Happy new year to everybody !!

Gujarati : Nutan Varshbhinandan
Arabic : Antum salimoun
Bengali : Shuvo Nabo Barsho
Hindi : Naye Varsha Ki Shubhkamanyen
Kannada : Hosa Varushadha Shubhashayagalu
Marathi : Nveen Varshachy Shubhechcha
Malayalam : Puthuvatsara Aashamsakal
Oriya : Nutan Varsha ra Shubhechcha
Punjabi : Nave sal di mubarak
Sindhi : Nayou Saal Mubbarak Hoje
Tamil : Eniya Puthandu Nalvazhthukkal
Telegu : Noothana samvatsara shubhakankshalu
Urdu : Naya Saal Mubbarak Ho

May all your dreams come true this year and have a nice time ahead !

BSNL to provide 2 MBPS from tomorrow!!

Broadband tariff shall be revised as follows with effect from 1st Jan, 2007 :

A. Home Plans:

Particulars	Tariff in Rs.
	Home 250	Home 500	Home 1000	Home 1800	Home 3300
Bandwidth (wherever technically feasible)	256 Kbps/ Up to 2 Mbps	256 Kbps/ Up to 2 Mbps	384 Kbps/ Up to 2 Mbps	512 Kbps/ Up to 2 Mbps	2 Mbps
Monthly Charges (Rs)	250	500	1000	1800	3300
Annual Payment Option to Customers (Rs)	2500	5000	10000	18000	33000
Download/ Upload Limit (GB)	1.0 GB	2.5 GB	5 GB	10 GB	20 GB
Additional Usage Charges/MB Beyond free Download/Upload Limit (Rs)	0.90	0.80	0.80	0.70	0.70
Free E-mail IDs/Space (Per E-mail ID)	1/5MB	1 / 5 MB	1 / 5 MB	1 / 5 MB	2 / 5 MB
Security Deposit	NIL	NIL	1 month rental	1 month rental	1 month rental
Night Unlimited (0200- 0800 Hrs)	Not Available	Available	Available	Available	Available
Minimum Hire period	Three months	Three months	One month	One month	One month

B. Business Plans

Particulars	Tariff in Rs.
	Business 700	Business 1200	Business 3000	Business 5000	Business 9000
Bandwidth (wherever technically feasible)	256 Kbps/ Up to 2 Mbps	256 Kbps/ Up to 2 Mbps	512Kbps/ Up to 2 Mbps	1 Mbps/ Up to 2 Mbps	2 Mbps
Single /Multi User-(SU/MU)	SU	SU	MU	MU	MU
Monthly Charges (Rs)	700	1200	3000	5000	9000
Annual Payment option to Customers (Rs)	7000	12000	30000	50000	90000
Download/ Upload Limit (GB)	4 GB	8 GB	20 GB	35 GB	75 GB
Additional Usage Charges/MB Beyond free download /upload limit (Rs)	0.80	0.80	0.50	0.50	0.50
Free E-mail IDs/Space (Per E-mail ID)	1/5 MB	1 / 5 MB	2 / 5 MB	2 / 5 MB	4 / 5 MB
Static IP Address (On request)	Not Available	Not Available	Not Available	One	One
Web hosting space (On request)	Not Available	Not Available	Not Available	5 MB	5 MB
Domain Name (On request)	Not Available	Not Available	Not Available	One	One
Security Deposit	1 Month rental	1 months rental	1 month rental	1 month rental	Rs 5000
Minimum Hire period	One month	One month	One month	One month	One month

Notes:

1. The downloading limits will be either up loading or down loading which ever is reached earlier.

2. The data rates for Unlimited Home 900 and 900 Plus shall continue @256 Kbps and no up gradation of bandwidth is proposed for the same.

All other terms and conditions will remain same.

 

So, I will not get the 2 MBPS scheme because I am in the plan 900 Plus :-(

Lets see what works out, I would like to shift my plan from 900 Plus to Home 1000; but then I will not get the Unlimited usage :-(

Babul !!!

Just watched Babul!!

Awesome movie !! I feel like, I have used my 2.5 hours in really good work.. Movie is rocking !! Its touching too (too much emotional).. Rani gets 5/5 from me in the movie !

My favourite song in the movie !! After coming home even, I heard this for at least 8-9 times :-)

Screenshots of Gmail's Mail Fetcher

Gmail added a new feature that lets you fetch mail from up to 5 POP3 accounts, but the feature is not yet enabled in all Gmail accounts. Here's what you'll see:

You'll find the mail fetcher in Settings / Accounts.

