Windows Vista and Office 2007 were launched officially on 30th Jan 2007 and we at Bdotnet launched it on 3rd Feb 2007.
I gave the keynote for Windows Vista followed by Office 2007 by Sridhar Pabbisetty. This was followed by series of drilldown sessions on features of Vista, Office 2007, WPF, WF, WCF, MOSS.
More details at
Bdotnet
Guess who will be there?
-Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft Corporation
-Anil Kumble, Indian Cricketer & Director, StumpVision (P) Ltd.
-Yash Chopra, Producer, Director, Writer – Yash Raj Films
-Rajnikant Patel, Managing Director and CEO, Bombay Stock Exchange
-Tarun Gulati, General Manager, DPE, Microsoft Corporation, India
-Raj Nayak, CEO, NDTV Media
-Anupam Mittal, Chairman & Managing Director, People Group/Shaadi.com
-Neeraj Roy, Managing Director & CEO, Hungama
-Jaspreet Bindra, Country Manager, MSN India
-Leon Brown, Regional Designer and User Experience Lead, Microsoft Corporation APAC (Singapore)
-Pandurang Nayak, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation India
-Deepak Gulati, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation India
-Dax Pandhi, CEO, Nukeation Studios
-Gurpreet Pall, Director, MSN India
-Janakiram MSV, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
-Bob Muglia, Senior Vice President, Server and Tools, Microsoft Corporation
And who else Me :)
Why you should also be there?
If you are a web developer, AJAX enthusiast, A UI freak, this is a place u have to be, the most awaited event of the year.
Moreover, its a perfect mix of Technical enthusiasts, Bollywood and Cricket!!!
Where it is?
National Centre for the Performing Arts
Nariman Point,
Mumbai 400 021
India
Well if you can't make it to the event.. catch the extravaganza on web! Register for the webcast now and catch up the latest craze Mandira Bedi as your host for the day, and win some cool prizes :)
Check out
Indimix06.com
My 2 cents ... This is
indeed a very strategic move. On the outset, it may seem odd. But indeed there
are many aspects that make this deal a wonderful one.
Novell supports Mono. Many companies are using Mono. Many companies are going live with products on Mono. Mono is also has a roadmap for WPF, WCF release in near future. Watch out for Olive. Development is happening almost in same pace as .Net releases with a acceptable delay. Microsoft can also help Mono to have better compatibility with Microsoft OS.
Novell has good Server market presence almost like windows
which has good Desktop market presence. Interoperability between
Windows and SUSE Enterprise Linux Server (SLES) on virtualization,
Microsoft's Active Directory and Novell's eDirectory,
and Microsoft Office and OpenOffice XML formats
on the desktop would be the best outcome of this collaboration.
It makes perfect sense for Microsoft to go ahead with
Novell than any other linux vendor because, Novell is not bound to Linux and has products
both on Windows and Microsoft. Novell on the other hand gets legal status
for SuSe Linux. Linux could violate 283 patents!
More Microsoft products can be ported to Linux, like SQL server, Sharepoint, Exchange Server, etc for Linux
servers!
Microsoft Open Specification Promise can help people develop better interoperable webservices for cross platform products to work seamlessly. A good consolidation move to allow new market of mixed source products. Host a ASP.Net app on linux, run a .Net windows application on Linux. That opens up a plethora of opportunities.
And... soon we can expect .Net 4.0/VS.Net 2008 to be released over Windows and Suse Linux on
same day:)
Indeed a nice move, and it would be interesting to watch new wave
of services and products on both platforms.
How many times have you ever wanted to have intellisense while writing a stored procedure/SQL statement? I would say almost every time! I bet we all had used to keep the table schema side by side, so that we could see and type or copy the table name and field names. Recently, I got a link from my friend about this cool software. RedGate software has introduced a brand new add in called SQL Prompt that can give you just that feature integrated with your SQL Manager !
Btw, for now it is free ... only for few days ... so hurry! Download it! and say good bye to additional window for database schema :)
Financial Times reported this article saying that Kerala has chalked out a plan for migrating its high school students to free software platforms in three years. Report says this applies to all government schools. Another statement that is of concern is 'In the current year, class VIII students have shifted to Linux. By 2007, class XI students and by 2008 class X students will follow suit.'
