when technology is a part of the whole!

everyone loves taking pictures. some take it seriously :) Microsoft (in India and few other Asian countries) is now running a contest to award great shots you take from your cameraphones or SLR. Prizes include HP Pavilion laptops and HP printers. The themes are “Food”, “Culture” and “Architecture”. So, just walk around and click anything that you find interesting that fits in these themes. To participate and learn more, visit: www.projectshutter.com , Project Shutter community: www.projectshutter.spaces.live.com Technorati tags: project shutter , photography

if flash can do it - Silverlight can do it better! i have seen animations being made but i was still waiting for a Silverlight game. and now i found one - Zero Gravity! while the game in itself is very simple, it does demonstrate the ability to do great games with Silverlight. The game took  about 4 weeks and a team of 5 (designers, developers, animators/artists) using Expression Design, Expression Blend 2 and Visual Studio “Orcas” to develop this Silverlight 1.1 game. The game Zero Gravity is available at: http://zerogravity.terralever.com/ or http://www.ltbennett.com Technorati tags: zero gravity , silverlight

I wanted to try the new Live Messenger 8.5. Live Mail and Live Writer 2 and so downloaded all of them. However, the installation didn't complete - actually it just died silently each time i would start the same. a fix was available on liveside.com (one that worked for me) and there seems to be an official fix for this: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!D85741BB5E0BE8AA!1368.entry Technorati tags: live. microsoft

The Outlook Connector beta allows those who use Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 to manage their Windows Live Hotmail e-mail, e-mail folders and contacts right from within Outlook for free. This was previously available as a subscription service ($19.95 a year), but is now being offered more broadly, and for free. You can take advantage of the rich capabilities that Outlook offers even when offline. Outlook Connector also provides the ability to use advanced contact management features in Outlook to manage your Windows Live Hotmail information like the new Business Card View, Instant Search, and the ability to sort contacts by criteria like location or category. Additionally, any changes made to contact information in Outlook will automatically synchronize with the web version in their Windows Live Hotmail account. Outlook Connector beta download URL http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7aad7e6a-931e-438a-950c-5e9ea66322d4&displaylang=en So get your hotmail mails

Apple Inc. has released a BETA version of their internet browser for Windows - Safari. Apple is known world over for their "cute" designs and this one was supposed to be no different. Based on Apple's reputation of style I went ahead and installed Safari on my Vista PC (aero enabled) from www.apple.com/safari The installation went fine and was quicker than that for IE 7 (given it validates genuine Windows PC, installs malicious software removal tool) etc. However, it did try to install additional software that it thought was useful for me and the ones that i respectfully didn't install. I am a first time user of Safari and some of my initial impressions are as follows: Safari takes longer to start up than IE. While starting IE on my machine is a snap, it takes longer for Safari to start. While Safari makes a claim on it being faster than IE, I would not agree with the same. At best, they both load at the same time. The text comes out rendered very well on IE and Safar

WMDC has made a new release as v6.1. WMDC is the next in line for what is called ActiveSync and is meant for Windows Vista. WMDC when it was released had a lot of issues - connectivity etc. With the release of WMDC 6.1 many bugs have been ironed out and IMHO, is ready for prime time. Get your download at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/devicecenter.mspx

It is well known and observed that blogger templates can be tweaked to get the desired results. searching the web here is a site that i discovered that really presents tips and tricks: http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com