.NET From India

Fixing Microsoft

I just came across this article in Business Week on "How to fix Microsoft".

There are some very interesting ideas in the article though I do not agree with all of those suggestions.

1. Take the lead on privacy - Sure is an interesting suggestion and one that is very much doable by MS. Esp. since IE is by far one of the most commonly used browsers and also can help MS combat Firefox in that front. And a anonymous mode sure will hit Google from the Ad revenue perspective, which I assume would also be something that will be of interest to Microsoft.

2. Build software around the way we actually use computers - Though the suggestion is valid, I don’t think it is a easy thing to do. What people use, varies?

One of the most common examples people use is Word and point out how it has such complex options that nobody will use every option.

Wrong.

It an option that is very important for me, is maybe useless to someone else.

3. The cloud is the computer - This is the one suggestion with which I am least in agreement to. I know cloud is now an "in" thing. But both from a security standpoint and reliability standpoint I think desktops have a long life ahead. I still remember how a couple of years ago, when the internet was the "in" thing how the PC's demise was predicted and how the "Network PC" actually died. I would not use the cloud for very important and secure stuff as well as things to which I need access, wherever I am, connected or not.

But I do find the Cloud VM idea very interesting. It is interesting from running apps from anywhere perspective. But there are ways to do stuff like that today. When you VPN into your office and remote desktop to your PC you are doing something similar.

Blog Design Changes

One of the things I wanted to do is change the design of this blog. The last design change was done 2-3 years back and as time went, there has been small additions of html here and there. I wanted to do a major redesign of the whole blog to take out dead code and also give it a new look.

Over the weekend I went about doing the changes. This time I have tired to see if I can get all I wanted by not having to use Advanced templates. Though the new design is not complete, I think I have most of the main peices in. Will be tweaking it here and there over the next couple of weeks.

Let me know if you like or hate the new look....

IndiaStockQuotes Version 1.2.1

It has been a long time since I actually worked on the IndiaStockQuotes component. Just had sometime over the weekend and fixed some bugs in the component and got out a new release. Also upgraded the component from .NET 2.0 to 3.5. I dont yet use any 3.5 specific features, so you should be able to recompile the source agains 2.0 and still get it to run.

Check it out at India Stock Quotes

Moving a project from VS 2005 to VS 2008

When you open a VS 2005 project in VS 2008, Visual Studio offers to migrate the project to the new format. Usually there should be no problem with this and all your project files, solution files, Test cases etc should move seamlessly to the 2008 format.

But if you do build your project you will notice that your output assemblies actually target .NET Framework 2.0 and not 3.5. This is basically because the migration retains the targeted framework to make sure you application does not fail. The method to change this setting after migration is not easy to find.

For VB projects, this setting is actually hidden inside, My Project -> Compile -> Advanced Compiler Options dialog. Obviously, this is not very easy to find. (See Image)

In C# projects this setting is a lot easier to find in Project Properties -> Application Tab itself. I am not sure why the VB team actually made this setting so difficult to find.