tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79210622012-05-22T09:25:09.746-05:00My thoughts on .NET...and life...Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-62992757541060678812012-05-06T08:58:00.004-05:002012-05-22T09:24:46.305-05:002012-05-22T09:24:46.305-05:00

My most downloaded app, Alphabets4Kids, gets a new face lift.  Its been one year since I started with Alphabets4kids, but it has remained the most downloaded app till now. The users have been asking for pictures and sound to be added. Due my busy schedule and work on my other apps, I did not find time to get those features in place. That's not an excuse, I know. But now, I have: 1.

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-67341586771162162362012-04-29T19:16:00.002-05:002012-05-22T09:25:09.753-05:002012-05-22T09:25:09.753-05:00

My 10th Windows Phone app is out in marketplace. PATHWAY. Whenever I go to New York, I get this adrenaline pump! Yes, I love to stand amidst all those chaos in Times Square - and feel that energy. You will never get that anywhere else - only in NY.  I always liked taking PATH, from and to New York, from New Jersey. When I was pondering over ideas for my 10th app, PATH was the first in my

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-41059509823834085072012-04-26T06:53:00.001-05:002012-04-26T06:56:46.319-05:002012-04-26T06:56:46.319-05:00

I thought I would tweet about it But ney, I would just jot down here so that I could come back later and see. And may be it would be here for others also. I get these bit.ly urls from tweets and in other sites. But I am not able to access those sites from work. There could be many others having this problem. I discovered this site http://knowurl.com/ which would convert the bit.ly url back to

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-34745514386716256352012-04-12T13:39:00.001-05:002012-04-13T12:42:35.729-05:002012-04-13T12:42:35.729-05:00

No, I haven't found one! Not yet. :) I get lot of posts on my Facebook, which I do not like, or which I do not agree with. If they would have said (said, as in spoken) those posts directly to me, then I would have argued with them. Yesterday I got this post ( I am not mentioning the post for anonymity sake) which I almost tempted to comment on it. Rather I was  searching for a dislike button.

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-40069637340594006542012-04-02T06:27:00.002-05:002012-05-22T09:24:28.582-05:002012-05-22T09:24:28.582-05:00

The topic should have been: HowManyThings - What really excited me? It's always fun to challenge yourselves in anything you do. That keeps you on your toes. I always challenge myself  by promising myself to use certain tools and features which I have never ever used. That makes the ride more interesting. For HowManyThings (it is relatively a smaller app), I used the following: SQL CE (I

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0Mechanicsburg, PA, USA40.2142565 -77.008587640.1900055 -77.0480696 40.2385075 -76.96910559999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-52057329464736118532012-04-01T15:06:00.002-05:002012-04-02T06:29:22.746-05:002012-04-02T06:29:22.746-05:00

It's spring time, and its time for some cleaning. Eliminating unwanted items in your house and organising things that you would want and use often. Have you ever wondered how many stuff is lying in (and around) your house? Well, yes, including those christmas lights! You might have started it, and pretty much meticulously. But when it comes to account for, you might realize that you couldn't

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-20322023086248927432012-03-30T12:29:00.001-05:002012-04-02T06:29:34.822-05:002012-04-02T06:29:34.822-05:00

I got a chance to visit Microsoft's office in Chevy Chase. MD, to attend the 2nd Windows 8 Developer Camp (in the country). And what a day it was.  I started around 6:20 AM from my house in Mechanicsburg PA, planning to reach well before 8:30 AM, so that I could get a chance to meet the presenters in person. And also to network with other geeks. But the traffic at 270 S did hit me hard and I

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-71744656452326427242012-03-23T07:25:00.002-05:002012-04-02T06:29:45.833-05:002012-04-02T06:29:45.833-05:00

One of the finest controls in the Silverlight toolkit for Windows Phone 7, is the ListPicker control. But I had to struggle with it for a while. It was mainly because I didn't understand it quite well. Below you would find the 2 scenarios where I had to stumble: 1. SelectedItem should be set to a valid item. That was the error I was getting no matter what I did to pacify the control. I googled

