few more cents

WTF, google screwed big time.

Recently I had a chance to complete a Silverlight survey from Microsoft. Got an Amazon gift voucher. Tried to buy some electronic stuff, but none are shipped to India. So I thought of buying Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. As it is banned in India, the only way is to smuggle it after buying it from some country where it is available or download a pdf. Though I have a pdf, it’s always been my wish to add it to my library. Common sense says that Amazon won’t ship it to a country where it’s banned. Still, I gave it a go. To my surprise, they shipped it. The label on the carton does not say it contains a banned book, invoice inside says, though. This is how I bought a banned book, legally!

Microsoft Innovation Days

This blog is a quick run through on Microsoft Innovation Days. I am limiting this blog to a few words on each session. As this was a fully packed hectic event, each session can consume an article by themselves. If you are looking for rhetoric on the event you should be looking somewhere else.

The event started with a keynote.

First session was about Microsoft’s bet on cloud. Azure, Mesh, new live services & much more. The presenter Pandurang Nayak, Technology Evangelist for Microsoft implemented a “Hello World” Azure application with VS 2008. Demoed many applications built on cloud computing.

This was followed by a note from Siddarth Kapoor, Developer Marketing Manager. This session was concentrated mainly on Microsoft’s offerings for developer community. He showcased the fully revamped msdn site & bdotnet.in a site for/by .net buffs in Bangalore.

Next session was all about RIA. Praveen Srivatsa, Regional Director, presented it. The main focus was on jQuery & Microsoft’s support for jQuery. I won a T-shirt here for giving the most compelling definition of RIA. He created a “Hello World” app with asp.net MVC web application template which uses jQuery extensively.

This was followed by a session on Optimizing Queries in MS SQL by Vinod Kumar. I paid less attention here as I don’t use MS SQL. But, the drive away points were not to use joins, negative statements unless there is no alternative. He showcased query analysis with Execution Plan.

This was followed by ***** buffet.

Later was the session on IE8, SL2 & Windows 7. IE8 is in beta, has rough edges need to be smoothened, it was evident by its unwillingness to cooperate with the presenter. Again Pandurang was presenting this session. He created a “Hello World” WebSlice. Web Slice is something similar to RSS, using which one can subscribe to a certain section in a web page. He demoed some accelerators built for IE8. Accelerators are tiny plugins increasing the usability of a web page. IE8 follows strict XHTML 1.0 & CSS2.1. Websites break if they don’t conform to this standard. However, there is compatibility mode which can be activated programmatically if the site is not IE8 complaint, & the site starts to render in pre IE8 engines. There were not many SL2 developers in the crowd. This made the presenter to skim through his presentation. However he showcased SL2 toolkit & created a “Hello World” chart. The answer was “Wait, be patient” for the query on print support for Silverlight. Windows 7 was demoed. Major changes are less footprint & less resource hungry. I won a Formal Shirt here was answering what “Aero Shake” stands for & officially got disqualified for winning more goodies further.

Next session was on Partnering with Microsoft. The presenter Girish explained the benefits of Microsoft Innovate On & Bizspark Program. If you are a company working on Microsoft Technology & you are less than 3years old & your annual revenue is less than 1 million USD, you get all the future releases of Microsoft softwares with 25 licenses for a nominal fee of just 100 USD.

The last session was on developers’ toolkit for .net application by Bijoy Singhal. He explained things on fuslogvw, perfmon, sos.dll, ngen etc.. Later the session was concluded by thanking the participants.

Its really fun & educative to be part of an event like this. The organiser expressed his doubts to whether to continue conducting events like this. Mr.Organiser don’t think twice, keep up the good work. There is no better way to reach the likeminded crowd. Forget not to invite me in your future events.

Cheers,

Chirag

I have been waiting to write that cool first blog, like a virgin saving his chastity as a special gift to his life partner. I found this great video from Jason Fried of 37Singnals, cannot wait to share with you guys. Anyone starting their software firm, gotta watch this deligently.

Kudos Jason

Oooooo hoooo… Santa Maria…. can’t wait to write.

Donno how to start, albeit myriad musings to share.

Did I hear: there are plethora of blogs, why did you start one, Damnit!!

Oh man, finding it tough to answer precisely, lemme visit this query after couple of posts.