Microsoft provides unlimited support for Vista SP1 users

If you have been having issues getting that driver to work with the Vista SP1, help is at hand.

Free, unlimited installation and compatibility support is now available for all customers using Windows Vista SP1. If you are in India, you will get email and phone support. the phone support is available from 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM from Monday to Friday.

All good things must come to an end and so does this offer that will end on March 18, 2009.

More information on this offer is located here:

http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?LN=en-in&prid=11274&gprid=500921&x=6&y=2

So get your Vista SP1 issues ironed out today! and yes if you do use this facility, drop in a comment here on how it felt interacting with Microsoft Support Services.

Windows Vista – Underestimated?

Some facts (and not opinions or hearsay) about Vista:

1. Worldwide Reach: Over 140 million licenses sold to date.

2. Adopted as fast as Windows XP: Millions of enterprise seats deployed, and growing on pace to deploy at a similar rate to Windows XP among businesses.

3. Enhanced Security: Less than half the vulnerabilities of Windows XP; a machine is 60% less likely to be infected with malware vs. Windows XP

4. Hardware Compatible: Over 79,000 devices and components are supported out of the box – 47,000 more since RTM.

5. Application Compatible: Over 200 Line of Business applications unblocked, 99 percent of top selling consumer applications are compatible.

6. Solid Performance: In recent tests, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 was noticeably more responsive after rebooting than Windows XP on several common business operations.

7. Total Cost of Ownership: Reports show $251 per mobile PC per year in cost savings.

8. Energy Efficient: Energy savings of $38.3 thousand per year for a well-managed 2,500 PC organization.

Some Positive articles about Vista in press:

· CRN, “Shout it from the rooftops: Vista’s more secure,” http://www.crn.com/software/205918138

· CBS News, “Don’t Fear the Vista from Your Windows,” http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/30/scitech/pcanswer/main4218082.shtml?source=search_story

· CNET, “Microsoft to businesses: Now is the time to switch to Vista,” http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9959703-7.html

· Wall Street Journal, “Vista Looks to Pioneers,” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119007886334230695.html

· PC World, “Windows Vista: 15 Reasons to Switch,” http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,128656/printable.html

· TheStreet.com, ”Why Upgrade to Vista?” http://www.thestreet.com/funds/goodlife/10356669.html

Technorati tags: tags, vista, windows

Silverlight 2: BETA 2 Releasing

Silverlight 2 BETA 2 will be releasing later in this week. Silverlight 2 improved over Silverlight 1 by incorporating .NET CLR in it thereby immensely improving the usefulness..

The BETA 2 now takes Silverlight 2 to “Enterprise Ready” status with a commercial go-live license available… Some improvements included in BETA 2 are:

• New and improved controls (over 40 new controls - button, check box, date controls, gridview, layout, TabControl, text wrapping and scrollbars for TextBox, and for DataGrid additions include Autosize, Reorder, Sort)
• Networking improvements (cross-domain networking support for calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS, and standard HTTP services, upload support for WebClient, and duplex communications)
• Data handling Improvements (can now provide one way or two way databinding to any number of data sources including LINQ)
• Improvements in error handling, reporting and development experience
• Updates to Deep Zoom and animation  (XML-based file format for Deep Zoom image tiles, as well as a new MultiScaleTileSource that enables existing tile databases to utilize Deep Zoom. build ads that plug into Silverlight and work with myriad network and syndication providers in the ecosystem)
• Updates to ensure WPF compatibility
• General improvements in performance and keyboard input support

One of the beacon deployments of Silverlight is going to be at Beijing Olympic Games where it will be used to  deliver an exclusive access to over 3000 hours of live and on-demand video content.

Silverlight 2 is going to debut in Fall of 2008.

Can you think of getting left behind?

Technorati tags: silverlight 2, beta 2, RIA

Microsoft launching marketplace for Experts

Microsoft has seemingly launched a new site - http://taskmarket.com/ that is meant as an exchange for freelancers and experts. It is in the lines of international sites like elance.com, getafreelancer.com, guru.com and limeexchange.com

At the site, you are required to register with a unique username and provide your paypal ID. The site offers the options to:

•  Post a Job
•  Search for Jobs
•  Subscribe to e-mail alerts to be notified when jobs you are interested in are posted
• Fill out your profile page

The site is very new (most of the jobs posted had the date for 3 June i.e. TODAY).. by industry sources this market may be as large as $10 mn by 2010.

