems to be only when the machine goes into standy and when woken, sometimes BSODed. Apart from this I have not yet seen any major crashes etc.

There is quite a bit of problem if you plan on playing some graphics intensive games. Since I got the new Dungeon Seige 2, two weeks back, I decided to install it on Vista. It works and the performance itself is OK, but the graphics is pathetic, with places where there seems to be multiple layers appearing black etc. So if you don't plan on running any highly graphics oriented apps, then I suppose it should be OK.

Java gets its Champions

I have been suprised that a vibrant community like the Java one, does not seem to have the equivalent of a MVP program and how Sun does not seem to be interested in encouraging its community leaders.

Looks like the Java community is going to get its MVP equivalent. It is called Java Champions.

A good Random number generator can save you money

Well it could have saved quite a bit of money for CBS, if they had done it right.

A very interesting story, Press Your Luck.

Microsoft Expression Family Tour

A Tour of the Microsoft Express family is available at http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/demos.aspx

Office 12

There are a few screenshots of Office 12, running on a new build of Vista, the next version of office, in news.com.

New looks for Vista, Office. Also looks like there is going to be a Beta 1 coming out sometime in the next two to three months.

Update - More hi-res screenshot of the new softwares demoed at PDC 05 avbl from Microsoft here

Flickr Killer from Microsoft??

Microsoft has a new beta software codenamed Max that allows you to share photo libraries with friends and family. You need to download some kind of software, but it seems to have a online sych facility. So not sure it would be a Flickr killer, but the title would have got you read this post..:-)

Microsoft® Codename Max is not like any other product. That's because it's not a product—it's your opportunity to try an exciting new user experience from Microsoft. Today Max lets you make lists of your photos and turn them into beautiful slide shows to share with your family and friends. Tomorrow...who knows?

Try it out at Microsoft Max

More Travels

I am off again. I am headed towards Copenhagen in Denmark. I am going to be there for the next two weeks helping a client architect thier new .NET application. If you are in Copenhagen and would like to meet up over dinner, just mail me...

Then I am going to travel to Redmond to attend the 2005 edition of the Global MVP Summit. This is the annual get together of MVPs at the Microsoft Campus. If you are in Seattle or plan on attending the Summit, let me know. Maybe we can meet up.

Btw, I am blogging this from the newly setup free (during the trial period according to the welcome page. Hope they would keep it free so that I have something to do while I wait for my flight!!!) Wifi network at the Chennai Airport. Signal is good, but speed is low. Well broadband access does spoil you quite a bit. :-)

IE7s Phishing Filter

I have been using the IE7 beta on both XP and Vista for sometime now. One of the new features in IE 7 is the all new phishing filter (What is Phishing??).

When you visit any site IE7 will automatically do a phishing check. This will be a combination of checking a list of sites in the Microsoft Database and also look at suspicous stuff with the site. One of the things that it seems to flag is when you use a pure IP based URL. It also does not go to the MS website for all websites, only for sites that are not on a local OK list. But this can kind of slowdown your browsing experience a little bit. I have found it to affect my browsing experience only when visiting more than 4-5 sites simultaneously (which is very easy to do now with tabbed browsing in IE7 making it easier). Hopefully it becomes better as it nears the release version.

Once it finds a suspicious site it flags the site with a message near the address bar. Also if it is a confirmed phising site, then you will not see the site at all.

IE Blog has a post on the phising filter with more details.

Think before Creating that Lookup Table...

An interesting article at SQLServerCentral on the so called all-in-one Lookup tables.

I agree 100% with the author. I have seen the kind of confusion that one of these table can create. Once people know that there is this thing, every type of code will start getting into it as people like to reuse exisiting facilities, instead of re-inventing the wheel (by creating a new table).

But in real life, I find almost every project lands up with atleast one of these tables.

SoundMax Audio Driver Problems

If you are using the onboard Audio card of a Intel Motherboard, then you need to install the SoundMax Audio drivers. The problem is that the setup kit of the driver checks the windows version and exits with a message that the OS is not supported. There are also some reports of problems with the driver if you go and install via the inf file.

The problem is to get your hands on the lastest drivers. The easiest way was to download it off the Dell support site. Search for "Audio: Analog Devices ADI 198x Integrated Audio, Driver, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Multi Language, Multi System" and download the latest update you can find.

The setup will still not run, but choose the custom install option (In the Add new hardware wizard) and choose the inf file directly. This will install the driver and your should be up and running.