My Election Wish 2009 #indiavotes

India is going to be voting soon. I have been thinking on how we can improve the whole political process and quality of candidates. The systemic issue with our voting process has been that educated people have stayed away from voting. IMHO, the reason being they don’t want to sweat out standing in a line or going to the nearest booth for lack of simple amenities.

I think there is a simple solution to the above available via technology. EC should make available voting via internet. If this made available, educated people who have access to internet and feel unmotivated to visit the election booth can vote via a very personal device – their computer. this would reduce burden on the voting booths and hence the expenditure for EC. also, the chances of fradulent/ bogus voting would be reduced as it will be difficult for anti-social elements to reach everyone’s home (rather than the voting booth).

I have heard people say that internet is not available for everyone. I agree and I am proposing this as an additional channel that people can vote through. I am NOT suggesting rooting out our traditional voting booths.

the next issue is that of verifying identity of people who vote via internet. until the National Social Security No. (NSSN) is not implemented, one could use PAN ID for this. A large section of people in India, who are educated, already posses their PAN ID. I already submitted my tax returns online last year. So, our income tax infrastructure is already ready for online usage. EC could simply link up the PAN IDs and make it available for voting.
to avoid duplicacy, EC would still need to link up Voter’s ID with PAN ID. or it could bring out a notification mentioning people without voter’s ID could self-declare and use PAN ID to vote online.

to me the challenge for implementing the above solution is political rather than technical. there exists little to NO political will to get this system implemented.

This is my election wish for the year!

What do you think?

Microsoft makes its Web Design tool FREE

Today, everyone has a blog. Everyone knows how to design a website (atleast with the right tools).

To support this new era, Microsoft is making available its web design tool FREE for everyone. This free tool (called Sharepoint Designer 2007 or SPD) has been made available at http://www.microsoft.com/spd to download. Sharepoint Designer is successor of the FrontPage tools that many of the people  are already aware of. In addition, this tool has excellent support for customizing the FREE SharePoint Services app that comes with Windows Server.

One might think that by releasing this software for free, Microsoft may be abandoning Sharepoint Designer. However, that’s not true. Sharepoint Designer will continue its development and next version will be released in the future.

While SPD is free, Microsoft also has a professional suite of web design tools available – Expression Web.

Lately Microsoft has been making available many of its tools available for FREE e.g. SQL Server Express, Visual Studio 2008 Express, Live Essentials, PhotoSynth, Accounting Express, Virtual PC, WW Telescope, Windows Defender, Windows Sysinternals and many more. IMHO, you can run your complete business with the above set of free products from Microsoft – NOT a penny to spend on MS software…

New Version of Windows Live Mobile released

Today Microsoft has released a new version of Windows Live client for Windows Mobile devices. If you are using any of the Live services – Live search, Messenger or hotmail, you want this locally installed on your Windows Phone as well.

the download can be accessed from: http://wl.windowsmobile.com.  The version currently available is v10.6.0046.0800.

the exciting addition to this suite has been inclusion of Live Messenger that was earlier taken out of the Live Mobile suite. so, now u can be on IM even when you are on the move. Live Messenger works well over GPRS networks and let’s u have text conversations with your Live Messenger contacts.

If you don’t want the client on your mobile, you can access Live services with web browser at: http://mobile.live.com

Technorati Tags: live,mobile,windows

Windows Phones gets a lot of Bling

 Today the twitterverse is occupied with news of skype releasing apps for iphone. Well, that is old news for Windows Phone users: http://skype.com/download/skype/windowsmobile/

But today, Microsoft Phones are getting a lot of bling.. Here’s some of the bling it is getting:

