Cyber Blood Banks

Last week, one of my friend’s friend met an accident and doctors told that he is in great need of AB- blood. Being one of the rare blood groups, hospital did not have this group to be able to exchange it with another group. My friend visited local college at the place but could not locate anyone with this blood group.

We knew quite a few sites which have contact details for a host of volunteer donors. We searched and found contact details for 2 people with same blood group. Very important and amazing was the response we got from each of them. It was really great and I still feel great when I think of it.

My friend tried calling first person. This guy was in Bangalore at that time so was not able to help us immediately but he was ready to fly to our place and donate blood as soon as he could. We told him to hold for some time just to try other person’s contact. Then we called second person, he was about 150 kms away from our place and told us like “I will be there as soon as I can”. After 5-10 minutes, we thought to give him a call just to reconfirm the time when he will reach us. Till the time we called him again, he was already on his way. He reached in approx 2.5 hours and donated blood

It was really good to know that even in today’s busy world there are at least some people who are eager to help just for the sake of humanity without any personal benefit.

Here is the list of some of the sites..

http://www.bharatbloodbank.com/

http://explore.oneindia.in/health/donors/blood/

http://www.indianblooddonors.com

http://www.lionsbloodline.com/

Tool to generate script with SQL 2005

Just wanted to share this tool to create script files for any DB changes for SQL 2005 as this feature no longer exist with new version. http://www.sqlteam.com/publish/scriptio/

Here is comprehesive description regarding the same from one of my friends.

From: Ravindra Bisht
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 3:38 PM
Subject: Tool to generate script withSQL 2005

Microsoft Sql Server management studio does provide a elaborate Script wizard for generating script but it has only following options

- Script to file (which is one huge file with everything)
- Script to Clipboard
- Script to New Query Window

However two important features from SQL 2000 are missing:

1) One object per file.
2) A script that performs both DROP and CREATE.

Though MSDN documents indicates that this is possible here http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191299.aspx

However, it doesn't give any clue on how to accomplish it. Quote from that page:
"The schema for generated objects can be saved in a single SQL Script file , or in several files with each file containing
the schema of just one object."

And these above two features can be accomplish by tool that can be installed from http://www.sqlteam.com/publish/scriptio/

However the extension for all those files is .sql which can easily be modified.

Regards
Ravindra Bisht

Yahoooo vs Gmail

Yahoo has finally done some really cool things with its email interface. Its all now using AJAX giving a very fast and rich interface. Sometimes, when my system is running under load, I feel yahoo working much faster than even MS Outlook which is a desktop application. Over that keyboard shortcuts have made life really easy. Gmail had done some marvelous things when it was launched. But now I can see Gmail way behind Yahoo Interface. And funny thing is …Gmail has also come up with keyboard shortcuts but their shortcuts are like

To Send Email –> Tab + Enter

This only works if your focus on the text area containing body of the composed email.

Because Tab shifts your focus to the next control (which is Send Button) and Enter clicks the button. So if someone types “To” address after keying in whole body then he will have to click on the text area to use shortcut for sending email.

Can someone call this a shortcut J

When to use asp 3.0

.Net guys must have read a lot of articles explaining what all benefits you get using asp.net over asp 3.0. but today I seem to realize that there are some instances when you may feel good to use asp instead of asp.net. Some of my friend, asked me to build a very very simple web application and he wanted to invest least possible amount of money. I thought, probably using asp would be a good choice to go as:

1. asp web hosting space is much cheaply available. In fact, you can get some free space to host, if you are not really concerned about domain name.

2. making changes to the application is very straight forward, just change the file and redeploy. (This point is partially correct, as you can get same thing with asp.net if you write complete code in aspx file itself without using code behind feature)

...and yes, these points only have some relevance when you have a very simple application for some kind of personal use. From organization point of view, small saving(with cheap hosting space) using asp does not really makes much sense as features obviously outweigh cost.

MS SQL Server 2K Editions

I was googling to know difference between three flavors of MS SQL server i.e. Enterprise, Standard, Developer. I was amazed to know that SQL servers comes with eight editions actually !!!!
Wanna explore difference between each of them…check it out here

Right to Information Act, 2005

I was surfing net searching for something, the other day and by chance I came across document related to Right to Information Act (RTI) and when I read it, I found it quite interesting. I mean interesting in actually two senses.

One, to know how whole RTI system works. I mean knowing duties for public information officer, information commissioner and how we can exercise our rights for the information.