This is especially relevant to India as most of the technical jobs are done here. The no. of freelancers are only set to explode in the coming days!

Technorati tags: microsoft, taskmarket, freelancers

Virtual PC releases SP1: Build a machine inside ur machine today

Microsoft has released its service pack for the Virtual PC 2007 software. Virtual PC is a Windows software that lets you “virtualise” computer hardware so that you can run heterogeneous operating systems on your machine – actually much better than dual booting option…

If you followed my twitters, I had been trying to get a VPC running with Windows Server 2008 Standard Core. It was unsuccessful. Even after successful completion all i would get is a black empty window.

With SP1 release now following OS support has been added:

Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Server® 2008 Standard
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3

And now i have been able to create my VPC successfully..

SP1 is now available at Microsoft download.

But before you go building ur VPCs here are few things i learnt (and you should too):

1. I started with a Core 2 Duo machine with 2 GB RAM. You need a BIG machine to get started.
2. Ample free space on your primary Hard disk partition is required (around the size of OS ur trying to install). I started from 2.21 GB free HDD space and while building the VPC only 826 MB remained.
3. If you are using virtual hard disk make sure you provide it room to grow to the maximum available size on the HDD. (The recommendation for Server 2008 is 512 MB RAM and 65536 MB HDD space.)
4. Close all applications esp Internet Explorer. The Virtual PC consumed from 5- 50% of CPU and around 43 MB of commit memory size. However, IE was a memory hog with all its add-ins..
5. The final install of Windows Server 2008 Core is around 1.5 GB on HDD.

Start buildling ur VPC today!

Technorati tags: virtual PC, Windows Server 2008 core, creating VPC, SP1

OpenXML wins ISO Standardisation and gets Better with Community

The FINAL verdict on ISO standardisation is out and OpenXML is now an ISO standard.

This standardisation process (that has consensus at its heart) has given an overwhelming endorsement (with 86% of voting national bodies) for ratification of OpenXML as an ISO standard.

The ISO standardisation process has strengthened the OpenXML standard making it much better than ever before. What is even better is that OpenXML is now in stewardship of the community and NOT “owned” by any company. The real motives  behind the protectionist “Open Source” (what a fallacy) lobby now stands exposed..

A lot of countries changed their votes from “No” to “Yes” after their comments were addressed during the Ballot Resolution Meeting process. While the LITD 15 Committee at the BIS didn’t endorse the OpenXML standard but the positive endorsement of various industry bodies and India’s leading IT companies prove that OpenXML has opened up a huge business opportunity for everybody! It has the potential to become the next Y2K goldmine that most of the Indian companies owe their fortunes to..

Another debate that gets settled is that we do need different standards as much as we need different products in the ecosystem.. the strongest standard would only gain widespread adoption and will survive! we don’t need to artificially create barriers for standards or products..

However, the work for Microsoft has only begun.. it needs to continue to work in an open & collaborative manner with various bodies and continue to bring more standards to marketplace.

And the community can reliably start building solutions using OpenXML standard. Here’s what one of my friends from community suggested someone should do - “Build a lightweight FREE application that people can use to author OpenXML documents on their PCs”.. now let the innovation begin!

Related Posts:

Witness the Academia - Industry divide!

OpenXML and ISO standardisation: Community contribution shines

OpenXML: Microsoft gets it right, will India too?

Use Java with OpenXML

ECMA approves Office Open XML as a standard - MS Office becomes standards compliant

Technorati tags: OpenXML, ISO, India

Witness the Academia - Industry divide!

The latest on the OpenXML ISP Standardisation debate is India’s choice to vote “NO” for the Open XML to become an ISO Standard by the BIS committee. the voting pattern was - 13 Against, 1 Abstain and 5 For. So who were the 5 voting for the OpenXML – Microsoft, NASSCOM, TCS, Wipro and Infosys... all of them are BIG IT giants (leaving out MS from this as it is expected to be pro OpenXML) employing thousands of people.

