May 29, 2008

How to Send free SMS anywhere within India?

This is really good website to send Free SMS to any mobile (CDMA or GSM) anywhere in India! Pretty quick service..

Just one thing to notice, they allow you to use appx. 92 characters for your message and append an advertisement in rest of the message! Service is pretty quick (in 15-20 seconds, other party will receive it!)..

Create your account at,
http://wwwc.way2sms.com

Stay tuned.. Wave

May 23, 2008

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta is available!!

I've been using Visual Studio 2008 from few months.. Its really a great improvement over productivity.. I love new features and speedy IDE. Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 contains not only bug fixes but also lots of new features! Along with .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 beta, VS2008 SP1 beta has been released few days ago. I just installed it on all my machines!

If you want to download it, refer to following links,

After you install it, following may be few useful links,

Happy coding!

Stay tuned.. Wave

May 8, 2008

Visitors diversity on blog..

Here is a snapshot from "Geo Overlay" feature of Woopra! Its showing country-wise allocation of last few thousand visitors (dark color means less visitors and light means more).. Looks like I have got quite a few visitors from Romaina as well!! Happy

05-09-2008 (042223)

Woopra really rocks! One of many other stats that Woopra shows,

05-14-2008 (045601)

Just waiting for new version that they are going to release by next weekend.

Stay tuned.. Wave

May 7, 2008

My Virtual Machine Repository!!

As I might have mentioned in my other posts as well, that I use Virtual Machines a lot!!

I love snapshot feature in Virtual Machine softwares, like Microsoft Hyper-V and VMWare Workstation! My repository goes something like this,

  • Windows XP 32 bit - Base OS (with SP2)
    • Windows XP 32 bit - Visual Studio 2003
    • Windows XP 32 bit - Visual Studio 2005
    • Windows XP 32 bit - Visual Studio 2008
  • Windows 2003 Server - Base OS
    • Windows 2003 Server - Base OS (with SP2)
  • Windows Vista 32 bit - Base OS (with SP1)
    • Windows Vista 32 bit - Visual Studio 2005
    • Windows Vista 32 bit - Visual Studio 2008
  • Windows XP 64 bit - Base OS (with SP2)
    • Windows XP 64 bit - Visual Studio 2005
    • Windows XP 64 bit - Visual Studio 2008
  • Windows Vista 64 bit - Base OS (with SP1)
    • Windows Vista 64 bit - Visual Studio 2008

This entire virtual machine jungle eats up almost 80 GB of my hard drive, but I think its worth it!

Because of various environment I have to work with on every single day, Virtual Machines is the only thing that can help me. Sometimes, I wonder if there would be no Virtualization technology, how would I work!

Stay tuned.. Wave

May 5, 2008

Evernote Invites available!!

As I told, I love new Evernote!! I have got few invitations for this closed beta! If you want to try it out (believe me, its too good and useful!) drop your email id in comment section, I can send an invite!

Stay tuned.. Wave

May 3, 2008

Watchout Yahoo!! There is no Microsoft on the back now!

Reading 'official' news on web that Microsoft has pulled the offer for Yahoo!!

Stock Prices for both companies will be worth looking in next few days!! Pray and Hope, its all that Yahoo can do right now!!

Pray: That people will hold on to their stocks!
Hope: Their developers still loves to work at Yahoo and not ....

Stay tuned.. Wave

Your Digital Lifestyle..

I remember, I watched this Video first time when I was at Seattle (attending an internal Microsoft Tech. Conference) may be at that time, it was not out in public!

Its Amazing! Take a look!


Video: Your Digital Lifestyle

Ok, watched the Video? Now, Add your imaginations for Applications developed on Live Mesh Platform and many other things Microsoft is not talking about Right now (that they are going to release in near future!) and See the Future! Looking colorful, colligated and contemporized ! ??? At least, it does to me! Happy

Stay tuned.. Wave

How would it be.. "If Plaxo provides desktop alert about contact update !!"

