when technology is a part of the whole!

From http://www.microsoft.com/msft/ REDMOND, Wash. — Jan. 26, 2006 — Microsoft Corp. today announced revenue of $11.84 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2005, a 9% increase over the same period of the prior year, marking the highest quarterly revenue in the company’s history. Net income for the quarter was $3.65 billion, which grew 5% from $3.46 billion for the same quarter of the previous year. Diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.34. Net results included $108 million, or $0.01 per share, in tax benefits. Operating income for the quarter was $4.66 billion, a 2% decline from the same period in the prior year reflecting in part the impact of significant sales, marketing and product development expenses associated with major product launches. “The growth in our core businesses was healthy during the quarter driven by strength in Server and Tools and the success of our Windows® Client products in a robust PC market,” said Chris Liddell, chief financial officer of Mi...

If you live inside Outlook the whole time or would like to read blog posts over email, here is a cool service that let's you do the same: http://www.rssfwd.com/ http://r-mail.org/ Actually, newsgator.com also provides a tool that is an add-in to Outlook that reads feeds like emails. for the above tools mentioned though there is no need to install anything on your machine which is cool! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

I am going to Trivandrum for the Community Launch there on Jan 21st. More details avaialble on: http://www.vslaunch.t-mug.org/speakers.aspx Addressing the set of developers interested in VS 2005 and SQL 2005, I will concentrate on two things: SQL Mobile (with a little focus on CF development on Mobile 5.0) Community Avenues You can prepare for the above two presentations using the following resources: SQL: http://msdn.microsoft.com/mobility/sqlmobile/ Community Avenues: http://www.microsoft.com/india/communities The last time i was in Trivandrum, it was for a presentation on Security Technologies for networking professionals. This time around too I am excited to be reaching the tip of India! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

So i really did go to Nagpur for the "Go Embedded". Once on the stage i could see the full house (i am told there were almost 600 people, mostly students). I guess the full house was attributable to the reputation that Yashavant and Asang enjoy as educators in the region. I am told on the dias that attendees have also come from neighbouring states of Orissa and Andhra. I am genuinely impressed. We start with a bouque for me and a gift (Oh wow!) Next is the traditional lamp lighting in honour of goddess Saraswati (the goddess of knowledge). This is followed by a joint session by Asang and Yashavant. It is very interesting to see the way the presentation is structured to make it more lively and entertaining. It is spread with little anectodes and little jokes. On the stage they demo several cool demos - Building an MP3 player, directX Game (Mario look alike), Bluetooth connectivity between phone and laptop and a sample device driver. The presentations were not cursory. They had...

I arrived in Nagpur and was greeted by a Computer Exhibition that was being held here called CompEx 2006. It was an exhibition of computer manfucaturers and the geek within me cudn't resist the temptation.. so i went and witnessed the revolution the computer industry is creating in lives of millions of people in India. the first thing that struck me on arriving there was the profile of attendees. A significant no of people were there from not so affluent class eager to see what computer industry has to offer (this is inspite the Rs 10/- enterance fee)! I think computers have aroused interest in all echelons of society now. You could see large pavilions from AMD, Microsoft, Acer, Lenovo, HP, Logitech, Intel and many other local manufacturers. If i have to hazard a guess I think there were more than 90 stalls there from various people of computer hardware industry. The product having maximum branding was Microsoft Media Center. I guess interest in the product that can "Pause...

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_art_of_evan.html By Guy Kawasaki : Tech industry’s first evangelist, worked for Apple Out of curiosity, I went to SimplyHired , a vertical search engine for jobs, and looked for openings containing the keyword “evangelist.” Amazingly, there were 611 matches--and none were for churches. It seems that “evangelist” is now a secular, mainstream job title. Indeed, the first eight matches were for evangelist jobs at Microsoft--go figure. As people hit the streets with this title, they need a foundation of the fundamental principles of evangelism. Fulfilling this need is the purpose of today's blog. Create a cause. As the previous blog called “Guy's Golden Touch” explained, the starting point of evangelism is having a great thing to evangelize. A cause seizes the moral high ground. It is a product or service that improves the lives of people, ends bad things, or perpetuates good things. It is not simply an exchange of things/services for money. ...

Nagpur in Central India is where i am headed tomorrow. I will be attending the "Go Embedded 2006" event hosted by Kantekar School of Embedded Technology. The event is targetted towards primarily students and various sessions will be conducted on embedded technology. Around 500 attendees are expected. More details can be found at: http://goembedded.kicit.com/?page_id=27 I have a 30 min slot to make my mark.. on my laundry list of items to present are: Demo a bluetooth application to manage my presentation Embedded Community Resources Code4Bill Contest SQL Mobile Quick Demo (maybe!!) MVP Program Is there anything else that i should talk about? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Q: [6] what are the scenarios for adding multiple devices (and consequently multiple SQL Server Mobiles) to sync with a single server and single SQL Mobile to sync with multiple SQL Servers? A: Case studies @ http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ce/productinfo/casestudies.asp would tell you mostly about why multiple SQL Server Mobiles are needed against a single SQL Server database. Q: [9] what are the scenarios for adding multiple devices (and consequently multiple SQL Server Mobiles) to sync with a single server and single SQL Mobile to sync with multiple SQL Servers? - i wanted to understand the technical scenarios for multiple sync. A: There are many scenarios where multiple sync can be a very useful feature. I'll explain one such scenario here. Take for example a courier company which has 1000 trucks to deliver couriers to all parts of a city. Each truck driver has a mobile device to improve his productivity. How would you leverage on these mobile devices and come out with the best t...

