Bhasker 's spoke v2 Blog

Microsoft Communit Launch ,January 8th Chennai

bosky101 — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 16:37:00 GMT

Hello everyone ,

Firstly a Happy 2006 to one and all. Heres some rocking news for software enthusiasts to kick off the years activities .

The Chennai .NET User Group welcomes you to the VS2005 Community Launch on January 08-2006 at the Tidel Auditorium (Tidel Park - Chennai ) and is also celebrating its 3rd Anniversary with this launch .The one day event ,being the first event for the year will be filled with technology and fun ;seminars from leading speakers talking on the key features in the new Visual Studio 2005 , SQL Server 2005 ,and Biztalk Server 2006 ,seminars , free software Goodies , and fun events . Registration at the venue starts at 9.30 am . Also register yourself for the event at http://groups.msn.com/chennainetusergroup/communitylaunchsignup1.msnw . For more information on the event ,also check out www.cnug.net
For copies of posters to ciculate in and around your campus / locality / peer groups please contact me .

Do join us and Get ready to Rock! .

Bhasker V K ,
Microsoft Student Partner,
Marketing Manager - Chennai .NET Usergroup - Student Chapter

Pro blogging

bosky101 — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:32:00 GMT

A word on Pro Bloggers

First up a look at the penetration of the top most blogs , over view of the blogrolling statistics and then the opportunity in blogging as a career!

Amused ,dont be ,the person who runs problogger.com now calims to earn in 6-figure 's and even introduced a course on blogging as a career.

August is over and my monthly Adsense figures were a new record - the daily average was $511.27 with the monthly total coming in at just a stones throw from $16,000 (USD). The following picture is a screen capture (with my personal details blocked out) of the monthly total. It actually ended up being 0.36 cents higher than the total you see there (it all counts I guess).
source:Problogger.com

as for blogrolls, surprising to find a few even higher than slashdot !

Blogstreet india stats show of the 2057 blogs registered

1	121	Kiruba.com - Weblog of Kiruba Shankar
2	106	lazygeek.net - weblog of lazy geek
3	89	Vantage point
5	68	Selective Amnesia

You can catch my blogs at :

1. Confessions of a Ninja
http://www.confessionsOfaNinja.blogspot.com
2.Bosky says
http://www.bosky101.blogspot.com

Keep Clicking,
Bosky

VS Evolution : too much ,too fast ?

bosky101 — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 23:44:00 GMT

Interestingly , Microsoft has spent the past few years encouraging Visual Basic 6 programmers to migrate to the new Visual Basic .Net platform, which has had its share of complications. Microsoft’s plan to stop support has been discussed for almost three years and the deadline already has been extended once, said the press representative, who requested anonymity. Visual Basic 6 has been supported longer than any other Microsoft product, according to the representative. “Extended” support, which is fee-based, will continue through 2008.

So I wonder if the next version,would add some refuge for the classical VB 6 developers.Especially with the Visual Studio Future and Live being talked bout.

source

Visual Studio Future ?!

Microsoft may have just shipped Visual Studio 2005, but the company is already starting to discuss its future plans for the development suite. Service Pack 1 is in the works for next summer, says Visual C# product manager Scott Wiltamuth, and Orcas -- the next VS release -- is being hashed out.

The first service pack for the older Visual Studio 2003 will also ship in the first half of next year, with Wiltamuth estimating an April release. Soma Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Developer Division, echoed those timeframes, saying the company would provide hotfixes in the interim.

"My current thinking is that we will target the first service pack for Visual Studio 2005 around summer next year," Somasegar wrote on his Web log. "As we get more mileage on the product usage in your production environment and get your feedback, we will firm up our plans here."

But Visual Studio 2005, known by its code-name "Whidbey," still has some work ahead despite officially launching this week at a special event in San Francisco. International versions of the product are currently being completed, and the Team Foundation Server component won't be ready until the first quarter of 2006.

Acknowledging that Microsoft took too long getting Whidbey out the door, Somasegar says his division will now embark on a 3-4 month-long milestone known as "MQ" that will attempt to fix those development problems.

"MQ is a milestone that is post-Whidbey and pre-Orcas that will focus on quality," explained C# team member Eric Malno. "We have learned a lot from the previous 3 versions of Visual Studio that were built around the .NET Framework, the biggest lesson that we learned on this most recent version was that we were not agile enough and we took too long to ship."

Malno added, however, that "MQ is not about servicing Whidbey. The MQ milestone is about changing processes and making improvements on these processes. It is NOT about code churn, adding features, or fixing known bugs in VS2005."

