Vishnu

Happy New Year

Vishnu — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 17:00:00 GMT

Wishing all the people, their friends, enemies, competitors reading this entry a very

Happy, Exciting and Competitive New Year.....

It has been a while since i posted some useful content to my blog. Apply polly logies for the infrequent entries to the blog. The year gone by has not been particularly bad. I had my fair share of luck. I do not really believe in any resolutions as they are always broken by me within the first two weeks. Never the less, i have promised my mom few thing(s) and expect that i would rise upto them.

I was quite busy the past few months working on Live Gadgets with a lot of help from my brother. There were a lot of things on my plate and i was not quite managing them well. I am currently working on getting a good hang on gadgets. I was named as an evangelist on Live platform in my organization and expected to take some sessions on them. This does require a great deal of commitment and hard work, to say the least.

Please do drop in some comments and suggestions on what kind of gadgets would interest you. I hope to put the gadget (a cricket score) i am working on for download once its in a working state and when i get a sign-off from my brother (who actually wrote the code!!! for me)

This bog has truly given me a lot of visibility (and appreciation) and helped me become more professional. My blog was voted as one of the BEST Developer Blog in India. Wow..So i am a Microsoft BlogStar. I never ever expected it to come my way. It's my obligation to my blog to reciprocate the favor. So please feel free to send me your harsh comments in case you do not find the blog updated frequently

I believe one of the main reasons why the gadget stuff i am working on is taking more time than expected is because i am really not comfortable with Java Script. I am not trying to give any excuse here, but believe that these are the general views i found both online and off line.

SQL Server is the most SECURE Database

Vishnu — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 15:38:00 GMT

Yes.. Thats right...
Study has shown that SQL Server is the MOST SECURE Database. It outbeats Oracle, MySQL, Sybase and DB2 in a study conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group in Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) data.

<Wiki>
CVE: The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) list provides an index of standardized names for vulnerabilities and other information security exposures - CVE aims to standardize the names for all publicly known vulnerabilities and security exposures. The CVE database is operated by the MITRE corporation, and is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security
</Wiki>

The study goes on the record saying that "ESG considers Microsoft, with proper execution, to be years ahead of Oracle and MySQL in producing secure and reliable database products"...which is definetly a shot in the arm for Microsoft. Microsoft is currently facing severe criticsm from its "ally" Symantec and McAfee for locking down its kernal in Vista and not "allowing" third party software to run properly.

A paper available at Microsoft website which compares SQL Server 2005 and Oracle 10g on Security shows that with the same level of security features in both databases, SQL Server 2005 is significantly cheaper to purchase and own than Oracle 10g for the same functionality. The paper also talks about "Which database is more secure?". The interesting part is the way "secure" is defined. The paper says "Measures of how secure a database server is should include how many security bulletins, incidents, or advisories have been registered against the database. Security bulletins show the track record of the vendor regarding security".

Going by the security bulletins, incidents, or advisories Oracle tops the list. I believe advisories, bulletins and incidents alone wouldn't suffice. They are just couple of parameters in the complex equation. Nevertheless.. it still doesn't take away anything from Microsoft.

Why on earth does the world need another search engine?

Vishnu — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 16:36:00 GMT

This is exactly what Microsoft is asking? This part of their new campaign for Live Search hitting the news stands.

Have a look at it, yourself

Trick or Treat!!!!

Vishnu — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 08:38:00 GMT

Happy Halloween

Got some time...then listen to Yahoo Podcast on the history behind Halloween.

View your website in 30+ browser's : www.BrowserShots.org

Vishnu — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 23:44:00 GMT

This site is pretty cool.

It allows you to see your, for that matter, any website of your choice in 30 browsers. It has support for Linux and Mac (oh.. do people sell them!!!!) .

Just submit the website you want to view and the job is queued. You can even set the maximum wait time. Once the wait time elapses, the screenshots are displayed on your browser. You can also see your ticket in the queue.

