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This blog has moved to its own domain. Please visit Ashwin's Blog for the all-new Ashwin's Tech Blog and bookmark it. The new site has much more content and some new sections, and you can read about them here and here. You can subscribe to full RSS feeds of all the sections from here. This blogspot site will no longer be updated, except in case of emergencies, if the main site suffers a prolonged outage. Thanks - Ashwin.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

No Entry for FireFox Users in new Microsoft Website

ARSTechnica has a good review on the upcoming design of the Microsoft.com's new website preview. This happens to be a disappointing news to the FireFox Users. Here is an example of how it displays to me on
FireFox 1.5.0.4:

and on IE 6.0:

Lots of development using AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML). In Firefox on typing the URL: http://preview.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx - it redirects me to - http://www.microsoft.com/

Therefore FireFox users, it's a No Entry for you in the new Microsoft website.

Microsoft obviously doesn't believe the left-hand navigation myth. Another change that is readily apparent is the use of images when browsing. For instance, clicking on the "Software & Services" link produces a new layer with images of products such as Windows, Office, and Games & Xbox. From there, one can drill down on an image to get a refined result set; Developer Tools leads to images for MSDN, Visual Studio, and so on. Microsoft has also used its in-house tools wisely, enabling AJAX-style navigation so that we don't have to wait during postbacks.

My assumption was that Microsoft took the site down, but I had to try it once more in IE, and to my surprise the site was still running. All I can assume is that the site doesn't work in Firefox. Is it really too much to ask for a friendly (or not-so-friendly) message saying that the site erupts for the blazing, orbicular cousin of the dingo? I've seen the "we don't support Firefox" message on at least three other Microsoft sites, so why couldn't these developers just borrow the code? Heck, it's probably going to be a new class in the .NET Framework 3.0 if it's not already in the company's global code snippet library.

Via ARSTechnica

Monday, July 24, 2006

Microsoft providing Free Trainings on Exchange Server 2007

Microsoft is providing free trainings on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Following are the details:

What's New in Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 Administration (Beta 1)

Title: Clinic 3053: What's New in Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 Administration (Beta 1)
Course Type: Self-paced Course
Available Offline: Yes
Estimated Time of Completion: 2 Hours
Language: English

Description:
This online clinic provides a rich multimedia learning experience where you explore the new features and enhancements of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.
This clinic introduces you to the role-based installation provided by Exchange Server 2007 and describes the various server roles. It presents the major installation requirements for Exchange Server 2007 and describes the features from previous versions of Exchange that are de-emphasized or unsupported in Exchange Server 2007.
This clinic also describes how to administer Exchange Server 2007 by introducing you to the Exchange Management Console and the Exchange Management Shell, which you can use to administer all aspects of the system. It illustrates some common administrative tasks, such as working with recipients and monitoring Exchange.
Finally, this clinic introduces the concepts, key features, and benefits of unified messaging. It describes how to configure unified messaging for an individual user. It explains messaging security, archiving, and regulation compliance features provided by Exchange Server 2007, and describes how you can use these features to benefit your organization.
This clinic is targeted to messaging IT Professionals with experience on Exchange Server 2000 or Exchange Server 2003.

Objectives:
At the end of the course, students will be able to:

Install Exchange Server 2007 servers and choose Exchange server roles.
List deleted and de-emphasized features in Exchange Server 2007.
Choose the most appropriate administrative tool for a given administrative task.
Describe the new administration tasks in Exchange Server 2007.
Define unified messaging and enable it for users.
Describe how Exchange Server 2007 can help administrators secure the messaging system and comply with regulations.