You can add up to 5 accounts.

It's a good idea to not leave a copy on the original server, if your POP3 account has a small storage. You can label all the messages and archive them without manually creating a filter. Gmail will also offer to let you send mail from the new address.





After adding the account, Gmail will fetch your mail every 3-4 minutes and show you a small status and a log of the last 5 actions.





Gmail's spam filter will put some order in your POP3 mail, although the filter is not perfect.



Overall, Gmail's mail fetcher is fast and doesn't need too much tweaking to make it work. You'll be able to get your old mail to Gmail and use Gmail as a universal account. Unfortunately, there are some bugs (I deleted an account, but I still received mails), so this feature will be delayed a little bit more.

Note: the feature was tested using a real POP3 account.

Disappointment in VS2005 SP1 on Vista

Reading following on Dana's blog ! I think his argument is right! Even I also set VS2005 on vista to run with admin user because if I dint, I was not able to get the intellisense!! (Standard user is not allowed to re-write the NCB file - intellisense file!!) Lets wait and watch for Microsoft's response!!

Well, I installed SP1 of Visual Studio 2005 yesterday on my laptop running Vista, and I have to say there was one think that really disappointed me. So much so that I am not just going to blog about it... I want everyone that reads this to go AGAINST Microsoft recommendations. Here is what I mean:

Thats right.... Microsoft is recommended to run Visual Studio as Administrator. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. Don't do this!!

You are on Vista. You should be running as a Standard User, and running Visual Studio as a standard user. Why? Because then you can SEE how your application will work while in least privilege mode AS you develop the software.

Now, some people will complain that they need to be administrator because they need some of the tools in the IDE. A good example would be if you are writing a COM component. You cannot register the library when running as a standard user. Is there a solution? Yes. Open up a cmd window as Administrator and do it by hand. Don't like that idea? Have a post build event that runs a custom app to do it... and modify the manifest to REQUIRE the UAC elevation. This way, you elevate a separate process to do your administrative task without requiring the IDE to be run with higher privileges that you really don't need.

And NOTHING prevents you from starting a second copy of VS2005SP1 elevated in those cases where you really have to debug as Administrator. But for your day to day use of VS... DON'T run elevated!!!

I am really surprised and disappointed to see this dialog. I only hope Microsoft reconsiders this position in its next version. If they REQUIRE admin privs for some tools, separate them out so only they have to be run as Administrator. You should only elevate when you need to; you should try to run with least privilege throughout the entire development process so you can REALLY see the impact of the code on normal users.

Well, IMNSHO anyways.

Source: Disappointment in VS2005 SP1 on Vista
Originally published on Wed, 27 Dec 2006 16:28:26 GMT by Dana Epp

iloggo - Create your own Grid from your Favorites Sites

 

iloggo, Polish based company, allows you to save all your favorite into a convenient visual map. Each user will be able to easily and quickly access to all his frequently visited sites.
iloggo is also a search engine based on dedicated algorithms and database of frequently visited and saved pages. The more users who frequently visit and save the same page the higher it goes in the results. You can browse for matters of interest among other users addresses, and share your addresses with them.
iloggo provide their users with some great Ajax experience. Also they offers you access to your favorite web addresses from any computer:

• Collect your favorite web pages on iloggo
• Services, you want to remember, add to “My entries”
• Services, you often visit, keep on your grid
• Enter your favorite web pages with just one click

Choose your favorite site

Crop site logo

Get your Grid

Sign up here

Airbag, Google Crash Reporter

Airbag is an open source tool from Google that can be used to identify why a program you're developing crashes. "If developers could get reliable and automatic reports when their programs crash, they'd be able to figure out which ones happen most frequently, and more importantly, be able to fix them. Writing a system to handle crash reports is a lot of work though, and writing a crash reporter that works across a variety of hardware configurations and operating systems is even harder," explained Airbag's developers.

Fortunately, that's exactly what Google's software aims to be. Airbag currently works in Windows, Mac and will be soon available for Linux, but you have to know how to work with Subversion to get the source. The system has client libraries that generate crash reports and a server library that receives these reports. "The server-side process library in turn reads the crash dumps and transforms them into information that is useful for debugging. The build tools are able to make sense of native debugging information, turning the data into a format that is understandable by the processor," is happy to inform us Sean Michael Kerner.

It's very interesting to note that Airbag has already a major supporter in Mozilla, that will add it in the next version of Firefox. "We don't have a formal roadmap, but we do have an informal mission statement, which is to provide a set of crash reporting libraries that can be integrated into a large project, namely, Firefox," said Mark Mentovai, who works for this project at Google.

