JiniShans Blogs

Microsoft’s announcement in today’s TechEd 2011 keynote, Windows Phone 7.5 aka Mango’s Enterprise features are trying to replace RIM Blackberry, the Enterprise Behemoth, with “Only on WP” features.

2011-05-16T22:21:00.001-04:00

Microsoft had announced a lot new enterprise/business features for the upcoming Windows Phone 7.5 update called “Mango”, coming this summer, in TechEd 2011 keynote.

Windows Phone 7.5 called “Mango” will include below enterprise/business features:

Pinnable email folders: Pin a folder to the start screen for quick access. This could be an email folder for a specific project, from a specific group or person (like your boss), or an RSS feed you’ve set up in Outlook.
Conversation view in email: Emails in your inbox are organized by conversation, bringing replies to a thread into a consolidated view so it’s faster and easier to stay on top of the conversation.
Server search: Search your email server (e.g. Exchange Server) for older emails no longer stored on yourphone, giving you ready access to all of your mail.
Lync: Lync Mobile brings the Lync experience to Windows Phone customers by delivering Unified Communications capabilities, including instant messaging and the ability to see the presence of your co-workers. The Lync app will be a free download from Windows Phone Marketplace and will be enabled with support from your business organization.
Security: Complex (alpha-numeric) password support
Rights management: Information Rights Management support for protecting e-mails and Office documents
Wireless improvements: Support for access to hidden corporate Wi-Fi networks

Lync client. Lync Mobile will provide the Lync communications experience on Windows Phone, with instant messaging and presence capabilities, and integration with hosted (Office 365) and on premises versions of the Lync server solution. The Lync app will be a free download from the Windows Phone Marketplace, according to Microsoft. (So it's not really part of Mango, per se.)

Office 365 integration. Mango will include deep integration with Office 365, which provides low-cost, hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync to individuals and customers of all sizes. This will include an Office 365 account type and Office 365 quick setup link in the Office hub.

Read more here from Paul Thurrots Paul Thurrot's blog

See in action more about the Windows Phone 7.5 aka “Mango” update in below video (video by winrumors);

Windows Azure 30-day Trial pass – Try it out folks Today (No Credit Card Required) !!!

2011-04-22T16:54:00.003-04:00

Microsoft is providing thru different channels a 30-day Trial pass for .NET folks to try out their Windows Azure (aka Microsoft Cloud Platform as a Service offering).
I thought of sharing one such pass found in one of the blog post thru this blog for others to try it out. Follow below steps to get one such Azure 30-day account, try to deploy a .NET app like ASP.NET/MVC web app or a WCF/Windows Workflow app in Azure and see how simple it is. You don't have to give your credit card details for creating a Azure account for you thru this approach.

Follow below simple steps to get your 30-day Trial pass;

Go to http://windowsazurepass.com/

Select the country and enter DPCE01 / MPR001 as the pass code

You'll get further details to create / login to your account from Microsoft

Get latest training Kit from here

Get support from Azure Team by contacting them thru below options

In case these 2 promo codes didn't work for you, you can contact Azure team by clicking the link ?Don't have a promo code?" in this page, login with a Live/Hotmail email id, and get your own code from Microsoft

In case you would like to go for a Full Azure account, not a Trial one, but use it for few months to try Azure features, you can go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure , register with a Credit Card, but, still it won't be charged until you exceed the limit. Use this option with caution, as it has lot of bells and whistles, I got billed by Microsoft once for around 50$ before I figure it out and cancelled it

Note: If you need assistance with your Windows Azure platform 30-day pass, please contact Microsoft; Chat Online Now* / Call @ 1-888-346-3129 / Email: Azure 30-day Trial Help

*online chat open between 07:00am – 3:00pm PST

A Web Application developed in ASP.NET/ASP.NET MVC/Silverlight app can be deployed in a Azure Web Role (it's nothing but, very similar to creating a Virtual Directory in IIS) and a WCF Web Service / Windows Workflow application can be deployed as a Worker Role (it's nothing but deploying a WCF/WF in a Windows Service).

Below are few scenarios you can try out;

1) A simple web app deployed in Azure as a Web Role. This way, you'll get a public URL like one I've provided below for my application. In this approach, you just deployed your Web App in Azure Web Role.

2) A WCF/WF app deployed in Azure as a Worker Role. In this scenario, you'll get a public URL, nothing but a Azure Service URL, you can consume in a Windows Form/WPF/Silverlight/Java/any other Application deployed anywhere in your Desktop or another Web Application developed in .NET/Java deployed anywhere else, consuming this Azure Service. In this approach, you just deployed your Service in Azure Worker Role.

3) A WCF/WF app deployed as an Azure Worker Role service, as mentioned in Scenario 2, and also develop another Web App, as mentioned in Scenario 1, deployed again Azure as a Web Role consuming your own Worker Role service. In this approach, you just deployed both your web app & service in Azure as a Web Role and a Worker Role.

4) The last scenario is just developing a Web App which consumes one/many Services already deployed in Azure as a Worker Role, nothing but a 3^rd party Service. This kind of services are nothing but called Azure Datamarket Apps (https://datamarket.azure.com/ ), which I've used in my below sample.

I've developed a tiny web application in ASP.NET and deployed using this Windows Azure 30-day trial pass in below location, as a prototype.

Simple Azure Web App URL: http://zillowazuredatamarket.cloudapp.net/

I've used Azure Datamarket Service called Zillow real-estate API, which does Mortgage calculation for US ZIP locations.

