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Saturday, June 30, 2007

Ways to stay updated with technology and why join or volunteer user groups

Today Internet being a vast medium of getting connected, we can have faster ways of finding and providing solutions to our clients. Every is a winner. The client gets a quicker and better solution, the vendor wins a better deal by maintaining his quality of service. May be one gets a better business contact or a suitable candidate lands up in his dream job by getting noticed. Since the technology has been moving at faster pace than our thought, we need to keep ourselves updated and upgraded in order to always stay in touch with technology. This needs us to find for better ways as to how we can gear up ourselves. Few of the options I would like to note down are:
Daily News
Magazines and Periodicals
Read various Blogs
Publish Blogs
Attend online WebCasts
Join discussion forums and NewsGroups
Join a public user group with similar interests
Technical Whitepapers
Get educational resources and get certified
etc...

Personally, I have explored a lot being a part of any discussion forum or a user group, it always helps us personally and professionally. There are end number of posibilities that we can explore. There may be various reasons that we may opine on, but here are few of them that I felt like posting.

Being a Community Member:
We make lots of new friends with similar profession and interests. It is always good to network with people. Who knows, some day you may land up having a good business contact or possibly land up in an even better job. But it purely depends on how we make ourselves get our talents noticed in public.
Get help from some of the technology experts on technology that we may be working on and enhance our skills
Get a chance to guide several people who needed help on technology. May they be geeks or novices, we come across various people inquisitive to learn more on some technology that we may be good at and it feels great to always share with them and help them keep upgraded on the technology that we are into.

In order to explore more from the technology perspective, we find ourselves at the drivers seat while we help the community being it's volunteer. We gain a lot of valuable experience on development projects, organizational committees, and other aspects of nonprofits. This always gives us a chance to keep ourselves get identified and noticed in the crowd. Here are some of the reasons that make me feel like volunteering a community.

Being a Community Volunteer:
We learn to manage events. We manage activities online and offline, which help enhance our management skills
Get an opportunity to provide presentations and help people understand technology that we are good at
Connecting to few of the best in technology known public identity and it is always a great feeling when we get direct help when in need of understanding the upcoming release of some much awaited products or the one that is in the market
Special opportunity to work on products when at Beta stage and get help from some of those who would be working on the development of the product. Learn more on the latest technologies and demonstrations of upcoming products and technologies
Keep ourselves updated by staying in contact with such experts
Opportunities are unlimited when it comes to learning. We share knowledge among people of all classes of expertise, which is a beneficial thing to all
Innovation rules and this can be the best place to implement our innovative ideas in front of public
Develop leadership and decision making skills by showing your proactiveness by initiating an idea and implementing them. The proof of being the best shows after our consistent efforts on the same
Helps us showcase our talents our way
Get opportunities to attend some of the Best Technology events and seminars which may not open to all ITProfessional public
Apart from attending, these are the places again where we get a chance to again volunteer and have ourselves get noticed
All this helps us improve our communication skills and make my presence felt among the group
We make good contacts globally and thoughts and innovative ideas to benefit the community comes out of the box. This helps us explore our own talents
Overall, this increases our own self-esteem

In a way, we improve our personality and change the way we are. You carry a lot of prestige when being a volunteer for some very well known product / technology user group.

The content that I have posted here is from my own personal experiences. There may be some disadvantages too but surely cannot beat the advantages and there surely are even more better ways than those listed here.

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Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Chris Benoit RIP

WWE Superstar Chris Benoit was found dead in his home on June 25, 2007 in Fayetteville, Georgia, along with his wife and son. Police are calling the deaths a murder-suicide. Investigators believe Benoit strangled his wife Nancy 3 days earlier. The next day suffocating his 7 year old son Daniel, and finally hunged himself in his weight room. All 3 bodies were found in different rooms with a bible placed next to the bodies of Benoit's wife and son. Steroids were also found in Benoit's home which investigators believe could have led to Benoit's burst of rage called "Roid Rage."

The WWE canceled its normal broadcast of RAW on June 25, which ironically was originally intended as a tribute to Vince McMahon's own death (which never turned out to be true) and instead aired a 3 hour special tribute to Benoit. He had wrestled for ECW, WCW, and the WWE.