1. MySpace now enables use of Silverlight on their site
   With its rich media capability is going to be a big help to all the musicians and actors on myspace :).. Tomorrow, the SDK to develop this application will be released on the CodePlex Open Source site.
   In addition, Windows Phone will also be getting an app for Myspace users soon. In fact, plan is to enable Windows Phone users to experience other  social networks right from their Windows phone, including Facebook and Windows Live.
2. Windows Marketplace for Mobile
   Windows Marketplace had been announced earlier (to be available later in the year) and today they talked about few additional things. Marketplace will be available as an Windows Phone application on Win Mobile 6.5. Customers will have the option to purchase applications on Windows Marketplace for Mobile with a credit card or have charges appear directly on their phone bill. In addition, people will be able to return an application after purchase within 24 hours for a full refund. Microsoft also announced today that developers will now be able to deliver updates to their applications for free throughout the application lifecycle.
   It costs USD 99 for developers to onboard an app in the Marketplace and they get to keep 70% of the revenue generated from their apps. 
   Microsoft announced it partnership with a lot of companies (representing the top-selling categories of mobile applications) who will be onboarding their apps to Marketplace including EA mobile, Accuweather, Resco, Spb Software
3. New Themes from professional designers
   Microsoft has announced new partnerships with the Design Museum London and Council of Fashion Designers of America to will offer a variety of free designer themes for Windows phones.
4. Make your own theme
   A new Theme Generator will be made available to personalize Windows phone. The Theme Generator will be available at http://www.windowsmobile.com later this year. The theme generator will enable Windows phone users to select pictures from their PC to set as background images, as well as choose colors to personalize their navigation bar, scroll bar and highlighted text. Once finished, their personal theme will be sent to their phone.
5. Windows Live for Mobile and Hotmail
   A new version of Windows Live for Mobile will be available for free download this week for customers in 25 languages. Windows Live for Mobile includes mobile versions of Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Contacts, Windows Live Spaces, Microsoft Live Search and enhanced photo upload capabilities.
   This will be available for Windows Mobile 6.x phones at http://wl.windowsmobile.com on April 2.

Come to think of it, Microsoft is embracing all the good things it has learnt from the mobile developments in the past and incorporating them at a rapid pace. However, lack of low end phones still continue to hinder its wide scale adoption. Now would someone offer me a Rs. 10,000 Windows Phone?

To see a browser – Take off its clothes

This is from a recent trip that I took and met few people who were Firefox users. Most of them were using FireFox at home and IE at work.. and most of them felt that FireFox was “faster” –meaning it would load websites faster and FF itself would load faster..

So, I devised this test and called it the “Naked Browser” challenge. Are you upto taking this? Here is what were are trying to do – kill most of the add-ons in IE and then test it against FF. Here are some step by step instructions -

1. Make sure you are running the IE8 Release Candidate 1. To make sure that you are on this version, just go to IE Help menu and click on “About Internet Explorer”. you should see Release Candidate 1 mentioned as follows:
2. Go to Tools –> Manage Add-Ons. In the Manage Add-Ons window, click on each Application and disable the add-on. You can can disable the add-on by clicking on the “Disable” button located at bottom right, once you have selected the application in the upper window.
3. Next, change the home page for both browsers to the same website of your choice.
4. Finally, close all the browser windows on your machine. You are all set for the challenge to start.
5. Browser load test: Start both the browsers by clicking on the shortcuts on the taskbar one after the another. What browser did you see come up faster?
6. Browsing Speed test: Type your favourite website address in notepad and copy it in memory (Ctrl + C). then in each browser, paste the URL (Ctrl+v) and press go button. Watch for the status bar at the bottom of browser window to say “Done”. Which browser completed loading the website first?

Do let me know what you observed on your machine?

In my experience, IE 8 WAS faster than FireFox in most of the cases for browsing speed and load test. I am using Vista SP2 RC. I will soon be sharing the screen recording of what i experienced shortly here.

also, Microsoft seems to have just released a study that validates what i just mentioned. A Microsoft video has also been released to demo the same. The study has detailed steps on how to test the browsers yourself (much detailed than the one detailed above by me).. in the report, out of 25 websites IE was the fastest for 12. FireFox was fastest in only 4 and in remaining cases Chrome was the fastest.

Take my “Naked Browser” challenge now and tell me what you see!

Technorati Tags: naked browser,IE

What’s your Phone Ishtyle?

Internet is spread with numerous surveys you can take to know yourself. From what cricketer are you to what colour are you, everyone has taken a survey of some kind. The surveys are a lot of fun and very entertaining.

Now Microsoft offers to tell you your Phone personality or Phone Style. It will ask you 5-6 questions and then tell you your phone characteristics.

I took the interesting quiz and here is what it said for me:

I’m Always in Control

On a good day, success means a leisurely game of tennis or lazing at the swimming pool. At other times, you’re travelling for a project and meeting challenging deadlines. Work or play, Windows Mobile puts you firmly in the driver’s seat.

The suggestions offered to me were HTC Touch Viva and ASUS M930.