Note: Azure Datamarket is a Microsoft Cloud offering, a B2B App Market for their partners, Govt., anyone would like to share their data/API, again as a Cloud Middle tier, kind of ESB layer over cloud.

The Windows Azure platform 30-day pass includes the following resources :

Windows Azure

3 Small Compute Instances

3 GB of Storage

250,000 Storage Transactions

SQL Azure

Two 1 GB Web Edition Database

AppFabric

100,000 Access Control Transactions

2 Bus Service Connections

Data Transfers

3 GB In

3 GB Out

My first Windows Phone 7 application – “My NEWS” published in WP7 Marketplace

2011-03-15T01:13:00.004-04:00

“My NEWS” published in WP7 Marketplace

As part of my spare time over last few weekends, I was kind of trying to develop a Windows Phone 7 application in Silverlight for Mobile. It’s been published to Windows Phone Marketplace last week.

was kind of interested in developing some smartphone app in iPhone, so, I installed Apple Mac Leopard OS few months back, tried a simple app, but I didn’t released it to iOS marketplace, as there were lots of similar apps. Now, as Windows Phone 7 is very new, not many are out there, though every month 1000 app’s are getting published, aprox. 100 app’s per day, still it’s in initial stage, kind of crawling, compared to Android and iOS applications. So, I’ve developed in WP7 using Silverlight for mobile. One more reason is I’ve a solid background in Silverlight, as I’ve proposed and implemented large LOB applications for few of our clients.

This application is a Simple NEWS Application, developed with simple controls and the unique Panoramic controls (new to WP7) for rich feel/usability. I’ve used C# as the code, implemented MVVM pattern (sort of) for this. I also took help from my brother a lot, in creating the background images and loader image in the beginning and even few Silverlight screen designs. He’s a very good Web Designer/Developer, running a Web Design/Web Hosting/Domain Registration company in India called JiNiom and he’s few websites to promote them, viz.,http://NagariDomain.com (for .com/.net registration), http://NagariDomain.in (for Asia specific domains) and http://NagariDomain.us (for purchasing in USD).

Here is a link to the application in Bing Visual Search page - http://www.bing.com/browse?g=wp7&qpvt=Windows+Phone+7+Apps#toc=0&categories_rbid=9&r=81

Here is the link in Microsoft Zune (opens in Zune) -http://redirect.zune.net/External/LaunchZuneProtocol.aspx?pathuri=navigate%3FphoneAppID%3D6bc90b67-9840-e011-854c-00237de2db9e

This “My NEWS” application is a simple news reading application, to start with, it’s for non-geek users, who’re not that much aware of RSS/Atom stuff. Just hit different sources, and it’ll kind of aggregate the news from various sources in the background, consolidate and remove the duplicates, show the result as title of the news, links with brief info.

In case you’ve a Windows Phone 7 (my wife has one), you can try this app. It’s free (without Ads’). Please let me know your comments, my brother will be doing further improvements to this application going forward in managing this.

I’ll try write in a detailed post on how much easier it was to develop in Silverlight for mobile and WP7.

What Next: Planning to develop/guide my brother to develop a Windows Azure based WP7 application.

Disclaimer: As I’m an employee of Wipro, I’ve released this app as part of my brother’s company name, JiNiom, as he’s done lot of work including designing some screen in Silverlight. Also, another reason is I’m not sure whether I can personally publish app’s to Windows Marketplace, even though Microsoft itself is allowing / encouraging their employees and even they can sell the app’s and take profit out of it.

Public vs. Private Cloud – PaaS vs. SaaS

2011-02-28T21:27:00.001-05:00

I don't' think any 1 service (over internet) since the day internet was born runs without any downtime.

Even services run as a company by itself like twitter, facebook, go down, including google search. When we're going to have such a service, like good old mainframes running simple reservation systems tirelessly without going down (very often), enterprise will believe in PaaS. Till that time, you'll see private cloud.

Finance institutions are the one who are creating an impression among Non-Finance folks, the Cloud is not secure.

I strongly feel, Cloud + Private Data Centers are going to go hand in hand in long-term. Cloud is not going to replace any Enterprise Data Centers in next decade or two, but, it's going to augment and provide the scalability for the Enterprise.

Microsoft Azure is the One and Only True PaaS (i feel so) in the sense, it's the only one which provide Enterprise to host their Middle/UI Tier in Azure and with Azure Connect to have their DB in-house/in their own Data Centers, which can provide best of both Worlds (PaaS/Cloud + Private Data Centers).

Disclosure: I'm a .NET Architect, and not in any way associated / working with Microsoft. Above is my personal opinion based on my belief, knowledge on Cloud, .NET & Enterprise.

Next is Windows Cloud/Azure OS

2010-06-07T22:07:00.001-04:00

This post is wrt M$ revealing RemoteFX feature in Win 2008 Server R2 and Win 7 SP1, officially unveiled at Microsoft’s Tech-Ed conference in New Orleans today.

Oh, i was thinking few days back, what might be the Next Windows OS. It might be heading to this direction means, it'll be Windows Cloud/Azure OS.

Even Ray Oze told few day's back in All Thinks D, Chrome OS (cloud os) is in the right direction, forget Balmer didn't agreed. Ray is right, Balmer probably dont' want to share it now itself that they're planning for it as next ver.

Win 8 should be nothing but Windows Cloud from this news, with full support again for client/server app's developed in WPF but, running from Server, trying to again kill the Browser.

I feel M$ is right, what we're now trying in Browser is, trying to replicate all c/s app features thru Silverlight/Flash or may be HTML 5. So, what's the point of think web app.

