when technology is a part of the whole!

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 d...

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...

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 a...

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...

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...

In the past days, I haven’t been blogging. A lot has happened in that time – terrorist attack in Mumbai, MNS lost track, global recession set in and Congress advanced in the country. Here’s an ode to the state of the society as viewed by my nephew, Shantanu Chandra who is in Class XII, Amity International, Gurgaon. The lines below capture the times prevailing and the need for us to drop the “chalta hai” attitude but with caution: This techie world of gizmo and gadget This eerie feeling of incongruous widget Which gives us pleasure and takes pain Along with it makes us insane; Absurdness to such a horizon from where one would never fall And still people call you “Microsoft—…That’s all” A teen like me can’t do without a mobile-call Even though I know it is killing my brain cells, after all; This techie world of gizmo and gadget Makes a non-techie guy weird and hollow The bureaucrat are more concerned about their Sunday meal Than to serve the poor people whose w...

One of the biggest grouse that I had heard from community was that MS development tools were very expensive for people in India. Specifically, students mentioned that it was impossible for them to get the products due to them being expensive. In the first step, Microsoft made available Express edition of the development tools freely available for everyone. And now, hold ur breadth, it is making the development tools (full editions) available for FREE for students. The products now being made available for FREE are: Operating System: Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition Development IDE: Visual Studio 2005/2008 Professional Edition XNA Game Studio 2.0 and 12-month trial academic subscription to the XNA Creators Club Designer Tools: Expression Studio 2 (includes Web, Blend, Media and Design), Database: SQL Server 2005 Express, SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition, What is great is that Microsoft is making available the entire stack from Operating System to devel...