General
General
If you press F5 in notepad, it will insert current date and time in the file. I think most of us know about this notepad trick. It is also mentioned in the Edit menu of the notepad. I am going to talk about a trick, which is related to this,
Sometimes we want to insert current data and time, whenever we open the file in the notepad. If you are a lazy person like me, who don’t like to press F5 whenever you open a notepad. Then here is a trick to avoid this. Just add a .LOG in the first line of your text file and close it.
Whenever you open the file with that text in the first line in the notepad, it will insert the current date and time at the end of the file. You can start entering your text after that.
For more detail about this trick, check out this url.
Like its theme "Get Connected", it was great oppurtunity to meet most of the fellow MVP's around Asia. Around 40 MVPs from India attended it. I would say it was more fun filled event then a technical event. If you look at this snap, you will get to know....
(I just flicked this photo from MVP Intranet site...)
We enjoyed a lot and the event was very well organized. Only part that can be improved in the future summits is level of technical sessions. Most of the sessions were at 200 levels, i feel they should have taken few 400 level sessions. Session on Office12 was very interesting session (i cant talk more on this, as it is covered under NDA).
Singapore is a very nice place to visit, especially for shopping. We went to Jurong Birdshow, night safari in Singapore Zoo and a lake side bar.. Then we went to few shopping malls Sim Lim Square, Mustafa and few shops in Orchard road.
Unfortunately as i mentioned in my previous blog, I didnt do much shopping. I got few stuff for my friends.. Smartphone is not cheap in Singapore as i expected, especially XphoneII. Therefore, I decided to buy it in India itself.
All in all, it was a great event. Expecting more events like this in future.
My MVP Award for ASP/ASP.NET is renewed for one more year. I got a mail from Microsoft on April 1st. This came as birthday gift for me. I am really happy to receive the MVP award again. Thanks to Microsoft for recognizing my work again...
I am going to attend the Asia MVP Regional Summit in Singapore this April end. It will be a great opportunity to meet and interact with all our fellow MVPs in ASIA. Also Singapore is a nice place to visit especially for shopping... I am planning to buy a smartphone, Camcorder, SD Card... and the list goes on....
I am planning to buy o2 Xphone2. If you have any suggestions/recommendation to buy smartphone or PDA, pass it on....
Today I am going to host a webchat on ASP.NET Caching. Here are the details about this chat,
ASP.NET Caching Features
March 2, 2005
5.00 pm IST
One of the important factors to improve web application performance and scalability is by using caching feature. Caching is the process of storing frequently used data, usually data that is costly to generate, for reuse. ASP.NET 1.1 comes with different types of caching like output caching, partial caching and data caching.
Join this chat to understand how caching features in ASP.NET can improve the performance in web applications. In this chat, we will also discuss about some of the caching enhancements in ASP.NET 2.0.
Enter chat room from here
Add to your outlook calender
If you are free around that time, come and join this chat.
Florida researchers found in their study, windows web server is more secure than a similarly set-up linux server. They compared Windows Server 2003 and Red Hat Enterprise Server 3 running databases, scripting engines and Web servers. Their criteria included the number of reported vulnerabilities and their severity, as well as the number of patches issued and days of risk — the period from when a vulnerability is first reported to when a patch is issued. On average, the Windows setup had just over 30 days of risk versus 71 days for the Red Hat setup, their study found.
More details at source....
Lots of comments about this study at Slashdot.
Today I installed a tool “Tweak UI” of PowerToys in my machine. This PowerToy gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more. You can download it from here.
First menu in this tool provides few tips on Windows XP. I found some of the tips in that list were new to me; here I am listing those tips which might be new to you also..
- To arrange two windows side-by-side, switch to the first window, then hold the Control key while right-clicking the taskbar button of the second window. Select "Tile Vertically".
- Hold down the shift key in the shutdown dialog to change "Stand By" to "Hibernate". Or just press H to hibernate instantly. You can even use the Power Control Panel to configure your power button to hibernate.
- You can rename multiple files all at once: Select a group of files, right-click the first file, and select "Rename". Type in a name for the first file, and the rest will follow.
- If you create a file called Folder.jpg, that image will be used as the thumbnail for the folder. What's more, that image will also be used as the album art in Windows Media Player for all media files in that folder.
- To close several windows at once, hold down the Control key while clicking on the taskbar buttons of each window. Once you have selected all the windows you want to close, right-click the last button you selected and pick "Close Group".