May be in next 3-4 yrs, once everywhere net/bandwidth is in 100 MB speed, we dont' need browser based RIA app, we can run the whole Windows OS from Cloud, so, we can just subscribe for Windows Azure/Cloud OS and app's will install/run straight from M$ servers.

Ref:

James Gosling moved out of Oracle a.k.a. Oracle + Sun a.k.a. just Oracle, is this the End of Java …?

2010-04-11T12:59:00.003-04:00

Time to move on...
Friday April 9, 2010
Yes, indeed, the rumors are true: I resigned from Oracle a week ago (April 2nd). I apologize to everyone in St Petersburg who came to TechDays on Thursday expecting to hear from me. I really hated not being there. As to why I left, it's difficult to answer: Just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good. The hardest part is no longer being with all the great people I've had the privilege to work with over the years. I don't know what I'm going to do next, other than take some time off before I start job hunting.
This is the new home of my blog. It contains all of my old blog entries from Sun: Sun's blogging policy gave bloggers rights to their own works. The few more recent blog entries that I did at blogs.sun.com were written under somewhat more strict policies :-)

James Gosling

James, We salute you. I'm literally crying that what's going to be the next step for Java and millions of Devs's around the globe, in the current hands.

I'm from India and did got involved in Java applets, servlets, JSP (in alpha stages) around late 90's and moved to .NET during it's beta and still with M$ camp now, living breathing in WCF/WF/WPF/Silverlight et all. Being said that, I've spent numerous nights with friends learning Java, in small city in Southern part of India when no one knew what it is, when ASP was the behemoth.

I've been an inspirational figure in my small town in my college during my post grad to tell everyone that im doing my MCA proj in JSP/Java Applets. Due to my frustration with Sun not releasing / progressing / having too many people involved in each spec, getting the initiative thru JSP taglibs, Tomcat and then to JSF, and lack of IDE's at that time for Java, we small set of Devs moved to .NET and VS.NET.

Still, I remember the days we spent on Java, the new thing, read about you and few other ppl in Sun, making stories about the Java cup (I never knew which one is actual one) and how James and others in Sun initial days got the Coffe cup as the symbol for Java.... Oh,mm those are good old days. Still I follow Java developments, but, you know, when the news broke that ORCL took Sun, i thought oh man, the new things in .NET space may go to an end. As you know, if there's no competition what'll happen to WinMo/Palm. Who's going to drive the Tech 4GL space now....

I think some young grds in MIT, or even maybe in IIT India/China, may need to comeup with a New language / platform and give a paradigm shift to developer community.

I think, Change does have lots of meaning, as it changes whenever it happens.

Now, I believe 2012 had already begun, but, I still've hope like the few people might save the Dev community, like in that 2012 Noah's Ark, try to give birth to a New World.

We all Salute you, millions, No, Billions of Devs across the World.

HTC HD2 from T Mobile – Get Bing.com 35% Cashback

2010-03-25T23:57:00.001-04:00

Bing.com gives 35% bing cashback right now. I've ordered 1 thru the same. My friend got 30% cashback when 3GS was released, but it took 1 month to get the cashback.

Steps to get HTC HD2 with Bing.com 35% cashback:

1) Go to Bing.com
2) give "HTC HD2" and hit search
3) you'll get the 1st link in your search result as "HTC® HD2 From T-Mobile®·T-Mobile.com Bing cashback" - saying "Big Screen, Big Speed, Big Story. 35% Cashback from Bing. Free S&H"
4) Hit the link "Bing cashback", it'll redirect with a pop-up window saying 35% cashback
5) Give your email/live email id, type the image letter/number in the textbox, and hit the link "shop and get cashback"
6) You'll be redirected to T-Mobile .com website to HTC HD2 page
7) You'll see a Pink button in the right side top called "I want one"
8) Hit that Pink button called "I want one", it'll ask whether you're a T-Mobile customer with Yes/No button. Click "No" if you're New to TMobile
9) You'll see the page gets refreshed with HTC HD2 selected in your cart and it ask you to select a plan
10) You've 2 options -
       - Even More & Even More Plus plans
       - Even More is with Contract from TMo
       - Even More Plus is with out Contract from TMo
11) Select Even More Plus plan (as you need to go with a minimum plan for at least 1 month) to buy without contract also
12) I've selected 59$ plan, but it's not a contract, so you can cancel before they charge next month
13) Then proceed with checkout (if you want you can add few ascessories, but ive not ordered anything now)
14) Give all details, and check-out

BTW, if you use IE7/8, there seems some issue, it gives in the final page saying tmobile site is experiencing some issue. Im not sure about other versions of IE. So, after i tried 4-5 times, i did the whole process (from step 1) thru chrome browser and checked-out and got a confirmation mail to my gmail id just now.

Happy HD2, as WP7 will take another 6-8 months min, if it's not delayed more than than.

I'm upgrading from my iPhone 3G to HTC HD2, for the powerful beast. Below are my USPs to go with HD2 from iPhone 3G.

1) Flash Lite
2) External Memory Card
3) 5MP camera
4) I can do some app and try/release, as it supports .NET (iphone sdk is not avl in Win)
5) Big screen
6) Office support
7) I hope the last WinMo without stripped down OS

Happy buying HD2.

Tx & Regards
jinishans

Silverlight 3 – Conceptualize, Design, Develop a AdHoc Querying / Reporting Framework

2010-01-19T18:00:00.005-05:00

Here I’m going to write about how I conceptualized a AdHoc querying / reporting reusable Framework in Silverlight 3.