A lot of credit for India’s resurgence in the global landscape can be attributed to these IT industries.. Since their businesses come from a variety of technologies (including Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, SAP etc.) these are truly vendor neutral organisations!

Now, in Sept 2007 BIS had raised 82 Comments for Open XML. On completion of BRM, all 82 comments from India were resolved by the committee. One would expect the committee to then vote “YES” for the standard.. So the question is then why would BIS still choose to vote “NO”?

Maybe the answer lies in understanding the psyche of the remaining participants. from the documents listed on the BIS website (thanks for the transparency BIS), the “rest” seemed to be obvious anti OpenXML lobby (e.g. FSF, IBM) and then the professors from institutes like IIT Delhi, IIT Mumbai.. now i don’t have any less respect for these institutions but from the voting patterns it is clear that these institutes seem to be totally out of sync with the industry stalwarts..

this "out of sync” behaviour only goes on to reflect the reality in Indian education system where large no. of graduates from engg. institutes are largely unemployable. i feel that these institutes should stay in sync with the industry.. only then can our country, industry and the students remain at the forefront of the world!

Technorati tags: OpenXML, india

Making Vista Search your PST Files

Vista can index a lot of files and for some reason it doesn’t index the MS Outlook files.. maybe it is as Outlook is already doing the same.. in case you still want to search PST from Vista Search here is what you can do:

1. Go to the Control Panel
2. Choose "Indexing Options"
3. Click on the "Advanced" button
4. Click on the "File Types" tab
5. Check the checkbox next to "PST" to include it in the search
6. Select the bullet next to the option "Index Properties and File Contents"
7. Click OK and OK again on the message that appears.

This is especially useful for information workers like me who have large PST files and are forced to archive from time to time … indexing the archives would return the information from these forgotten folders as well :)

Tip taken from On10.net

Technorati tags: Outlook, PST, search

OpenXML and ISO standardisation: Community contribution shines

I have been following Open XML for some time now and have earlier posted my views on why OpenXML maybe good for India? Here's the latest from the OpenXML ISO standardisation process after I made the last post:

After India saying "NO" to the standard in Phase I of standardisation process, various worldwide committees (and hopefully Indian as well) participated in the meeting in Geneva to resolve the technical comments made by various committees ( in jargon - "Ballot Resolution Meeting" or BRM). By the end of this mammoth five day meeting, 98.4% of the comments (1011 out of 1027 unique comments raised earlier) were resolved (ISO release on the process). IMHO, this is a true example of community contributing to developing a standard and improving it by collective wisdom. Microsoft has in some terms for the first time come to a platform where it is open to review from various companies and nations...

and there has been one good action from BIS, India and that is to make its member's participation, views and stands clear on its website. With this information, one can objectively access what is BIS thinking and why? Earlier, the whole process seemed to be run behind an iron curtain. I really laud the step in the right direction for BIS by providing visibility into this whole process. i have downloaded the objections raised by various people and looking at them to understand their concerns and gauge their thoughts..

I also came across an interesting article by Jesper Lund Stocholm who represented Denmark (apologies & thanks for the correction Jesper) in the above meeting:

http://idippedut.dk/post/2008/03/Why-ISO-approval-of-OOXML-is-not-an-option.aspx

Jesper provides an interesting insight on how IT industry benefits from standardisation of Open XML on similar lines of my thoughts. From there another post from Patrick Durusau came to light. Earlier in July during the Phase I voting, Patrick who was the Chair of committee set up to examine Open XML had recommended disapproval for OpenXML. However, now pleased with the community participation in building the standard, he has decided to recommend approval of OpenXML as ISO standard. He seems particularly pleased with the fact that Microsoft is listening and incorporating changes requested by its members. He offers his thoughts in very interesting but equally thoughtful anecdotes.

The one SHOCKING piece that came to my attention was that IBM India had written mails to its partners asking them to "influence" our national bodies. The grip of establishments like IBM is clear by the assertions made in the email. The abstract from the letter can be found here. What is even more appalling is the brazenness with which IBM is assuming that they are the ones voting and not the national body of India -BIS for this standard!

