Finally, I was successful in convincing my wife – ‘Khushbu’ to start blogging! Though she already had a domain name registered but was sitting idle, waiting for some love. Looks like it’s got lucky! Anyways, she blogs her ideas at,
Feel free to pay a visit to her site..
Here I have mentioned the Google Chrome extensions, I use almost every single day. As I start using new ones or stop using any (because of better option) I will keep updating following list.
Browser Extensions are great when you only have the ones you regularly use. My rule of thumb has been every once in a while (once every 3-4 weeks), I go and check is there an extension I haven’t used in last one week, if there is, see if it can be removed. If you have suggestion for any other good Google Chrome Extension OR better option for any of the above ones, please leave a comment.
As you might know, we’d been to India for almost a month in last February and had amazing time there. My brother Pratik got married and we got a new member in our Family. Time we spent at India was memorable, we returned with lots of memories, pictures and videos. But I did not imagine, on our return to home a big surprise would be waiting for me. My manager delivered mid-year review (Microsoft typically has two reviews in a year – One in March, another in Sept) and informed me with delightful surprise that I’ve been given promotion and I’ve been moved to next CSP (Career Stage Profile).
Let me not get into what is CSP at Microsoft (you may find something written here and there on the internet) but in a nutshell, it comes with increased responsibilities and new job title. I know that its just the first step in a large corporate ladder but its always nice to see your work being appreciated. Anyways, my new job title will be SDET II. Just to give some context, core engineering discipline IC (individual contributor) at Microsoft has job titles like, SDET, SDET II, Senior SDET, Principal SDET and Partner SDET. Each title comes with two or three different levels and each level has responsibilities, experiences and skillset assigned to them which typically takes X years (the higher the level the more time it takes to make yourself ready for that level).
So, this will make me more busier, at the same time more will be expected out of me. But - that’s the life I guess 
Both I and Khushi (My wife) are going to India (Ahmedabad) for a long vacation. I recently visited India on an official trip but Khushi is going to India for the first time after our Marriage. So, lot of excitement. Hope to have a great time with Family and Friends. I will hopefully get enough time from there to write about activities there.
A lot of friends have asked me what do I do at work. Its really difficult to explain in half an hour but to give brief idea, output of hard work we do is following nodes (and all content within them) on beloved MSDN.
I’m just a very small part of tremendous team whose hard work spits out what you see above… So far, I love what I do.
Stay tuned..
Here is a secret!! I am a screenshot junkie! I take lot of snapshots of portion of computer screen for any of the following reasons..
Till now, I had been using Inbit's FullShot software (thanks to one of my friend who gifted it to me!) Its undoubtedly awesome piece of software for taking arbitrary screen snapshots! If you learn that software entirely, you increase significant percentage in productivity!
Main problems that I was facing with Fullshot was, snapshots taken on one machine were only on that machine.. Many a times, I had to remote into my office machine just to take a look at the damn snapshot that I took during office hours! I was looking for a solution that includes S+S model.. where I can integrate snapshots of all my machines (there are bunch of them that I work with regularly.. sometimes it becomes painful keeping things in synchronization!)
Before I got evernote into mainstream, I added my snapshot folder in Live Mesh profile so that all the snapshots on all the machines are synchronized! (Even before I got live mesh into mainstream, I had been using Windows Foldershare.. there is a lot of history associated with this dragon!)
But then, I got Evernote which is exactly what I wanted!! I moved all my snapshots into evernote (there are appx. 780 screenshots in my store increasing everyday!).. Here are advantages that I get using evernote over all my past systems!
So, after a long time, I have Good bye Fullshot and welcome'd Evernote to my always running tool! Like they say, One needs to welcome change.. and Softwares are no exceptions to it!!
Stay tuned.. 
Woo hoo.. June 18th was somewhat special in the terms that my blog crossed 1,000 Page Views marks.. (Generally this has been from 700-800 average daily page views with 500-600 visitors).. Looks like Chris's twitter and respective friendfeed post has helped getting people's attention on my Live Search blog-post..
Following is what my Woopra shows..
Though, time spent per visitor per page (47 seconds) is not very good.. But I think Woopra's algorithm for counting it has some drawbacks (say if you come to any page, read it for 10 minutes and leave the site without clicking any other link, Woopra counts it as zero second visit!! and I think its not woopra's mistake, because there is no way to track such visit's accurate timing..)
Anyways, Thanks a lot people, hope you enjoy the content! Just thought of sharing this because crossing 1000 page views for this blog is first time in my knowledge 
Stay tuned..
Before I joined my present company, I was working with VARAHA.. I just found their latest product release featured on a regional TV Channel.. Way to go, team..!
Stay tuned..
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,
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..
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!
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!
Stay tuned..