When our client came and requested they wanted to go for Business Objects / SQL Server Reporting Server kind of reporting server/tool last year in the mid of a big recession in Financial Sector and everyone wanted to reduce the cost of anything (including in our project), i was having doubt on what the end users of our project really want.

As I was with this project for almost 2yrs, and as it went to live just 6 months back when they requested this reporting feature, i told them, do we really need such a tool/server for this small application. Cos, i felt the maturity of the application is more important for going to such a product. Of-course you might think it makes sense, but, i felt, the application is not so mature to go for such a product.

I gave 4 options for reporting;

1) Silverlight based AdHoc querying/reporting tool

2) SQL Server / SSRS based reporting

3) Business Objects based AdHoc tool

Our users wanted below mentioned high-Fi features too;

Select the Table they wanted to Query
Query the Transactional/Historical tables on need basis
Drag & Drop the required columns
Have their own condition for required columns
See the result in a Nice gird
Re-arrange the columns, etc
Generate couple of simple graphs
Export the data in Excel, save the graphs as images for reporting purpose, etc.
Finally, a Nice looking UI for showing to their end clients that they use such a sophisticated tool for generating their reports

Due to above feature requirements and cost restrictions, they’ve decided to go with Silverlight.

Finally when I prepared the presentation, I gave a glimpse of what we’re planning in Silverlight.

Conceptualization

When I conceptualize to provide these features, i came up with below wire-frame ppt for my development team.

BTW, due to the last point in the above requirement, we’ve decided to use Telerik Silverlight tools.

To choose the Table, I thought we’ll use CoverFlow control.

Also, I convinced the users that selecting the Table and querying would be time consuming & daunting task for end-users. Instead it’ll be called Business Specific Pools (aka Views in our terms technically).

Now, the Whole AdHoc Query/Report Framework needs proper flow of controls to be placed to achieve all above features/requirements.

I thought of several other options and went with “Dockable Panel Control” called RadDocking in Telerik Silverlight. I’ve given below the wire-frame I created out of it for our AdHoc Fx.

Design

As we already use Silverlight 2, our team doesn’t have any issue in doing it in Silverlight 3. This is what we went with for different layers;

UI – Silverlight 3 + Telerik SL controls

Service – WCF

DB – LINQ (I’ll tell the reason behind this)

There’s nothing much to talk about UI/Service as this is easy to understand. But, with SL 2 in 2009 beginning we went with LINQ, but with SL 3.0, we thought we’ll go with Data Services. When we started investigating it, we came to know only with .NET 4.0 Data Services gets’ support for calling SPs directly, we’ve decided to go with again LINQ.

Developed AdHoc Fx

Once the team finally developed it, users very well received it and appreciated on the features we’ve provided and moreover the way it’s been implemented.

Conclusion

This blog is not just to tell whether what we can do with Silverlight/Telerik/.NET/C#. It’s all about how we should Conceptualize, Design & Develop a small piece of module when users come with such requirements, of-course with cost in tab.

It’s not about only Architect can do it, everyone who can visualize what client wants, can come up with such options.

Note: As a last note, I need to Thank my Development Team who implemented this in an excellent way, what I envisioned. Without their excellent contribution, it would not be an useful tool and got this much appreciation from users.

Windows Mobile (6.5 / WinMo 6.5) Marketplace Launched !

2009-10-06T00:58:00.001-04:00

Seems M$ Windows Mobile Marketplace has been launched partly, although not available fully.

I thought I’ll check in MSDN blogs, and got some links which led me to a nice Silverlight based Windows Mobile Marketplace site.

Also, in US, only 2 devices will be available with WinMo 6.5 loaded tomorrow morning.

Also, only the US site is in Silverlight with comparison, other country sites are just web-pages, not with Silverlight.

And about other M$ features comes with any WinMo 6.5 are here.

Here are few snapshots of them and I’ve created even my first Custom Theme and downloaded to my laptop, yes, it’s running Win 7. Atleast for this we should try WinMo 6.5.

My Phone is not yet up, but check back on 6th Oct 09;

Windows Live for Windows Mobile;

Active Sync;

Insider, to get more news about Windows Mobile apps, products, etc;

Few apps on Software & Services;

Netflix, Fusion (voicemail s/w), NewsBreak Lite, Facebook, Photo Contacts 4.0 (still this is not yet avl. in iPhone without jailbreaking), Viigo (socio utility), Kinoma (mobile media player), Windows Live for mobile, Bing for mobile, etc.

Also, like Zune HD, some crap games, so not worth to mention here.

Custom Theme creation screenshots;

Select your background, select the color scheme / choose your own color;

Downloading custom theme to my laptop;

It’s 1.79 MB, a CAB file, I can’t install as I dont’ have a WinMo 6.5 device yet. If someone can tell me how to install it in my iPhone 3G, that would be awesome.

BTW, you can send the custom theme to your mobile too.

i think pretty much most of the stuff are available, i couldn’t test rest except custom theme, cos, I don’t have a WinMo 6.5 yet. Planning to go for HTC Pure with AT&T. Let’s see tomorrow for more news.

Microsoft “Spark” programs – FREE for 3 yr’s

2009-09-28T17:19:00.001-04:00

Microsoft, at a time when the current economic climate is still tough, launches something called “Spark” programs, WebsiteSpark, BizSpark & DreamSpark. It’s all FREE for 3 yr’s.

