IQ Test..

Just before few minutes, I read an email from a colleague mentioning his IQ level number, and I did not know my IQ level.. I thought, its good time to do some research and find out for me as well. I also wanted to know what these number really mean!

I remember having it read somewhere, that Einstein's IQ level was somewhere above 160 (he was called a super genius!)

Anyway, I did some research on IQTest and found a test at,
http://www.iqtest.com

I took the test and got the report in EMail, I got rated at, 132.

I did not exactly know how should this be considered (though comparing it with my colleague, it was good and I know, I cant compare with Einstein.. ) So, I did some more research on the interpretation and found following data..

I am also going to take IQ test at Tickle (just to make sure, I am really at 132!) Anyways, time to get back to work!

Stay tuned..

Google Master Plan - The movie..

The facts mentioned in the movie are really worth giving a thought!

read more | digg story

How would it be if, "Google reader enables comment posting from its interface!"

Yeah, I know, post in 'How would it be' series after a long time!! Doesn't mean I am not getting idea these days (ideas for productivity is something like, I get every now and then..) but its just not getting enough time to phrase them here!!

Anyways, back to the business.. I was probably the happiest person when Google Reader team enabled feature of sending a post in the email from within the Google Reader interface.

Now, what is needed is, you are reading some post in Google Reader and want to comment on the post! What we need to do is, open the post in separate page and add the comment. Wouldn't it be cool if we can add comment (using our Google Profile!) to that post from within the Google Reader by similar interface? I am sure, people will interact more if that is the case.

I also understand that its not easy thing, but having OpenID propagating now, I think it can be done.. And Google can at least start with all Blogger blogs (I think that is 25-30% of my feeds!!)

Stay tuned..

Application Virtualization Platform by Microsoft

I remember of seeing an awesome demo of Application Virtualization when I visited the conference at US in last august. I saw having all office versions running on a machine without installing any of them (with the help of Application Virtualization)

Basically, Microsoft acquired a company named SoftGrid, with the help of its product offering, MS has built on this technology.

I just found a very cool demo of "How it works" here,
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/softgrid/evaluation/guidedtour.mspx

Want to see it in action? Wait for Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP)

Stay tuned..

Bed eMails..

Forget about Bed Tea.. I found the term Bed eMails today.. he he he.. I was just wondering if this habit is good or not.. but its been a while following it.. Everyday I wake up, before getting out of my bed, I drag the laptop from the desk and first, 'CHECK EMAILS'.. Whats so important in there?? Not so much.. but still somehow I end up doing that daily... Its correctly said, "A Picture is worth a thousand words.."

Forgive me for a ghosty look.. I dint mean to scare you.. LOL.. Anyways, its just a random rambling, on a good sunday morning (what else can you expect from a bachelor staying alone !!)

Stay tuned..

Yet another busy week..

Yet another busy week has passed (have got no time for blogging!!).. Few things that I learned this week includes

• COM+ export feature
• How application proxy works internally (in COM+)
• Few more debugging technics..
• Managed exception debugging
• Event Log programming from .NET (System.Diagnostics namespace)
• Silverlight
• Networking and making best out of it (its about social networking! not the computer networking..)

And yes, I just got a good news at job yesterday that I was anticipating.. Life is better with more responsibility..

Stay tuned..

YouTube Under Maintenance..

YouTube is also run by Machine!! It also needs maintenance...

Thx to Alpesh for pointing out!! 

Stay tuned..

I am still here...

Hey there.. Just a quick update.. Have not blogged from a long time, I think, I am busy with things here and there.. Last to last week was almost training and learning windows kernel internals (yeah, once again internals training.. but there is still a lot to learn..) and yeah I got 'Instant Recognition Award'.. Last week was fun.. Having ThanksGiving celebrated by my customers, I was having some relief, and we utilized this time to gear up and did some parties, presentations (knowledge sharing), and it was all fun.

This weekend, its Interview Time... Oh yeah, We are hiring.. We have two different set of vacancies..

• If you are good in Web Services, ASP.NET and have some knowledge of COM+, please feel free to contact me.. Job is at Bangalore, Microsoft within my team.
• If you are good in Win32 API, have clear fundamentals about Windows Architecture and have really good C++ skills, contact me, we have a vacancy in SDK team.

What else, life is good and awaiting for some professional good news!! (Yes, guess if you can, hard work is getting paid off!! )

Stay tuned..

Tehelka - Gujarat Riots - Inside Story..

Dont know why, but today I started searching for Gujarat Riots inside story.. While going through the search results, found Tarun Tejpal's note and remembered Tehelka.com.. Through SpyCam they have collected few videos.. worth taking a look at.

 

 

 

 

After watching all these videos, I feel like as a general public, we never know what all things are going behind the scenes.. My personal feeling regarding gujarat riots is, WHATEVER HAPPENED, IT WAS BAD AND SHOULD NEVER EVER BE REPEATED.

Stay tuned..

The best place to work for...