Happy Blogging

First look at Google Applications for Your Domian (beta)

Vishnu — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 08:01:00 GMT

I got a beta invitation for GAYD, Google Applications for Your Domian, from google last night and quickly got down to work. GAYD consists of Email, Chat, Calendar and Domain web pages.

Before you can get started with GAYD, you need to 'claim' that site you registered for the beta testing is actually your's. For this, you just need to upload a html file with verification code to your website.

When you sign into GAYD, you are presented with a sleek dashboard with all the bundled services

User Accounts:

You are allowed to create upto 25 user accounts for your domain. You can either type all or some of the 25 user accounts

or you can save them in a .csv file and upload them. There is a specific format for the csv file. The account with which you have signed in wil be the admin account and rest are limited account(s).

Email: The flagship of google, Gmail, is perhaps the only reason you might want to consider GAYD. To get started with Email you need to change the MX (Mail Exchange) record in the DNS. Its advised to delete the existing MX record and then add any new entries. You can contact your Web Hoster for the specific steps. Its normally found under the DNS tab.

The Gmail Inteface provided under GAYD is same as the one found in the Gmail. Absolutely no change. The only change perhaps is Powered by Google image at the bottom of the page instead of (C) Google found in tradiotinal Gmail. The Email interface also supports the built in messenger service as found in Gmail. Yes...You also have the flexibility replace the Gmail logo at the top left hand corner with any custom image. Each mail account has 2GB capacity. When you log into your mailbox you are not left with an empty mailbox!!!! As a bonus you get 2 mail messages. Both are from Gmail team promoting their products like Google Desktop and Picasa. Yes. Everything is the same including the contextual advertisements on the right side of your mail.

Chat:
To get the Chat working you dont have to do anything. That is the best part!!! 30 mins from the time you log in to your Dashboard, the chat would be available. You just need to download the client and sign in. All the features available in Gtalk are present. You can call people, leave voicemail and pretty much do everything you did in Gtalk.

You are also adviced to setup XMPP for the chat. XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) is an open, XML based instant mesaging protocol. The help link suggest that you edit the Service Record (SRV) and suggests the values you need to provide. You are better off not worrying about this. The main reason being you will never be able to find the SRV settings in your Domain Control Panel.

Calendar:
There is again no difference between the Google Calendar and the one given away as part of the GAYD. How can there be any difference, both are powered by the same codebase. You can also find the calendar link on the top left corner above the logo in your dashboard and mail interface.

Domain web pages:
You need to change the CNAME record in your domain setting for publishing the web pages. A CNAME record or Canonical Name record makes one domain name an alias of another.

This is a 3 step process. In the 1 step you are asked pick up the address for your website

In the 2 step: you need to confirm the same. Caution: Once you confirm this step you will not allowed to change the address after this step.

Since my site is already hosted, i didnt proceed to the third step. I presume you wil be asked to edit the CNAME with the values provided by Google. You can change the CNAME settings in the DNS section of your sites's control panel. If you skip this step you still be able to create web pages but you will not be able to publish them to your site.

Highlights:

You can check both gmail and GAYD mailboxes at the same time. ;-)
9/10 people would not be able to say if u r using GAYD or Gmail. And if you dont happen to change to your custom logo, then make it 10/10

Lowlights:

Looks like google was late by few months on releasing GAYD. Microsoft has gone live recently with Live Domain which was in beta for nearly 6 months or more. Live custom domain also offer similar package. Except that the Messenger was not part of the package.
Of the 4 packages rolled out so far, only Gmail and Gtalk (if you consider Gatlk as an IM client) would be their selling points. Look at my previous post on Google Talk on analysis and market share of Gatlk. Google Calendar and Google Web page creation are just for increasing the package count. Web page creation tool is still a very primitive product by any standard and it never really took off. Google Calendar is still used by the Anything But Microsoft, ABM, group and again in that by the very small subset of die-hard googler's.

