.NET From India

Ad Funded MS Works

There has been some info on the web on a new version of Ad-funded MS Works that would basicall be free to the end user. Works has a stuff like a low end version of Word, address book etc. I have never used it as I have always had access to Office Professional.

Though most people in the US do not seem to like the idea, I think this is something that would be of great value in a country like India. I think something like Office Home funded by ads would be a great sucess in India or other countries where buying a license of Office is very expensive and there is a growing number of home users. For such non-technical users, like my parents, this would make a perfect way to use Office software legally. Most of these set of users currently use illegal copies of Office (most probably provided by their vendor or friends). I have rarely come across this user set using OpenOffice (I mostly find OpenOffice being used by techies rather than end customers) or other free tools. So it would make perfect sense for MS to have a Ad-funded version of home office for these customers. Though MS Works is not Office Home, I think this is a good first step and maybe it would lead to a ad-funded Office suite at sometime in the future.

Windows 7 - Is Vista's end near?

With all the latest excitement on whether we would get a new version of Windows in a year or so, Supersite for Windows, has a few screenshots of what may end up as Windows 7.

Currently as mentioned in the page, it seems to be Vista with a few things added. It is still in design stage and it will take quite a while before they clear up on what new features will go in and what will go out.

But the problem with a new version coming out in a years time, is more to do with applications. For example, Lotus Notes just added support for Vista and they still do not support 64-bit (Personal Experience :( ). There are quite a lot of applications that need to start supporting stuff like 64-bit and UAC. With a possible new OS in a year or so, how many of these applications would be able to keep up??

Free MS Software For Students

Students had multiple ways to get free Microsoft software. MS has a decent academic program, which allowed students of enrolled colleges to get access to MSDN for free. There are also a number of free to download software like the Express suite of products.

Now MS has a new offer called Microsoft DreamSpark. This allows students who are studying in registered universities/colleges to have access to Professional versions of MS software for free. The main thing here is that they get the real professional versions of software like VS 2008 and Windows 2003. The site does say it is Global, but I don’t know if there are country wise restrictions. Maybe someone who has used it can leave comments.

Any effort to get legal professional software into students hand is very good, especially from an Indian context. This allows them to enter the job market with skills and knowledge of tools that are widely used in the industry and that is good both for them and for companies that hire them.

Good Show Microsoft.

Hyper-V in Win 2008

A review of Hyper-V that is available in Win 2008 is available at ZDNet.(this will not ship out of the box with the March release of 2008, but will be release later as it is still in Beta now. But basically it is part of Win 2008 license and so is a part of the OS).

I am not a virtualization expert, but as with every techology person, VMs are a part of life nowadays. Most of my customer demos are packaged as VMs... Technical POCs and tests are VMs... Virtual PC is one of the tools on my "I cannot do without" list.

But my experience on the server site, with Virtual Server has not always been great. Performance is a big problem when going for a virtualized server. So from what I can see, anything that can improve performance on a virtualized server is a good thing..:)

I can see Hyper-V being something (if it is sucessful) that would push a lot of the bigger enterprises to upgrade to Win 2008.

MS CRM ListView Webpart Bug??

If you are using Microsoft CRM 3.0, it ships with a set of webparts that allow you to integrate CRM data with SharePoint called the CRM ListView webparts. You can put a set of these webparts in a MOSS page and then link them via a producer-consumer setting to filter data.

A colleague of mine was working with these and suddenly the filtering part started working and the webpart stopped posting back when choosing a row. The webparts are supposed to postback so that the other webparts will filter if it is setup as a provider. It was not clear, when this problem occurs and it seems to be very randon and seems to go away when he plays around with the page.

After some debugging of the scripts and the page itself, I found that the webparts generate dynamic js to handle the clicks and postback to initiate the filtering. When you click on a webpart it calls a javascript function called CRMHandleSingleClick and that in turn bubbles down to a javascript that seems to have been dynamically generated to handle the row's single click. This function seems to have a variable ProducerOrConsumer, the setting of which decides if the postback occurs.