Microsoft WebsiteSpark, for people who want to start a Software Service co. with less than 10 member (entrepreneurs/fresh grads’/IT pro’s/etc.) wanted to setup a firm with their friends/known people, will help support developers and companies by providing the business resources, training, and software necessary for companies to get started and grow successful businesses on the Microsoft Web Platform. More about WebsiteSpark from ScottGu is WebsiteSpark.

Microsoft BizSpark, if you want Software? Support? Visibility?, and your business is Developing Software, Privately held, Less than three years old and Making less than US $1M annually, then BizSpark is for you.

Microsoft DreamSpark, simply for Students. Register with your university/college email id and you’re in. You can download any latest s/w from Microsoft DreamSpark site, get Training, etc.

Also, you can get more info on these from Microsoft StartupZone too.

Nice right.

Is M$ & Zune HD going to replace the way we browse, watch YouTube, etc. etc. @ Home ?

2009-08-17T18:00:00.001-04:00

We all came to know today from NVIDIA’s announcement (though officially today, but we all knew it already) that Zune HD is powered with NVIDIA’s latest powerful Tegra processor from various sources. You can read more from the announcement NVIDIA Tegra Provides The Multimedia Muscle In Zune HD.

What came to my notice was the small catch of words at the last “always-on HD Internet”. I was not sure what is this, as sites like gizmodo.com, engadget.com didn’t mentioned about this when they talked about Zune HD. I though, let’s Bing it.

I got lot of details when I Binged about “always-on HD Internet”. Surprisingly I found the 1st link from the Bing’s decision search was another NVIDIA’s announcement MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 09—BARCELONA, SPAIN— FEBRUARY 16, 2009. Now, this announcement was about “NVIDIA Enables The World's First $99 HD Mobile Internet Device”. Ok, that’s fine. But, what’s that all about “always-on HD Internet”.

I just saw something mentioned as “Optimized hardware support for Web 2.0 applications for a true desktop-class internet experience”. Does this mean, we can Browse internet thru Zune HD, when it’s connected to our HDTV..? Can we browse YouTube video’s when Zune HD is connected to TV..? I think Zune HD doesn’t come with Bluetooth also, so we can’t even connect a Keyboard/mouse. But, is that an option ?

Does this make sense, to browse / watch you tube in our HDTV using Zune HD, directly, without those all high priced Widget HDTV’s yet tobe launched in US…?

Bing - It's working. M$ had made it

2009-06-01T11:31:00.000-04:00

I used to search everytime when i wanted to compare live search and google by searching the term "richmond", as live search gives some crap results earlier, google gives some relevant results wrt richmond city in virginia stage. Whenever M$ came out and told they improved live search, i do this, but retain google as my default search provider in IE.

Today, I searched richmond, it's really a surprise, i got relatively good results from Bing. Seems it's working. I went to IE Search providers and downloaded the plug-in and made it as my default search engine.

Nowadays, google also became as a URL / website search provider. No one remembers the site they wanted to go, just search in google, it tells you with options of related sites or exact site with URL.

But, Bing gives really nice way of categorization which google lacked for long time. I think Google taken it for granted that no one can replace them.

Let us see how best Bing performs in comming days.

Alchemy: Microsoft Silverlight in Embedded Platforms and it's really

2009-05-28T17:24:00.000-04:00

Alchemy is Microsoft's Silverlight in Embedded Platforms. As M$ had removed the constraint on Silverlight can run outside of IE, it's making its way to run in Embedded Platforms.

Silverlight might be, mostly in Zune HD, few pictures are here.

More reading on Alchemy is here.

Windows 7 Release candidate / RC download – 7100 build – available in torrent

2009-05-01T15:06:00.001-04:00

I was using Win 7 beta from day 1 it was released, upgraded from my vista sp2 beta, until my hp pavilion dv9500t due to some LCD issue.

When i got it back, hp restored my laptop to factory settings, i.e. Vista yesterday.

First thing i did was, as i know Win 7 RC is going tobe out by May 5th, i can’t wait, so searching for some torrent and found the below pointer.

Now, i’ve downloaded from the isohunt torrent url provided in the below article (url), verified it with the MD5 hash, it seems original Win 7 – 7100 build.

Downloaded this build, i.e. Windows 7 – RC 7100 ver and upgraded my Vista and writing this blog.

Yahooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. It’s really fast, atleast 20% when compared to Beta version of Win 7 which i was using for almost till last week, for the last few months.

Now, with RC 7100 build, i think Windows 7 RC is very much stable compared to beta version, i mean, there’s no sluggishness in any area, whether it’s shutdown (takes just 1-2min), reboot (again 1-2min), IE 8 (really fast than the one available for XP or Vista). Wowwwwwwwwwwwww. In just 1 day i tried most of the features. Its really fast, now i need to see how stable, fast it is down the line in next few months.

I faced quite a few issues with below s/w with Win 7 Beta version, now i need to see these are working fine in RC are not.

1) McAffe

2) WebRoot spyware

3) Railroad Tycoon 3

4) SimCity 4

5) Download daemon sometimes gave issues

BTW, all these above were already installed when i upgraded to Win 7 beta from my Vista Sp2 beta, but, now, i dont’ have anything in my notebook, other than default OS and few HP s/w, Nortorn (did not work in Win 7 it said). So, i’ll install all these in Win 7 RC 7100 ver and see.

Will post again on Win 7. Anyway, Win 7 is gone be a really nice OS. All the best MS.

