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Showing posts from February, 2008

Encouraging Diversity - Women Students from Engg. Colleges: Interested in joining Microsoft?

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Microsoft India is going to be conducting an All India Selection Test for women engineers who are completing their courses in year 2008. You have to be from Comp. Science/IT/Information Sciences discipline and completing a recognised BE/B.Tech/ME/M.Tech course. Students interested in appearing for this test will have to submit their resumes at www.merittrac.net/microsoft   with the last date of receiving the application being 1 st March 08. This test is being conducted on Saturday 8 th March 08  that coincides with the International Women’s Day across eleven test centers across India. More information on test centers, schedules, contact details for are also available at the above link. However, just clearing the test doesn't get you the Microsoft job. The students clearing this test will go thru the various levels of interviews before being made the offer to join Microsoft. This effort is a part of the diversity campaign within Microsoft. I think this is an "excellent&quo

Web 2.0 Storage: Skydrive is now RELEASED!

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Skydrive from Microsoft has now been released! Earlier, the free online space from Microsoft was only released as a BETA in 3 countries (I had written about it here )... with this release, Skydrive is now released to most of the world (officially to 38 countries) and hosts large storage of 5 GB :).. it was earlier only 500 MB when in BETA.. i have been sharing documents on this service.. everything has been perfect except when i wanted to share some ZIP files that created some problems.. however, with this release that error also seems to be fixed :).. welcome to web 2.0 storage! Technorati tags: skydrive

Games Everywhere: XBOX Live & at Zune

We all love games.. we all love XBOX.. we all love Zune... and now all of it is coming together... hey wait, I like to write games too.. so be it - one can now author games and run it on Zune and share it on XBOX Live! I personally think that this is a gaint leap for the Microsoft platform from 2 perspectives: It is community focused. The games that are authored by community members can now be shared on XBOX Live and downloaded for FREE! Interoperability between MS products at a deep level. Zune and XBOX both have direct dependency on the hardware it runs on and by enabling games to be written on both, MS has unlocked huge synergistic benefits.. sometime ago, i was thinking about Zune and wondering why doesn't it take benefit of Silvelight capabilites. going by the direction things are moving it may soon be a reality! One can develop these games using the XNA Game Studio 2.0 toolset for free from http://creators.xna.com .. there are already 7 games available on the XBOX Liv

New Version: Microsoft Forums

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Microsoft has been running newsgroups and forums to provide community support for its products.. incidentally, many MVPs come from forums where they are TOP contributors to the forums.. but this isn't about MVPs today :) i t is about MS forums... to begin with Microsoft used Community Server from Telligent to host its forums. And now they are revamping the same on to its own code.. in the background, there seems to be an entire Community Platform emerging with blogs, tags, forums & wikis within Microsoft.. (very much in line with MSs focus on community).. The new forums are available at: http://forums.msdn.microsoft.com/ http://forums.technet.microsoft.com/ http://forums.community.microsoft.com/ However, the older forums are also around and the migration will be done in a phased manner. there are plenty of exciting features in this release: · Dynamic Posting, Quoting and Paging: Now posting, quoting posts and paging in a thread are now all client site events. Users can post re

Learning game development with source code of Commercial games - Halo, Viva Pinata

After announcing the 2.0 version of XNA Game Studio during Gamefest's keynote, XNA general manager Chris Satchell also revealed that Microsoft will allow consumers direct, legal access to game content from a number of Microsoft-owned games. This license is to use and display Game Content and to create derivative works based upon Game Content and strictly meant for noncommercial and personal use. The licence is similar to the Creative Commons agreement that some writers and artists use to give their works free and open copyright to the public, gives users access to any game published by Microsoft Game Studios (but not any third-party brands). With this materials from Age of Empires, Forza Motorsport, Halo, Project Gotham Racing, Viva PiƱata and any other MGS game can be freely and legally 'remixed' by players. There are some clauses: the rights don't extend to music or sound effects, assets can't be used for racist, obscene or pornographic ends, and players can&

My Valentine - My Country

This valentine, I stepped back and thought - what is the one thing that i have fell head over heels for in the last year? i thought and thought... obviously, the first was my family! I always say - "you always carry something of anyone u meet".. and i am a little bit of everyone in my family!  so that doesn't qualify, as this love affair has been on for quite sometime :) since last year i have been more and more been talking about how great our country is now.. be it the relative safety of the known in here or the strong social and family network or the simple informal chats with people.. i have loved everything that India has given me.. at more occasions than once, have i found myself advocating being in India than any other country... and so i think my love affair in the last year has with my own country - India.. India is my valentine for this year! Happy Valentine's Day!

Microsoft proposes to buy out Yahoo!: Big fish to swallow

Microsoft Corp. has proposed to buy out Yahoo! This news comes recently after Yahoo reported cutting jobs due to decreased profit margins. Microsoft is already known very well in the desktop and enterprise server space. it has been trying to make a dent in the web application with its Live & MSN Services.. search, messenger, mail and a host of other services have been coming from time to time.. Yahoo is an ideal company to acquire to fill in the gaps in the internet space. Microsoft has been playing underdog in Online Advertising space which is dominated by single company - Google. if Yahoo is acquired, then Microsoft would be in a position to seriously challenge the online advertising giant Google. There is a lot of synergy that the content networks of both companies can leverage on.. the acquisition proposal is based on $31 (US) per share for Yahoo in a transaction that would value at approximately $44.6 billion (US) in cash and stock. this is at a 62% premium to its share va