In my view with the latest developments, the ISO standardization process has only reinforced the openness that Microsoft is committing itself to! It is also indicates that Microsoft is learning to work with the community and this step is sure to make Microsoft products more beneficial to customers.

Just like multiple products in market (e.g. MS Office and Star Office) enhance the value to the customer, multiple standards also enhance that value (e.g. WiFi & WiMax, GSM & CDMA) to customers by bringing the advantage of technology advancement to customers quickly.

I would urge BIS committee to keep the larger interest of IT ecosystem in India in mind when deciding on issues like these. Ulterior motives of organisations should be understood fully and we should not be held hostage to anyone (read IBM and their memo)..

Some other posts from people in India on OpenXML:

http://vasudevg.blogspot.com/2008/02/common-myths-about-open-xml.html

http://dotnetjini.jigneshdesai.com/dotnet-whidbey/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=12

Technorati tags: OpenXML, ISO, India

Office Live Workspace Available NOW

  Office Live Workspace is now available globally! Microsoft Office users will be able to use the English version of Office Live Workspace beta, a free Web-based extension of Microsoft Office, to save and access their works online and easily collaborate with others, whether they live in Australia or Singapore or India or Canada.

When u sign up, you should install an addin to your Office applications. This addin provides an additional menu in Office applications that lets you save and retrieve documents from Workspace directly! This enables multiple people to work on the same document. And you can create various kinds of workspaces to categorise the work you are doing!

With the activity pane, you can also track what changes are being made to the document.

but saving documents (excel, powerpoint or word docs) isn't the only thing you can do here! Check out this screenshot that shows other things that you can include in your workspace:

And using Workspace now comes with a windfall gain -  there is a sweepstake that is also available for users in US..

if you haven't started using workspace yet, start immediately and experience the power of collaborating!

Technorati tags: workspace, office live

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

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" effort to encourage more diversity within the organisation. However i do think that there are few things that MS may also want to ponder over:

1. Does diversity mean women only? IMHO, diversity means people from all walks of life and that may include people with special abilities and needs e.g. handicapped people in terms of mobility, vision, hearing.. Diversity also means people from poorer section of society. It may also mean people from the "hijra" community who are generally ostracized from the community. I haven't heard of these people whenever i hear of diversity in here!
2. Parity of salary levels between new hires and existing employees. Not being from HR, I can only rely on unofficial sources and they tell me that compensation parity doesn't exist between new hires and existing employees. Since MS policies don't allow sharing of compensation data or it being made public, this one is a difficult one to be specific about. However, i know that organisations go to great lengths to ensure this and wonder if MS India thinks of this at all?
3. I have often heard from MS recruiters on how irrelevant it is that a person comes from a specific educational background. you can find employees in MS from diverse backgrounds as well.. How come this initiative is only limited to engg students then? How about bright girls from B.Sc., MCA & other disciplines?

MS India benefits from the global learnings and the time it has been in business. I sincerely believe that this is a great beginning to encourage diversity within MS. There are hardly any other companies in India who specifically have such initiatives.

MS policies on the whole are very intelligent and I hope that in future MS will think about the above points as well. i know that it is easy to preach than practice but this will genuinely take the diversity in MS to the next level.

Technorati tags: recruitment, jobs, microsoft, india

Web 2.0 Storage: Skydrive is now RELEASED!

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:

1. It is community focused. The games that are authored by community members can now be shared on XBOX Live and downloaded for FREE!
2. 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 Live from today!

but to build games for Zune you will have to wait for XNA 3.0 to be available later in the year (with a preview in April 2008)...

Some key features that will be available:

• Ability to support local ad-hoc wireless play with up to 8 different Zunes.
• Discoverability/access to user’s music – allowing the user to customize background soundtracks or create real-time visualizations

Now i think Zune is more social than iPod and is definitely a better player than iPod.. hope that the community takes to developing these games quickly! i for once would like an "Abhishek" authored game to debut on Zune devices!

for indian software industry, this opens up new opportunities of developing new age games.. for mobile game developers distribution of their games was a big issue.. with XBOX Live opening up, there is potential for them to reach out to a larger set of audiences..

