NEO Binaries: The definitive guide to newest and the most popular web2.0 applications. Listings, reviews, news, articles and web2.0 community

[Surfing online noticed this new site which reviews web applications, basically a CNET of web applications. Very cool stuff]

Read more at www.neobinaries.com/

Nokia... 6630

After years I've picked up a Nokia phone. I bought the new Nokia 6630 an exteremely power packed phone + 1.3 Mega Pixel camera + UMTS support all in one neat bundle.

Would be posting more about this new baby soon :-)

Securing your MSN Messages Simp Lite

Guruji, recommended a cool new tool called Simp Lite to secure your MSN Converstations. The tool is free for personal use.

It's amazingly easy to setup and use and provides decent encryption.

It also shows up as a Red MSN icon and has options to reveal to you which conversations are encrypted or not. It's pretty flexible in how it indicates encrypted conversations etc.

 

Welcome to the Sandbox

I bumped into this site searching for the new MSN Desktop search beta. It's the place to keep track of all the new MSN Technologies.

Some very interesting stuff like the the new Toolbar and desktop search and other prototypes etc. like 3 degrees, Newsbot etc.

Interesting site I must say and interesting collection of tools.

Mobile Controls Device Update

Often I get mails from people saying that the Mobile Internet Toolkit from Microsoft which they are using to build mobile web applications is not targetting a specific phone. My first piece of advice is to get the latest ASP.Net Mobile Controls Device Updates. This is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/mobility/othertech/asp.netmc/mobileweb/aspmobiledrivers/default.aspx

Microsoft constantly updates the list of mobile device information in these updates. The  Tested Devices page lists the various devices which one can target with the ASP.Net Mobile controls. Besides this if one wants to target a specifc device one needs to look at the Extensibility Developer's Guide.

Device updates extend Web applications to work with additional devices and browsers. When you install a device update, the <browserCaps> section of the Machine.config file is revised to include additional entries for the new browsers.

ASP.Net 2.0 changes this, no longer is Machine.Config altered but there are .browser files which contain browser information.

Software GreenHouse - Blue Jab

An exciting new opportunity for mobile developers was launched at the Mobile Developer Conference in Bangalore.

The Software Greenhouse

It's an amazingly interesting opportunity for developers to peak into the innards of how a mobile software is being built. It's a fun application called BlueJab, its a cool and fun utility which takes the social networking concept to a new level. It combines the power of a Windows Mobile device and Bluetooth technology, opening up a completely new way for people to meet, communicate, exchange ideas or maybe even trade.

The entire software development cycle will be exposed to developers so that they have a chance of learning how things are done at each stage of the mobile application development.

There are online forums where the community can discucss the technology and application, there are Webcasts where the team will discuss and showcase finer aspects of the project.

This is if I'm not wrong the first time in India and probably the world where such a unique concept is being explored. This is a new level of reaching out to the developer community. Kudos to Microsoft for this initiaitve.

Check the software greenhouse at http://www.softwaregreenhouse.com

Mobile Developer Conference Bangalore

A major milestone for the Indian Developer community, the first Mobile Developer Conference was held in Bangalore, India from the 9th-11th of Dec 2004. Today is a last day with Hands on Labs being conducted.

It was great fun being at the Mobile developer conference. It had some interesting highlights for me. I got to know I had to do a session on Windows XP embedded at the last moment. Got the slide deck at 12:30 A.M. in the morning and spent some 3 hours after that learning more about it. Unfortunately I couldn't get the tools to load on my machine as I didn't have the software in time. Well anyways it seems a lot of people are interested in Windows XP embedded(XPe). It was good fun a lot of the audience were newbies, as in almost 90% of the audience had not built their own XPe devices or used the tools.

XPe is a compotenized version of XP allowing you to choose and build a custom version of the OS by choosing parts you require and create an OS image. It's a big hit in devices such as Kiosks, Set Top boxes, etc.

The other session I did was on ASP.Net Mobile controls. That covered the new unified control model in Whidbey. In fact I have written about this at Devx.

THE MDC in India had some exciting moments like Software idol. A fun filled evening where the speakers were contestants for the title :-)

For user group members from Bangalore this MDC had a special in terms of a direct meeting with the INTL speakers. This was a exlusive opportunity to have face time with them, and was brought to Bangalore user group members via INETA and local Microsoft.

Overall a very satisfying experience.

Mobile ASP.Net 2.0

I've just written a new article on the new ASP.Net 2.0 mobile capabilities. It's really amazing how Microsoft has advanced this new engine to combine two awesome things 1) The earlier ASP.Net engine + new feature 2) The mobile toolkit or ASP.Net mobile.

Now all of ASP.Net 2.0 is mobile enabled. This should surely bring a smile to many a developer as this now enables all the web based applications you write to be mobile enabled. There are however a number of things which you should be aware off. I've tried to highlight a few of them in my new article on DevX. Check it out Mobile-enable Your Existing Web Apps with ASP.NET 2.0

Back to here

I've been using Mblog.com for some time, but I've finally kicked back in here at blogger as Mblog shut down their free service.

Well I'll be posting my entries out here henceforth.