December 30, 2010

Karan vagar nu Rajkaran (કારણ વગર નું રાજકારણ)

કારણ વગર નું રાજકારણ is collection of Gujarati comedy jokes on Politics by Sairam Dave. Enjoy all 8 parts in the player below (they will start one after another automatically)


December 27, 2010

How to view files inside MSI and extract them

Recently, I had an MSI file that I wanted to crack open to see what are the contents of it because I wanted to check some files out even before running the MSI (before doing installation). There may be other ways to do this, but I found this slick way to do this and thought of sharing it here.

We can use the tool called Less MSI to do this very easily. Following is a snippet from the project home page to give an idea about the tool. You can download the tool from here for free.

Features

Windows Explorer Integration

Lessmsi also integrates with Windows Explorer so that you can right-click on a Windows Installer file (.msi file) and select "Extract Files" to extract it into a folder right there:

Just select Preferences from the Edit menu to enable (or disable) the explorer integration:

GUI

In addition to allowing you to extract files from the command line and from inside Windows Explorer, lessmsi has a graphical user interface that allows you to view detailed information about any MSI file.

MSI Table Viewer

Windows Installer (.msi files) are based on an internal database of tables. Lessmsi features a viewer for those tables. Useful for people who work a lot with installers.

Maa baap ne bhulso nahi (માં બાપ ને ભૂલશો નહિ)

If understand Gujarati and you’ve got 2 hours time, please please please watch this program. It is highly likely that your eyes will be wet and you will call your parents immediately after watching it.

If you don’t have 2 hours, go through this one atleast.

 

 

Part 1 : (1 hour 10 minutes)

 

 

Part 2 : (1 hour 7 minutes)

 

 

Update: I heard that Google Video is going to go down and delete all the uploaded videos so, I am putting Youtube Alternative below as well. In case if Google Video does not work, watch from below mentioned YouTube..

 

List of all Gujarati Natak here

December 16, 2010

Things you should know If you are developing applications/games for Windows Phone 7 platform

I will list important things one should know if they are planning to develop applications/games for Windows Phone 7 platform.

  • You need a developer account to upload any application/game which costs 99$ per year.
    • You can submit unlimited number of paid applications.
    • You can only submit 5 free applications using one developer account. Each additional free application will cost 19.99$ to developer. Having said that, there is a catch.
      • When they say 5 free application submission, they mean that you can make 5 submissions to Microsoft for any applications. If your application is rejected by Microsoft MarketPlace team, you lose your one free submission. So, say X submits XYZ application, which is rejected due to problem a. He now has 4 free submissions. He fixes the issue a and then submits again, it gets rejected again due to b problem. He now has 3 free submissions. If he fixes problem b and then submits again, if this time it gets accepted, X will be left with only 2 submissions now. So, you should make sure you test the application thoroughly. Because after 5 free submissions, each submission try is going to cost you 20$ (and because it’s a free app, you are not going to get direct revenue from app sale!)
    • You can use the same developer account to upload 10 XBOX games to XBOX 360 marketplace.
    • Microsoft will take 30% of total earning; developer gets 70%.
    • You will receive your payment only after your sell reaches 200$.
    • Once you get the developer account, you can “developer unlock” your windows phone device. (Maximum you can unlock 3 devices where you can deploy applications without going through marketplace).
      • If you have student partner account, you can keep maximum of 3 applications on the device which hasn’t come from marketplace.
      • If you have paid account (which I mentioned above 99$/per year) you can keep maximum of 10 applications on the device which hasn’t come from Marketplace. So, in case if you have to add 11th application on the developer unlocked phone, you will need to remove one of first 10 apps from phone, otherwise you will not be able to transfer 11th app!
    • Here are the guidelines and requirements that one should go through before attempting a submission to Marketplace. If you miss any of the points mentioned in the guide, your application may be rejected.

 

I will update this blog post as I come across more facts.

December 15, 2010

Developing your first Windows Phone 7 Application

Here, I am going to outline the steps to get your first windows phone application going to Marketplace.

  • You will need to create a developer account from http://create.msdn.com/en-US/ (it costs 99$). It may take a few days to get identity verification and everything approved.
  • Download the Windows Phone 7 application development kit from here. This toolkit contains (all the software you need to develop Windows Phone 7 application),
    • Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
    • Windows Phone Emulator Resources
    • Silverlight 4 Tools For Visual Studio
    • XNA Game Studio 4.0
    • Microsoft Expression Blend for Windows Phone
  • Some Resources to get started with Programming,
    • Getting started guide here
    • If you have any questions during the development phase, you can ask the questions on the forums here (msdn forums – official one) and here (silverlight.net)
    • Go through this jump start course to get some information about the development skills.
    • Here is short video course for Windows Phone 7 development.
    • Keep an eye on Windows Phone 7 team’s Blog here
    • MSDN also has extensive documentation for Windows Phone 7 here
    • Download the Windows Phone Training kit from here
    • This MSDN link has Common development tasks
    • Charles Petzold has written a book on Windows Phone 7 Programming, which is freely available from here (actually you can get the PDF from here)
    • One more book called “Windows Phone BlueBook” is available for download for free here
  • I am preparing a list on Twitter that you can follow (once I finish adding most of related people) to get up to date with the Windows Phone 7 news.
  • I am also trying to compile list of all the blogs and websites (in the form of RSS feeds list), once finished I will add it here. (If you want access to the current list right now, leave a comment)

 

I will keep updating this blog post to add further steps as I go through them. You should also check this one out as it contains some information that you need to know as a starter.

December 14, 2010

How to switch from beta channel to development channel in Chrome OS.


  • Go to Wrench icon->about chrome OS
  • You will see something similar to following,

  • Click on "More Info" and select "Development" from the combo (From Beta). You will see something as follows,