- In Internet Explorer, type Ctrl+D to add the current page to your Favorites.
- This and many more keyboard shortcuts can be found by going to Internet Explorer, clicking the Help menu, then selecting Contents and Index. From the table of contents, open Accessibility and click "Using Internet Explorer keyboard shortcuts".
- In some applications (such as Internet Explorer), holding the Control key while turning the mouse wheel will change the font size.
Today I was accessing my corporate mail account in my home through dialup. I was replying to one of the mails from my Project Manager. After writing few paragraphs about my current work, I pressed send button. Then only I noticed my dialup connection was terminated, all my mail contents were lost. I told myself that I should have saved this mail somewhere. I reconnected to net and I was ready to type the mail again. But after I opened the mailbox compose screen, I got a popup..
WARNING: The following email was interrupted and was never sent
From : saravana@abc.com
To: Mymanager@abc.com
Do you wish to restore it?
Yes or No
I thought for while “this software understands my feelings”… I pressed yes.. please restore it… It restored that mail completely.. I was amazed with this feature at that time.. It saved me lots of time …
Then I was curious to know how they have implemented this feature. I did viewsource and got the code. Using javascript “SetInterval” function they executed a client side function continuously after certain interval. In that function, they saved the content of the mail to cookie (if cookie is disabled, they stored the data in side frame). When compose mail page is opened, they will check whether any data is there in cookie. If data is there, they will show a confirmation message for restoring that data. Though it looks simple, they have written around 50 lines of code for implementing this feature.
I faced this problem few times with .Text also, but I couldn’t restore the blog content back. Nowadays I used to write my blog in notepad or in my mailbox before I post it. It would be great if .Text supports this feature also…
Last month I blogged about SyncWithAD_Lookup error during VSTS Installation. John Lawrence (Development manager in Microsoft VSTS Team) posted a comment for that blog today. Microsoft accepted this as a bug in this release and it will be fixed in next release. This information has been posted in VSTS Team blog. What I am impressed with this is, Microsoft's interest in customer feedback to improve their product. I just posted about this error in my blog, I didnt event post it in Microsoft Feedback Center. However, they noticed this blog and took it as a feedback. Not only this, I have posted two bugs(1 and 2) in Microsoft Feedback Center. For that also, I got replies within two to three weeks times.. All this proves that Microsoft is listening to customer constantly...
So guys, if you have any feedback or comments about Microsoft Products. Post it.. Microsoft will listen to you...
Selling your proposal to your boss is critical to your success. If you can’t get your boss’s approval when you need it, you are not going to go very far in your career. Michael Hyatt explains in his blog, how effectively you can sell your proposal to your boss.. Good one to read... It will surely help you to move forward in your career...
Free e-book - Dissecting a C# Application: Inside SharpDevelop is available in Apress.com.
Here is the short introduction about this book,
Learn advanced .NET programming techniques by getting an insiders' look at a complete application! The developers who created SharpDevelop give you an inside track on application development with a guided tour of the source code for SharpDevelop. They will show you the most important code features and explain how you can use these techniques in your own projects. You will gain valuable experience of building an application on this scale, learning from the decisions, mistakes, problems and solutions that lead to the current version on SharpDevelop.
Wish you all a very happy new year... May all your dreams come true this year...
This is my first post in this new year, so I thought of blogging about the product releases that you could expect from Microsoft in 2005.
Bink has provided list of products that will be released this year based on his assumptions. Here is the list, which I am interested in,
Biztalk 2004 64
Commerce Server 2002 64
Windows XP x64
Windows Server 2003 x64
SQL 2000 Service Pack 4
Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1
Longhorn Beta (client)
Longhorn Server Beta 1
MSN Messenger 7
MSN Search web
MSN Search desktop
Office 12 Beta
Sharepoint Portal Server 2005
ADAM 2.0
Visual Studio 2005
Visual Studio 2005 express editions (C#, VB, ...)
Visual Studio 2005 Team System
SQL Server 2005
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
AntiVirus ?
AntiSpyware
.NET Framework 2.0
Commerce Server 2006 beta
ASP.net 2.0
For complete list, check out this article
Yesterday I took a session on ASP.NET Tips and Tricks in Bangalore .NET User Group(BDOTNET). Along with me, Sridara took a session on Regular experssion in .NET. Since it was a Christmas eve, I thought there wont much response for these sessions. Nevertheless around 50 people turned up for the session. Some of the tips and tricks which I covered in this session are
- Progress bar in asp.net
- Scrolling datagrid with fixed header and sorting
- Customizing Pager section
- Setting focus, showing messagebox
- ASP.NET Path tips and tricks
- Disabling viewstate in Datagrid
- Best practices for adding dynamic controls
- Maintaining scroll position and few more....