After MQ, Orcas will begin to swim. "Orcas is all about enabling platform adoption for Windows Vista, for Office 12 and for WinFX," says Somasegar. "You can use Whidbey today to build Vista applications, for example. But Orcas will make it a whole lot easier for people to build Vista applications through easy to use designers and the like."
In a growing trend at the once-secretive company, Microsoft will boost transparency during the development of Orcas. The company will share specific feature plans and request feedback from customers before details are set into stone.

Somasegar also says his division will begin work on a number of incubation experiments -- a concept that has become a veritable requirement within MSN and Microsoft search rival Google.

"In light of the 'Live' announcements last week, we are starting to think about what it means for us in the Developer world," he explained. "There are two things that we need to think about -- the kind of tools support that we need to provide for our 'Live' services platform and what does 'Visual Studio Live' look like."

Resources
1. Microsoft Talks Up Visual Studio Future
2.A PETITION FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNMANAGED VISUAL BASIC AND VISUAL BASIC FOR APPLICATIONS
3.Campaign to save Visual Basic 6 gathers support
4.Microsoft MVPs revolt

No matter what the result, it will turn out a a telling tale of the three avtars ... Visual Basic ,Visual Studio Express and Visual Basic Future. Thats not keeping in mind the compact and devices versions !

KEep Clicking,
Bhasker

Building A Great DevelopmentTeam

bosky101 — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 06:38:00 GMT

While pondering over my imagine cup team and prospects, I found this interesting yet understated piece in the transcripts of Boyd Multerer's video on Building a Great Development Team
Channel9 Wiki: BuildingAGreatDevelopmentTeam: "BM: I have some ideas about how to go about building an effective development team.

When you look at the releationship between developers on a team and also between your development team and your test team there are certain personalities that really stand out, and the thing to remember is that people on the team are people and they have to communicate with each other and they suffer all the normal problems that people have when they are communicating.

So, when I think of building my team. It starts by reminding my of an old guitar player joke:

- What do you call a guy who hangs out with three musicians?

- The drummer.

So, the guitar players are looking down on the drummer and they are thinking 'this guy is not a real musician, we're musicians'. But if you didn't have the drummer in the band you totally lose the beat and they would be all over the place and it would be a mess. If the band was all drummers, they would have a great beat but it wouldn't be very musical.

You need to have all the elements, all the musicians, in the band in order for it to be cohesive, have a good groove and make some really good music and a development team is the same way. You need to have the guy who is really good at double checking his work, really good at double checking everyone elses work and really good at doing schedules. You need to have the guy who is really good at 'Gee this is a really vague and ambiguous problem, we don't have a clear answer and there are competing interests in it' and he's able to listen to the various sides of the story and he's able to come up with some good directional answers. But maybe that's not the person who's going to spit and polish the schedule and make sure you're going to deliver on time. You need to have the person who goes really deep, the engineer who you give a specific really hard problem to. You know they don't care about all the other stuff tha" source

Threat to the my drag and drop days ?!

bosky101 — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 06:37:00 GMT

I spent a good amount of the weekend "soul searching" and evaluating my perception ,and those around me , of where i was heading with all the seminars , hands on labs ,and other iniatives that came along with being a "Microsoft Student Champ". Now i know most of you are going to be wondering - "so what ?!" .As Sriram put it very well the other day,compare majority of the regions MS student developer space with their Linux counterparts and you cant stop to wonder what the very purpose of these advocates are if :

 (a) Dont have passion for technology
(b) Are in it for something good on their resume, CDs and t-shirts

It is also true that knowing how to create applications ,however new the API or technology was still not peanuts.and whats the big deal in just knowing how to do something without understanding the underlying funda's .Now hold on here .If you think knowing how the data is represented or the various layers of business logic or knowing the syntax for comppiling on the command line is is 'geeky thoery' - then you are so so wrong . Like i was .

Because like i found out later - any one with a encouraging learning curve would in a week or two be able to :

connect to a DB and give security
make ur app talk to a webservice
xml feed or data representation for ur mobile devices
windows forms !

arrghgh !!!! Please i repeat ,this is not anywhere close to development.The only thing you will efectively do with a stint in these is to probably have a fair edge at the sniper maps in Counterstrike or so .

For all those who thought .net was all there was going on ,and that developers cant live without the wizards .Other notions that spring up are that ppl in MS have no clue of what the hell is happening outside windows, cant live without a pretty looking IDE , and are basically guys who found this the easiest thing to do .

NO ....i repeat NO way. And i wish i could explain in details with each of you who think otherwise.I'd probably try to elaborate on why i say so. Take a look at some of the developer tools ,contrary to pupoular belief that the work that happens in MS ,is done on VS.