Secondly, as this was probably first of this kind of document, I was going through; I noticed how these kind of documents need to cover guidelines for each related aspect with deadlines:
a. Guidelines to govt. organization about how to organize things to provide information.
b. Necessary staff (officers, commissioners etc.) required
c. Situations in which request can be denied.
d. Public appeals against officers and penalty, in case officer are found to be guilty etc.
e. Different costs involved.
f. Guidelines about how Govt. should make people aware about this act and encourage them to exercise their rights.

If you would like to go through it, here is where I found it. This really sounds great!!! (I mean, at least on papers :))

Interesting interviews abt SQL Server

Someone, forwarded me this link today telling about some interesting interviews about SQL Server.
Really good one :)
How do you spell S-Q-L?

All about Garbage Collection

These are some of the very useful links about garbage collection.

Enjoy !!!

Jeffrey Richer on MSDN – Garbage Collection

Part 1- http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/1100/GCI/default.aspx

Part 2 -http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/1200/GCI2/

Maoni's WebLog

Using GC Efficiently – Part 1 http://blogs.msdn.com/maoni/archive/2004/06/15/156626.aspx

Using GC Efficiently – Part 2 http://blogs.msdn.com/maoni/archive/2004/09/25/234273.aspx

Using GC Efficiently – Part 3 http://blogs.msdn.com/maoni/archive/2004/12/19/327149.aspx

Using GC Efficiently – Part 4 http://blogs.msdn.com/maoni/archive/2005/05/06/415296.aspx

Career Development: Attending Conferences

This is excerpt from one of the article on simple-talk.com talking briefly about a few good conferences and what to expect from each of them.

Which Conference?

As soon as conference season starts, I receive advertisements and emails for numerous conferences. The ones I choose to attend are simply the ones that most closely match my current needs. For broad coverage of all aspects of Microsoft development, Tech Ed , or the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) are probably the conferences to attend. PDC is more future-oriented and happens only when Microsoft has new technology to announce, whereas Tech Ed focuses more on shipping technology. If you work extensively with Visual Studio, then VSLive is an obvious choice. Similarly, SQL PASS is good option for SQL Server developers and DBAs.

However, if you have very specific requirements then a more specialized conference may be a better bet. For example, I work on a number of systems that target the Pocket PC and, as such, will be attending the Microsoft Mobilized and Embedded Developers Conference in May. The MIX conference in March interests me because this is the Microsoft oriented conference that will focus on what is often called Web 2.0. I write about and use ASP.NET for my development, and things like IE7 and Atlas need to be a part of the Web sites I will be doing in the next couple of years.

I would be remiss if I did not also mention the Code Camp conferences. These are always free and always held outside of normal work hours. Since my blog post in 2003, Code Camp has become a viable option for people who do feel that conferences cost too much or take you away from your job for too long. For many people, especially those just starting out or with fairly general needs, Code Camps are a wonderful way to get the conference experience with limited, or possibly even no cost (presuming that there is a Code Camp close enough to you that you do not need a hotel).

In a similar vein, user groups offer single evening a month chances to get some of the benefits of a conference, with generally a single session, but lots of chance to network. My local .NET user group occasionally has "Geek Dinners," where there is no technical content, just networking while eating good food.

MS Desktop Search : Soft way to force restart :)

I used to get reminders from Office 12 to download Microsoft Desktop Search, whenever I open my Outlook. After quite a lot of reminders, I finally thought … lets download and give it a try.
This is final screen of the installation process asking if I want to restart my comp now or later by checking on the given check box. But check box is already disabled. Cool na !!!!

Error : General network error. Check your network documentation.

SQL server 2000 throws General network error sometimes when I try to update values. The behavior is quite random (I m not even able to reproduce it. Only way, I know about this error is thru log file, as application is configured to log all the errors in a log file) Sometimes, It happens at one place and sometimes at the other. But the common thing is it always happens when I try to call fill for adapter object. I mean it works fine for executing stored procedures. I tried googling for the solution of the same and found a couple of suggestions to try. Like increasing command timeout, removing pool settings etc.
http://weblogs.asp.net/pleloup/archive/2003/07/23/10451.aspx
http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/rtgurskevik/archive/2005/03/03/58301.aspx

Only thing which seems to be working is removing pool settings from web.config (as I did not see that error occurring after this). but again that’s quite weird solution as I know that gonna directly impact the performance of the system. Can anyone suggest some better solution or at least the possible cause of the problem?

Error : General network error. Check your network documentation.