You can download the presentation and demo from this location.
Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has acquired GIANT Company Software Inc., a provider of top-rated anti-spyware and Internet security products. Microsoft will use intellectual property and technology assets from the acquisition to provide Microsoft® Windows® customers with new tools to help protect them from the threat of spyware and other deceptive software. In addition, key personnel from GIANT Company will be joining Microsoft's security efforts..
Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates answers the questions he is asked most frequently, including the secret to his success. Check out
this link
In my previous project, we used XMLHTTP request object extensively to submit the web page without refreshing that page. It is a very nice feature, which is required in most of the projects. During those days, I thought why this feature is not used by many people. One reason might be, it was not supported by all the browser at that time.. Now i think most of browsers provide an option to achieve this Microsoft.XMLHttp object in IE and XMLHttpRequest in Netscape.. That is why its been used extensively now,
In Whidbey, Microsoft is using this feature to implement Client Callback mecahnism and google is now using this feature for implementing Google Suggest.
To know how Google Suggest works, check out this blog. If you want to take look at javascript file which does this job, then download it from here...
After working in Virtual machines you might think whether it is possible to create virtual image file out of any physical server. Yes, it is possible.
Microsoft have released Virtual Server 2005 Migration Toolkit (VSMT) Beta tool for this purpose. This tool can be used to automate the migration of OS from Physical server to Virtual Server. You can download this tool from this location
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/evaluation/vsmt.mspx
This tool is still in beta, so if you find any bugs. You can report at this place.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/evaluation/vsmtbeta.mspx#ECAA
Note: This tool can not be used to migrate a physical machine to virtual PC. This is only for virtual server 2005. This tool can not be used to migrate virtual server to physical server also.
To know more about VSMT, read this faq.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/evaluation/vsmtfaq.mspx
If you face any problem when you move from physical to virtual machine. Read Ben Armstrong blog. He is the program manager of Microsoft Virtual Machine Team. He is giving many tips on how to migrate a physical machine to virtual machine.
Have you guys wondered what is .mspx extension, why some of the contents of microsoft.com site are of .mspx extension.
.mspx extension is like an .aspx extension registered in IIS with custom web handler written by Microsoft to generate content for that request. This article "Developing a Worldwide UI Framework" explains about this.
This article describes how a common presentation framework—including XML-based design templates, centralized control of common user interface (UI) elements, and a custom Web handler and rendering engine built on the Microsoft® .NET Framework—is leading to a consistent, reliable experience for visitors to Microsoft.com.
If you are interested to know the internals of Microsoft.com site, then it is a interesting article.
My PC got affected by one of the Popup virus. Whenever I access internet, a popup window will open with some junk site. I just did some googling to fix this problem. In some blog i got a pointer to this tool - HijackThis. Fantastic tool, it clearly mentions what are the unwanted stuff in a machine. It also has an option to fix that problem.
This popup virus came because of one browser plugin, I don’t know how it got installed in my browser. This tool correctly pointed me that plugin. I removed that plugin and all unwanted application from my machine(same tool pointed me that also). Now i am escaped from that popup. But I am still thinking how that plugin got installed in my machine??
I took a session on “Caching Enhancements and Client Callback in ASP.NET Whidbey” last week in Bangalore .NET User Group. You can download the presentations from here
Caching Enhancements and Client Callback in ASP.NET Whidbey
Best part in this session was discussion on how to implement these feature in exisinting ASP.NET 1.x applications.
Few links related to session.
On Caching
- Caching Improvements in ASP.NET Whidbey
- Improved Caching in ASP.NET 2.0
- Implement Custom Cache Dependencies in ASP.NET 1.x
- Supporting Database Cache Dependencies in ASP.NET 1.x
On Client Callback
- Client Callbacks in ASP.NET Whidbey
For those in India, if you want to meet steve ballmer in person. Here is a chance for you.
Details:
Steve Ballmer Live! In Bangalore
At The Leela Palace
On November 15, 2004
To attend this meeting, you need to register yourself. Go and register yourself in this link
http://www.microsoft.com/india/steveballmerlive/