• .NET Framework 1.1
• .NET Framework
• .NET Passport 2.5
• ADO.NET 1.1
• Application Center 2000
• ASP.NET 1.0
• ASP.NET 1.1
• Collaboration Data Objects 2.0
• Data Access Components 2.7
• Data Access Components 2.8
• DirectX 9.0b
• MapPoint Web Service 3.0
• Mobile Internet Toolkit 1.0
• Software Development Kit for Java 4.0
• Virtual PC 2004
• Virtual PC for Mac Version 6.1
• Virtual PC for Mac Version 7
• Visual Basic .NET 2002     • Visual Basic .NET 2003
• Visual Basic 6.0
• Visual C# .NET 2003
• Visual C++ .NET 2003
• Visual C++ 6.0
• Visual FoxPro 8.0
• Visual FoxPro 9.0
• Visual InterDev 6.0
• Visual SourceSafe 6.0
• Visual Studio .NET 2002
• Visual Studio .NET 2003
• Visual Studio 6.0
• Windows Software Development Kit 3.1
• Windows XP Driver Development Kit
• XML Parser 3.0

( NOTE : Also check out the complete list of pre-release products included in the Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 Go-Live License )

For Office and Business solutions and products tht have interesting API 's spaning across :

In fact Sriram tells me that ,the good ol 'command line' makes a comeback for him at Hyderabad for his work But the topics that got me really all excited were :

Virtual Device Drivers for MS-DOS Applications or Special Hardware
Microsoft STI : Still Image Device
Microsoft Windows Internals
Writing Windows Wdm Device Drivers ( PS: you can check out more on Getting Started with Windows Drivers and the Windows Driver Model (WDM))
Developing Drivers with the Windows Driver Development Kits(DDK's)
Writing Windows VxDs & Device Drivers
Hardware ,Display Compatibility Test kits & DVD Test Annex
Windows Native API References
Microsoft Active Accessibility 2.0 Software Development Kit Tools ( check out accesability code samples here , and a gr8 list of resources here )
The Real-time Communications (RTC) Client
Rotor and so on

Will take me some time to go through each of the above.So while im at it , ive decided to go back in time and anayse how it all evolved. Starting with the windows version history for DOS , tried finding the first API call ever ,but i cudnt find it :( . But i found this worth a look

A model of an API call

What Are the Differences Between a 16-Bit Windows API and a 32-Bit Windows API?
* Case sensitivity.
* Unicode or ANSI options.
* Parameter data types.

...more here

Then found this dated to 1994,that talked bout Creating Useful Native Visual Basic and Microsoft Access Functions.For Getting started with System programming in Windows ,you can check out WHDC for :

System and Device Design - Designing for Windows compatibility and reliability from the beginning prevents much rework later.

Driver Development - Microsoft provides the Windows Driver Development Kit (DDK) and a collection of testing tools to help you build reliable, stable, and secure drivers.

Logo Program Testing - To supplement your company's quality assurance practices, the Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) testing programs and the Windows Hardware Compatibility Tests (HCT) will help ensure that your hardware and drivers qualify for the "Designed for Windows" logo.

Qualification Service - Windows Quality Online Services provides the Web site infrastructure that you use to qualify your products for Microsoft logo programs and to list them in product catalogs and directories.

Product Maintenance - Windows Quality Online Services offer several methods for maintaining and distributing drivers, including the ability for your company to view Windows Error Reporting (WER) data associated with driver failures.

Well heres to the start of some serious and exciting stage of system level programming  ... Cheers to that .
End of Part - 1 .

About myself

bosky101 — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 06:30:00 GMT

Im Bhasker V Kode aka Bosky ,doing my final year Bachelors in IT in a humble town called chennai in india ; and a real knowledge seeker if u can call it . i like to call myself a technologist and am also staff member&moderator at TechEnclave.com.,involve in reviewing and discussing the latest in technology at both the forums and occasionally at my blog ,apart from trying to spread whatever i know in class or whereeve i am,hoping to learn and expand ma horizons in the process.