This sounds bit outrageous because students will be forcibly influenced with this kind of political and somebodies' [ u know who ] propaganda. Student phase of life like soft mud. Teachers are given that wonderful right to mould them and give them a nice shape. Its good that students will be taught a new OS, new kind of applications, what is open source, how can one contribute to open source projects etc. But why deprive the knowledge of Microsoft products which are most widely used across world. By the time these children come out to job market, they would be deprived from the opportunities from the major chunk of job market, the work on Microsoft technologies. By these kind of rules, politicians and some individuals are playing with the student's future.
During student phase, students should have a choice, not a forced propaganda of some political group or some individual. By this kind of rules, student's creativity and learning capabilities will be limited. Let there be a level playing ground where both Microsoft technologies and Open source technologies be taught. In that way, students will make a better choice of what they want.
More of this here, here, here and here.
Took a session on AJAX and ATLAS as a part of BDotNet fortnight sessions. Session covered history of AJAX, need of better UX, ATLAS along with demos of Server Centric and Client Centric ATLAS applications.
BDotNet, the largest usergroup in India moved its venue for sessions to NetKode premises and timing also changed from Friday evening 6pm to Saturday afternoon 2pm.
I got renominated as 
for ASP/ASP.Net!
Thanks to all who made this possible :)
6 Indian MVPs including me, are giving Webcasts this month. Attend these LIVE Webcasts by experts from Microsoft and get on to the edge of the steep-learning curve. Participate in the contest during the Webcast and take your chance to be one of the 2 lucky winners to win an Orchid Music Player.
Details are http://www.microsoft.com/india/webcasts/
My session is on June 28th, 2006. It is based on VSTS for Architects.
Session Abstract: Visual Studio 2005 Team System now has range of features for Architects who till now had to rely on various disparate products for Architectural diagrams. The purpose of this webcast is to create the application diagram and explain the flow of information through the entire system while showing off the Distributed System Designers found within Visual Studio 2005 Team System.
Click here to register for my webcast
Yes TechEd India is here! Check out the site www.techedindia.com for more details. Date and venue details are as below.
June 5-7, 2006 @ Taj Palace, New Delhi
June 8-10, 2006 @ Le Meridien, Pune
June 12-14, 2006 @ Renaissance, Powai, Mumbai
June 15-17, 2006 @ Chennai Trade Center,Chennai
June 19-21, 2006 @ Shilpkala Vedika @ Hyderabad
June 22-24, 2006 @ Grand Ashok, Bangalore
I will be attending TechEd in Bangalore from June 22nd!
Catch up pulse of Teched at http://forums.techedindia.com. I am there and invite you also to join me :) Post your concerns, issues, interact with experts, learn the basics required for some sessions, post your blogs, overall... have a pure tech fun :)
Lets rock TechEd :)
Yes.. we have launched a company and the name is Zealous Solutions Pvt Ltd :)
Checkout http://www.zealousnet.in
Details will follow soon :)
For the first time, MEDC is starting with India. MEDC-India 2006 is Microsoft's largest mobile and embedded technology focused conference in the subcontinent. I volunteered to proctor some labs for MEDC-India 2006. This presented me an opportunity to explore solutions with the experts behind the technology we use every day.
Keynote session was cool with amazing demos. To beign with I attended Gaurav Khanna's 'Symbian and Windows Mobile: Side by Side' session which compared basic differences with Symbian and Windows Mobile. Then I attended Gaurav Khanna's 'Developing Applications Using Location Based APIs' which uncovered the usage of GPS APIs which mobile devices can take advantage of by writing more location aware applications. Later I attended 3 MED Solution tracks which consisted of 'Building Enterprise Grade Mobile Applications' by Ravi Subramanyam , 'SIP based VoIP Client for Windows Mobile Platform' by Murugesan Natarajan and the most impressive 'Smart Store' by Suresh Kumar.
On the second day, I attended 'Enterprise Mobility Solutions Development' by Vineeth Gupta, 'Ultra Mobile PC: Origami' by Kenneth Vassallo 'WISP and WISPlite' by Saurabh Kapoor followed by 'Microsoft's Mobile PC Road Map: Today, Tomorrow and Beyond' by Kenneth Vassallo again and 'WEPOS: Developing POS Applications' by Sean Liming. The main highlight of the event was Ultra cool Origami :)
The closing ceremony was fun filled and a winner (forgot the name) won a TVS bike worth Rs.59,000 and two others won Pocket PCs and Smartphones.