BTW, this time they’ve given until June 1st, 2010 time to evaluate Win 7 7100 RC version. Again Yahoooooooooo.

http://windows7center.com/news/windows-7-rc-download-build-7100-x86-and-x64-leaked/

One more thing i noticed was in Win 7 Beta it was showing my laptop Rating as 2.2, now, im not sure, it’s changed to 3.9. HP only changed my LCD, so, that should not impact this rating. Anyway, 2.2 was totally wrong as my Vista was showing as 4.9, now, i feel, 3.9 is OK, since Win 7 requirements might’ve changed and this laptop is now 18months old, so, 3.9 is fine compared to 2.2 which can’t be. But, it was Win 7 beta, so, i didnt’ paid much interest on M$ rating of 2.2. Now, in RC 7100, 3.9 might be OK in my opinion.

“Anyway, who cares what’s the Rating / min requirements are if the OS is really fast.”, like in iPhone 3G, no one cares whats’ the hardware spec are, as the hardware is able to work without any sluggishness for basic operations. Ofcourse it starts hanging nowadays once we’ve more than 50+ applications on it. This above 1 line statement is a User Statement on, which M$ need to pay more attention in Win Mobile 6.5 also.

Let’s not go off-topic to this post.

Let me experience for some more days and see how Win 7 RC performs. I hope it’ll keep its promises.

Windows 7 beta download update

2009-01-09T18:03:00.000-05:00

See the below blog to get an update on when Windows 7 Beta (public beta) will be agailable - http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/MainFeed.aspx

Windows 7 Beta available now URL - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx

2009-01-09T13:52:00.000-05:00

As we all knew that Windows 7 Beta / public Beta is going to be available for public download 9th Jan 2009, afternoon. It’ll be available only for 2.5 mi users.

But, it’s already available. Yes, the URL is available, which I found out by going thru the HTML of the Windows 7 website. It’s there in the menu, but, it’s not visible right now (now time is 1.33am EST). I tried the URL, but it goes somewhere else to technet. I think they validate the time and if it’s not reached, it’s redirecting to technet. Or it might be available for download in technet itself on 9th afternoon.

URL: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx

Code having Windows 7 Beta url: Right Click in the homepage and click “View Source” or click “V”, you’ll get a html file opened in a notepad (guys like me knew it). You can find the below code.

1:  <li>   
2:   <a href="/windows/windows-7/beta-videos.aspx"    
3:   onclick="javascript:omniModTracking(this,'SubNav','',   
4:   '/windows/windows-7/beta-videos.aspx',1,                 
           'Videos','');">   
5:      Videos   
6:   </a>   
7:   </li>   
8:  <li class="lastItem">   
9:   <a href="/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx"   
10:   onclick="javascript:omniModTracking(this,'SubNav','',  
11:   '/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx',1,                 
              'Download the Windows 7 Beta','');">  
12:      Download the Windows 7 Beta  
13:   </a>  
14:  </li>

So, we need to look at the top of this Windows 7 public Beta. So, the homepage would look like below.

It’s not going to the download site now. I too selfish, though i’ll download and post it. But, it doesn’t work anyway. Whoever see this blog and download it before i wake up tomorrow morning, need to share it for me :) Good night….! Windows 7 Dreams….

Reply to : “Reasons to skip Microsoft’s Windows 7 Beta download, posted by Sam Diaz @ 11:08 am @ blogs.zdnet.com” by a hardcode MS guy

2009-01-08T15:28:00.001-05:00

This is a Reply to: Reasons to skip Microsoft’s Windows 7 Beta download

· I know it seems silly to ask but… is there a specific time on Jan. 9? Here in Silicon Valley, our clocks will be among the last in the world to reach the midnight hour.

Reply for Q1) Dude, Your Question is right, but, it shows that you’re desperate to be one of those 2.5 million allowed public user. You know how many downloaded in torrent sites the pre-betas..? It’s more than 65,000 for more than few weeks/months.

· Windows 7 Beta will expire on Aug. 1, 2009. Huh? Expire? So everything just resorts back to the older crappy version of Windows?

Reply for Q2) What else you want from a Beta version. Hope this’s not the 1^st time you’ve heard the word “Beta” in your life time…? Any Beta will expire. Aug. 1^st is too much. Its 7 months for evaluating an OS beta s/w.

· Be prepared to lose data.

Reply for Q3) For mentioning all these info itself, you guys make such a noise. If they/bloggers don’t mention like this, you’ll come and sue them for losing your data for evaluating a Beta s/w.

· Then there’s the No. 2 item on Ed Bott’s “Five things Steve Ballmer won’t tell you about Windows 7” blog entry: Good luck finding drivers for all your old XP-only hardware.

Reply for Q4) XP came almost 8 yrs back. Definitely you may need luck to find a driver for your 1 decade old OS. This is the simple reason, Mac sell OS X in their hardware. Common dear, give me a break.

· Finally, even if you love Windows 7 and are willing to let it expire in August because the buzz is that it will be available again by the holiday season - think again.

Reply for Q5) Not available again, the release version of Windows 7 itself will be available by that time.

If you had a chance, go and see how Apple’s getting blamed for their iPhone Updates. After each Update, an existing feature of iPhone is being screwed up. So, better SOS. Instead of blogging about Windows 7, try to blog about the buggy iPhone Patches.

iPhone 3g BLANK Picture problem resolution – After updating with Apple’s iPhone 2.2 update

2008-12-20T10:27:00.001-05:00

Hi All

I got a problem with my camera. It just take pictures, but it’s all blank / white in my iPhone 3g after i update it with 2.2 update. I’ve jailbreak it with 2.2 also, nothing works. Video does not have any issue. I tried above option, but, it didn't worked for me.

I found below URL; http://modmyi.com/forums/ziphone/32461-problems-iphone-camera.html

Bottomline, you need to execute below command in SSH command prompt.