WM 5.0 SNAPI: When you need more than PhoneSignalStrength can provide

Got a piece of information I did lot of R&D on (in my previous company :-)!!! 

Hello All -
I am new to WM 5.0 but enjoying it.  Rory's screencasts (http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=209784) have been very helpful.
However, the app I am developing (an enterprise app for determining cellular coverage in a given location) seems to be limited by the SNAPI abstraction.  That is, Microsoft.WindowsMobile.Status.SystemProperty.PhoneSignalStrength gives me "phone signal strength, expressed as a percentage of full strength" but that value is not actually useful in more technical applications.  Can anyone help answer any of these questions:
What is the actual RSSI value? A percentage such as that returned by PhoneSignalStrength is a fraction.  In this case, it is probably the current RSSI divided by the maximum RSSI.  I need to know the current RSSI - either directly or by deriving from the percentage and maximum RSSI.  Does anyone know how to access these values?
Is there a way to get the current Bit Error Rate (BER)?  Many modems offer this in response to an AT command.  It would be almost as helpful as RSSI.
For that matter, does anyone know of a way to send AT commands directly to the modem and get the response?  The modems have a ton of troubleshooting tools (that admittedly may be modem-specific) that would be great to have in a mobile device that relies on said modem.
Thanks for any insights or advice.
- Hank

Source: WM 5.0 SNAPI: When you need more than PhoneSignalStrength can provide
Originally published on Wed, 27 Dec 2006 01:05:10 GMT by HankJones

2007: Google Talk Phone Calls, Offline Google Docs

Google launched many applications in the last 2 years, but most of them had too few features (Google Talk) or they were under-promoted (Google Docs & Spreadsheets).

In 2007, things will change. David Girouard, VP and General Manager at Google Enterprise, told Internetnews.com that Google Talk will include many new features and will become a true VoIP client. "Girouard said that Google Talk, which currently allows users to make VoIP calls among themselves, will be beefed up to integrate with traditional phone systems as well as VoIP offerings from other vendors."

Google's social network could also receive an upgrade. Google "may use the fruits of its acquisitions of Web 2.0 companies such as wiki-builder Jotspot and social-networking site orkut to build the framework for a collaboration platform".

Products like Google Docs & Spreadsheets are sometimes faced with the problem of Internet access. Google wants to fix that, at least for enterprise users, by giving them access to their data when they're offline. In 2007, Google will add new features to Google Docs & Spreadsheets and will try to make it a real option for consumers and small businesses. "This year has been about getting our toe in the water. [Next year] will be about taking a lot more steps forward."

Applying my hands on PHP !!

As I wrote earlier also; I have purchased a web-hosting plan with LINUX_ONLY option.. And its my wish from long back that I have my own dynamic website where I can apply all my thoughts (weired thoughts!! of displaying dynamic information)..

So, the only option left for me is to learn mySQL and PHP and SSH and linux related technologies!! mySQL is not a problem as its almost same as normal SQL; but PHP is something I have to do..

So, today whole day (till right now :-) I did some pretty stuff with PHP 4.4.4 (will move on to 5.0 later on..) !! One thing I would say, C++ helps everywhere !!

So, what else!! Keep watching my new domain (right now I have put 3-4 years old website) huge plans to make and release something !!

Merry Cristmas !

Metal Pen which would last forever !!!

 

A stainless steel pen, 8cm long. However when you unscrew the top, the 'nib' is a solid piece of metal. There is no ink, yet this pen will write on virtually any type of paper. This is what it looked like when we tried it on a piece of normal paper...



How does it work?

In the Medieval period, artists and scribes often used a metal stylus in order to draw on a specially prepared paper surface. Generally known as Metalpoint, or Silverpoint when the stylus was made of silver, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer and Rembrandt all used this technique. http://www.silverpointweb.com/index.html gives a lot of information about how it works.

The pens we sell are a modern version (and do not use silver). The solid metal 'nib' consists of a metal alloy, that leaves a mark on most types of paper. If you use the sort of paper typically used in printers and photocopiers, the pen leaves a mark that looks as if it was made by a pencil. However the line will not smudge, and cannot be rubbed out.

Since there is no ink, there is nothing to dry out, so the pen will work just as well in 25 years time as it does today. And of course it never needs sharpening!