SQL server 2000 throws General network error sometimes when I try to update values. The behavior is quite random (I m not even able to reproduce it. Only way, I know about this error is thru log file, as application is configured to log all the errors in a log file) Sometimes, It happens at one place and sometimes at the other. But the common thing is it always happens when I try to call fill for adapter object. I mean it works fine for executing stored procedures. I tried googling for the solution of the same and found a couple of suggestions to try. Like increasing command timeout, removing pool settings etc.
http://weblogs.asp.net/pleloup/archive/2003/07/23/10451.aspx
http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/rtgurskevik/archive/2005/03/03/58301.aspx

Only thing which seems to be working is removing pool settings from web.config (as I did not see that error occurring after this). but again that’s quite weird solution as I know that gonna directly impact the performance of the system. Can anyone suggest some better solution or at least the possible cause of the problem?

IIS 7.0 + Media Player 11 + Skype free calling

IIS 7.0 on the MSDN .NET Show
Microsoft revealed about some of the new features, which would be a part of IIS 7 release. Here is the quick summary.

As discussed in this post about IIS 6 that Microsoft has disabled most of the features by default to reduce the attack space for the vulnerabilities. So if some one is not using a feature of IIS, his application should not be a target of attack for some vulnerability in that feature. Now with IIS 7, Microsoft has extended it to next level that you will only install those many features with your IIS which you want to use. Other than this, MS is going to add logging features to help if something goes wrong. Also it would support role delegation so that Admin can delegate some user a role so that he can change some of the settings those defined by Admin.

Beta 1 for Windows Vista is already out in the market. One very important thing is.. IIS 7 is only meant for windows vista or windows longhorn server so all existing windows web server would need an upgrade to use IIS 7.

Windows Media Player 11 Beta Released
Microsoft has launched beta version for Media Player 11. I just installed it on my machine and by the first look, GUI looks pretty cool. Thought I could not manage to do a lot of RnD on the new stuff, but during installation it told about new Music Store, MS has launched like we have ITunes for Mac. You can read more about it here.

Skype Outgoing Calls to US and Canada goes free.
Skype has made outgoing calls to landline phone/ Mobile nos of US and Canada free for US and Canada customers. Its free only if source and destination of the call is both in US or Canada. But if you are skype customer from outside these counties, you will still need to buy Skype Outgoing Credits to make calls to landline/Mobile nos.

Development Tools

SQL Intellisense tool available for free.
Here is the tool available for SQL which adds SQL intellisense capabilities in your Query Analyzer. This is really helpful as you no longer need to look for exact table names and column names while writing SQL queries (as we don’t remember whole lot of things for .net library and mostly rely on intellisense).

Re-Sharper Tool for Visual Studio
Re-Sharper integrates with Visual Studio IDE and provides a lot of features which includes..
1. Syntax and Error Handling
2. Error and Quick-Fixes and Code Assistance
3. Refactoring
4. Code Generation and Code completion etc.

Only word of caution is that it impacts your IDE working speed. You can notice a significant performance hit working with .NET IDE after installing resharper. But still features outweigh the performance loss !!!

Google's Eric Schmidt : Pamela Video Moment

Hey.. This video is really interesting.

Google's Eric Schmidt Has a Pamela Anderson Video Moment

The way Eric started and then how he improved till end of the video... also the conflict thing he talked about... too good.

Microsoft Tech Ed 2006

Microsoft is back with Tech Ed 2006. Here is a newsletter telling details of the same.
----------------------

Dear Developer,

Microsoft India presents Tech.Ed 2006 this June. And for the first time ever - across six cities.

Microsoft Tech.Ed, as you know, is the most definitive technology conference for Developers, IT Professionals, and Architects. Tech.Ed 2006 promises to deliver a more relevant experience for you. With, more focused technology sessions that matter to you, the opportunity to network with the community and with your peers, and access to technology that will enable you to evaluate the technology for yourself.

Also, for the first time ever, we present Tech.Ed for Developers. Two complete days dedicated to Developers with four tracks (32 break-out sessions and multiple Deep Dive Sessions!)

Attend Microsoft Tech.Ed 2006 this June and you will return with the edge you need to keep up with the latest development trends. Here's how:

Gain hands-on experience trying out and evaluating the latest cool development tools.
Acquire skills to build more streamlined, scalable, and secure applications.
Meet and discuss topics of interest with industry gurus, Microsoft staff, and colleagues.
The event promises great content covering topics such as, Programming Mobile Devices; Windows, Web, and Microsoft Office Programming; Language Enhancements and IDE Productivity Features. Besides, addressing issues, such as easier development of applications across client types, migrating applications to .NET, building a scalable and secure architecture, and designing applications for easier and more effective deployment.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Regards,

Sheila Gulati
Director, Developer and Platform Evangelism
Microsoft Corporation, India

Tech-Ed for Developers (Day 1 and Day 2)



For more information on Attending Tech Ed 2006, Agenda, Speakers, Itinerary,
Conference Fees and Registration Form log on to www.techedindia.com

Programmer poetry

This is what i got as a forward mail..