From a research /technical point of view ,i've always been playing around with projects in Visual Basic,then entering .net.Im the current Microsoft Student Champ(MSC) for SVCE (one of the best pvt collegs in moi state) based on moi credentials .You can check out more bout me "resume ishtyle" .Talk about papers,and i can only talk bout my paper i did in 3rd year on "analysis of a wireless network for a mapping system on mars" and now im plannign to do one regarding my current mini project "optimizing search in decission trees "using knowledge based learning . have also done a paper on rfid and erp deployment (both very basic )some time back in first year . im looking to do a final yr project probably with voice enabled /voice recognition based app for say or IP protection .(hck out the chennai .net user group for more info on .Net )

Was a volunteer at the Tablet PC stall and hands on Labs at TechEd 05 in Chennai (one of the 5-6 cities on the indian agenda) , an had a great experince meeting lotta ppl,especially from redmond (see my Review: Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005) .But perhaps the highlight of the day,or rather past two days must have been Sheila Gulati - Director PE - Microsoft India pat me from behind while i was at the Tablet Pc stall and ask me to adjust the volume for Pink Floyd's - "comfortabaly numb" ...!! I mean where else can it happen but microsoft.... 8 )

Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode,Microsoft Student Partner
Sri Venkateswara College of Engg,Chennai

Looking back at a few Hands on Lab .Net sessions

bosky101 — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 06:19:00 GMT

I'm back from Bharath College of Engg, where myself and reza took a really convincing and inspiring intro session and Hands on labs ,with the material that we prepared for the SRM and MIT held CNUG Training Meet earlier in last month.we dint use it for Abdul Hakeem or VIT ,those were more casual talks .So,coming back to what we did ,we talked bout the CLR and platforms over which the languages are complied into assemblies ,the manifest ,opened up a few dll's and exe's with ildasm and worked with notepad for some 'nascent' notepad coding with the VS 2003 Command prompt.Again lotta theory ,and history through evolutions made in the programming models and methodologies.Moving over to winforms and simple file operations and dialog controls ,comparing with VB 6.0 and java ,some thing on the string and text reader helper classes ,and the code interoperability and emphasis on the CLR handling the output be it a vb.net or C# form. Then went into ado.net and the various theory again ,the namespaces for the managed providers like Sql and oracle as well as oledb and their namespaces. After some troubleshooting finding out the right connection server and login parameters,we got thru examples for both disconnected and connected architecture . Then we moved into a slow and low stress ride with XML and were on the white board a lot for that. Ended up with a simple xml node traversal,search and display within the app,after explaining ze rules for creating xml files. Break ke bad... moved into webservices and ended up with implementing database and xml applications for the pocket pc .One thing that always tends to get me ot go on and on ,are the "magic of web services and xml" . Still under the influence of Jean 'XML' Paoli 's video from channel9 on xml's histroy and future ,i had all the more reason to. Tried the smsindia webservice from uddi,unfortunately wasnt able to send,i think my operator's not included.Either that ,or i'll be hapy to bu spammed by my sms's when i make up tomorrow :P .

Anyway,thought i'd quickly elaborate on few other common tweaks ive noticed that you can check ,so that you can avoid any future problems deadling with asp.net or webservices and so on after someone in Cnug, reminded me of the debugging days form lat years Microsoft Student Project program on asp.net .

1.Error as soon as you attempt opening up an asp.net or webservice

Usualy IIS is installed before installing the .net sdk ,but when you do happen to install IIS after installing the VS, then theres some mapping to be done to "set things right again " . So if you do find an error bang on initially after u attempt to create a new asp.net app or webservice ,then do as follows :

navigate to dotnetv1.~dir/aspnet_regiis -i

eg: C:/ windows / microsoft.net / framework / v1.1.4322 / aspnet_regiis -i

(ive just addes white spaces to make it more readable )

2.IIS service not running or disabled

This also throws an error box when u start an iis related app.Simply enable and start the iis service as follows:

Start->Run -> services.msc

,then right click on iisadmin service, and enable and again right click start. If your worried about resource hogging (like me) then make it manual instead you could make a bat file add a line :

net start "iis admin service" , so that before running ur iis relted app, run the bat file ,it does the start service for you .For that matter you can even start and stop a lot of other services to reduce your resource hogging while gaming or listenting to multimedia / resource heavy apps .but beware ,that closing networking related services assumes that you wont be going online. so pick and choose depending on the occasion . ive attached my gamingstart.bat that i used to have long time back. no time to game nowadays ....8 )

3.Internet eplorer is working offline

Simply make sure taht while running ur asp.net apps , that :

Internet Explorer ->File -> working offline ,is not ticked.

if you do a aspnet_regiis without the -i ,and maybe with a |more ,you can see what it actually does and that -i installs the asp.net version and sets things ok.

PS: the reason im telling you this is that this is one of the most common ,yet unnoticed reason contributing factor to get everyone going - "its not woorkinggg" in your Hands on labs sessions and help to know why it did .... 8 )

Keep Clicking,

Bhasker V Kode

MSC - SVCE , Chennai