Strategy:
Microsoft does provide all these features and more under their Live umbrella. Microsoft still has a headstart of more than 6 months when compared to google. We still believe that Google has rolled out a half backed product. Google should have added few more of their goodies into the GAYD. It could have integrated the Google Video, Earth and the ability to post to blogger from a single interface or from gmail. If only someone would have bothered to lookup in their impressive product list

One thing is proved for sure. Software as a Service is here to stay. Its not just a mere marketing ploy like Web 2.0. This reminds me of my fellow blogger JayaDev's favourite quote.
"What's web 2.0 ?"
"Something which produces more RSS than Revenue" ;) [If you know what he mean]

Happy Blogging

Microsoft investigates leak of "Office" videos

Vishnu — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 02:45:00 GMT

Microsoft said on Tuesday it was investigating how two in-house training videos made by British comedian Ricky Gervais , creator of "The Office" television series, appeared on Web sites. It appeared on YouTube and Google Video, Altough it was pulled off from YouTube, its still available in Google Video. The Office is a mock documentary set in a company whose politically incorrect manager, David Brent, believes, wrongly, he is amusing and popular. "These videos were produced for internal use and were never intended to be viewed by the public," said the company's spokeswoman.

You can watch the Videos Here and Here

Happy Blogging
:B

Google Adsense installed on my site

Vishnu — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 16:28:00 GMT

Finally got Goolge AdSense to add some advertisement on my site. Google SiteIndex added to my site too. Its almost like a kid's stuff. Here, i would like to talk about this amazing product called Community Server. Our University Science batchmates are planning to build our own website (finally!!!). Some of us are working on web technologies and most of them are not. So we are having some hugh chain mails running in our google group. I proposed to use Community Server to power our site. But we have a difference of opinion here. Some of them want to host it on some LAMP thing.... (Dont know exactly what it is....) So we are in the process of finalizing in coming week (hopefully). This being the main reason why i want to use all the happening things on my site. And Google Ads are the in thing now. So got my site to display the first batch of google ads with just few lines of code. Also letting the Google Spiders to crawl on my site. As of now, the website, tentatively is to be called http://platform9.net. I hope to use this blog site as a Proof Of Concept (POC) to demonstrate the RAW power which Community Server Provides. And not to forget the innovative, stunning support of the community. Mind blowing. The moment any new thing comes up, people get started on writting mods/add on's/plugin's for it. The latest being the Windows Live Writter about which i blogged. I thought i was the first from our community to get a post out from it. But i was pleasently surprised when i saw more than 10 to 12 post before me. And couple of our active members are even started writting gadgets for it. Phew...

The bare minimum which i can do is to pass on the knowledge to the newbee's. I am writting an article on adding Google Sitemap and Google Adsense to the site. I hope it sees the light of the day very soon. I also have some Knowledge Sharing stuff on SQL Server 2005, SSIS packages. I hope to complete them soon.

Do click on the Goolge ad banner on the top of the page, atleast just for fun!!!!!

Happy Blogging
:B

IE 7 RC1 available

Vishnu — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 04:22:00 GMT

Good news, IE7 is out of beta now. Bad news, it requires Genuine Windows OS to run. In case you happen to use Genuine Windows, you download IE7 here.

On a different note, here is more evidence of the well know Memory leak in Firefox. I have noticed this more often now-a-days. I use IE 6 and Firefox @ home. Firefox a.k.a FF has lot of known issues. For apparently no sane reason, FF hangs. This is noticible when my system does not recieve data from broadband connection. The number of tabs opened are less then 4. Also, there are no extensions installed.

Worst, when FF dies and i try to resurrect it again by opening it again, it does not show up. It stays in memory and keep hogging memeory. I think, it is time Google stop promoting FF for personal gains and look at Opera or Safari. Wonder if there is any hidden conspiracy by google here. Its trying to sabotage FF and come up with its own Browser. Its no secret that G funds Mozilla. Its time Mozilla start thinking on its own. End of the day its business and Google knows how to be in business..