What I found after a initial poking around I found that if the last webpart in the page is not filtered, then it sets this variable to false and this seems to affect all the other webparts above. So if the last webpart (rendering wise) is not filtered, then none of the webparts seem to acknowledge the filter setting as this variable seems to be false and they do not post back.

If all webparts in a page are either a producer/consumer or the last webpart in the page is one, then this problem seems to disappear.

Ok, this variable may not be the exact problem, as I just sent an hour or so with this. But setting all controls to be a part of a filter or making sure that the last control has this setting, seem to solve this problem.

Helpful to know this, if you are also having similar problems.

Bill Gates - Last Day Video

This is a video that they ran during CES 2008.. Very entertaining!!

Video: Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip

Free Ebooks on New technology

Here are a few free ebooks on the latest MS technology avbl for download...

Courtesy Microsoft Press

(Thanks to Manok Agarwal for the info)

Windows Feedback Program

Microsoft seems to have started a new program aimed at the end users (most of the developer related interactions seems to now be concentrated at Connect), so I am assuming this is more for the end consumers and widespread feedback loop.

If you are a XP or Vista user and agree to answer surveys and also let MS collect usage information from your PC, you can get some free MS softwares.

You can sign up at http://wfp.microsoft.com/. Do note you need to sign up for both the programs to be eligible to get the free products (Restricted to US only and for XP and Vista OSes only). Also for the second part, you will have to download and install an App that will collect and send information to MS automatically (Ahh, when will the Trolls on the secret data collection technology of MS start??)

As per the site the following are the list of software avaialble for distribution free for particpants:

Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit DVD)
Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007
Microsoft Money Plus Premium
Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008
Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008

Reporting Services 64-bit Gotcha

I was developing a set of reports on a x64 machine running Win2K3 64 and SQL 64. The database that was used to get the data was Sybase. After a little bit of research, I decided that I would use the Sybase drivers that are provided by Sybase, rather than the OLEDB drivers. So I set up the drivers, create the reports and everything is fine. The preview works fine; I fine-tune the report and then deploy it.

Access the deployed reports and it give an error that the data source is not available. Come back to BIDS (Business Intelligence Development Studio) and try it, the report works. After a few times of redeploying the server etc, I went and checked the data source in the ODBC Manager and surprise!! No Data source definition.

Then it remembered, there is only a 32-bit version of BIDS (I had created the data source from inside BIDS). So I go and check in the 32-bit ODBC Manager and there is the data source. Sybase has two different client driver packs, one for the 32-bit and one for the 64-bit world. So I go ahead and install the 64-bit version, setup the ODBC connection and change the Datasource in the Reports server. The reports start working fine.

So, if you are developing and deploying on the same 64-bit machine, remember that the drivers used by BIDS and Reporting Services can be different.

Embed Search Provider Details in your Page

Today when I went to a KB article at the http://support.microsoft.com site using IE7, I noticed the search provider drop down light up orange.

I had never noticed this though I have been using IE7 for a long time now. Clicking on this button usually shows the installed search providers and also other options related to search providers. I know about that feature and have used it.

Since I had not seen this, I just clicked on the dropped down and I could see it had a new option called the Microsoft Support Search Provider, that was added.

Not only was this provider available for use, it was also appearing in the Add Search Providers menu. I tried going to Google to see if IE was able to automatically find a Google Search Provider. It did not get anything new. So I was kind of intrigued by this and decided on searching for information on this feature.

I found an article on this in a blog post at Technobabble.

Take a page from Microsoft Support Page; if you go to that site, you'll notice the arrow next to the search magnifying glass is yellow.  If you click it, you'll notice three things:

• "Microsoft Support Site" is a new entry that you never added
• A little yellow sun next to "Microsoft Support Search"
• An entry that reads "Add Search Providers" with a subentry "Microsoft Support Search"

This is done by a simple line in the header:    
     <link title="Microsoft Support Search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" rel="search" href="/common/opensearchdescriptor.aspx?ln=en-us" />

The original post also describes how to set this up for you own site.

This post was written yesterday Sep 21, but due to some problem with my internet connection, actually got posted only on Sep 22nd.

What else will MS Do??