Third day, it was just Hands On Labs [HOL]. I proctored all 3 sessions. First was 'Building Data Change Notification Framework for .NET Compact Framework 2.0/Windows Mobile 5.0' by Gaurav Khanna, followed by 'Building Scalable Data Replication Models with SQL Mobile' by Sachin Sinha. The last HOL was 'Visual Studio for Devices' by Amit Ranjan. Amit highlighted some of the less known numbers which can allow users simulate a outgoing calls and SMS using emulator for testing :)
Overall a wonderful experience :)
In response to the primer session I took some days back, pre-final and final year students of UBDTCE, Davanagere requested a 2 day hands on lab. On 4th and 5th March 2006, I was with them.
On first day, I started the session with basics of .Net followed by hands on coding of simple windows applications, components, web services, web applications, mobile and pocket pc applications. Examples of VB6 examples and C/C++ references were used alternatively to help pre-final students understand the similarities and differences between those languages and C# and VB.Net. By the end of the session, students were very much comfortable working on C# and VB.Net.
On the second day, I interacted with students on types of projects they are doing, how they can do them better, how .Net can help them to do the job quickly and efficiently. I suggested many projects that students can do for academic projects and updated them about Imagine Cup and Microsoft Academic Projects Program.
Overall a wonderful experience :)
NIT Durgapur hosted an annual tech event called Aarohan2K6, on Feb 17th to 19th, and was invited to present a topic on 'Student Project Opportunities with Microsoft'. The session covered basics of .Net, possible applications that students can build using .Net framework, Imagine Cup, Microsoft Academic Projects Program. Best part of the session was interaction with students at the end where students ranging from novice to experienced .Net users got answers to their questions. During my 3 day stay there, many students discussed their projects. I was really impressed by some of the student projects and was happy to suggest some improvements, embellishments, and share some radical ideas.
Was judge for paper presentation. Enjoyed late night quizzes from Parnab Mukarjee and Arul Mani. Had very less time to spend with Arul. Really enjoyed his picture round of Quiz. Got to spend good amount of time with Parnab. Hats off to his way of quizzing. The second quiz started on 1am of 19th and concluded at around 6am.
Another wonderful event was star studded panel discussion. An event organized by literary wing of NIT, had invited Mr. Amit SenGupta from Tehelka background, Ms. Rashmi Bansal of youth magazine Jam, Mr. Sudhir Mishra the man who directed off beat movies like 'Is raat ki subha nahi','Chameli', and 'Hazaro quaishe aise', moderated by the quiz master Parnab Mukharjee.
The last event I witnessed was Srijan, a open house model presentation, where students presented some creative software applications. I had good interaction with all students who participated in Srijan. Some .Net applications by students were real cool :)
Overall, wonderful event and was real glad to be part of it. Kudos to Abhijit Mehta and other organizers for job well done :)
After the most successful Indian launch of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 by Bill Gates on 9th December, India's biggest usergroup BDotNet arranged for community launch of the products with help from Ineta. Event was held in NMKRV College Auditorium. Agenda was as below
Day 1
09:00 - 09:30 Registration Starts and Get a chance to talk with the experts
09:30 - 10:15 Intro to VSTS
10:15 - 11:30 VSTS Team Architect
11:30 - 11:45 Break
12:00 - 01:15 VSTS Team Developer
01:15 - 02:15 Lunch Break
02:15 - 04:15 Smart client and ASP.NET 2.0
04:15 - 04:30 Break
04:30 - 05:45 VSTS Team Test
Day 2
09:00 - 09:30 Get a chance to talk with the experts
09:30 - 11:30 SQL Server 2005 for BI (SSAS + SSIS + SSRS)
11:30 - 11:45 Break
11:45 - 01:15 SQL Server 2005 for Programmers
01:15 - 02:15 Lunch Break
02:15 - 03:15 SQL Server 2005 for Customers (Exploring High Availability)
03:15 - 04:15 SQL Server 2005 for DBA (Security Features)
04:15 - 04:30 Break
04:30 - 05:30 SQL Server 2005 for Performance Tuning (New performance tools)
I took session on VSTS Team Architect session covering the major four designers for Solution and Infrastructure architects; Application Designer, Logical Datacenter Designer, System Designer and Depolyment Designer.
On Friday evening, I took a session in BDotNet, one of the largest user groups in India. The session highlighted MVC [Model-View-Controller] pattern, its usage and implementation. This session was a continuation of the community chat anchored by me last month.
After a brief presentation, we had a chalk talk, where we asked for a general application problem from audience, we analyzed it, discussed how we can implement this pattern, the facts that have to be taken care while designing, how to break the application into different components, how this pattern allows scalable architecture, how to make the application easily extendable, advantages and disadvantages of pattern etc.
Hope to do more sessions on design patterns soon :)