Untitled

Indian Blog Portal

Vikas is talking of building a Blog Portal for Indian Blogs and has even gone and published a table design as a starter. Here are our few suggestions, though. The table can have another field which will store the number of hits for blogs. Also, Most of the blogs have a small description for them, so we can include this information also. As for the location of this directory, we can register a new domain name and the site can be hosted anywhere (?? Kamat.org's web server, if Vikas has some bandwidth). To start with Vikas can be the editor and then later few more people can be inducted as editors for the Portal. Indeed this is an ambitious idea, but achievable. Our 2 cents.

Untitled

XooMLe

How could I miss XooMLe? Beau Lebens left a comment on our website directing us towards XooMLe. Thanks Beau. XooMLe is an implementation of Google API using REST-Approach. And if you don't know what REST is, check out this great new article by Roger Costello. We had also blogged about few REST articles in the past, so you can even search the archives for that.

Untitled

Is .NET dead yet?

In an article on E-Commerce Times, the writer asks, Is .Net dead yet? I must warn you, It's a very confusing article. After asking the question, She goes and talks about how the transition from "legacy" applications to .Net applications will take place and that the biggest challenge for MS will be keeping the development tools easy to use. So, What information did she convey? Well, I have no clue, You decide. Also, Why is everyone so keen to declare Microsoft's .Net initiative as dead so early. How old is .Net, not even 2 years and already we are seeing such articles. Some days back Sam Gentile and others had rebutted one such article. Well guys, .Net has just started and is maturing real fast, no matter what these short-sighted guys write, .Net is here to stay.

Untitled

Hot, Steaming Hot

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://blogg.hotornot.com/js/rate/?eid=OE&amp;key=QDRX"></script>Well, Looks like you guys voted our blog as hot blog. Thanks!!

Update: I just came across few blogs with 9.5+ rating, So mebbe we are not that hot. I guess the title of the post should be, Hot, Steaming Hot, not Boiling hot.

Untitled

.Net comes to Apache

Now you will have options selecting the Web server to run your ASP.Net applications on. Covalent Technologies today released the Covalent Enterprise Ready Server which will support Microsoft ASP.NET Web services development platform.

"With Covalent's Enterprise Ready Server, a server package that includes Apache, developers will also be able to use Microsoft development tools, which are fairly popular, to build their Apache applications. Microsoft's Visual Studio.Net includes Visual Basic.Net, Visual C++.Net and C-Sharp, a new C-like language from Microsoft that Java programmers say looks awfully familiar. All of these tools can be used to build Apache applications now.

Untitled

Userland Software's deal with Salon

Salon.com in partnership with Dave Winer's UserLand Software will allow user's to publish their own weblogs through Salon. These blogs will be powered by Radio Userland tool. The service along with the software will cost the users $39.95 a year (30 day free trial period). Read this Press Release for more details. Now, you head over to Recently Changed Weblogs page on Salon, You will see a high-water mark at the bottom of the page which stood at "70 weblogs, on 7/24/2002; 5:44:06 PM". This high water mark looks like the total number of weblogs created under this partnership. In just 2 days they've reached this figure and I know this will have an exponential increase(atleast for the next few days/weeks). I understand most of these started under 30 day trial period, but even if half of these guys actually bought the service, that translates into handsome $$ figure for both Userland Software and Salon. So, What's the moral of the story(read partnership). No it's not dollars for Dave Winer (actually it is). As for me, this shows the power the medium of Blogging brings to these people, And who does not like power and power at $40 is no big deal. Just my 2 cents !!

Untitled

Code Secure

This article from MSDN explains cross site scripting with very good and simple examples. We all have heard of cross site scripting in the last couple of years and most of the times it was in context of some vulnerability with IE (different versions). Threats from Cross Site Scripting (or XSS) includes account hijacking, changing of user settings, cookie theft/poisoning etc. If you don't take care, this could be easiest forms of hacking. Here's the URL once again:
When Output Turns Bad: Cross Site Scripting Explained

Untitled

Dive Into Accessibility

I knew it was coming what with all the success this series had. Mark Pilgrim has released his wildly popular series "30 days to a more accessible weblog" as a book, only this time the word weblog has been replaced by the word website. I would recommend this to any serious blogger, website designers, user experience designers, programmers, my managers, friends, foes and everyone I meet in the next few days.

Untitled

Cool Dude, We've got a SONY VAIO

Atlast, It arrived. Our Sony VAIO (GRX500 series) Notebook. With a screen of 15" (XGA), it's not a compact and lightweight eyecandy, but it's what we wanted (in fact Deepak wanted to go for the one with 16.1" screen, No way). It is powerful with 1.6 MHz Pentium 4-M processor and then we got it customized with 512 MB RAM, DVD/CD-RW drive and a 30 GB hard drive. With Windows XP Professional operating system, shall we say We've arrived at the .Net scene. There will be no excuse for not learning .Net and trying out few things now (At work, .Net is atleast 6 months away). And this beauty in purple and black didn't come alone, it came with an Epson Color printer (free after rebate) and a free DVD(Black Hawk Down)

Untitled

High-technology companies spend less on technology

This article points to a recent Forrester Research report that shows high-technology firms spend less on technology than other companies. One of the reason it cites for this behaviour is that in most of the tech companies, the CIO's reports to a CFO and "With finance more likely in charge, these firms demonstrate less executive commitment to technology than the average company does--ironic, considering the industry is technology". Also, most of the big IT firms eliminate the spening by utilizing in house developed products and applications. The article lists many other reasons to support the finding's of this report. Read it all here.

Untitled

Amazon.com Launches Web Services

Amazon, today launched web services targeting website owners and developers. Developers will now be able to create applications which will allow them to search and display products from Amazon's catalog. Also, another newly exposed web service will allow them to add Amazon.com products to shopping carts, wish lists, and registries from third party locations. The whole thing is free. You just need to download the development kit which has quite some examples and then you will need to register yourself with them to get the developer's token just like the key used with Google API. It wouldn't have hurt if the toolkit had few .Net and Visual Basic/ASP samples.

Untitled

What's that site playing?

Now here's a cool tool which will allow you to maintain your streaming playlist. "BlogAmp is a free Winamp plugin that allows the user to keep in his personal web page a list with the last songs played in his Winamp. This list is updated by FTP in real time." Keep an eye for our playlist, coming soon.

Untitled

Microsoft's Palladium: What the heck is it?

Good FAQ on Palladium, a new security initiative by Microsoft. "Palladium is not a separate operating system. Rather, it consists of enhancements to the Windows kernel and to hardware, including the CPU, peripherals, and chipsets. Together, these enhancements will support a trustworthy execution subsystem within the PC--think of it as a very secure little computer inside your larger, insecure one."

Untitled

Few good articles at Builder.com

How to thrive as a developer among nondevelopers - "Being a developer among nondevelopers is a challenging situation. You have the opportunity to make significant contributions to the organization thanks to your skills. Properly handled, a career as a lone wolf can be highly rewarding."

Eight reasons why extreme programming won't work in your shop - "XP can work in a development shop if both the development team and the business organization are realistic about what XP can deliver."

Untitled

XML Web Services Developer Center

Today has been a day of some cool discoveries. Check out the XML Web Services Developer Center at MSDN. A cool feature of this website is links to few blogs under community section. Although this list can be more exhaustive, but it's a nice start. All the action seems to be taking place at Weblogs. While at the website check out the new article by Don Box on Understanding GXA.