This video is from the last 5 minutes of WWE's Raw broadcast from June 25th.

R.I.P. BENOIT, YOUR WIFE AND SON. You were one of wrestling's great champions. Until the facts come out, we can only speculate as to what happened; However there can't be any conclusions as many of us have done already.

R.I.P. Eddie Guerrero




More News:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Benoit

The above video is a must watch as it also features Chris Benoit's best friend Eddie Guerrero. My Tributes to both the superstars.
Eddie Guerrero RIP

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Saturday, June 23, 2007

Who are these 3 people on Windows Vista DVD?

Just found this link where the person found a secret within the hologram on a Windows Vista DVD. It remains a mystery that who are these 3 guys!

Have a look at more images here. He says that these photographs were taken using Nikon 5700 in macro and by putting a cloth prover in front of the object.

Via MakeZine

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Thursday, June 21, 2007

MCSA, MCSE: Register by June 30 to Save 40% on First Windows Server 2008 Exam (Worldwide)

Just a reminder to all those not yet registered for your 40% discount voucher to upgrade yourself to Windows Server 2008. This is a last chance and this offer closes on June 30, 2007.

Register by June 30, 2007, to receive a 40% savings voucher for use on your upgrade path from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 certification. The transition exams (one for MCSA and one for MCSE) and the 40% savings offer are both intended to recognize your investment and expertise in our current technology and help you in your transition to the latest releases available from Microsoft. Register today for your voucher.

The best part of this offer is that this is valid WorldWide and not USA / Canada Specific :)

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Friday, June 15, 2007

Features in Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 is released and now available for download. Here are few of the updates made in SP1

  • Support for Hardware-Assisted Virtualization (Both Intel VT and AMD V)
  • Support for additional guest and host operating systems
  • Support for more than 64 virtual machines on x64 hosts. Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 now supports up to 256GB of physical memory and can run up to 512 virtual machines
  • VHD Mount command-line tool and APIs which allows you to mount a VHD file as a virtual disk on your host operations system.
  • Improved scalability support (Up to 256 GB of memory, Up to 512 VMs etc)
  • Interoperability with Volume Shadow Copy Service
  • Service Publication using Active Directory Service Connection Points
  • Virtual SCSI hard drive for installing Linux guests
  • Default size increased to 127 GB from 16GB for dynamically expanding virtual hard disks
  • VMRC ActiveX control now uses the Internet Explorer Security Zones
  • New VMRC client option to enable video stretch in full screen mode
  • Host clustering / Quick Migration whitepaper
  • IVMGuestOS::Get_OSName property now returns more operating system information

Find more: Here and Here

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Thursday, June 07, 2007

How does Microsoft come up with product names?

Interested to know how the name Windows Server 2008 came up? Check the video. That's simple to understand but an innovative video.

How does Microsoft come up with product names? This video goes over the process for naming Longhorn to Windows Server 2008.


Video: What's In a Name?

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Sunday, June 03, 2007

Microsoft announces Surface

What is Surface?

"Picture a surface that can recognize physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. Today at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer will unveil Microsoft Surface™, the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft that breaks down traditional barriers between people and technology. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, dynamic surface that provides effortless interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Beginning at the end of this year, consumers will be able to interact with Surface in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues."

Presenting: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Minority Report meets the kitchen table in the new Surface from Microsoft. Claiming that surface computing is "as significant as the move from DOS to GUI," the company today announced a tabletop device with an integrated 30-inch screen and five cameras to enable multitouch access to music, photos, the web, and more. According to Microsoft, Surface isn't simply a regular PC with a touch interface—it's a whole new category of computing device that will supplement rather than replace traditional machines. We talked with Microsoft about the concept and what's powering it.
What lurks below Microsoft's Surface? A brief Q&A with Microsoft

Microsoft Surface
Microsoft Surface Virtual Pressroom
Microsoft Surface: Behind-the-Scenes First Look

On WikiPedia

Thanks Pramit for pointing this out to me.

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About me

  • I'm Ashwin Kini
  • From Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
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