Technorati tags: XNA, XBOX, Zune

New Version: Microsoft Forums

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 :)

it 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 replies or quotes to thread without having to wait for the server to reload the page. These features makes the application snappy, dynamic and friendly.

· Inline Posting: New posting of questions or replies keeps you on the same page which you can still scroll and see the contents of as well as page through the threads or posts while creating your message. This allows you to “Multi-Quote” when replying to a thread. This makes it easy to respond to several posts in a single post.

· Thread Preview: This allows users to view the first 20 posts of a thread in line without needing to commit to a post back or page navigation. Users can preview threads and then decide to dive in and participate.

· Real Time Updates: Every page updates with new activity. Home pages update to show changes in recently online users, forum pages continually update to show recently updated threads and new posts pop up dynamically to users viewing threads.

· Code Formatting and Spellchecking: Users have the ability to include code and format it to the specific code language. C++ users want their code to look like C++ code. People adding XML want it to look like XML. This is now possible with the latest editor. Users can also spell check their posts if they so choose.

· Proposed Answers: Any user can now more actively participate in helping other users by selecting "Proposed Answer" in any question thread. This should help others that have the true authority to validate the answers, Moderators and Question Askers, find questions that may be very close to being resolved.

Community Features

· Online Avatars

· Recently Online

· Filtering By Users: Users can scope down the list of contributors to a particular thread by simply selecting the user filter bar. This is especially useful for users who know "who" they are looking for and want to see contributions from trusted sources.

· User Recognition and Affiliation: A medals recognition system rewards users for their participation. This can help users understand whether the source of a post is from a novice or someone who has invested a lot more time and effort in continual online forums participation.

· User Based Tagging: Users can apply tags to threads which help other users find content the community find relevant to a particular term. Users can select multiple tags, every one, applying a more targeted query to refine the pool of threads.

· Browse Users: Simply browse the user list and review any user's recognition status or last participation date and clicking "view threads".

Discoverability Enhancements

· Enhanced Filters: A powerful set of additional filter options allow for finding threads of various types, states and properties. e.g. a moderator can look for people that have posted questions with no replies that include code snippets.. Better yet, these filters can also be subscribed to as RSS!

· Tag Browsing: Users at any level of the forums application (brand, forum or thread) can find threads by tag.

· Top Level Filter Entry Points: Users that always like to start off at the top level of the forums list can now quick link into the unanswered or answered threads in the forum of their choice. This saves what used to be three or more clicks, anchoring the user into a context pre set for them.

· Search Result Filters: When search results come back and seem overwhelming users can select a filter for various thread states and properties. Users can choose to select only answers, only questions or any of these threads that may contain code.

the base to a successful community is the community platform it uses.. with this release, MS has reaffirmed its commitment to the community!

What remains to be seen in such a high usage site is how well will the site be able to run without any hiccups? MS has a lot of experience running high traffic sites and this should be also run smoothly.. but u can never be sure of 1-2 bugs lurking in the vast expanse of code :)..

IMHO, Microsoft should also think about releasing these community platforms for the community so that community software on .NET technologies become more widespread!

Technorati tags: community, microsoft, forums

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 Piñata 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't claim to be adding 'lost chapters' to Microsoft IP, plus they have to add clear '©' and related disclaimers to their resultant creations. They also can't reverse-engineer the games, either.

However consumers may now use gameplay footage, screen shots and other gameplay elements to, says Microsoft "express their own imagination and creativity".

More details can be found at Microsoft's official 'rule' list for the agreement.

Technorati tags: game, development, XNA, microsoft

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 value on Thursday..

Microsoft is not new to making acquisitions from a diverse set of companies.. integration with Yahoo would present a huge challenge and a test of all the acquisition skills that Microsoft has built up till date..

More information here: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080201/microsoft_yahoo.html

Yahoo has not yet accepted or declined the offer.. so what are your bets on successful acquisition?

Technorati tags: yahoo, microsoft, acquisition

OpenXML: Microsoft gets it right, will India too?

What does being an Indian meant to me till now? i think it has been assimilating various cultures in my personal value systems and being better than all of them.. the sum of all is greater than cultures added together..