I have never even heard of it till a fellow MVP pointed it out to me. Microsoft actually has a scientific calculator called Microsoft Math.

Microsoft Math’s full-featured graphing calculator with 3-D technology helps students visualize and graph math and science equations.

Sells for 19.95, so I assume it is a over the shelf retail product and since I have not seen any Ads for it yet, I assume MS sells it mostly via its academic channels. With Laptops being a part of school accessories, just starting in India, this may be a volume business for MS. (Some of the high-end schools in India already have a laptop per student policy, while the majority have a computer Lab. But with the drastic fall in laptop prices over the last year or so, I foresee every student in most private schools having a laptop in around 3-5 years time).

New Malware Center

MS has a new Malware center with information on the latest tests and links to the latest update files for Defender and Forefront.

The main thing I like is a single place to get all of the malware/virus information. But once you go one level down the whole thing dries up. You click on a virus/malware and you suddenly find there is not much information in the encyclopedia. In all entries I saw the Prevention tab just has a few general security recommendations like using a firewall etc.

Good start, but a long way to go though..

Certification Tips

Came across a set of tips on taking Microsoft certifications at SQL Server Central.

Though it is aimed at the SQL Server exams, most of the tips are really common to any of the certifications. Just replace SQL Server with <your product of choice> :)

Link to Article: Certification Rumors and Tips

Writing a new Programming Language??

If you are planning to write your own programming language, now you don't have to worry about writing an IDE for it. When Visual Studio 2008 gets released, it's Shell can be reused for your language seperately.

It can even be used as a completely seperate design layer if you want. This is perhaps the most extensible Microsoft's IDE has even been. Started with the ability to use Add-ins in the old Visual Studio to a completely reusable IDE is a big step forward.

And did I mention, this is free!!

Acropolis - Smart Clients on Steroids?

Will so many codenames around, I think I will quickly loose track of what each means. The latest one that I came across is Acropolis. This lools like a new Smart client component set that will help you build Smart client business applications faster.

The CTP is out and I have not yet played around with it thoug..

TechMela - India's Unique Tech Event

India has been having its version of TechEd for close to 10 years or so and also MDEC for the past few years.

Looks like the India DPE team has now decided that doing so many separate events is too problematic and that it is easier to have one single event for the whole country. So that lead to TechMela. So you now have this huge event which is aimed at all kinds of people who deal with technology right from the business decision makers to developers.

The downside I see to this kind of mega event is:

1. This happens only in Mumbai, which means that the big bulk of small time developers in other cities most probably do not get to attend this event. Travelling and staying in Mumbai is extremely expensive and I suspect it will only be the corporate developers with sponsorship from their companies who will attend.
2. With a focused event, it is easier to network with likeminded people. So if I attend a mobile conference, there is a higher chance that I will meet mobile developers. While in this kind of an event it becomes a lot more difficult to network with a specific set of people.

Anyway this is another effort from MS India to come up with a viable way to have a big technical conference for India. There has been many formats tried, from 1-city only to multi-city to multi-day spread over a few months kind of effort. All of them have had their plus point and downsides. So this is another format and let’s see if its better or more successful.

Silverlight Samples

With all the excitement around Silverlight, I assume most of you want to see it in action, before you go ahead and start learning it. There are quite a few demos and samples out there, but it is not very easy to get to all of them.

Scott Hanselman has put together a post that aggregates some of the best samples and demos out there.

Custom MSDN Library

Was checking out MSDN today and they have a new tool in codeplex called PackageThis. This tool allows you to choose parts of the MSDN library and then store it locally as help file.

This is god send, when you are learning a particular tool and you do not have a very good internet connection.

Also this is a nice code example for people who want to work with the MSDN Content Services, which is a set of web services that allows you to access MSDN content.

WPF/E is SilverLight

Looks like we now have a name for WPF/E - SilverLight.

I don't like the name much, but then MS does not ask me before they name their products though..:)

"Fiji" - Vista SP1

One of my fellow MVPs forwarded a link to a post on the planned Vista SP1. This is supposedly already under the works and MS is looking at early TAP participants. I am not suprised, since I would have expected that as soon as Vista was RTMed (or near RTMed), the team would have started working on the SP and maybe a few on the next version of Windows too.