I would say it is pretty much on mark :)

And the site even offers you a Windows Mobile phone as a prize and for that you will need to refer a few friends to the site and complete a slogan..

So, if you want your phone to do more for you, head over to:

http://www.whatsmyphonestyle.com/

Technorati Tags: mobile,style

Search for Voice: Microsoft Recite

Microsoft Recite is a search technology for your voice that runs on Windows Mobile 6.0 or higher devices. With Microsoft Recite, you can use your voice to easily store, search and retrieve the things you want to remember, where and when you need them. Recite even lets you remember and search in multiple languages.

You can record your shopping list, friends’ birthdays, addresses, school happenings, gift ideas, get-togethers, favorite wines… anything you might need or want to remember later. Later, you just need to search with your voice and it retrieves all recorded notes.

How Does It Work? 

Microsoft Recite’s voice search works by voice pattern matching. It analyzes the patterns in your speech and finds matches between two recordings -- the notes you stored on your phone, and the search you do using your voice. This is different from speech recognition, which has to accurately convert spoken words to application-readable input.

The free software can be downloaded from: http://recite.microsoft.com

Feedback can be sent by clicking the ‘Feedback’ button on the above web site.

 

Technorati Tags: recite,search,voice

Win32/Conficker.B/Downadup infections

Reports of a new worm Conficker, Kido or Downadup are doing the rounds. Win32/Conficker.B exploits a vulnerability in the Windows Server service (SVCHOST.EXE) for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Windows 2008. Attacked systems may lock out users, disable our update services and block access to security-related Web sites.

Microsoft addressed this issue in October with Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067, and Forefront antivirus and OneCare (as well as other vendor’s anit-virus products) helped protect against infections, many systems that have not been patched manually through Server Update Services and Microsoft/Windows Update or through Automatic Updates have recently come under attack by this worm. The systems which have already applied the out-of-band released MS08-067 in October 2008 are protected, unpatched system user have experienced system lockout and other problems.

However, given the present spread, Microsoft has taken the following additional steps:

1. Updated the January version of the MSFT to detect and remove variants of Win32/Conficker.B.  You can download this version from the MSRT from either the Microsoft Update site or through its associated Knowledge Base article.
2. Created the KB article 962007 “Virus alert about the Win32/Conficker.B worm” to provide public details on the symptoms and removal methods available to address this issue.
3. Announced the release of the items and the virus threat itself on the Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog.

The recommended step is to apply MS08-067 to any other unpatched systems as soon as possible to avoid this threat.

Technorati Tags: microsoft,worm,infection

In recession – Cut Costs: Microsoft India Shows How

The one thing i keep hearing everyday is cost cutting that is going on everywhere. Layoffs are more drastic of these cost cutting measures. Our company has also done its own bit of cost cutting (without firing anyone yet!)..

Microsoft India has launched a website - http://www.controlcosts.com/ that can help enterprises cut costs. The site showcases prominent Indian business leaders at the site.

To start, you just choose the scenario that you think is creating cost bloat in your organisation and the site will recommend tools and technologies that will help you streamline that process.

At the site you can also pre—order the CFO toolkit that contains 10 ways to control costs. In addition, the site features a bunch of case studies from customers who have experienced cost savings.

If one wanted to setup a discussion on cutting cost with an expert within Microsoft, they can do the same at the site.

In the current times, this is an excellent move by Microsoft to help the customers solve their real business problems.

Technorati Tags: control costs,india

Microsoft launches Answers website in BETA

Consumers worldwide now have another way of seeking help from peers. Microsoft has today launched Microsoft Answers BETA: http://answers.microsoft.com/windows for providing community support for Windows Vista. If you have an issue or want to learn a few things about Windows Vista, this may be your destination.

Microsoft Answers Website is:

· A rich, interactive community self-help experience moderated by Windows Vista support engineers.

· One place for consumers to quickly and easily find Windows Vista support content from Microsoft and the community.

· A site built with consumers in mind—from content to tone to aesthetic.

Till The landscape for Windows community support has been dominated by 3rd party communities e.g. neowin, winsupersite.

If you are in India, there is an option that you may want to explore. The community at www.merawindows.com has been active for more than 2 years and has an impressive base of over 6000 users. The forums are extremely active there and the latest news is shared by community from all over India.

Check Microsoft Answers and let us know what you think about it!

Technorati Tags: microsoft answers,forum