Recently a survey got conducted by Business Today, Mercer and TNS India. The topic of the survey was "THE BEST COMPANIES TO WORK FOR IN INDIA.." and guess what, Microsoft tops the list!

Even before survey results came, I was pretty sure, its going to be Microsoft, there can't be any other place!!

Read more at,
http://businesstoday.digitaltoday.in/the-best-companies-to-work-for-in-india-9.html

I am proud to be at Microsoft.

Stay tuned..

Kashi Congratulating Jigar Mehta

Kashi Congratulating Jigar Mehta
Originally uploaded by anil_mahadev001

Picture taken during BDOTNET new website opening. BDOTNET is bangalore developers user group. They recognized few technical blog writers on http://bdotnet.in/blog.. Luckily, I was one of them :)

Stay tuned..

MS Bangalore Reception..

Today, while coming back home, I was waiting for elevator.. and thought let me use the camera in my cellphone (which I hardly use )

So, here is the Embassy Building, Microsoft, Bangalore reception view from outside!

Stay tuned..

Keeping up with comments section of any blog!

It was just yesterday, that I was thinking to create a new "How would it be.." post on my blog with an idea of having feedback notification for blog comments. Because, the problem was when I leave a comment on anybody's blog, and after some time somebody comes to that blog and looks at it, replies to it, I never know that my comment has been replied (this is a barrier in blog multi-party communication idea!). I have to manually keep track of all pages that I have added comment or subscribe to comment RSS (if its available!)..

And as usual I was leaving a comment on a blogspot blog, and found as always Google has just released this feature!! Take a look,

So, now, when you want to leave comment, dont worry about future replies on that comment, Just make sure you check the checkbox "EMail follow-up comments to ...." so, everytime some new comment is added, you will get formatted subject email from Google (for which you can even create a filter as I have done and labelled it as "Comment Followups")

PS: Though other blogging platform has not added this yet, but I hope they will also do the same very soon (to make life simpler! )

Stay tuned..

I am for BDOTNET.. Are you??

We had opening of BDOTNET (India's Largest and Most Active Microsoft User Group!!) new website (http://bdotnet.in) and had a meeting for that this weekend.

I wrote few blog articles for BDOTNET,

• What is AppID??
• How to find out which processes have loaded particular DLL??

I will also continue writing technical articles for BDOTNET, that way I can share content with community (with the feeling of giving something back to community!)

So, The BDOTNET committee recognized few contributor and gave them a TShirt.. . Here I am posting design of TShirt, take a look..

Update: Pictures for event are @,

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/15842575@N00/

• http://bdotnet.in/photos/bdotnetlaunch/slideshowpro.aspx

Stay tuned..

Getting addicted to RSS.. Help me..

Anybody has solution for this habituation? I am thinking, I am getting addicted to RSS reading.. When I get some time (be it 10 free minutes or some stretching time in my day, I open my RSS reader and start reading things there!!)

Here is what my Trendline shows..

There are pros and cons of this thing as well (if you think deeply)..

Pros:
You can get up to date with what's latest with the industry.Sitting on chair in your office, you can travel entire world.. You can increase your network in the industry. And most importantly knowledge. You never know which bit of knowledge will become useful in what situation. Ultimately, we all are knowledge workers..

Cons:
Time.. time.. time.. The only cons I could think of is, TIME.. Sometimes we need to set proper priorities to tasks, and if this habituation comes in front of real task it creates the problem.

I am still finding my way between these pros and cons.. but I think its going good.. (except next few weeks, I know I am going to have hectic schedule having both of my team members on vacation..)

Stay tuned..

GMail increasing the mailbox limit..

Yes, I was little bit worried about my primary gmail account, I was thinking if I had to take premium services from gmail so that I can get some more space because today, after deleting all spams my usage was 49%(there were around 3254 spams in my mailbox!!! I dont know when will Google get rid of this spams.. Look at live.com they dont have these much spam!! I get literally 1 spam on my live.com account everyday and where as on gmail, I get everyday almost 140-200 spams )

So, when I logged into my account today, I got to know that gmail is increasing their limit.. Right now, its 3428MB but I have read it somewhere that they are going to increase it till 4 GB in near future.

So, Enjoy!!

Stay tuned..

How would it be if "Online Calendars integrates with IM"..

After a long time, posting an article in How would it be.. series. Does not mean I have stopped getting ideas, it means, I have become somewhat lazy or not getting enough time to fire a post on the idea.

So, today's idea is, if Online PIM systems like Yahoo, Google, Windows Live which has IM support as well as Online Calendar. I heavily use calendar (corporate calendar for customer meetings and google calendar for my personal tasks) for managing things. Now, when an event occurs in calendar, these online calendars have already integrated with their respective email services, and some of them have even integrated with SMS systems so they send you SMS (like Google Calendar). But wouldn't it be great if they integrate with their IM system? The end result of it would be, whenever event is about to occur, it would send you a short instant message with all event detail to your IM (for people like me who are online almost all time, it will be really great and too fast!!)