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-89136355439776809472012-03-13T08:51:00.002-05:002012-04-02T06:29:56.055-05:002012-04-02T06:29:56.055-05:00

I am a big proponent of using Source Control in our daily development. In my day job, we use Subversion. I had used TFS2010 earlier. It was the best source control/ALM software I had ever used. I should admit shamelessly that I don't have any source control for my Windows Phone development. You would think I am being modest. And some of you might ask why would I yearn for a source control when I

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-39955169317910760532012-03-08T22:14:00.000-05:002012-03-08T22:15:28.204-05:002012-03-08T22:15:28.204-05:00

Just after my encounter with ApplicationBar Icons and RelayCommands, I faced another issue with two-way binding of a textbox. I had 3 textboxes in the page and 2 of them where binding properly. One of them was misbehaving. It was not misspelt (I checked that many times - I even rewrote the property and the binding element.) for sure. What could that be? After hours of head-scratching, I ventured

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-81969528413608937402012-03-08T17:26:00.000-05:002012-03-08T17:30:40.703-05:002012-03-08T17:30:40.703-05:00

On pondering over MVVMLight for a while, I decided to take it on for my new Windows Phone 7. It was very informative watching and reading Laurent Bugnion and Jesse Liberty's blogs and  videos. The one that helped me get started was The Full Stack series from Jesse, John Galoway and John Papa. Just search for "The Full Stack" in the Channel 9 web site. I created an data entry screen, and a Save

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0Mechanicsburg, PA, USA40.2142565 -77.008587640.1900055 -77.0480696 40.2385075 -76.96910559999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-73834217201551989122012-02-10T09:11:00.001-05:002012-04-02T06:30:09.446-05:002012-04-02T06:30:09.446-05:00

Needless to say, I am a Windows Phone 7 Fan!  What more could I shout loud to say that than show you the live feel of Windows Phone on my blog post! :)

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-59103228859919375012012-02-10T08:41:00.001-05:002012-02-10T08:43:06.289-05:002012-02-10T08:43:06.289-05:00

Yesterday I had this popup on my new Nokia Lumia 800 for a phone update. I connected it my laptop and up came the Zune. I went through the wizard for the update, and but lo, the update failed. The error conveyed that the failure was due to a problem with BITS. For the newbies, BITS stands for Background Intelligent Transfer Service. This is the piece of service which

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-60244694069494663142012-01-05T12:12:00.003-05:002012-01-05T12:13:15.721-05:002012-01-05T12:13:15.721-05:00

Do you want to know more about SQL Server 2012? Come in and enjoy an evening with Kevin Goff, who would go over the features and capabilities of SQL Server 2012. When: January 17th, Tuesday 2012. 5:30 to 7:30 PM. Where: Computer Aid Inc office, Harrisburg PA. Details at http://www.central-penn.net.

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-28136809959515066762011-11-09T08:49:00.003-05:002011-11-15T08:35:13.740-05:002011-11-15T08:35:13.740-05:00

John Baird is coming back to our .net user group, with a presentation of the new  Windows Phone Mango features. Not to be missed. Details at http://www.central-penn.net. UPDATE THIS MEETING HAS BEEN CANCELLED. A deer hit John's car and the car is badly damaged. John is fine. We will try to get him in January 2012.

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-7915099240363168312011-07-28T09:23:00.006-05:002011-07-28T14:09:58.150-05:002011-07-28T14:09:58.150-05:00

Disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with washing or repairing cars.   Well, I have been pondering over Managers and Management for long - as long as I can remember. Every software developer does, in my opinion.  I treat myself as a Manager's developer (akin to Director's actor :)). Having said that, I have flourished under stupid managers too (you have to believe me :)). Developers who

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-10150773361083497792011-07-28T08:25:00.000-05:002011-07-28T08:25:12.305-05:002011-07-28T08:25:12.305-05:00

Stephen Walther explains about creating a WCF service in Windows Azure - a step-by-step guide. Have a look at it here. You will enjoy, for sure. I did.