SP1 for Vista should be a easy go as quite a few technologies that were not fully completed, just did not RTM with Vista. So they would need a SP1 to get all of those out as soon as they are complete.

Visual Studio 2006??

The latest edition of MSDN Flash India edition has the following super offer:

Popular e-Learning courses are now FREE! Get the edge over your peers. Microsoft is offering some of its most popular eLearning courses FREE for a limited time. Access free eLearning courses on SQL Server 2006, Visual Studio 2006 and a host of other products. http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5943774

This is the only place where you can learn free about SQL Server 2006 and Visual Studio 2006, the hidden and unknown new versions that are released by Microsoft, but is unknown to everybody else..:)

WPF/E CTP Released

Microsoft has released a CTP version of the supposedly Flash replacement from MS, WPF/E (WPF/Everywhere).

You can download the runtime for multiple OSes and the SDK and samples.

Phonetic Input Tool

I was just checking something else in Connect and stumbled on the Microsoft Phonetic Input Tool Beta. This is a cool tool if you are bilingual and use on of the Indic languages. 90% of the time you use English, but then sometime you need to write in a Indic language, but then it is too much trouble switching keyboard layouts or using the onscreen keyboard??

This tool allows you to type in English, but get the output in the equivalent in the respective Indic script. For example, I typed thamizh in english, but with the tools turned on I got தமிழ். Very cool and easy way to type out Tamizh blog posts (I am not sure if I will start one, but then முயர்சி செய்யலாமே) :)

And the other thing I love about this tool is that it is so easy to use and integrates into the normal IME.

After you install the tool, just go to a Unicode aware application and click the language toolbar. You now have a list of all the Indic languages that the tool supports. So you work with it as if you are working with the default IME. Then select the language you want to work with and you are ready to use it. The tool now shows the language selected and you start working.

The major problem I have had till now is that it does not support editing the text easily as once the conversion happens, what is actually there in the text is the unicode equivalent in the target language.

MSN India Entertainment

Looks like MSN India is jacking up its entertainment value...

Uninstall a patch

One of my co-MVPs pointed out to a recommendation from EA on one of their latest patch, "to uninstall a critical security patch" to get their game to run.

This is so surprising that I read the post multiple times, before I could believe it and this is in the readme of a recent patch!!

I can understand if your program is broken due to a security patch. You then go ahead and try and fix your application so as to work with that and then release a patch. But to release a patch and recommend users to uninstall a security patch for it is work, is surely not acceptable at all.

(Update: Looks like MS has has released a hotfix that makes it work with the game now)

SteveB live in India

SteveB is visiting India next week and one of the few public appearances he will be making is for the Indimix event in Mumbai.

If you cannot make it to Mumbai, you can still watch the event over the web by signing up via MSN for a live Internet TV relay to your desktop. If you do not have the bandwidth, you can go to one of the many Virtual Townhalls (at the local Microsoft Office), in multiple cities, where this event will also be simulcasted.

IE7 Goes Gold

After three rounds of Beta, it is now time to go Gold.

You can now download the release version of IE7 from Microsoft site.

Blogstars contest - Is it good for Indian Tech Blogging?

Microsoft announced a couple of weeks back about a new contest that they were holding called Blogstars. This a India specific contest, aimed at improving/supporting technical blogging in India.

At first looks, I was quite interested. I believe that technical blogging in India is still very low. Though blogging as such has grown by leaps and bounds in India, there are few, indepth technology blogs by people living in India (Please note, I did not say Indians).

A second look and I felt something was just not right. So this post is about the positives and negatives, I could see. It would be interesting to see other peoples views on this too..

Pros

1. Indian Tech blogging scene could do with help this could be it.
2. Provide recognition to good tech bloggers, who are currently not well known
3. This can be something that provides the needed initial momentum to get some good people to start blogging.
4. Create a new generation of Microsoft technology blogging out of India.
5. Spur people to blog on their use of Microsoft technology, that helps create more information on the web, thus helping the developer community.