It's basically DCIM needs -R permission ( i think read, im not a unix guy, im a .net guy).

I followed the below url, since 1st time im doing ssh. I used putty, but, since i dont have much knowledge of unix commands, i used WinSCH as mentioned in the below URL;

Step 1: Go to URL - http://sleepers.net/blank/install-and-use-ssh/

Step 2: Download and follow this section "On Windows (using WinSCP)" for just login only, not the whole section. Once you login, come to "Step 3" below. Before you click "Login" in WinSCP, see the Note below, which might be useful.

Note: Before you click login, makesure you click Advanced settings and select "Windows Explorer style" property instead of Novel style.

Step 3: Now, once you're in you'll be in the below node "/private/var/root/Media"

Step 4: Go to "/ <root>" folder and now navigate to the below folder "/var/mobile/Media"

Step 5: Now, in WinSCP, select the folder "Media"

Step 6: Now, in WinSCP, at the Top, you can see a BLACK icon called "HOM" (there will be only 1 black icon). Just click that

Step 7: It opens up a Terminal Window

Step 8: In the "Enter Command" give below command;

chown -R mobile DCIM

Step 9: Now, click the button "Execute"

Step 10: If the Terminal window shows as below, then you're all set.

/var/mobile/Media$ chown -R mobile DCIM

Take a picture, you'll be able to see it, and no BLANK picture problem. It's resolved.

Step 11: If it throws an error saying "no folder DCIM exist, it means, you've not selected the right folder. Basically you should be 1 folder up of DCIM folder.

Tx & Regards
jinishans

Windows 7 announced....! Windows 7 is now with Touch Gestures. So, why don't we call it as Windows Touch....?

2008-10-28T16:19:00.001-04:00

The much awaited Microsoft Windows 7 has been announced today in PDC 2008. This release is called M3 pre release to beta 1, might be available to few for MSDN subscribers ONLY, I believe. A public beta 1 would be available around Dec. 2008 / beginning of 2009. A detailed review of Windows 7 from PDC 2008 is Windows 7 M3 - PDC 2008 bit review.

More importantly, Windows 7 comes with Multi Touch Gestures. I feel, it can be called as Windows Touch 7.

Silverlight 2 Toolkit Nov 2008 overview released in codeplex...!

2008-10-28T14:46:00.001-04:00

Today, the much awaited Silverlight 2 developers, called Silverlight Toolkit has been released in codeplex.

Components in the Preview Quality Band
- AutoCompleteBox
- NumericUpDown
- Viewbox
- Expander
- ImplicitStyleManager
- Charting

Components in the Stable Quality Band
- TreeView
- DockPanel
- WrapPanel
- Label
- HeaderedContentControl
- HeaderedItemsControl

And, there are few Themes comes with this toolkit. You can have a look at them Silverlight Toolkit Themes.

Quality Bands - Silverlight Toolkit would be following the below quality bands for the releases.

Quality Bands

Experimental
Experimental components are intended for evaluation purposes. The main goal of these components is to provide an opportunity for feedback during the earliest stages of development. This feedback will help decide the future of these components. Development of an experimental component may end at any point so it may not be included in future releases.

Preview
Preview components are intended to meet most basic usage scenarios. While in the Preview Quality Band, , these components may have a moderate number of breaking API or behavior changes in response to customer feedback and as we learn more about how they will be used. Customers are likely to encounter bugs and functionality issues for non-mainline scenarios. Preview is similar to "Alpha" quality in many traditional projects.

Stable
Stable components are suitable for the vast majority of usage scenarios and will have incorporated most major design and functionality feedback. They are designed to address over 90% of customer scenarios and will continue evolving via limited bug fixes and fit-and-finish work. Stable is similar to "Beta" in other projects. Stable components will have a very small number of breaking API or behavior changes when feedback demands it.

Mature
Mature components are ready for full release, meeting the highest levels of quality and stability. Future releases of mature components will maintain a high quality bar with no breaking changes except when such changes are necessary to make them more secure or guarantee future compatibility. Customers should be confident using mature components, knowing that when they upgrade from one version of the Silverlight Toolkit to a newer version it will be a quick and easy process. Due to the heavy focus on backward compatibility between versions, the bar for fixing bugs found in mature components is also considerably higher than any other Quality Band.

JiniShans

.NET 4.0 & Visual Studio 2010 pre-release CTP available for Download in M$ Connect.

2008-10-28T13:44:00.001-04:00

M$ just announced the release of .NET Framework 4.0 and it's VS version Visual Studio 2010 in M$ Connect site. It can be downloaded from Visual Studio 2010 pre-release CTP download.

Windows Azure, .NET Services - M$ entering into a big bet.......?

2008-10-28T00:39:00.001-04:00

Today, Oct 27th, @ Professional Dev. Conference aka PDC 2008, M$ announced the CTP (Community Technology Preview) of Microsoft's next generation Windows platform for M$ community. It's called "Windows Azure". Along with this, M$ also introduced something called .NET Services.

You can register in Connect for trying out with these M$ new Services offering. But, remember, you can install Windows Azure SDK only in Windows Vista (with SP1) / Windows Server 2008. Oops....! To use M$ Services, you need latest OS only.

What M$ is trying to do with this. Trying out Services and what the Industry & Dev are betting on it.

I remember, during .COM bubble, Intel was having a division called Intel Internet Services (or something of that sort), which tried to have Data Centers to host other's web-sites. But, during .com bubble burst, the division got closed by Intel, if I remember correctly. Today', it's M$ trying to do the same for Software, but, not just web-sites. My friend told me, even Amazon tried the same some time back.

