Inherited from System.Object

In the midst of mad rush and technological revolution, there is very less of importance given to Indian languages on a daily basis. This is a gigantic leap taken by Microsoft to get the technology to the masses in India.

For the first time, a major webcast is exclusively organized in Telugu.

Pass on this information and help save your mother tongue survive the wave of technological revolution.

Link to register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032410398&EventCategory=4&culture=en-IN&CountryCode=IN

Twice the fun— Share photos while you chat with Windows Live Messenger.

I got this mail today, but I’ve been using all of them for long time, so I know they are second to none. Live Mesh is the best thing online. If you are not using it, you are missing so many things in life.

Google provides 1GB for Picasa… thats all Google? What happened to your unlimited storage promise to Picasa?

I’m shifting all my photos to Windows Live Photos, for several reasons including 25GB space. I have 2 live accounts between me and my wife, so we have 50GB for online storage. bye bye Picasa..

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February 2009

The new Windows Live is here!

And better than ever. Updated versions of our online services—Hotmail®, Messenger, Photo Gallery, Spaces, SkyDrive™, and more—make it easier than ever to stay in touch with your friends and keep your life in synch.
See how it works

Stay in the know

Keeping up with friends in your network is easier than ever! Now every time someone updates their personal status, or posts photos, comments, or public messages, you'll see them on your Home page. That way, you never skip a beat.

See "What's New" right now.

All about you

Your new Profile page in Windows Live is where you share information about yourself—your interests, occupation, age, funny hobbies, and more—for the world to see. It's also where you add Web activities, so your friends can see what's you're up to online at places like Twitter, Flickr, and more.

Update your Profile.

One place for all your e-mail

You don't have to log in to three or four different e-mail accounts every day. You can send and receive e-mail from your other providers—Gmail, AOL, YahooPlus, and more—right from your Hotmail® inbox. How easy is that?

Try it today.

Share your calendar

The simplest way to let friends know when you're free and when you're busy? Share your Windows Live Calendar with them. It's fun and convenient, and saves time when making plans.

Learn how

Missing mail?

If you're not getting e-mail in your Hotmail inbox that friends are sending you, it may be because your junk e-mail filter or blocked sender list has excluded them. Fortunately you can fix it, in just a few clicks.

Update your settings

I never knew that I can come up with resolutions to many things in life.

This happened couple of weeks back. I was under the mystical influence of a freak show called jetlag, just like that guy who fell down from his bike as a pillion rider. I was getting sleep, but then I was not actually getting that… that is why it is mystical.

So, I was lying on my bed… beside the clutter of clothes - nonetheless to say… and trying to get sleep badly and having accepted my defeat, i diverted my focus onto something else so i can get sleep out of air.

So, I was thinking on several things bugging human race in general and India in specific… while I was slipping into the magic of sleep, I managed to resolve the below problems:

• Resolved Hunger
• Cured Terrorism
• Cooled down the global warming
• Found alternate fuels that last of very millennia
• Brought the world out of economic recession
• Made India a developed nation
• Resolved the bug I was trying to fix.

Next day, story as usual… i mean the jet lag and me resolving the problems…

So, one day when any of the above is actually resolved, you know who you should thank… right??? right???

Kalam sir, I’m dreaming. :)

This is a wonderful opportunity for students in India.

Now, you don’t have to pay for most of the softwares (required for development). Microsoft started this intuitive program called DreamSpark that allows all students in India to get a DVD from their nearest authorized center and start working using the best development tools on the planet.

Whats more??? Microsoft is even giving the latest versions of Windows and SQL server along with the standard versions of the Visual Studio, Expression Studio and XNA Game Studio and several others.

So, whatever is your interested area… if its in Microsoft technologies… flash your ID at your nearest authorized center and get a fully licensed DVD containing all the softwares.

So… no more downloading torrents with viruses and no more copying pirated copies from friends… you can own your copy and be proud of it. :)

Last but not the least, this is even for students with other than Microsoft technolgies experience/interest to try out why people like or hate Microsoft tools… don’t be a cattle and follow the herd… try it out yourself.

You can find more information at this site.

Please take a moment and suggest tripadvisor guys to use their charity money in the appropriate charitable trust (for various causes). It just take a moment, trust me.

Here goes the link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Causes

Everything was going fine in my life… in fact everything was going exceptionally well until yesterday.

No work to worry about. However, I’m married – so…
And, my company does not demand me to come and fill my desk without any work, so I can stay home and fill my bed for longer time.

My dad was taking an early morning flight and was running little late and my home is good 1hour 30 minutes drive from the airport. (Damn, new airport – I hate you.) So, being a good son (in fact a very good son) I drove him to the airport around 4.30 in the morning (its like mid-night for me).

I wanted to go to office to steal some supplies (and to see if my ID card still works) and wanted to take company transport. Little background: My home is 2 hours drive from my office in the opposite direction as the airport.

I wanted to drive a little faster and reach home and sleep for an hour before getting on to the bus to continue my sleeping session, but life has something else for me in the store.

Now on, I'll time the events.