Sign Up here

Overview of Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 Architecture (Beta 1)

Title: Clinic 3054: Overview of Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 Architecture (Beta 1)
Course Type: Self-paced Course
Available Offline: Yes
Estimated Time of Completion: 2 Hours
Language: English

Description:
This online clinic provides a rich multimedia learning experience where you explore the most significant changes in the Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 architecture.
This clinic describes how the most significant changes in the Exchange Server 2007 architecture improve upon earlier versions of the product. It also describes the design goals behind these architectural changes, the infrastructure required to deploy Exchange Server 2007, and the three different Active Directory topologies in which you can install Exchange Server 2007.
This clinic introduces the architecture of the five server roles in Exchange Server 2007 and describes the communication between the server roles. It illustrates message routing and how to interoperate with Exchange Server 2003 routing groups. It also describes different deployment scenarios.
Finally, this clinic introduces the changes made to the Exchange Server 2007 message store. It describes the improvements in performance and user experience that these changes provide. It also illustrates how to configure client infrastructure services in Exchange Server 2007.
This clinic is targeted to messaging IT Professionals with experience on Exchange Server 2000 or Exchange Server 2003.

Objectives:
At the end of the course, students will be able to:

Describe the most significant changes in the Exchange Server 2007 architecture.
Identify the features required to run Exchange Server 2007.
Describe when to configure Exchange Server 2007 in different Active Directory topologies.
Describe the five Exchange Server 2007 server roles.
Set up an Exchange Server 2007 backbone to route messages to and from Exchange Server 2003 routing groups.
Describe how to create a dedicated routing topology.
Describe ways in which the Exchange Server 2007 store is better than the store in earlier versions.
Describe the Exchange Server 2007 client infrastructure services.

Sign Up for Exchange Server 2007 Beta 2

Be known for knowing. Be the first to get the beta.
Register now and be the first to know when the Exchange Server 2007 Beta 2 is available. You’ll get an e-mail update from us, a free subscription to the TechNet Flash online newsletter with news about the Exchange beta and other betas, and free access to Beta Central, where you’ll get information and resources available only to subscribers.

Vote on bug incidents: See the most prevalent bugs reported to date, and vote on the ones that are most important as the first-release candidate is prepared. Microsoft product teams will provide progress updates on the bugs with the most votes.

Web forums: Use the 2007 beta Web forums to post questions about the new release. As a Beta Central member, your inquiries will receive priority status by Microsoft experts monitoring the boards.

Webcasts, contests, and more: Find the resources you need to work with the beta in one convenient location. Beta Central brings it all together.

Register Here

Saturday, July 15, 2006

BangaloreITPro gearing up for the next UG Meet

BangaloreITPro is now gearing up for the next UG meet at Microsoft office - Goldwave. I am done preparing the HTML page for the invitation and sent out the e-mails. Lot of plans moving around and have thought to be more innovative this time in the UG meet. For the first time, we are conducting a Live conference with Microsoft, USA. Thanks to Kaliyan for getting the sources through his MVP contacts and Rahul has done more good work in co ordinating with Ramnish and all of our Microsoft friends. There are some more plans that we are actually working on but till the UG meet day on 22nd, we have to hold the suspence and spill the beans at the meet. Looking forward to more participants this time and have this event a grand success, than we always have!

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Microsoft Virtual PC is now Free!

Microsoft has announced to give away Virtual PC also for FREE unlike the Virtual Server 2003 R2 they are giving away for FREE. Cool... so now both virtualization tools are available without any charge. Just a complimentary.

Whether Microsoft virtualization technology is an important component of your existing infrastructure or you're just a Virtual PC enthusiast, you can now download Virtual PC 2004 Service Pack 1 absolutely free. Microsoft is also offering the free download of Virtual PC 2007, with support for Windows Vista in 2007.

Its all here. Go ahead... Download now!

Get the Most out of Virtualization with Virtual PC and Windows Vista Enterprise

Install up to four copies of the operating system in virtual machines on top of Windows Vista Enterprise with a single license. Learn more about Windows Vista Enterprise.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 Demo

See Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 in action. This demo shows how Virtual PC is perfect for any scenario in which you need to support multiple operating systems, whether you use it for legacy application support, technical support, training, or application development.

This is what the Virtual PC Guy has to say:

1. Why are you giving Virtual PC away for free?

Microsoft views virtualization as a tool. Virtual PC is used for a number of reasons, but the primary reasons are for development and test scenarios and application compatibility. We already provide Virtual PC as part of MSDN for development and test users, and given that all our other application compatibility tools are free - charging for Virtual PC did not make much sense.