I love Plaxo! I have been using Plaxo since the days when it was still in Beta (even Today, their 3rd version is still in beta! but I am talking about days when Plaxo was beta for their first version)! Plaxo has been giving me all that I wanted about my Contacts!! (According to me Plaxo was one of the first implementers of Social Networking.. way before social networking balloon really started blowing!).. As a result of my long relationship with Plaxo, I have almost 1000+ contacts in Plaxo address-book and a few hundred in Pulse. I love to visit Plaxo Pulse website to check what's up with my contacts..

But it would be really great if Plaxo comes up with a desktop application that notifies me for any of my Friend's updates.. Where, I should be able to tell that application, I want 'more' updates for X, and 'less' for Y..

Right now, they have an update RSS feed which I can use to get update about all my contacts.. I subscribe to that feed right now and keep a watch! But I know how often I can reach my RSS reader to read my feeds!! My point is about "Push" mechanism of updates instead of Pull (from user's perspective!!!).

Stay tuned.. Wave

How would it be.. "If I can develop *these* applications on Live Mesh Platform!"

Microsoft has already announced that they are building A PLATFORM for live mesh which will open new horizons for synchronized applications and provide a whole new user experience!

I have NO IDEA right now, what sort of platform is that going to be, but while thinking towards it, I can think of few applications!!

  • Synchronized Browser Experience..
    • This is something, I have been craving for, from a long time. I also blogged about this in my past 'How would it be' article..
    • But I think with Live Mesh Platform, I should be able to do this very easily (If Microsoft doesn't do it themselves)! Having a browser add-in communicating with my Live Mesh storage on cloud, I should be able to store all my browser related data there like,
      • Browser settings.
        • For example, If I enable Inline URL Auto-Complete (BTW, I love this feature in IE), all machines that I own should automatically get this option enabled automatically! Having 5 physical machines and at least 14 virtual machines that I interact with, I have tired doing these very small settings on all browser again and again, I would love that if it happens automatically.
      • Browser History.
        • What I access on my office machine, should also be stored on the cloud (just the URL and Title of the page for "Search" purpose) so, when I come home, I just open IE and I can painlessly refer to that URL again.
      • Bookmarks.
        • Though, today I can have shared bookmarks between all machines with Live Mesh without any platform requirements (I will write a blog post later about how to do this!), Platform based Synchronized Bookmark solution will give many extra features like searching and sharing with other people!
  • Store/Read/Reply SMSs from Any machine..
    • I still hate typing SMS in Windows Mobile (or any other mobile device including iPhone for that matter).. May be because I type at somewhat faster rate on computers than mobile devices.
    • I should be able to develop an application using Live Mesh platform so that I can interact with SMSs on my Windows Mobile Phone through any computer/web!
    • I dont keep all SMSs (one that my Mom sent me on Birthday before 2 years! or one that a friend sent for his address before 6 months!) on my mobile phone! Wouldn't it be great if all SMSs are stored on cloud and search/interaction is provided!!
  • All applications that I develop can store application related user settings on the web associated with user's Live ID.. So, wherever user goes (even if he doesnt have his machine with him, he just installs the application and fetches the settings after authenticating with Live ID) he gets same experience..!
    • Say for example, I use Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Writer almost on all machines! So, wouldn't it be great if my windows live writer fetches my Weblog account configurations from Live Mesh and makes it ready to blog for me!! No more time waste when I setup a new machine!! Thats called productivity and a great software! Though, No doubt that today Live Writer saves a lot of time and it is already productive!
  • Alerts from my mesh'ed devices diverted to my Windows Mobile!
    • Live Mesh, being a platform that allows PCs and Windows Mobiles to be added to ring, I should be able to develop another small platform on top that, which allows me to subscribe to alerts on cloud data and get an update on Windows Mobile! What would be a typical use-case? Well, Just imagine,
      • An IT administrator getting an alert on his Windows Mobile for Server5 running out of disk space.
      • A Web Admin getting alert on his Phone for W3WP.exe crash on one of his web server!
      • A Support Engineer like me getting an alert about a new CritSit from customer (Critical Situation).
      • A kid getting alert on his phone about his favorite latest cartoon episode downloaded to his Media Center at home!
      • A businessman getting an alert on his WM about somebody leaving a voicemail on his Desk Phone!
      • A music lover like me getting an alert on Windows Mobile that his/her Zune is running out of battery!!
      • If this becomes true, I would love to have an alert on WM that somebody just broke into my Car and its about to be stolen! Happy
  • All my search queries on Live Search are stored in Live Mesh (on cloud)!
    • Google already does this (with Web History) and I think it is really very good idea. If Live Search team implements this with the help of Live Mesh platform (yes, they have to do that, any application developer can not do that)
    • The main purpose behind this would be so that I can "Search" my past "Search Queries" and get correct "Search Results" very easily!
  • Store data somewhere else on cloud and still Sync with other devices through Live Mesh!!
    • Right now, Microsoft provides 5 GB space out there in the cloud and I have not heard of any plans to provide any more space as of now. If Live Mesh keeps on expanding at the rate that I am predicting, 5 GB will be very less for Users today living Digital Life!
    • So, Live Mesh Platform should help me create a system that helps solve this problem! Where I should be able to store the meta-data on Live Mesh for actual data stored somewhere else in cloud (may be on my Amazon S3, or at my Data Center online). And use that meta-data to keep content in sync with all my meshed devices!