Cons

1. Blogging is all about sustenance. Since this contest make no difference between a new and long running blog, it actually favour new blogs. So you can start a new blog, register for the contest, produce good posts for 8-10 weeks, win the contest and then stop blogging for the rest of your life. Since a blog that is there for a long time will have technical and personal posts, it is easier for a new blog to be considered more focused and so win.
2. It is more than a week since it was announced, but I don't see any blogs listed in the blogroll yet. That is indeed very worrying for me.
3. The panel of judges named are well known speakers and very knowledgeable (I actually know all the three very well and have great respect for them personally and know that they have tremendous passion for technology). But except for Venkat, none of the others (Sanjay, Praveen) seem to have updated their blogs recently (Also the updates to their blogs seem to be quite infrequent). And the worst part being their bios on the site does not even mention their blogs except for Venkat's.

So that leads me to ask the question, is this a about tech blogging or just technical writing? If it was about technical writing alone, wouldn't it be easier to have an competition for technical articles?

Final Thoughts

This is a good move Microsoft. But if you really want to help technology blogging,

• Get this going and get the people who are competing listed on the blogroll.
• Get a few good bloggers also into the panel  or get some kind of voting (by bloggers??/technorati??) mechanism to choose the winner. 
• Add some way to look at awarding sustenance too, as according to statistics, over 80% of blogs started do not last for more than 3 months.

And am I in the fray? As of now NO. Why? Because, I think I would rather let new talent be recognized instead. [But I will not say no to a link from any other blog or the Microsoft site ;)]

(Posted using Windows Live Writer Beta on Windows Vista RC1)

Google Videos in Windows Media Player

This blog post on Everything About Google Video talks about some corrupt header that Google has added to google video (.gvi) files that seems to break only WMP. All other players seem to ignore this bit and play the video fine.

Wasn't "Do no evil" supposedly Google's principle?? Maybe that is not the case for Google video?

(via Totally innocense)

Browser Shield!!

Microsoft Research has come up with a prototype of what they call "BrowserShield"

Researchers at the Redmond, Wash., company have completed work on a prototype framework called BrowserShield that promises to allow IE to intercept and remove, on the fly, malicious code hidden on Web pages, instead showing users safe equivalents of those pages.

From the article it looks like this is a framework which can be updated with addins, which can protect you against specific attacks. And since this runs before IE gets the HTML, it can modify the HTML that gets delivered to IE. So they may in the future send out updates for BrowserShield, before they actually release a patch, when a critical flaw is found in IE.

Kerala Dumps MS

Kerala government has decided to move all government schools to Linux. Some of my thoughts on this in my Thoughts from India Blog Post called Is teaching only FOS good?

Windows Live Writer

I was just checking the blog of Peter, with whom I had a telecon in the morning, and found outA about this new tool that MS has released called Windows Live Writer.

This is a windows application that allows you to blog from your desktop. I have not tried it yet, but I have been using Word 2007's blogging feature on and off and so do not see a major value add here, unless someone does point it out.

If you do not have Word 2007, then the good thing is that Writer is a free download and seems to support most of the blogging systems out there.

Charge for Office Beta?

A recent news.com article talks of MS starting to charge for the download of the new Office 2007 Beta.

According to the article the reason is that due to the high download rates, it is costing MS a lot of money in bandwidth. This I think is a very bad move. The whole idea of public beta is to have public at large test the software and so help Microsoft build a better product. The main beneficiary here is Microsoft and the people who download actually get a time constrained eval copy of the new software for use. They spend a lot of thier paid internet connection to download this software and do free testing for MS. So I would assume it is a small thing that MS can do to allow them to use the software for the evaluation time for free.

Looks like someone inside Microsoft just got thier facts wrong. Yes, a lot of people want to look at the new Office, but they are actually helping you, not the other way around.

Hopefully, they recognize this and not take such idiotic mesures. If they do not want a lot of download they can always keep it as a private Beta (Office has been in private Beta for quite sometime now).

Virtual PC goes Free

Another shot into the Virtualization areana. Looks like Microsoft is giving away VPC 2004 SP1 for free.