Google, Apple are also trying the same thing for Mobile platform, if you think of it in a high level. They too provide SDK's and a place to host them, for users to use it in their Mobile Devices. M$ is trying it with .NET. It's up to the Industry & M$ community how well it'll be taken seriously.

Fine, let's see What's Windows Azure Services and .NET Services.

Azure is a M$ managed services platform with dedicated Data Centers across US and in few more places (coming up soon). For what...?

To host your .NET Services applications. What's .NET Services application....?

It's nothing but, .NET applications developed using .NET Services SDK (might be similar to .NET SDK only), most probably utilizing few .NET Services (more services coming soon) over Internet, and deployed in Windows Azure platform (in M$ data center). Oops..!

Today I tried to register for these and M$ had put a restriction that it can't be done during PDC is happening. Ok fine. But, I got the invitation code (Yahooooo....!) and I registered now with Windows Azure. I'll be anyway trying it out. But, what I was wondering, when I tried to download the SDK/site, few times I was diverted to a M$ search page, sometimes error, sometimes page-can't be displayed message. If for registering the site itself is having this much issue / M$ is not able to handle the load, how come the Azure services / .NET Services are going to be reliable / available....?

Only time would tell.

I'm expecting tomorrow's announcement on Windows 7, .NET Framework 4.0, Dublin, etc. Let's see whether that would be at-least fruitful.

JiniShans

Architect,

Wipro LTD @ NYC

.NET Framework 4.0 & Dublin CTP in PDC 2008 !

2008-10-23T17:34:00.001-04:00

M$ is going to release the CTP (community technology preview) of .NET Framework 4.0 & Dublin in PDC 2008, starting on coming Monday, Oct 27.

M$ announcement on Dublin & .NET 4.0 is .NET 4.0 & Dublin announcement, and features coming up in Dublin can be downloaded Overview of .NET 4.0 & Dublin.

When you see the features in Dublin are much similar to BizTalk. So, when I tried to find out what's the difference between Dublin & BizTak, I found a blog post from Charles Young. It's a wonderful post and we may need such difference from M$ as a statement to tell client what's the difference between Dublin & BizTalk. You can read more about the difference What's the difference between Dublin & BizTalk.

JiniShans

Silverlight 2 RTM (Release) version released !!!

2008-10-14T11:30:00.001-04:00

Hi All

M$ has just released the release version a.k.a. RTM version of Silverlight 2 today, which was in beta 2 for few months, and within 3 weeks' time of releasing RC0 for Developers.

It can be downloaded from Silverlight 2 website.
Microsoft Press release on the same is Silverlight 2 release press release.
Scott Gu blog post is also Scott Go post on Silverlight 2 release.
Download and get started on Silverlight 2 from Getting Started on Silverlight 2.
One of the nice Silverlight 2 controls from a 3rd party vendor telerik RadControls for Silverlight 2 is telerik RadControls for Silverlight 2.

Now, it's going to be an interesting battle between Adobe Vs. Microsoft Vs. JavaFx (due tobe released in 2009). But, right now, the RIA battle would be between M$ vs. Adobe. I'm a .NET guy, but, still i was in Java in my initial day's for quite some time.

I knew Flex from the beginning stage when it was introduced by Macromedia. MXML is the tag based language similar to HTML, but XAML in SL 2 is a lighter version of WPF one.

As we all knew, WPF itself is a ground up development by M$ with DirectX 10 (.NET ver of DirectX) released with Windows Vista. So, i dont' think no one would compare XAML with MXML. But, still, feature wise, SL 2 Vs. Flex is going to give Enterprise Architects, CEO's, RIA decision makers a tough time to decide. Since every Enterprise would have .NET / Java team internally/thru their partner vendors. But, no one would be having Adobe / Flex team within their Enterprise.

BTW, i've seen some recent blog comment by a RIA advocate saying, getting Flex resource is becoming tough, tough Flex is nice. Even we're also experiencing the same as a Vendor for few of the Flex projects.

My gut feel is, slowly, M$ would replace ASP.NET with SL 2 in the Enterprise with every .NET projects by the mid / end of 2009. Since Java guys knew JavaFX is on the way, they're reluctant in learning/doing Flex based UI. This would continue till JavaFX is released. I've a strong feel that JavaFX would comeout by the end of 2009 only, knowing Sun's no-commitment strategy on Java. So, by the time Flex and SL 2 making inroads in Enterprise, almost all .NET projects would start using SL 2 and JavaFX in no time will become the de-facto RIA for J2EE based projects. Ultimately, Flex would end-up in competing with Java world, but, not with .NET world. I see a % of market-share as below by end of 2009;

Silverlight 2 - 40% in RIA market, but, with 50% in .NET rest with ASP.NET

Flex - 30% in RIA market

JavaFX - 10-20% in RIA market

Other RIA frameworks' - Rest of the 10-20%.

It's almost 2 yrs back I took a session on WPF/E (WPF everywhere - code name of Silverlight 2) in Chennai Tidel park for Chennai .NET User Group (CNUG). M$ kept it's promise by releasing an Silverlight 2 Ecplise plug-in for Java community. More info is Silverlight 2 Eclipse plug-in for Java.

Tx & Regards

Sankar Balu

Architect

Wipro LTD @ Bank of New York Mellon,

New York

Spore..!

2008-10-05T01:24:00.001-04:00

I played Spore today (after long time i played a game) since i moved to NY. It's really nice. Need to play more.