Google Analytics Results

Vishnu — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 01:47:00 GMT

Now this is what i call 'NO-Nonse blogging'.
The results are out.... Barely after a week into blogging, my blog is going places...

The first results are out from Google Analytics... and they are pretty impressive. Without any delay, i shall present them to you....PV, are you listening..

The Site had....
21 views from Mountain view (61.7%) (USA)
1 view from Fort Collins (2.94%) (USA)
1 view from Lodi (2.94%) (USA)
1 view from Round clock (2.94%) (USA)
1 view from Edmonds (2.94%) (USA)
1 view from W Westminister (2.94%) (USA)
1 view from South Bend (2.94%) (USA)
1 view from Columbus (2.94%) (USA)
1 view from Tehran (not sure if the click was intentional!!!)
3 fom Bangalore (8.8%)
2 from Hyderabad (5.8)

My conversion rate also looks pretty good (as of now).. 64.15% users are coming back to view. What puzzles me is 13% of people came to the site from 'google'. My blog is not listed on google. I tried sending random queries with my sites meta-tags... It wasn't in the top 10 pages. The only way you can reach the site through google was by typing the entire url of the site. 15% are from digg which is quite understandable given the fact that my post on Yahoo Easter Egg was dug by 19 users and counting. I do have some vistor from "blogs.msdn.com", "some IP" and "(other)".

The browser segment is quite interesting... 75% of the broswers used are IE and Firefox has 22%. So is the IE browser share gone down?... Hope not....The satisfying thing is there is no Firefox 2.0 beta browser but there is an IE7 beta 3. Cool..

There are a lot more analysis, graphs present in google analytics. Need some time to go thru them and 'plan a strategy' for the site...

One thing puzzles me... What is that people would like to see "in blogs". Got some great hits in short span of time. In case you happen to see this post, do spare few keystrokes for me. Do people want some casual read, techno gossip, current affairs. If only someone can answear this, they are surely going to RULE THE WEB.

PS: Thanx for the hits. Keep them coming.

<<Time for Some Serious blogging>>

Microsoft Offers To Help Firefox Run On Vista

Vishnu — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 17:10:00 GMT

Now..this is official.....

Microsoft has offered support to FireFox and Thunderbird to run on Windows Vista. Sam Ramji, Director for Open Source Software Lab, has written to mozilla that he has setup office space, hardware, VPN access, 1:1 with product team, support team at the Windows Vista Readiness ISV Lab. He also cross posted it to Mozilla dev planning group. Read the entire letter here.

Below are the content from the mail posted to google group

Quote

I sent this invitation to s...@mozilla.org as well, but in case their
spam filters are set to block @microsoft.com email addresses, I'm
posting here.

I am the Director of the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft, and I'm
writing to see if you are open to some 1:1 support in getting Firefox
and Thunderbird to run on Vista.

As part of my mission as an advocate for open source applications on
Windows, I've gotten spaces set aside at the Windows Vista Readiness
ISV Lab. In the past the company has only invited commercial software
developers to these labs. I'm committed to evolving our thinking
beyond commercial companies to include open source projects, so I went
to the non-trivial effort of getting slots for non-commercial open
source projects.

The lab itself is a 4-day event held in Redmond every week through
December 2006; we provide secure office space for 4 people, hardware,
VPN access, and 1:1 access to product team developers and support
staff.

If you're interested, please send email to sra...@microsoft.com,
jcan...@microsoft.com, and mfran...@microsoft.com - I'm on vacation
through 8/27, but Jamie Cannon and Michael Francisco will help you get
tracked in.

You can learn a little more about my lab on our site,
http://port25.technet.com.