What do you think?? Share your thoughts in comments section..

Stay tuned..

My blog posted on B.NET Community website..

We have India's largest and most active Microsoft User Group in bangalore named B.NET (http://bdotnet.in). Recently I have got my blog posted on the community website.

Its about AppID (what is AppID.. its topic related to DCOM, COM+). Access it here,
http://bdotnet.in/blogs/web/archive/2007/10/15/what-is-appid.aspx

Feel free to leave comment if you have any question..

Stay tuned..

Indiatimes.com gets AJAX based mail interface..

I was reading IT magazine (October issue) and found that Indiatimes has got AJAX based interface for their email. I have an account at indiatimes but had just forgot it (I never check emails because of that world's oldest interface!!) But I opened it now and its cool now. You can drag and drop mails to folders, there are right click menus (GUI is not very good still but hope they will improve it!!)

If you have indiatimes account, go ahead and check it out.. (http://in.indiatimes.com)

Stay tuned..

Free Office Suites

From vendors other than Microsoft

read more | digg story

Microsoft Windows Release History..

Product Name	Internal Version Number	Release Date
Windows NT 3.1	3.1	July 1993
Windows NT 3.5	3.5	September 1994
Windows NT 3.51	3.51	May 1995
Windows NT 4.0	4.0	July 1996
Windows 2000	5.0	December 1999
Windows XP	5.1	August 2001
Windows Server 2003	5.2	March 2003

Hmm.. Interesting..

Stay tuned..

Google Desktop - Secret downloader

I have been using Google desktop from its initial beta days. And have loved this product. Due to some other debugging, I have network statistics logging driver installed on my machine and what I am seeing is something strange-unexplained.

Google Desktop downloads 1.99 MB of data every now and then. I think at least 2 times in an hour. It connects to google servers and starts downloading these data, every time the number of bytes being downloaded are almost the same (around 1.99 - 2 MB). Can anybody from google explain why do you need to download those 2 MB data? Is this the reason you are creating 3 GB of index file?? (to store these downloaded data??) And "Do no evil" company doesnt document anything about this!! Why?

PS: I even dont have option enabled to search my gmail account, in which case I understand it has to download the email data and create index for that, but I just want my local machine to participate in index, I dont want any updates and any such unsolicited bytes coming from the web.

Anybody else, have observed this behavior???

Stay tuned..

Play file of any format on your Media player with windows essential codec pack

Intersting post!!

 

 

Sent to you by Jigar Mehta via Google Reader:

 

 

Play file of any format on your Media player with windows essential codec pack

via Blogger Whale|freestyle blogging by GC on 10/9/07

Stop installing every other media player you see for playing different file types and make your favourite media player a standalone all in one media box with windows essential codec pack.This is a freeware and a 8mb download worth it.It handles Audio CDs, DVDs, (S)VCDs and XCDs on the fly, and it adds support for 3GP, AAC, AC3, APE, AVI, DivX, 3ivx, DAT, h.264, x264, AVC, Nero Digital, DTS, FLV, FLAC, HD-MOV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, M4A, MPC, MP3, MP4, MO3, MOD, MKV/MKA, MTM, OFR, TTA, OGG/OGM, S3M, Vorbis, VOB, WavPack, ATRAC3, XviD, XM, WV, and UMX.

You can download windows essential codec pack from here.

 

 

Things you can do from here:

• Visit the original item
  on Blogger Whale|freestyle blogging
• Subscribe to Blogger Whale|freestyle blogging using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

 

 

Silverlight Weekend..

Yeah, last weekend was a silverlight weekend.

Got to meet author of this book. Yes, I attended a seminar on Silverlight 1.0 and 1.1 by Jason Beres (Product Manager, Infragistics). Microsoft held this seminar in our corporate campus and was fun getting real hands on experience on silverlight. Whats more, I won a TShirt in the Question-Answer session .

And yes, we have Principal Development Lead for Silverlight team from Redmond here @ bangalore right now. So, going to attend few of his seminars as well to really clear my concepts and doubts about silverlight. One thing, I am pretty sure about though, is SILVERLIGHT rocks! Its going to be the mainstream of all our web applications. AJAX is nothing when it comes to silverlight according to development plans, more I can not disclose because of NDA.

Stay tuned..

Distributed Technologies..

Yes, I have got tremendous interest in distributed technologies and thinking to expand my role here at MS to take on other technologies like MTS, COM+, Distributed Transaction Coordinator. Right now, learning about them and when time comes, will jump into those technologies.. Yes, its time for me to expand skills from COM, DCOM, .NET Interop to distributed technologies as well. As a part of preparation, right now I am going with COM-DCOM-MTS relationship and concepts behind design of Distributed Transaction Coordinator-MSDTC. (though MTS is no longer supported by Microsoft but its the mother of COM+)

Lets see how it goes.

Stay tuned..