What do you think? Isn't Live Mesh opening up a whole new set of opportunities for Application Developers and lots of new 'Start-up' ideas?

Stay tuned.. Wave

Typing speed on Laptop is faster than that of Desktop !

I remember those days when I hated laptop because I hated keyboards and mouse system on Laptop! But today, I realize that I was wrong!

As a part of proving myself to be true right now, I took a yet another test from laptop (I took one previously from my desktop machine and results are here) and guess what, I could get the same typing speed (rather somewhat more! Happy) that is ~80 WPM !!.

A picture is worth thousand words!

image

If you want to try, go ahead,
http://www.typequick.com/ttest/start.asp

Stay tuned.. Wave

How can I get more productive with Live Mesh ?

This is obvious question. Any software/system which is Good, should make a person more productive, should save time/energy/money!

I just read a blog post on Angus' blog (who is Sr. Product Manager at Microsoft) about this, take a look..
http://blogs.msdn.com/angus_logan/archive/2008/05/03/get-more-productivity-out-of-live-mesh-with-vista-tips-tricks.aspx

Live mesh really rocks!!

Stay tuned.. Wave

How do I invite somebody to Live Mesh ?

I have heard this question from many people. How can you invite somebody to Live Mesh?

Its the simplest task on the earth, believe me! All you have to do is Share a folder with him and he will get an invitation (if your friend is not already member of live mesh, he will get invite to become member otherwise new folder will appear on his live desktop after he accepts the invitation!)

Steps are as follows (to invite somebody to Live Mesh..)

  • Create a shared folder in Live Desktop

  • Open the folder in Live Desktop

  • Click on "Members" on the right hand side

  • Click "Add"

    • According to system right now, everybody has limited number of invites allocated (they are generational so, anybody who is invited directly from Microsoft gets 5 invites  and when he invites somebody he gets 4 and so on!) So, when you click on Add member, you will be able to see the text there saying you have X invite left! (If you have 0 invites left and your friend is not already member of live mesh, he will not be able to get the shared folder! because he needs to get into the system somehow)

  • Type in their email address.

  • Click OK

  • Thats it! You are done!

    Stay tuned.. Wave

    Woopra rocks!!

    Thanks to Woopra (still in beta), I am now able to exactly watch and analyze patterns for my blog visits!! Following is one of the statistics that Woopra provides,

    image

    So, as you can see in the snapshot above, It allows me to see what are daily visits for my blog and how many page views were made by those visitors! I have started using it from last 5 days and now, I know what content is mostly liked by people out there and which blog post's ranking is top most in search engines! And all these things I can see on a desktop application (they have a very good and efficient Java Desktop Client!), no need to go and watch things from Web Interface!

    Woopra is really good, believe me!

    Stay tuned.. Wave