I would guess that in time the nib would begin to wear down, as you are leaving a small amount of metal on the page. However this has got to be a much slower process than with a pencil, which wears down pretty quickly.

If you are planning to write the definitive 21st century novel, I would recommend a regular pen. However as a scientific curiousity, we like this pen a lot.

The pen comes in a very smart, circular, silver coloured metal presentation tin, and would make a very unusual gift.

 

Price: £14.99 / $29.38 (Excluding VAT at 17.5%) :-)

Update on Blog Site !!!

Hello Everybody,

This is regarding the blog site and hosting update for http://jigar-mehta.blogspot.com

I purchased my own domain yesterday :-)
http://jigarme.net

So, http://jigar-mehta.blogspot.com will redirect you now to http://jigarme.net/blog. Everything will be same but, hosting and space will not used from blogger!!

Yesterday whole day I was busy in setting up new server and finding some way to figure out, how to merge all my things distributed all over the internet!!

Well, about the hosting, I have purchased a very huuuuuuuuuge plan where they could give me domain registration free of cost :) and still I paid 120$ :(
Its loads of webspace on the internet (but yes, its totally linux hosting.. so, ASP and ASP.NET would not run :(.

Now, for one-two days, would give all my time to create one good website for http://jigarme.net. So, keep watchin :)

Merry Cristmas !

How to get "No to All" button on copy/move dialog!!

If you ever copy and move a large batch of files, or a group of many files at once from one location to another location, you will be prompt with a “Confirm File Replace” window if there is another file with the same name already exists in the target destination folder. “Confirm File Replace” will have 4 buttons or options for you to choose by default, that’s “Yes”, “Yes to All”, “No” and “Cancel”. There is no “No to All” button on the “Confirm File Replace” pop-up dialog. So if there is not so few or hundreds of existed duplicate files, it will prompt and keep repeating to tell you that this folder already contains a file name “xxx”, and ask you would you like to replace the existing file with this one for not so few times or hundreds of times. If you simply want to replace the existing files, “Yes to All” is simple button to click, but if you decided that you want to keep the existing files, you no need to click on “No” button for that many times.

You will see this warning message dialog whenever there is a file with the same name already existed in the target destination folder. If you have many conflict or identical file names, and want to overwrite and replace the existing one, “Yes to All” will do its job, and once click, won’t prompt you for overwrite confirmation anymore.

If you decide not to overwrite any files with the same name, press and hold on the “Shift” key, and then click on “No” button. This key and mouse sequence will simulate as “No to All”, mean no identical named files will be replaced or overwrote. Instead, Windows Explorer will skip any conflict automatically.

This hack is also useful when the many files that you copied or moved has file size that is very big over a slow connection. At this case, even though you know that the existing files in the destination folder can be safely overwritten or replaced or completely identical, but you wouldn’t click “Yes to All”, as it will take ages to transfer the files over. If you use the trick to perform “No to All”, all files the has the same name are skipped instead of transferred, so the process will end a lot faster.

The tip and trick will work when you copy and move files with Windows Explorer, or My Computer or any Explorer window in most Windows OS such as Windows XP.

Writing managed control panel items

Want to develop control panel applets for vista? This article is really good, having step by step instructions along with screenshots.

http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/2006/12/writing-managed-control-panel-items.html

Good Daniel, thanks for good content.

Siemens says they have shown record breaking speed, 107 GBPS !!!!

Just reading the Reuters article here,

and, I am flat!!!

With this speed, I can download something worth 25 normal DVD data per second !!! Siemens even says they will release this product shortly!

WPF Unleashed - New Book from Sams Publishing

Just reading Tim's blog, came to know that Adam Nathan (my favourite .NET Interop Book Author), has written a book on WPF.. Would like to take a look in short time !!

 

If you're looking to learn WPF from a book, there are an increasing range of good choices out on the bookshelves that are based on the shipping APIs.

• I wrote a little about Charles Petzold's latest Microsoft Press title Applications = Code + Markup a few months ago.
• Our very own Laurence Moroney is the proud author of another positively received book by the title of Foundations of WPF, published by Apress.

The latest book to be published is WPF Unleashed by Adam Nathan. If you've ever needed to do any coding to the Win32 API from a managed environment, chances are high that you've either got a well-thumbed copy of his book .NET and COM on your desk or you've found an API wrapper at his website pinvoke.net. Almost uniquely for a technical book, .NET and COM was so popular that there was a grass-roots developer campaign to resurrect it after it went out of print - for a while, it sold used for significantly over its list price on eBay, before the publisher ordered a new print run.