4.20AM: Start to airport… vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooooooooooooooooooom
5.15AM: Say bubbyee to my dad and drive back towards home… vroom
5.20AM: Out of airport departure area… vrrooom
5.25AM: Out of airport premisis… vrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooommm
5.30AM: Burning the road… vrrrrRRRRRRRoooOOOOOOmmm
5.31AM: Car enjoying the ride… dhud…dhud…dhud…dhud
5.32AM: Me, suspicious on car’s intent… screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetch
5.33AM: Turn off the engine… Zzzzz
5:33.21AM: Realize no light around, so turn on the ignition… $#(&^$
5:33.24AM: Get out of the car and close the door… BHAM
5:33.28AM: Check the front wheel with my detective glasses… tan… tadan… tadan… tadan…
5.33.55AM: No clues found… nothing whatsoever… hmmmmm
5:35AM: Relish the fresh morning breeze… sshhhhhhh
5.35.17AM: Open the car door
5.35.17.011AM: Realize car kicked me out, my car kicked me out…
5.35.20AM: Woke up to reality and did a root cause analysis… huh!?!
5.36AM: Remembered about the function I asked the sales man to include – auto locking.
5.36.21AM: Thinking hard to get into the car… duh
5.37AM: Brilliant idea found!!! - Call my brother to get duplicate keys… hello anybody home
5.37.59AM to 6.40.43AM – smile at the passers by and become the clock of the day… “its 5.45AM… its 6.01.12.675AM… its 6.23AM… its 6.37.22AM… its… its…”
6.40.44AM: Take the duplicate keys and unlock the car… beep beep
7.40AM: Reach home… huh
7.41AM: Got a call… hello DAD… “yea I too reached home”.

Moral of the story: NEVER STOP WHEN YOUR CAR MAKES SOUND… IT IS FAKING.

Now that I came out of my cocoon, wanted to share updates and what exactly will be life inside the cocoon. :)

I was expecting “Thanks for not writing mails from some of you, but never got any. So, I’m assuming that you actually wanted me to write”. It seems there are some laws surrounding blogs and one such law states that you should never apologize for your audience, they meant - no sorry for not posting/sorry I was making money for my employer posts. So, no sorry for you guys… in fact you should be sorry for not being able to read my blog… Okay… Apologies accepted… now that the enlightening session is over the actual blog post starts.

Firstly, I got married!!!

Once you are done with laughing, continue…

Secondly, even without updating my blog I’m getting equal number of page visits… so pretty much happy that my blog is searchable. Most of the traffic is coming from Google. Thanks Goog, but its just little more time before Live curbs your enthusiasm and dominance… nevermind… continue.

Thirdly, if you haven’t heard off – sub prime crisis in US is shaking the foundations of the economies world wide… including mine.

I’m planning to devote at least one hour a week to write some stupid stuff and waste some disk space on the server hosting my weblog, so you’ll never be disappointed anymore. :D

Gmail, the email solution introduced by Google in 2003? undoubtedly changed other company's perspective towards web based emails. However, it is in news, these days, for all the wrong things.

The newest flaw discovered in Gmail turns the email service into a sophisticaed spamming engine. So, next time you get a mail from a gmail server, make sure it is from your friend.

Inspite of being a beta for almost 4.5 years, bugs seem to be surfacing everynow and then... Guess who is not dropping the beta tag for several more years to come? :)

Source: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080510-security-flaw-turns-gmail-into-open-relay-server.html

CCF Workflows takes several seconds to start for the first time. This is to do with the fundamental .Net feature called JIT. When you first launch the workflow, CCF creates the workflow engine for the first time and starts the engine before working on your request. This eats up so much of processor... remember the JIT compiler compiles the IL instructions only when required?

One workaround for this problem would be warm up your workflow before the user actually uses this. This will help in faster response time from CCF as the required last minute compilations are already done for you and all you will do is to use the cached binary instructions instead of IL.

As always, below is the sample code that does exactly what is mentioned in the above sentence:

Find the line in your desktop.cs file

customerWorkflowManager = (IWorkflowManager)this.GetHostedApp("Customer Workflow Manager");

add the following lines below that statement.

//Modified for warming up the workflow

ThreadStart ts = new ThreadStart(ExecuteAsyncWorkflow);
Thread wfThread = new Thread(ts);

wfThread.Start(data);

//end of modifications

Finally, add this method.

private void ExecuteAsyncWorkflow()
{
    System.Reflection.MethodInfo method = customerWorkflowManager.GetType().GetMethod(
             "DoAction", new Type[] { typeof(Microsoft.Ccf.Csr.Action), typeof(string) });
    Microsoft.Ccf.Csr.Action action = new Action(-100, "Human Workflow Automation", "");
    //TODO: Fill the below ALL CAPS words with proper values or better yet, make a web service call to get a valid workflow xml.
    //      Refer to custom workflow manager project on how to use the web service call.

    string data = @"<Workflow><StepName>NAME HERE</StepName><HostedApplicationId>ID FROM DATABASE HERE</HostedApplicationId>
 <HostedApplicationName>VALID APPLICATION NAME HERE</HostedApplicationName><Action>VALID ACTION NAME HERE</Action></Workflow>";

    try
    {
        method.Invoke(customerWorkflowManager, new object[] { action, data });
    }
    catch (Exception)
    {
    }
}

This is fairly simple code could save you up to 20 seconds. The tradeoff with this approach (of course all good things have an asterix) you are adding more load during the start up, though the time your solution loads will not change as this is a background thread, but the CPU is now split with one additional thread.

Let me know if you have a better solution to this problem.