2. Is the Windows Vista Enterprise licensing right restricted to Virtual PC?

No - you can use any virtualization software for this. In fact - you do not even have to use virtualization software to exercise this right. You could - if you wanted - setup a quad-boot physical computer and be licensed for all four instances.

Salaam Mumbaikar

After the recent tragic happenings in Mumbai leaving a gaping hole in the heart of Mumbai, and in the soul of every self respecting Indian, this has shown the failure of the police, the intelligence officials, and the government in providing information, and here's the mirror on the wall that shows “who is the dirtiest of them all”. It is a real shame that the watchdogs in the government and the so called INTELLIGENCE failed to even sniff a whiff of the same. And now, after 200 fatalities and 400 injuries, and a billion scarred souls, the authorities have the guts to come out in the open and say “THE RESPONSIBLE WILL NOT BE SPARED”!! What a shame!!

Salute the Mumbaikars who showed ultimate courage, defiance and respect to the country and its countrymen. The Mumbaikars came out with full support of their aggrieved brethren, bring in a sense of satisfaction and solemn affirmation of the virtues that our country stands on. The pictures prove us that we, the people of India have it in us to rise up from the ashes as the eternal phoenix. Every time somebody tries to stamp us down, we rise with doubled spirits, and a desire to overcome all that keeps us bound.

Even after such cowardly act by the terrorists, the common man has shown the never say die attitude, and the courage to travel in local trains even after seven blasts the day before, tears in the eyes of complete strangers when they talk about a deceased or injured, the help that flows in as soon as it is required irrespective race, religion caste or creed… needs a true heart. This is the undying SPIRIT OF MUMBAI.

SALAAM MUMBAI, SALAAM MUMBAIKAR !

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Light a candle for those who died in the Mumbai bomb blast

Mumbai came to a shocking standstill on July 11 when serial blasts ripped through its local trains, killing and wounding hundreds. But the city of dreams stood fearless and fighting fit.

Salute Mumbai's never-say-die spirit and Light a Candle for those who succumbed to the blasts or got injured. For every candle you light, CNN-IBN and Channel 7 will donate Re 1 for the relief of the victims.

Light a Candle

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Client Security: Present and Future

Find webcasts, virtual labs, and other resources to help you enhance your client security. Then, preview the new and improved security features in Microsoft Windows Vista. From enhanced intrusion prevention to improved network access protection, Windows Vista security features can help you provide a more usable, manageable, and secure experience in corporate, mobile, and roaming environments. Find them all [ here ]
More Security related resources available here on TechNet

Test Drive the Microsoft Office 2007

In addition to the beta download version of Microsoft Office 2007, here is a new way to test drive Office 2007. Its Live online using Windows Live.

Test the new version of Office [ here ]

Some good SEO Tips

Here are a few tips on Search Engine Optimization for all of you. Hope you like it.

1) robots.txt

Create a file named robots.txt in the document root of your site (eg. http://site.com/robots.txt ) You can create this file with notepad, and the only thing that you should put there is this line :

Code:

User-agent: *

More about this you can find here

2) Keywords

Put keyword phrases in your content, and mark them with the <> tag

Code:

<>keyword phrase< /strong >

3) Meta tags

There is a plenty of meta tags that you can use with your site, but the most common, and the most used by the search engines are the robots and the description meta tags. The robots meta tag indicates the rules for the spiders, just like robots.txt does.
The description indicates the description for the web page, and Google will show it when the page will show up on its results page. Use different descriptions for each page. Another common meta tag is the keywords meta tag, which I am not going to explain as it has no use in these days.