OpenXML is the same.. it provides a culture new to us that promises efficiencies in the future.. it is upto us to take up all that is there and make a story better than each of them put together.. different cultures, different standards have been always beneficial for the world leading to choice & ensuring the survival of the fittest... if TCP/IP was not given a chance in the world dominated by Novell Netware's XNS stack, would Internet ever be around?

OpenXML is the "opening" up of Microsoft Office. the earlier binary format of MS Office is now available for viewing & working upon by anyone. This has been a long way for Microsoft when in 2004 EU recommended that MS opens it Office formats. there may have been licenses granted to 3rd party developers for building products but OpenXML makes it available to all the developers of the Microsoft Technology ecosystem.

Microsoft does get things wrong but with OpenXML it is bang on target.. why shouldn't it be when OpenXML was formulated out of concerns of the community that uses its products. MS first decided to present OpenXML as an ECMA standard in 2006. i had posted about OpenXML being adopted as an ECMA standard here.

Next when it was put forward to be ratified as a standard from ISO, India decided to vote against the same in Sept 2007!

This I think is primarily against Indian values of giving everyone a fair chance! here are some of the reasons that India should reconsider their stand on OpenXML:

1. Microsoft technologies are an ecosystem like any other technology. Killing a standard here amounts to killing an ecosystem! does india want its IT story to turn sour? Not only Microsoft ecosystem but also Java ecosystems as OpenXML can be leveraged from Java as well. Here is an example of using Java on OpenXML.
2. OpenXML provides an opportunity to convert numerous Office documents of yesteryears to be converted to open format so that it be maintained and acted upon now and in future? OpenXML ensures long term preservation of content.
3. OpenXML is technically superior to competing formats given it has support for custom schemas i.e. for any document format that your company devises. Not only this, it has great accessibility support and focuses on maintaining fidelity in the office documents.
4. Does Govt. of India want to be seen as a closed economy or be seen as a cultivator of open economy encouraging better products and services?
5. The OpenXML standard is available for FREE and there is no IP issues around the same. Given the freedom that OpenXML provides, what could be so wrong with OpenXML?
6. Microsoft as a company has given many good products and technologies to the world (including the now famous AJAX)... why should a company with such wide penetration and technical depth be not supported in opening up its technologies to the world?

One does wonder though if OpenXML was developed by Microsoft to serve it "secret" purpose? In fact, the standard was developed in consultation with a lot of companies and many others have already implemented support in their products e.g. Apple, Corel, Novell, IBM (Websphere Portal, DB2 Content Manager V8.4, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Symphony & DB2 9 pureXML) & Google (use filetype:docx, filetype:xlsx, filetype:pptx in your search terms).. Now doesn't it seem ironic that many of these companies are at forefront of opposing OpenXML standard?

There are primarily 2 reasons for this contradiction:

1. Some companies want to use the standardization process as a barrier to trade.. getting a standard disapproved shields them from ever facing competitive threats in the govt. procurement. this should never be allowed to happen!
2. Given widespread adoption of MS Office technologies, these vendors don't want to be cutoff from the opportunity OpenXML brings about in the market.. we should welcome the move as it encourages competition.. what can be more exciting than an IBM product that does a better job handling Office formats than Microsoft does :) ?

So what is the current situation and do we have a second chance to correct our mistakes?

As of now, MS has provided solutions to all 3,522 comments that were raised on the specification by various national bodies. This gives India time will Feb 25th to study the specifications after which there will be a Ballot Resolution Meeting in Geneva from February 25 – 29. Following this conference, the National Bodies will then have 30 days to evaluate their final position on OpenXML as a standard.

And if there is a 3rd party non-sponsored indepth report one may wish to see on OpenXML, here is one from Burton group: http://www.zdnetindia.com/index.php?action=articleDescription&prodid=16128&biznews=biztechNews

And here's the community that supports OpenXML: www.openxmlcommunity.org

I hope when the time comes to finally vote, we stand true to our character of being Indians & embrace all the variety that world has to offer to us..

Technorati tags: openXML, india

Outlook satiates at 3GB

Well u can say that i am a power user of Outlook :).. i realised this recently when my local PST file went to about 3.3 GB... i was blissfully unaware till -

there were no mails coming to Outlook anymore.

so how bad did it look