Exposure to WPF, WCF, Silverlight development

Well I've recently received training in WPF,WCF & Silverlight areas... Technologies look very promising & going to be industry buzz words for upcoming years.... Silverlight is very cool... Its grid & list controls are quite eye catchy along with all other animation stuffs silverlight provides to make rich user interface type web application....Our trainer was Mahesh Sabnis from Seed Infotech. He has posted many articles on http://www.dotnetcurry.com/

Business Communication

Here are few good sites on Business communication:

1. Executive Planet has "Essential business culture guides for the international traveller". This covers around 50 countries... Helps in understanding the cultural aspects of that country.. I guess good reference for any international traveller. Check this out at http://www.executiveplanet.com/

2. This is one of the best learning site I found for Business communication. It covers many other areas of management also http://www.managementstudyguide.com/business_communication.htm

Demo of Sony's 3D TV

Well, on our way back from Kodai on 30th June, our flight was via Bangalore with halt of 3 hours. Sony's new 3D TV was on demo at Bangalore airport. This TV is not yet launched in Indian market at time of this writing. This T.V. got 2D as well as 3D modes & comes with eye glasses to view picture in 3D mode. It was an exciting first experience of seeing 3D picture in regular large size T.V. When we inquired whether it automatically converts 2D picture into 3D compatible form, the guy was not very sure. If thats the case then probably it will surely hit the market as obviously people will prefer 3D versus 2D if comes in same price range. It can be the next future T.V. concept & probably computer screens can also take same path for 3D gaming softwares. I really doubt if 2D video straming can be converted into 3D form at end point of T.V.. I guess separate video streaming for 3D shows will be required on T.V. channel at time of broadcasting.

Does any one has any idea about how the streaming of 3D video takes place? What sort of technology gets used in converting 2D video stream into 3D form?

KVK Reunion pics

Core Web services standards

The SOAP 1.2 specification can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/soap/.
The WSDL 1.1 specification can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl.
The XML Schema primer can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-0/.

Dangers of Bio fuel & finding Aliens

Well much has been said about bio fuel & how it will help in getting cheap energy. Other flip side of coin is that to produce bio fuel, lots of farm land & corps needs to get allocated. This can result in booming up of food prices & will drain away food resources for developing countries. So bio fuel consumption can turn into a risky affair for overall man kind.

There are some efforts going on in finding aliens living on other planets... I feel that even if man kind finds the aliens then it may not be in its own interest if found aliens turn out more intelligent & capable than human beings... Currently human beings are ruling among all animals but as soon as we discover aliens with superior power/capabilities or they discover us then that edge will go away. It can cause serious threats to our own existence if superior aliens start exhibiting evil intentions & actions on man kind....

Visit 2 Harvard Univ. Campus & 1st exposure to iPad

There were 2 exciting things happened in mah life 2day.

First is I got a chance to visit Harvard university campus 2day which I wanted to do since a long after coming to Boston. Harvard university campus is pretty huge & I was barely able to cover much coz I was running short of time. Just saw college of world religions, Harvard extension school, memorial church & library buildings. In entrance area they've created Igloo to resemble presence of natives in early years of 1635.

Secondly, I been to a Galleria mall at Cambridge. Went to an Apple's store. I tried using Apple's newly launched iPad tablet PC. I was very amazed with their cool graphics. When I've opened the book reader software & started scrolling pages of a book, animation of turning page reminded me about the touch screen device which i came across in one museum at Melbourne. When I was going thru their Maps software, I just double clicked to zoom out the map. Then I was struggling to do reverse of zooming it back to actual size. Then I noticed that touch screen supports operation by finger & thumb. If you will bring first finger n thumb near by then maps will do zoom in & if you will take them apart then it starts zooming out. That was pretty cool thing.. iPad also supports iTunes as they have it in MacBooks. Safari is a software to browse internet & I just watched my this blog for first time on tablet PC. Even Youtube videos they support.. Other cool thing is if you rotate iPad device then your picture on screen also rotates accordingly. So you can see it horizontally also. They have many games installed on it... It has softwares for mails, Notes, To do, calendar, Pianno etc. It automatically pops up key board layout screen on lower one third area when editing is needed any where like entering web site address in address bar... Other good thing about iPad is that its battery lasts for almost 10 hours with single charge which is like 5 times than laptop.... Currently it costs 499$ (16GB), 599$ (32GB) & 699$ (64GB).. No wonder why its running out of stock... I think product is matured enough & worth buying at this price.... Apple is coming up with iPad+3G on April 30th in U.S. That will be great to have coz current one only supports wifi net connectivity but with 3G support internet will be available like cell phone signals & people can use it during traveling.

