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.

Outlook /safe

I was amazed to know that outlook has a safe mode. My friend Piyush enlightened me about the benefits of this. Essentially it loads outlook without all the add-ons.

In my case surprisingly no add-ons showed up as being enabled but somehow they were being loaded I guess, cause my Outlook would hang every few minutes. This was a painful experience for months. And finally I have a way of operating Outlook without it hanging up on me.

 Next need to figure out a way to completely remove add-ons :-) in a clean way.

Open Source .Net CF

If you're developing for the .Net CF you might definitely want to check out the open source .Net CF. They've recently released the SmartDevice Framework 1.0 Seems pretty neat.

The .Net CF mobile world is a very limited world from a .Net developers perspective. We need many more such initiatives.
If you've come across any similar initiatives drop in a line.

A SmartPhone Content Aggregator

Found this nifty little application SPRSS v0.0.1 which is a content aggregator for my SmartPhone.
http://www.codent.com/smartphone/

extremely cool!!!

My newest article on Managing Mobile Data on PocketPC/SmartPhones

Thought I'd just mention my latest article on Managing Mobile Data on PocketPC/SmartPhones devices has just been released. You can check it out at http://www.mobilizedsoftware.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=17701459

Blogging tools

I hate it when I have to come online onto the blogger site, yes I do like the convenience if I'm at any location and need the ability to put down my thoughts.
I wonder if there is an ideal blogging tool. I've been searching... if you know any awesome tools let me know.

But frankly I like the idea of an aggregator + a tool which allows me to make posts.
I quite liked Newsgator but didn't like the fact that it chewed up my titles or didn't retain title formatting etc.

But I'm equally surprised that there are no decent free aggregators + post tools.
Another feature I wish I had was the ability to make posts from my SmartPhone. An app which would sit on my SmartPhone and allow me to make posts.

It would be lovely if Outlook itself provide this facility. Now that would be certainly a wonderful feature.

Till then maybe I should really write one, any takers who want to contribute?

Thinking in Visuals

Had an enllightening discussion yesterday for about 2-3 hours with Sanjay Vyas(Guruji) and Raj. Both Raj and myself went thru Guruji's explanation of concept Visualization.

For years I've been using some or the other kind of memory system, essentially followed Harry Loryane's books, recently read a book called the Mind's Eye by Ian Robertson, it really opened my eye and then this talk by Guruji opened it wider. It was extremely interesting to observe how he has expanded on the concept to his training of technology concepts. My mind was on fire literally. All three of us were wondering if there exists a software to help facilitate this further. I showed them both Mind Manager which is a tool I have been using for quite some time. This is surely one of the tools it opens your mind literally, but I figure we need something more to take his idea of concept visualization further. I would actually say it's thinking in moving visuals, like a full fledged movie, with colors action, interaction. Not just static visuals as the word visual portrays. I would highly recommend anyone to go thru this explanation by Guruji himself.

We discussed issues with concept visualization for instance how do you force your mind to follow this in day to day life... well practice is one sure way, but forcing a lazy mind is difficult...
nevertheless this quest on better thinking is forever a pet subject...
If you read this and know more about this idea of thinking in visuals do let me know.

My quest for a better tool to help in this process continues....

Finally!

After years of procastination, I've decided to start learning C++.
I'm looking for all the help I can get on this one, picked up Bruce Eckel's thinking in C++.
Infact I realized that probably this is what I should do pick a new language a year and understand the mechanics of the same.
I wonder if there is a list of all the possible programming languages out there.
Infact started making a list of some of the best technology books available covering different topics too... still building it will post it down the line. I'm looking for contributions to the list, only if you think the books is nothing but the best on a particular topic would I think of including it in the list.

(Incidentally realized Bruce Eckel also has a book called thinking in C# amazingly it's not available on Amazon but on some other online siteshttp://www.bluestonelab.com
And the ebook version costs about 1$. Interestingly it's in the same format as the thinking in C++ book. )

BBC NEWS | Americas | US father names son 'Version 2.0'

BBC NEWS | Americas | US father names son 'Version 2.0'

I was zapped when I read this, now is this whacko or what ?
It just makes me smile. I wonder if someday cloning and all that mumbo jumbo will enable a person to clone everthing about himself and create a better version... hmm now I would like a little less flab in my next version and yeah make him a little less lazy :-)

.Net Bytes 1 - ASP.Net Session.Abandon

Every other day one comes across interesting tit-bits of .Net which one can so easily forget or ignore and which one shouldn't.
I think .Net Bytes is what I would call them. So here goes...
-------------------------------------
ASP.Net Session.Abandon
-------------------------------------

When the Abandon method is called, the current Session object is queued for deletion but is not actually deleted until all of the script commands on the current page have been processed. This means that you can access variables stored in the Session object on the same page as the call to the Abandon method but not in any subsequent Web pages.

It is interesting how the session.Abandon command works, this often leaves many a programmer wondering why session variables on the page are accessible even though a call has been made to abandon the session.

Well I think now you get the picture... if you've got any .Net Bytes (bites ;-) to share let me know. You can email me at sanjayATwirelessstrategist.com (hmm you're wondering why I didn't put this as @ right, to avoid the spammers ;-)

Arggggggggghhhhhhhhhh that’s what I feel NewsGator doesn’t respect my sites settings…

It takes a subject for a message, however no title. I would think it should convert that to Titles L 

Wow now I’ve also set up an RSS feed(oops ATOM feed, duly corrected by Guruji

http://sanjayshetty.blogspot.com/atom.xml

 

I think I’ve now found after a long search the perfect tool NewsGator.

It allows me to check RSS feeds, post to my blog and best of all integrates with outlook. Now isn’t that cool. Still playing with it. This my first test posting from the tool J 

Open Source .Net

I was chatting with Piyush, an old colleague of mine who's kicked off two open source project initiatives on .Net infact using the new Whidbey tools.
It's good to see the no. of open source projects kick up. One of his projects is a

Site Portal (Phase Alpha)
A ready to go site builder which you can use to build a site of more than 100 pages with minimum effort
Infact the alpha build is online with source code (http://groups.msn.com/manasvin/projects.msnw)


Another interesting project which actually kicked me quite a bit is
Forum Alerts (Phase Initiation)
An MSN messenger alert system for users who subscribe to forums & newsgroups.
This is extremely cool as a whole lot of us technology biffs subscribe to various forums. The interesting part is that this idea is going to be built using MSN Alerts SDK. He's currently looking for more people who might want to participate. I think I might contribute to this one. Definitely an interesting idea to pursue :-)

Articles I've written

I recently wrote a couple of articles for DevX and .Net Developer Journal

thought I'd provide the links out here to them:

http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/17746 - Super Charge your forms based apps with Advanced Data Binding

http://www.devx.com/wireless/Article/17968 - Develop for the SmartPhone using Techniques you already know

https://www.sys-con.com/dotnet/article.cfm?id=454 - Windows Form controls Tips and Tricks

Smart Client

Buzzword or new application development paradigm?

Simplicity is what I believe will drive smart client development adoption.

Smart Clients have very simple rules:

1. Local Processing
2. Communication via Web Services with the backend
3. Online or offline the application should work
4. Client should auto update

The simplicity of the above rules implemented in any application which you develop can have dramatic effects on your client ensuring client delight.
But are there tools which support this paradigm as yet... my bet is that within the next 2 years one is going to see a whole lot of tool support within the Microsoft tool set. Till that becomes reality I'm sure just application of these simple rules will change how software is developed across the globe.