Man Who Made It Possible...Bill Gates !!!

This is the end of an era that transformed people's lives like never before. Era which saw PCs reaching homes and everywhere. And everybody knows the biggest force behind this, not any Bill Gates, but THE BILL GATES. Now as he steps down, it remains to be seen what the new era has in store for us. This era was dominated by Bill Gates and no one can come closer to matching the great work he did. Also, the greatness of a person not just depends on how and how much he earns..but how he spends it! And the amount he is putting in for philanthropy work is commendable. Hats off to you, Sir.

There is an interesting thing you will see in the video. There is a photograph of young Bill in an advertisement saying "A computer at every desk and at every home running Microsoft software." Man, this is called vision and dedication.

Here are the videos prepared by Microsoft presenting the journey of the greatest man in the software industry...

Cool Windows Live Products !!!

Its been a long time that I wanted to use Windows Live Writer, but sign-on was making a mess of everything, including messenger. Now, as I formatted my machine and installed everything fresh, everything seems to be working fine now :).

Here are some of the products from Windows Live that I liked and found them to be useful:

Windows Live Writer

I extremely loved Live Writer...an amazing product from Microsoft. It's simple, yet it's extremely helpful. You can draft your posts offline and still view how it will look like. A whole array of tools for helping make your blogging experience better. While posting online, I always avoided posting photographs as it was a pain. But Writer makes it extremely easy and I was able to do loads of things with it. This post is my first one from Writer :). Other thing I liked was multiple weblog support under same roof. Publishing to different weblogs, including Sharepoint is pretty easy and I am able to manage my technical and personal blog using it. It's just like Microsoft Word!

Writer's architecture looks cool as well. It's a plug-and-play system. SDK is available at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa738906.aspx, which allows you to add new blog host support, add more plug-ins to Writer as well as create your own-custom UI for posting. Nice stuff!

Windows Live Spaces

I left my Spaces blog because of its inconsistent behavior. Visitors complained that they are not able to post comments properly. Its highly improved now and I may switch back to it with a new blog for my new group. It contains module to support HTML insertion just like Blogger, which can be used to add advertisements and news. Pretty cool!

Most interesting thing is its integration with SkyDrive. Few days back, I was discussing with my group that how could we distribute files and I found my answer. Put it on SkyDrive and share it! Features like alerts and sending messages through blogs is what we were looking for. Guestbook is another interesting thing. And there are more cool features available!!

Also, I investigated quite a lot on Web gadgets available as plug-ins. Being a .NET guy, I will certainly code a couple of them as per my requirement :)

But I still find it a bit slow in loading. I would love to see it loading faster. Other aspect that's missing is Comments Moderation feature, which makes Blogger pretty cool. But anyway, Live Spaces is good and with new features that will be integrated with it, will certainly make it more useful.

Windows Live SkyDrive

Online storage and management of files. It's nice but best part is its integration with Live Spaces. Files and folders can be shared and people can access it through shared folders. Pretty useful when used with Spaces.

- Mohit

Sony Vaio Rocks !!!

Yesterday, my laptop got infected with a virus in front of my client. I took her pen drive and plugged it in and went further without scanning. I clicked on a file which was actually a virus. You can say, it was carelessness or unfortunate that I had switched off Vista's Defender and have already removed Norton Anti-Virus (because it's a bigger headache than a virus as it makes the performace of the machine pathetic). At first, my task manager got disabled. And as I restarted my machine, the screen went blank after log in and Ctrl+Shift+Del was not even giving me Task Manager. Bad enough, I could not perform a single action. I restarted the machine thrice just to avoid the embarrasment of an empty screen. Even, safe mode was of no help!

Then I brought in My Vaio's Recovery Tools to picture. From the boot menu, I selected to recover my machine. In a single minute, I was back to the original state of the machine. It cleaned up the virus. And I didn't lost any data !!!

Right now, I am in no mood to put in technical stuff. But must say, I took a lot of time to decide on a machine and I am glad that I choose a Sony Vaio CR series model - CR24G. Sony Vaio Rocks Man !!!

Software - Can Aid In Spreading Awareness!

Recently, while browsing through new ways of software development, a thought crossed my mind. I am not sure if it's already happening or not but why can't software help in spreading awareness among people? Why can't they offer constructive suggestions to people without actually being linked to subject of software? I believe, they definitely can!

Software industry is already huge, and is growing! Today, it touches millions of lives. All that is required is a little space from the software. That space can be utilized to spread awareness among people about anything - Environment, efficient use of resources, diseases, their rights - almost everything! Software could be for an insurance company but messages could be like "Keep your city clean and green." These kinds of messages may sound irrelevant at one point of time, but constant use of it will help in spreading the message.

Today, developing a software is no big deal! Following this, we can actually take software industry to a new role completely. Because spreading awareness is not just the job of government and NGOs. Let us contribute to this as well...