Visit these sites for more details:

http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/
http://www.apple.com/ipad/
http://www.apple.com/ipad/apps-for-ipad/

My Hometown under Google Maps

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Thomas's blog on IIS7, ASP.Net

Thomas's blog who works for Microsoft in ASP.Net development team.

http://blogs.msdn.com/tmarq/

SQL Server 2008 Replication & Sync Framework

SQL Server Replication:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms151198%28v=SQL.100%29.aspx

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/1438201/Setting-Up-Transactional-Replication-A-Step-by-step-Guide.htm

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms147929.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms147363.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143677.aspx

Sync Framework

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sync/default.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc281959%28v=SQL.100%29.aspx

Virus Awareness

Well after moving to U.S., my laptop was badly affected with all kinda viruses.... So just thought of sharing with you all some of the tips on anti viruses....

* Before you start downloading any anti virus, make sure that you download it from genuine provider. Now a days, many viruses float on internet which claim as anti viruses but in reality they are viruses & can cause more damage. As far as possible, try to download from http://download.cnet.com/ which is the most secured place to get free anti virus softwares.

* After machine gets infected with virus, some of deadly viruses stops browsers functionality, downloads etc. So it is always a good idea to take a proactive approach & get anti viruses loaded on your machine when its working in fine manner.

* Spybot Search & Destroy is free anti virus which takes care of many scarewares & spywares. It can be downloaded for free from http://download.cnet.com/3001-8022_4-10122137.html

* Malware Bytes - free software

* Semantec

* Mc Afee - Bank of America a/c holders get one year free subscription. Licensed version of Mc Afee can be downloaded from bank of america's web site after logging into a/c.

* Norton Anti Virus

* Registry Mechanic - free software

* In case your windows XP files association got corrupted. e.g. exe files don't work & opens dialog box of "Open with" then in such cases respective registry needs to get fixed. Those reg files can be downloaded from http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm Just double clicking .reg file will install registry.

Lavasa city (near pune) is like Salzberg (Austria)

Just been to Lavasa city (http://www.lavasa.com/) recently. Its around 64 kms. from Pune. City is well planned by HCC group. Its going to spread over 25,000 acres (one fourth of size of Mumbai) comprising 4 towns. Currently their first town Dasve is under development. Whole town is getting built surrounding backwaters of near by lake. Its very well planned & reminds mediterranean architecture... When I saw the town first time, its surrounding natural beauty of mountain ranges on both side of backwater stream reminded me about my trip to Salzberg in Austria, Europe... Lavasa has water sports, rapelling (downward tracking), natural trails for hiking etc. already in place. We stayed in Waterfront Shaw hotel's service apartments which offers good breakfast. Hotel has some DJ activities in evenings & some complimentary free services like getting your name written on rice bran by artist. Location of hotel is very prime just oppostite to lake & information center of city is 2 minutes walk from there... Unlike Amby valley, entry to Lavasa city is free. Information center is on 4th floor of that building where they give free demo of half an hour about city in their mini theatre & 10 minutes 3D animation show. Same building has few free services of children games, tattoos, face sketches etc. on first floor. We stayed for 2 nights, 3 days... I guess by 2012, many new things will start there & that should be the time to travel there... Right now its too early as many things are not operational there... For couple of days trip, it should be fine but for longer stay its not a happening place right now....

Dot Net 3.5, 4.0 & SQL Server 2008

Download free ASP.Net 3.5 Tutorials & eBooks (You need to wait for 1 minute for ad to get disappeared before "Download File" link appears.. So be patient when you hit individual book link.) http://www.free-ebooks-download.org/free-ebook/dotnet/ASP.NET/Download-Free-ASP.NET-3-5-Tutorials.php

MS SQL Server Training Portal http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/training/sql-server.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlserverue/archive/2009/02/02/sql-server-2008-books-online-january-2009-update-now-released.aspx

SQL Server 2008 Books Online (around 144MB) can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=765433f7-0983-4d7a-b628-0a98145bcb97&DisplayLang=en

Exam CRAM 2 Series books in older versions of .Net can be downloaded from http://www.free-ebooks-download.org/free-ebook/dotnet/MCSD.NET/

.Net Development Solution Starter Kits (productivity enhancers) can be downloaded from http://www.asp.net/community/projects/ (Older famous iBuySpy Portal starter kit is now extended as DotNetNuke & its site address is http://www.dotnetnuke.com/ )

MSDN Online help for VS2008 (.net 3.5) is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa187919.aspx & for VS2010 Beta 2 (.net 4.0) is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd831853(VS.100).aspx

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 Downloads -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd582936.aspx

VB Future (VB.Net 2010) http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vbfuture/

ASP.Net Third Party Data Validation Controls http://www.peterblum.com/DES/Home.aspx

Regular expression Collection Library http://www.regexlib.com/