Best regards,
Sam Ramji
Director, Open Source Software Lab
Microsoft Corporation
(510)913-6495
sra...@microsoft.com

UnQuote

Browser is pitted as the virtual OS / window to the WWW. IE has lost the market share from 90% to abt 80%. The main gain has been for Firefox. It has already grabbed 15% of the market share.

.... And people still charge Microsoft with anti-competitive business behavior

Update::

Mike Beltzner, a phenomenologist for Mozilla and the company's spokesman spoke on the issue. Follow the link for the response.

Solution for Poincaré conjecture

Vishnu — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 05:24:00 GMT

My Ph.D (in Mathematics) brother (Sko P) referred me to an article in Telegraph about a math genius, Grigori Perelman, who presented a series of papers solving the Poincaré conjecture and was unemployed!!!!

In mathematics, the Poincaré conjecture is a conjecture about the characterization of the three-dimensional sphere amongst three-dimensional manifolds. Loosely speaking, the conjecture surmises that if a closed three-dimensional manifold is sufficiently like a sphere in that each loop in the manifold can be tightened to a point, then it is really just a three-dimensional sphere. The analogous result has been known to be true in higher dimensions for some time.

Being a pseudo mathematicican myself, it really pains on hearing this. It dosent make your life any happier when you come to know about an utterly stupid idea can earn you a Million Dollars!!!!. Alex Tew built a web site called The Million Dollar HomePage which is sold to advertisers for 1$ a pixel. It also recieved a google page rank of 7 and generated a gross income of $1,037,100.

Hmmm.. So maybe i should register a billion dollar website...

Google Analytics installed

Vishnu — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 10:08:00 GMT

Now this is what called AWESOME...

My site is analytic'ified. For the noobs...Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. All they require is you to add some tracking code (javascript) in each and every page of your site.

Community Server is such a power tool that it provides you access to the source code of the page without even opening it. If your site is powered by Community Server, like mine, you just need to add the tracking code to the Control Panel --> Administration --> Settings --> Site name & Description --> Raw Header. All the tags present in this section will be added to the page header.

Yes and please do 'touch' (Add an additional space or remove a space) up your web.config file, so that all the pages are compiled again. I just cant wait to see the report.

For my post Easter Egg in Yahoo's Homepage, i had 136 views on the same day, dugg by 16 diggers. That is very cool. Too bad....cant get back those stats...

Visit again to have a look at the stats...

Windows Live Contacts Gadget (Beta) released

Vishnu — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 05:37:00 GMT

MS has released Windows Live Gadgets (beta). OK, before you can start asking "What is a Gadget", Visit MicrosoftGadgets for a walk thru on gadgets.

This gadgets uses Cross domain scripting (XSS) to communicate. As Thorpe says in his blog,

Quote"

What's special about it?

The contact gadget aggregates UI and contact data across multiple domains without requiring any special server support - it's all done on the browser client, in JavaScript. Normally, if you wanted to splice data from another server into your web page, you'd need to implement some sort of logic on your web server to handle relaying the data from the other server to your browser through your domain.

How does it do it?

It's really quite simple, actually: magic. Or pretty darn close to that in the severely constrained world of JavaScript. Cross domain scripting (XSS) is generally associated with "exploits" but in the contacts gadget we're using valid DHTML techniques to build secure, user-controlled data sharing. Since one end of the data channel can't see the other end, this general category of XSS has picked up the nickname "wormhole" in the JS community. It's a fun metaphor and moniker, but if anyone says "Voyager" or "quantum singularity" I'm going to have to hurt somebody!

" Un-Quote

Using the gadget in your web page looks easy. In 5 simple steps you can start using the gadget on your web page. Shortly i shall try and install the gadget on my site. The homepage also has a list of Known issues in the beta release.

It also has 2 working sites as sample. The sample site didnt work for me. I used both IE and Firefox. Once the gadget "hangs", the site is pretty much un-usable. Hhmmm..Beta says it all

View Website as a Graph

Vishnu — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 18:28:00 GMT

This Software displays your site as a graph. Very Cool...