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-40875227980205500522011-06-16T08:59:00.001-05:002011-06-16T09:00:31.235-05:002011-06-16T09:00:31.235-05:00

As of today, I have 3 WP7 apps in the marketplace. And 3 are coming... I have been developing the apps using Silverlight only, and keeping my fingers away from XNA. I haven't had much time pondering on XNA, so I have been procrastinating on it. Next Tuesday, 21st that is, Chris Gomez is coming to Harrisburg PA, for presenting a session on XNA for WP7, for our user group. He has promised me to

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-9990952340255271192011-05-03T17:43:00.002-05:002011-07-28T09:56:33.991-05:002011-07-28T09:56:33.991-05:00

I have already dived into the ocean of Windows Phone 7 development. Not alone, but with one of my friends Rajeev Venkitaraman. He is also a .NET enthusiast and technologist. We already developed two apps, for kids, Shapes4Kids and Alphabets4Kids. To track our progress, and also to share our experiences, we have created a blog - http://hubapps.blogspot.com/. Please visit this site and plant your

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-75032128485141211792011-03-21T14:32:00.004-05:002011-04-01T06:59:15.793-05:002011-04-01T06:59:15.793-05:00

I haven't been blogging much lately... just posting activity updates of our .NET User Group. What I have been upto?  I have been: Learning Silverlight I have made several attempts to learn SL in the past, but for some obvious and not-so obvious reasons, I had to drop it. The obvious reason was for the fact that SL was not "enterprise" ready. But this time, I have had it all sorted out. With the

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-12299598746647183772011-02-18T09:04:00.002-05:002011-02-23T09:16:22.647-05:002011-02-23T09:16:22.647-05:00

It was an amazing evening this tuesday. John started of with this statement: Silverlight (and WPF for that matter) makes easy things harder and hard things easier. It couldn't have been explained better.

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-16781779466466407332011-01-10T13:20:00.007-05:002011-02-09T13:35:01.970-05:002011-02-09T13:35:01.970-05:00

.NET developers are very much excited with the release of Windows Phone 7. The users like it's interface as much as they hate (that's a strong word, I know. Read it as "dislike") the 6.x version. John Baird is coming to Harrisburg (once again), for his much awaited presentation on Windows Phone 7 development. I have known John for quite a long time. I have attended his presentations in

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-37747186396284379502010-09-23T18:17:00.001-05:002010-09-24T06:38:32.824-05:002010-09-24T06:38:32.824-05:00

I have been playing with ListView and DataPager a lot lately. One reason is I have read a quite lot on these controls and thought very high of it. The combination gives us a light weight data control with Pagination facility. What more can you ask for, right? To a vanilla page (with no gimmicks), these controls behave very nice. But once, you start your circus, they don't bend. The magic of

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-36672039628375039842010-09-22T05:41:00.000-05:002010-09-22T05:41:45.368-05:002010-09-22T05:41:45.368-05:00

This year, our user group had very few topics for novices. The only ones we had were run by our President, Judy Calla. I would be presenting a beginner's session on WCF on November 16th - yes, that Whys and the Whats. And of course, the Hows! :) If you are from Harrisburg or would be visiting during the month, come on in and join for a fun filled 2 hours of WCF.

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7921062.post-19347449204542862442010-09-22T05:35:00.005-05:002010-09-24T07:47:33.734-05:002010-09-24T07:47:33.734-05:00

I should thank all the speakers who participated in our code camp and made it a successful one. The participants (attendees) had a full day of technical infotainment and had absolutely enjoyed. Raffle books at the code camp Code Camp 2010 has become another golden feather on our user group's hat. Many kudos go to the organisers who made it possible and Judy Calla, our President, who lead us

Rajeev Nairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13718789002304140927noreply@blogger.com0