Here is an example:

Code:

META NAME="Description" content="This is the description of this page"
META NAME="robots" content="all,index, follow"

Opened and closed by < >

4) Domain name

The domain name of a website is a very good keyword to the search engines. So if your company is called Star and you are selling fish use a domain like starfish.com
Even the name of the html pages are keywords for the search engines so you can add there some keywords that indicates your site's theme eg. contact+fish+star.html

5) Link Popularity

This is the best search engine optimization factor. Because links are like votes to a site, search engines give a big boost to sites that have lots of them. So you may find webmasters that have a site with relative topic to yours, and ask them to trade links. There is something that you may watch here. Google is not counting reciprocal links, so a better way is the three way linking. That means that you link to the site A that links to the site B that links to your site. There are also some automated link managers, but I do not trust them and I have never had any good experience with them so I would not reccomend any of them.

6) Number of pages in the site

This is a very very serious thing. Because as every SEO pro sais content is a king and as many as your pages are so the search engine traffic increases. But do not use mirror pages or pages with very simillar content, because they will not be indexed by the search engines and you can even get banned from them.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Yahoo! Mail beta released

Yahoo! has released the Beta Upgrade of Yahoo! Mail. This morning, I got a message asking to check the Beta. And here is the new look:

On Firefox:

On IE6.0:

Looks an another mail client with web interface. Easier to browse through. Overall it looks like the Microsoft Outlook interface having the three-pane window with folders in the left vertical pane, headers top right, and a message preview pane below the headers. Similarly I had earlier found a free e-mail service provider, MailNation having an outlook like interface.
Unlike Firefox or IE7 browser, Yahoo! Mail beta also now has tabbed interface whereby you can line up several messages for reviewing later. You just got to double click the message and you find that opening in a new tab. Gone are the days of right clicking the message and click - Open in New Window or Open in New Tab. But will this affect in the performance of the connectivity? I need to keep checking this.
Tabbed browsing will not fascinate me enough since my Firefox fulfils them. But at some point yes, I like it as all happening under a single Yahoo Tab.
Another good point, your compose mail window open in a new tab and keeps your Inbox intact in the original tab. So we are now able to access our inbox even while writing a mail and when we may need to refer some multiple messages for a reference to the mail.
Also I found that the messages automatically keep getting refreshed so that I donot keep clicking the Inbox button to check for latest mails. Open your Yahoo! Mail and leave it. You will have all your messages being downloaded automatically.

Then I can quickly format my mails with the Rich Text Editor easily available. On Replying to a message, I find the Signature automatically being displayed and can even make the changes in them quickly.
Another good feature is the Right Click feature.

The above image will show you all the easily accessible feature to take a quick action on the mail. View Full Headers opens in an another pop-up window.

Next feature is the drag and drop feature that lets you move the messages quickly into your desired folder.

There also is a All RSS feeds section in the left pane. I need to yet check on this.

On downloading an attachment, here is the message that pops up, leaving my message open in the same window. This is a good feature that will anymore not have me keep clicking the back button after the message is scanned.

Overall, I found this to be a very good improvement in the Mailing revolution and has become more quicker in accessing mails. This works for me well with both Firefox and IE.

More Screen Shots available here and check this review by PCMag

Following is the welcome mail received from the Mailbot:

Staying in-touch is faster and simpler with the Yahoo! Mail Beta.
Welcome. Thanks for checking out our new beta. It's everything you love about Yahoo! Mail, plus lots more.

Features by the bucket-full.
Enjoy a fast, intuitive new interface that makes it so much easier to stay in touch and organize messages. You can drag & drop email here and there, and have lots of messages open at once. You also get email automatically (no need to keep checking), and it's easy to preview messages.

But you gotta see it to believe it.
Words don't begin to explain it all. Explore the Yahoo! Mail Beta by checking out our tutorial. Or forgo the theatrics and jump into our Mail Beta FAQ.

Feeling separation anxiety?
Relax –– all your messages, preferences, and contacts go with you to the Yahoo! Mail Beta. And you can easily switch back to original Yahoo! Mail anytime.

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Thursday, July 06, 2006

Flickr slideshow

Flash Slideshow

Finally layout changed

Finally... I got a new template for my blog. Now its time to keep developing this. Everything happens for good. Last time I had got my Blog template screwed up. Due to this I lost all my feeds, counter, and adsense etc... This has helped me rebuild the whole thing in a better way and enable me to get more features. Keep visiting and find this blog now getting constantly updated. :)