Vaibhav’s Blog

Google should be congratulated on taking such a tough stance against China. As announced on Google Blogs on 22 March, Google Inc. has closed down its China (People’s Republic of China referred as PRC here onwards) portal www.google.cn and has started redirecting visitors to www.google.hk, its Hong Kong portal. Google had earlier declared that it will stop censoring search results in China and this decision is in line with implementing its promise.

PRC has always put several restrictions on MNCs operating in the country. One of most bitter is the censorship. Since China remains world’s biggest Internet markets, U.S. companies have always accepted these restrictions and rules. Google also had (unwillingly?) abided by search censorship rules so far, against to its own policy of compromising search results. This included blocking search keywords for words blacklisted by PRC. Read more…

Microsoft is a supporter of the jQuery JavaScript Library. Currently, Microsoft is shipping it with Visual Studio and ASP.NET MVC. Microsoft also builds features making it easier for ASP.NET developers to create rich standards-based web application using the jQuery JavaScript Library. At MIX10, Microsoft announced that it will take a more active role participating in the open-source, community-driven development of the jQuery JavaScript Library. Microsoft will work in concert with the jQuery JavaScript Library team to accelerate the creation of new features designed to simplify and expedite the creation of rich-web applications on any platform. Microsoft’s latest deliverable to the community creating the jQuery JavaScript Library is to propose a powerful templating feature that makes it easier for developers to build client-side, data-driven web applications.

Read more…

http://silverlight.net/learn/

• Microsoft delivers the premier mobile application development experience.

o Today, with the combination of Windows Phone 7 Series, Silverlight, the XNA Framework, Visual Studio, Expression Blend and Windows Phone Marketplace, developers have the richest, most productive development tools and platform for creating and deploying high performance, compelling mobile applications.
o Microsoft offers a familiar and flexible development experience for mobile applications with Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone and Expression Blend for Windows Phone.
o The Windows Phone Marketplace offers developers a low-cost, easy, transparent and predictable way to publish, distribute and monetize their applications.

Read more…

In India ‘State’ means a federated state which is a territorial and constitutional body which is part of the larger union which is a sovereign state or country or nation. The Constitution of India has defined the power sharing between states and the Union.

Before formation of Union of India, Indian subcontinent was being ruled by several ethnic groups over centuries. During British rule, India was either under direct British rule or was under Princely state allied to Britain. British had divided India in certain Provinces like Central, Bombay and Calcutta for simplifying the administration. These boundaries were not reflecting cultural and ethnic diversity in subcontinent. Post independence, when State reorganization was necessity, these were created based on linguistic criteria.
That’s how today’s modern states were formed. This grouping of states and thereby people of same language or culture was created on ideology that people of same culture will mix together as one identity and they share similar aspirations and beliefs.

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It’s a typical Johar movie, a love story, a dramatic adventurous mission of “Meeting the President of the United States of America” to tell him THE MESSAGE, and to add mirch-masala, instances to glorify the “Rizwan Khan” a.k.a. SRK himself, blah blah blah. Nothing surprising, nothing different.

Point here is not to discuss the film, which some people may like, some may not. But I want to centralize this topic around certain message given in the film.

“Do not stereotype all Muslims as terrorists.” Read more…

2D barcode based technology that allows you to put certain information in a “tag” which you can publish/print anywhere. And then, just install Microsoft Tag Reader application in your camera phone and when you just point your camera to the “tag”, it will automatically reveal the information, within seconds…

This Beta version can be used for pointing to vCard, URLs or plaintext information. Plus, with custom tags you can use any picture of your choice and just embedd it with tag graphics.

Here is my vCard tag as sample:

vCard of Vaibhav Sathe

When you will point your phone to this tag, it will automatically load the vCard details as per Contact format of your phone – (Supported: iPhone, WinMo, Blackberry, Symbian or J2ME). All you need is an average quality camera and a GPRS connection.

“] Microsoft Tag reading my vCard tag on iPhone

Contact read from tag can be saved as new or added to existing

More information on MS Tag can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/tag/

Also you can see – High Capacity Color Barcode on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Tag#Microsoft_Tag

Bing is real surprise !!! I never imagined MS will build something so great, so innovative, so different…

Bing is really cool with every feature it has right from the first page photo – even though certain websites are proudly making 20 Billions from a text box and a button, as Ballmer says there is lot more to do in search.

Bing homepage displays different photo everyday and also you can see all previous ones. It has got real cool set of photos and they don’t even take time to load. Not just that but every photo would include information with video links about the place.

If you would like to have Bing Homepage photo set and updated everyday as your Windows 7 desktop wallpaper, Click Here. It is really very simple and quick to create your “bing theme”.

Search results are very relavent and you get relavent links and sections - if you search place name, you would get left hand links with Tourism, Weather, Maps and Restaurant. If you search person, you would get personal links like Books, Accomplishments, Facts etc. You search university, you would get Admissions, Alumni etc.

As said it is real “Decision Engine”. Really something beyond conventional search.

Coolest feature i loved is if you search video – within search result you just take your mouse over it and it will start playing automatically within search result page – no matter it is from Youtube or any other video site.

Reviews all over web also are great and this is definitely start of new “era” in search engines.

Next time you need something, Just “Bing” it..

Note: I assume most of features are only availble on US website of Bing, so don’t forget to change Country from Top Right Menu to United States.

After Microsoft closed its internal hosting service (FREE!!!), I had to come back to Brinkster after a year’s break. To my surprise Brinkster just offered this hosting package @ just $02/mo with all required 1GB/.NET 3.5/MySQL etc. This is awesome!!! I always loved Brinkster for its support, but $120/year was too costly earlier. You can check more details at www.brinkster.com/mini if you are intereseted.

Main intention behind my owning domain was always email account, but now starting blogging…