You can download this at Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 Service Pack 1 page.

RSS Engines

Microsoft has this wonderful ability of having multiple teams develop similar features, but completely without any interaction, or so it seems.

The one that is bugging me now it the RSS syndication abilities. The new IE7, has the ability to read RSS/Atom feed and also act as a syndication system. When I talked to the IE team, they said that this whole engine was available as a COM library so that it can easily be used by third party applications.

Outlook 2007 also has the ability to be a syndication engine for RSS (Listed as one of the top 10 reasons to upgrade to Outlook 2007). As I was trying out the software I found that it does not have auto discovery capabilities and raised it as a feature request. Response - That is not part of Outlook's RSS functionalities. If it is using IE7's RSS engines, then this feature should be already in there as IE does auto discovery. My guess is that the Outlook team went ahead and wrote their own...:(

Why do two teams have to develop completely separate RSS engines, when both products are slated for release at around the same time? I currently think the IE7 engine is a lot more functional and since the IE team says it is designed to be used by third parties, shouldn’t they have at least tried to get the Outlook team to use it?

I for one will surely not use a RSS syndicator that does not support auto discovery.

IE Beta 3

The next beta of Internet Explorer is here.

What’s new?? Well, from the page looks like mostly newer UI related stuff and lot of bug fixes. Anyway, I am just updating my Beta 2 installation.

 

Published from Microsoft Word 2007 Beta 2

IE7 Beta 2 - Week 1

I have been using Beta 2 of IE7 for almost a week now. No major crashes and it is quite stable. No major changes to the UI compared to the Beta 2 preview. I think the new list of open tabs is appearing as a dropdown menu near the Quick Tabs is new though.

The major irritant for me in this release is the changes made due to the law suit relating to the ActiveX controls.

Polaris uses Lotus Notes for mail and its web access if built on Java. The change forces you to click the Applet/ActiveX to activate it. So now every time I need to write a mail, do near enough anything with my mail, I have to click twice to do it. There currently is no way to actually turn this feature off, the only way is for the web page to be modified by the web owner.

And ofcourse, this affects all Flash web sites too as Flash currently runs as an ActiveX.

IE7 Beta 2 is out

Beta 2 of IE7 is out today.

I am just back from a dinner hosted by the IE7 team at SFO today and they released Beta 2 to public at 9pm pacific time today. Robert Scoble is down here for a few days and he invited me to go with him to this event. It was a fun event (I enjoy talking tech and so it was fun). So thanks for that Scoble...

You can download Beta 2 here.

I will post my thoughts on the new version in a few days after I download and install it.

Free Virtual Server??

I had mentioned a few days back that VMWare was preparing to released a free version of the vmware server.

Looks like Microsoft has prepared a strong reply to that move. It announced that Virtual Server 2005 R2 would now be a free download. So now the fight for the virtualization space has started...

Did you say Origami??

If you have been following blogosphere closely in the last few days, there has been a lot of exicitement on what is Project Origami all about? It was known this is something from Microsoft, as the domain was registered by MS and has for the past three weeks having some intriguing Flash stuff.

Now it is out in the open. It is the code name for for the new Microsoft Ultra-Mobile PC, UMPC.

Zdnet has a overview about UMPC here.

New Certificate Error Display in IE7 B2 Preview

Another new thing in IE7 Beta 2 Preview.

It does not pop up a error dialog when there is a certificate error. It instead shows a error page. I am not sure if this is good or a bad thing, but it atleast is more natural than a error dialog when browsing. Also it is not offering you a Yes/No kind of option, but rather has an advice that leans towards security and forces the user to proceed only if he is very sure about the site.

Another thing that I missed last time was the menu. In the previous post I had mentioned it had disappeared. Actually, it has not. It appears when you click the Alt key(I assume there must be some option that would make it always stay on, but I have not searched for it yet). But it appears in the correct place now, above the toolbar, instead of below it.

IE7 Beta 2 Preview

I had mentioned about the release of IE7 Beta 2 Preview sometime back.