Nice one to read… But Personally, I don’t agree with the poetry. I don’t feel like staring at the monitor, rather I enjoy it !!!
But it may be due to the fact; I haven’t spent that much time with the software industry till now. May be with the passage of time, I also start feeling like boring. :)

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 to Windows Internet Explorer 7

Windows Internet Explorer 7 beta has got some cool features other than most common visible multitab browsing support. Here are some of them:

1. Phishing Filter:-

Here are some FAQs about phishing from Internet Explorer Help.
What is phishing?
Online phishing (pronounced like the word fishing) is a way to trick computer users into revealing personal or financial information through an e-mail message or website. A common online phishing scam starts with an e-mail message that looks like an official notice from a trusted source, such as a bank, credit card company, or reputable online merchant. In the e-mail message, recipients are directed to a fraudulent website where they are asked to provide personal information, such as an account number or password. This information is then usually used for identity theft.
What is Phishing Filter and how can it help protect me?
Phishing Filter is a feature in Internet Explorer that helps detect phishing websites. Phishing Filter uses three methods to help protect you from phishing scams. First, it compares the addresses of websites you visit against a list of sites reported to Microsoft as legitimate. This list is stored on your computer. Second, it helps analyze the sites you visit to see if they have the characteristics common to a phishing website. Third, with your consent, Phishing Filter sends some website addresses to Microsoft to be further checked against a frequently updated list of reported phishing websites.
If the site you are visiting is on the list of reported phishing websites, Internet Explorer will display a warning webpage and a notification on the Address bar. From the warning webpage, you can continue or close the page. If the website contains characteristics common to a phishing site but isn't on the list, Internet Explorer will only notify you in the Address bar that it might possibly be a phishing website. You can click the notification for more information.
Is Phishing Filter always on?
No. When you first install Internet Explorer, Phishing Filter only compares the addresses of the websites you visit against the list of legitimate websites that is saved on your computer. It also helps analyze these sites to see if they have the characteristics common to a phishing website. No information is sent to Microsoft unless you choose to send it. The first time you visit a website that is not on the legitimate website list, you will be prompted to indicate whether you want to check websites automatically. If you choose this option, Phishing Filter will send certain website addresses to Microsoft to be checked against a frequently updated list of reported phishing sites and alert you about suspicious or reported phishing websites. If you choose not to check websites automatically, Phishing Filter will display an icon ( ) on the Internet Explorer status bar. To check the website, click the icon, and then click Check this Website. You can also check websites from Internet Explorer.

2. Zones:

Internet Explorer has different security zones for home internet users. Now, with Internet Explorer 7, it will automatically detect if user belongs to any intranet, then only intranet zone would be active. For home users, it would be inactive automatically to reduce the chance of using intranet zone settings by some malicious site.

3. Improved User Interface:

Internet Explorer 7 has improved User Interface a lot. It has better managed UI to use comparatively less space leaving more space for site navigation. Eg. Microsoft recognized very less use of File Menu, probably that’s the reason the File Menu remains hidden unless you press ALT key from your KeyBoard.

There can be a lot other features, which I could not explore. Would be great, if some one can add more in the list.

Guys who don’t want to take risk of using beta version (as I have noticed some of the sites crashing with Internet Explorer 7, at the same time working fine with Internet Explorer 6 or Firefox) and want to get some of these cool feature in their existing Internet Explorer 6, two of the most important features tabbed browsing and Phishing filters are available through MSN toolbar (Ad-In to Internet Explorer 6)

And yes… have you noticed? Microsoft has renamed Microsoft Internet Explorer to Windows Internet Explorer.

Google Calendar

Quick Digest

• This is why SEO (search engine optimization) is booming like anything
  


• MS followed Windows Desktop Search after Google Desktop Search
  


• Google launched Google Calendar
  


Waiting for MS follow up for calendar..

PJ is flying to Japan

Just a good news to share.. My friend PJ, he is flying to Japan for some conference. I dont know much about VOIP world, but he told me its not just any conference, but its one of the best conferences related to VOIP.
Great !!!