This is how my site looks..

Click on this link to view it.

The program executes an applet to render the graph. I liked the way it slowly builds the graph as if its parsing the web pages for the tags and dynamically building the graph.
The catch is, it requires J2SE Ver 1.5 be installed on your machine. If you dont have it then you can download it. Your system literally comes to halt when the applet starts rendering the graph. IE which generally takes 8 to 15K memory sucks more than 50K.

Easter Egg in Yahoo's Homepage?????

Vishnu — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 17:21:00 GMT

The all new revamped AJAX'ified website of Yahoo! looks cool. My fellow blogger Jaydev pointed out to an 'Easter Egg', if it can be called so, in Yahoo's homepage.

When you click on ! (exclamation mark) in Yahoo!, you can hear a YAAHOO Cry...

I tried digg'ing for this at Digg but couldnt find any post. Looks like Yahoo! is one of the first mass commercial site to employ Web 2.0 technique....

I was wondering why would anyone would like to click on it and listen to a CRRYYY. Would have been better if they employed famous voices like Sir Sean Connery in his famous scottish accent or the Big B of Bolloywood, Amitab Bachchan

Well atleast now i know where to go if i need to check if my speakers are working!!!!

YYAAAHHOOOO!!!!!!!

Google Talk supports Voice Mail

Vishnu — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 06:09:00 GMT

Few days less than a year into business, google has finally added some teeth to its light weight IM beta client, Google Talk. GTak was released on Aug 22

It has added File Transfer, Voice Mail and Music Status options to its IM client. Check out the entire list here.

Nothing special to brag about as these already exists in Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger's.

The Voice Mail is a very scaled down version found in Yahoo!. But none the less, finally Google has updated its beta IM client before it scales down to alpha version. ;-)

Cheers
:B

Update:::

Google IM hold a pitiful 1% of total instant messaging market share, with 3.4 million unique users in May 2006 according to ComScore, a respected information resource.

The controversy was trigerred by NT Times article In the Race With Google, It’s Consistency vs. ‘Wow’. Many cry that these figures are not accurate and ComScore is expected to release a updated report.

What ever be the actual number, Google IM has a long road ahead.....

Technorati test

Vishnu — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 11:49:00 GMT

Technorati Profile

Windows Live Writer is available

Vishnu — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 00:28:00 GMT

Hmm... Yet another blogging tool. Blogging is similar to XML in a sense. Not every one knows "What is XML"? But one thing which everyone knows is, XML is very important. So is blogging.

But I should say, Live writer is different. The installation is a breeze (of course, provided you know what to enter where). It has support for other weblogs like Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress (and many others). But one thing which disappoints me is that there is no mention of Community Server even though I can choose it from the list of supported service. Many of Microsoft's sites are powered by Community Server. http://blogs.msdn.com/, http://forums.xbox.com, http://channel9.msdn.com/, http://hive.net/, http://mix06.com/ just to name a few.

It has a cool a very sleek WYSIWYG interface. Great support for inserting pics, tagging and editing posts. Support for Windows Live Maps. I tried posting the map from the Writer editor but looks like i have some permissions issues with my site. So i have manually deleted the link.

This is a post straight from live writer. And the best part is you can extend the functionality of the program thru the Windows Live Writer SDK.

Happy Coding
:B

Hello World!!

Vishnu — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 04:56:00 GMT

Whoohoo...

Finally i did it! I am online now. OK....
Invoking the blessings of God and Goddesses to keep this site alive both technically and financially.

Starting off my blog with our traditional Hello World!! style.

Sat down today for 4 hrs, skipped a family get together and got my site up and running. Thanx a ton to the Telligent guys for giving away such a cool product Community Server.

"Today... We celebrate our Independence Day".. reminds me of Harrison Ford's statement....
Yes, Aug 15 1947 is Indian Independence Day. Today India celebrates its 59th Independence Day.

Cheers