Downloaded and installed the new version over the weekend (I have been using Beta 1 for quite sometime as my default browser). I am quite impressed by the newer features added and the refining of the other features.

The first one that actually catches the eye is the the set of new graphics that are in place. the icons seem to be better and the tabbed interface slightly more polished.
After a few seconds you notice that the confusing menu under the toolbar has vanished (This was my most hated feature of IE 7). Then to your suprise you find that the menu bar itself has vanished. A little search and you find it tucked in the left corner but as a toolbar now.

Another mistake I usually did when I started using tabbed browsing (I still do it once in a while) is when I want to actually get rid of a site, I close the browser forgetting the other tabs that are still there. Now IE shows a dialog reminding you that closing the broser will close all Tabs.

And ofcourse the completely new feature that is hidden in one of the icons on the toolbar is the preview mode (This is the name I use, I am not sure what is the official name of this feature). This is really cool and I really like it . I am not sure how useful it will be when browsing, but it is super cool.

What this does is allow you to see a thumbnail of all the pages you are currently browsing in different tabs in a single screen. You just click on one and go to that particular tab.

Will write about other features as I come across them. In total Beta 2 looks a lot more polished and usable than the previous beta (that is to be expected) and till now has been quite stable.

Do give it a try if you have not been using other tabbed browsers before and you will find that it can be quite addictive..:-)

Microsoft Office Live

Office Live has gone into Beta. Everything is free during Beta, two of the three options are charged for once you get out of Beta. So this maybe the best time to actually play around to find out how it could be useful for you.

Looks like they are going to keep the basic version free even after Beta. Not a bad deal for a domain name, 30MB storage, 10GB monthly transfer and some online web designer tools (Did I mention you also get 5 email accounts with 2 GB of space per account).

ACE Award

Yesterday I got a package from MS that contained the Award for Customer Excellence for Visual Studio 2005. This is usually given to the team when it ships a product. This time, they also gave it to MVPs who were beta testers for the product.

These are a few snaps of the award and the box in which it was packaged.

IE 7 Beta 2

A Beta of the new IE is now publicly available at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/default.mspx

I also got a link from a co-MVP Anando to this video and it is hilarious!!!!

New Certifications

Microsoft has announced a new set of certifications with the release of .NET 2.0

Focus now seems be able to provide people with specilized certifications and help them become experts in a particular technology.

You can find more information on this at The New Generation of Microsoft Certifications

Info from the Summit

I am back in India after visiting the MVP Summit at Redmond. I spent two days with the VB team looking at Whidbey and Orcas.

Some of the latest Whidbey features are very good. I am especially amazed with the kind of work they have done on the Data Form interface and Refactoring. Ofcourse, they added refactoring via an external Addin, freely downloadable from the web, after a huge hue and cry from the VB community.

I think the refactoring support integrated into VB is way ahead of the refactoring in C#. I dont mean the number of refactorings supported etc, but rather the intutiveness and ease of use of the refactoring.

I am also quite impressed with the LINQ support in VB (LINQ is slated to be part of VB 3.0/Orcas). There is a downloadable public preview available, if you want to play around. Warning: Install at your own risk. It totally screwed up my VS 2005 install, forcing me to format my machine.

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

Halo, coming to a theatre near you...

Looks like Halo is going to make it from your computer screen to the big screen!!!

Microsoft goes Hollywood with 'Halo' film deal

XBOX 360

If you are interested in the new XBox 360 that is gonna come out sometime end of this year, then you now know how much you are gonna budget for it. The pricing for the new XBox has just been announced at the Leipzig Games Convention 2005.

You are gonna be poorer by around 400 USD (around 18K INR)..:-)

A new Guinnes World Record!!

Question: What can you do with an Unisys ES7000 32 CPU / 32 GB RAM Server with Microsoft Windows 2003 Datacenter Edition running on it?
Answer: The coolest Guinness World Record ever :) namely 1073 people playing Counter-Strike 1.1 simultaneously!

Read more at Michael Anderberg's blog post on this event.

Major redesign of MS Certifications

A recent MCP mag article talks of some major redesign of the Microsoft certifications. This redesign is to coincide with t