So what's the new book like? While I haven't yet had the opportunity to read the final manuscript from cover to cover, I've seen a number of draft chapters and there's a lot to like here. Adam has a readable, human style that isn't as dense or exhaustive in its coverage of each topic as Charles' work, but provides some great practical insights in the many sidebars scattered throughout the book that will help you apply WPF concepts to your own projects. As one of the key developers on the 3D team, I'm looking forward to reading Daniel Lehenbauer's contributions on that topic, particularly since there's only sketchy printed coverage available thus far on that topic.

For such a visual technology, SAMS have taken the smart choice of publishing the entire book in color, and that has a powerful impact on comprehension: being able to scan through code listings printed with the same color scheme as you'd see on-screen in Visual Studio makes it far easier to pick out the salient points. Of course, it's even more important for coverage of topics like styles or vector drawings, when color is everything. This book sets a new bar for visual polish, and I hope other publishers take note.

The publishers have been generous enough to offer a sample chapter available for download from this blog; it covers a number of the major new concepts in WPF - dependency properties, routed events, visual trees. Remember - you saw it here first!

Which of these three books should you buy? It's hard to make a categorical recommendation of just one title: they all have their strengths. If you're just starting out with WPF and are looking for a survey of the major elements and concepts, then Laurence's Apress book is a great introduction. If you're already developing with WPF, you'll find Charles' Microsoft Press book to be a treasure trove of elegant solutions, clever tricks and precise explanations. If you're looking for a good general purpose, approachable guide to the breadth of the WPF platform, then Adam's SAMS book is definitely worth a look.

Google's Discontinued Services

Google launched a lot of services over the time. Some were successful, others were decent, but very few were discontinued. Here's a list.
1. Google Keyboard Shortcuts (2002) - use your keyboard to navigate between search results.

2. Google Voice Search (2002) - search Google with a telephone call. This way you don't have to type queries, while Google uses voice recognition.
3. Google Viewer (2002) - view Google results as a slide show. Google Toolbar has this feature, but it doesn't move to the next result automatically.

4. Google Webquotes (2002) - see comments about a web page.
5. Google Compute (2002) - an add-on for Google Toolbar that allowed you to use your computer's resources to help research projects (the program worked only when your computer was idle). "When you enable Google Compute, your computer will download a small piece of a large research project and perform calculations on it that will then be included with the calculations performed by thousands of other computers doing the same thing. This process is known as distributed computing."
6. Google Answers (2002) - get answers from researchers for a fee. The product was closed in November this year.
7. Google Search API (2002) - a SOAP API that allowed developers to integrate Google's search results into their applications. The product is now deprecated.
8. Google Deskbar (2003) - search Google from your desktop and see search results in a mini-viewer. The product has been integrated into Google Desktop.
9. Google X (2005) - a Mac-like interface for Google. The page has been live only for a day and it has been removed to prevent a suit from Apple.
10. Google Video (initial version) - search the content of television shows. Google recorded the TV programs and allowed people to search closed captions and see images from the show. You couldn't play videos.
As you can see, some products were replaced by more powerful ones, others were unsuccessful, had copyright problems or technical difficulties. It's interesting to note that most discontinued products were launched in 2002.

What is side-by-side assembly execution?

If you are .NET developer, you might have heard about the side-by-side execution. What the hack is that?

Side-by-side execution is the ability to store and execute multiple versions of an application or component on the same computer. This means that you can have multiple versions of the runtime, and multiple versions of applications and components that use a version of the runtime, on the same computer at the same time. Side-by-side execution gives you more control over what versions of a component an application binds to, and more control over what version of the runtime an application uses.

Support for side-by-side storage and execution of different versions of the same assembly is an integral part of strong naming and is built into the infrastructure of the runtime. Because the strong-named assembly's version number is part of its identity, the runtime can store multiple versions of the same assembly in the global assembly cache and load those assemblies at run time.

Although the runtime provides you with the ability to create side-by-side applications, side-by-side execution is not automatic. For more information on creating applications for side-by-side execution, see Programming Implications of Side-by-Side Execution.

Taken from, http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpguide/html/cpconAssembliesSide-by-SideExecution.asp

In the nutshell, side-by-side is, say if you have some application requiring assembly version 1.2.0.0 to run properly and some of your application requires same file but having version 1.3.0.0 then you can have both assemblies on your computer and at the same time, you can have both running, using different assemblies at runtime :-)

Test Blog !!

Test blog to verify something !!

:-)

Something secret !! :-) Try to find out if you want to...