Celebrities worldwide have been marketed well. they have a perfume line, a restaurant, a clothes lines and a WEBSITE that dishes out all the juicy information. The publicists there do a good job. Here in India, cricket and movies are two things which are oft watched with interest (ok i intentionally forgot the "K" soap operas!) .. apart from the eye popping ad venues that cricketers make the publicity is limited to someone taking a bribe or someone lashing out at the coach :) In the cricket world, players have taken to: Commentary - Ravi Shastry, Kiran More Running TV shows - Navjot Singh Sidhu, Restaurants - Kapil Dev Well, in the FIRSTs to have an "Official" website of his own is Virender Sehwag at: http://server1.msn.co.in/SP05/virendersehwag/index.htm It is sure made well with lots of pictures of the star everywhere and provide details on Sehwag, his wife and few more details. There also seems to be a blog(called "Sehwag says") where Sehwag has made t...

I got a newsletter today from Office Live where i have registered for a beta. It talks about some very cool features coming: G et a FREE Web site with your own domain name, free hosting, online business applications, e-mail and more. Easily access your company e-mail, customer and project information from almost any Internet-connected computer. Make better use of your time and resources with one central location for your important data and smart, easy-to-use tools that can help you manage your small business. Streamline information sharing among employees, vendors and customers through a password-protected, private Web site. I am eagerly looking forward to Office Live whenever it is available. Office Live also marks a beginning to an interesting trend in Microsoft. IMHO, MS is moving more towards the ISP model through its live.com initiatives. it will be interesting to see the marriage of traditional desktop model and ISP model. ---------------------------------------------------------...

It was very cold TODAY.. Delhi recorded minimum temperature in a few decades. The chill is in the air. I like the cold climate (it is my favourite) and i cudn't ask for a better climate here :) One of the reasons why i love Delhi is the fact it does really have different seasons - summers/ winter/ rainy/ autumn/ spring.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

After the launch blitz of VS 2005, SQL 2005 and BTS 2006 it is time for the real guys to take it on - THE COMMUNITY! The community launches have begun. these are events sponsored, hosted and conducted by community - mainly MVPs. The first one is happening in Bangalore: http://groups.msn.com/bdotnet The first reports suggest almost 2125 people attended the first flurry of events that happened on Jan 7-8 in Bangalore, Chennai, Kurnool, Madurai and Coimbatore. Over the next few days, there will be more such launches. I know that on a single day, Jan 21, Hyderabad, Trivandrum and Kolkatta are holding their launch events. It looks like the community will rock with more than 6000 people touched when the community launch is all done :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Here is a post from an MVP who said it well: "We as community are growing at a very fast but controlled speed and at the same time the value addition is comming but from many limited directions. We have time and again discussed these issues , How much is enough and what else is to be done to complete this constant cycle of MVP Nirvana every year. It is not a matter of renewal for Award but much more than that. In the near foreseeable future We can feel the opportunities and challenges knocking our door. Being an MVP is not just seeking a title that lasts on a resume or Signature alias at the End of an Email. We must share the responsibilities bulletin that comes along with it. Techinically all MVPs are proficient in providing the feedback and helping the community online and offline with techinical question. But we need more participation at the root level. Keeping the community inspired and involving more people in this spectrum is the need of hour.I hope and expect much more wil...

Discovered this cool application that one can use to control applications on your PC using your Windows powered smartphone. The application uses bluetooth so you need to have bluetooth on your PC/ Laptop. I am using "Ranger" USB Bluetooth dongle to add the bluetooth functionality on my laptop. you will need to install the application (.cab) on smartphone. the cab gets installed with the available msi. the application can be downloaded from: http://btremote.selfip.net/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

I am working with DNN these days. On exploring the RSS module, I discovered that it only supports a single feed. I think there should be a module that should support multiple feeds. that way in a single page you can display information from more than one feed. Upon research, I found a paid module for the same at: http://www.dnncreative.com/Reviews/Modules/RSSFeedModules/OrizontiNukeFeedsv12/tabid/187/Default.aspx I am thinking that i should get the source code of any feed aggregator e.g. RSS Bandit, RSS Feeder and create a DNN module out of it. It might not be an easy thing to do and will take time to implement. do i have the time? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

We are pleased to introduce the following new MVPs for this quarter: Ankit Fadia, Windows Security Lakshmi Murthy, BizTalk Server Sanjaykumar Buragute, Win Embedded Venugopal Iyengar, Windows Security Mahesh Chand, Visual C# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

this will be my first new year post. New Year is here. Everyone is making resolutions and i was wondering what would I want to do in the new year. As i look forward to the new year, I would like to do the following: Be fitter. Not thinner. I would like to sweat more so that when i hit the bed my muscles ache. Take the message of MVP Program and community to everyone. I dream that everyone knows what is community and how to participate in communities. When once utters "MVP", everyone knows what is being talked about. I want it to be a household name. Make the MVP program come together as a team. In India, we have excelled as individuals but failed as teams. I desire that the MVP Program in South Asia excels as a team and shares the laurel of success together. Retain the MVPs in the program. MVP program is valid for an year. After every year, MVPs have to be renewed based on their contribution for the past year. Every time as we announce new MVPs we also have to announce the de...