CodePlex - Microsoft's answer to SourceForge goes Live

Microsoft took a stab at an open source community for Windows developers this week with the launch of CodePlex at the Open Source Business Conference in London.

The community development site went into public beta last month, providing a dozen Microsoft open source projects and another 18 Shared Source-related projects with a single place to call home.

"One thing we really wanted to do with CodePlex was to provide an environment where developers can collaborate with the Microsoft community and external developers," said Jon Rosenberg, director of community source programs at Microsoft.

As part of the project, Microsoft is helping open projects get set up on the steps of Shared Source licensing, how to manage the project and deal with all of the licensing and source code control issues, he said.

Microsoft gets around 150 requests per week to host projects, but for the time being is only adding around five to 10 per week.

CodePlex is built on Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server and provides source control, bug tracking, discussion forums and RSS feeds in and out of each project.

Prior to CodePlex, Microsoft's open source projects, such as its Atlas extensions for AJAX and IronPython language, were scattered around MSDN. And three projects –- Windows Installer XML (WIX), Windows Template Library and FlexWiki –- were hosted on SourceForge, an open source hosting site on which CodePlex is modeled.

Based on experience gained with the SourceForge experiment, Microsoft decided to create its own community for developers who follow its Shared Source Initiative.

SourceForge is mostly home to more relaxed open source projects that follow the GPL and other unrestricted licenses.

CodePlex participants will need to download a small client for code check-in and check-out, which is available for free, said Rosenberg.

There will be some cross-linking and referencing between CodePlex and Port 25, Microsoft's open source lab. There will be connections between the two and sharing of links back and forth, said Rosenberg.

My Gadgets Collection

Mobile Phones


My First Mobile Phone - Nokia 5110

My PC Speaker System - Creative Inspire 5200 2.1

Windows Weird Bug - Bush Hid The Facts!!!

Bush Hid The Facts

For those of you using Windows, do the following:
1.) Open an empty notepad file
2.) Type "Bush hid the facts" (without the quotes)
3.) Save it as whatever you want.
4.) Close it, and re-open it.

is it just a really weird bug?

Thanks to Karthikeyan for this Forward mail :-)

After digging the details about this bug, I came across the MSDN Blog, which explains the reason for this behaviour. Please check the answer to this behaviour at Michael Kaplan's Blog link.

One more entry to this: Try the same steps with the text "this app can break" (without the quotes)

Microsoft Announces Plans for July 2008 Transition for Bill Gates

Working full time at Microsoft through June 2008, Gates then will continue as chairman and advisor while increasing Foundation efforts; Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie to assume expanded roles.


June 15, 2006, Redmond, Wash: (L-R) Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie and CEO Steve Ballmer gather prior to a news conference announcing plans for Gates to transition out of a day-to-day role in Microsoft over the next two years while Ozzie and Mundie assume increased roles in the company.

Read the Presspass News -
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jun06/06-15CorpNewsPR.mspx

BSNL Broadband - Setup Help

I came across this website which provides a very good help to setup BSNL Broadband at home. This help is provided in Flash format and available at official site:

http://www.calcutta.bsnl.co.in/dataoneinstall/menu.html

There's some stuff on Multi-user settings too..... Hope it works!

Let the computer Read Out the PDF Content for you

Did you know this? You can listen to any PDF instead of reading with Adobe Reader 7.0 or 6.0, and the short-cut keys are:

To Hear The Current Page - Ctrl+Shift+V
To Hear The Entire Document - Ctrl+Shift+B
To Pause - Ctrl+Shift+C
To Stop - Ctrl+Shift+E

Open any PDF File and test the above. Its amazing!!! Thanks to Ganesh Dalvi for sending this tip through mail.

After going through the Adobe website, I learnt that:

Adobe Reader 7.0 contains many capabilities specifically designed to make it easier for people with disabilities to read PDF files, regardless of whether the files have been optimized for accessibility. It leverages accessibility functions built into Windows® and Macintosh operating systems, and allows adjustment of user preferences to optimize the reading experience for a variety of disabilities.

Photo Blog - KLICK KLICK...!!!

Have you ever seen a Photo Blog? Check these out:

Got this link from my ex-colleague Santhosh - http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/

And this link belongs to Deepak Gulati, the Microsoft Expert who is usually seen at various technical seminars: http://deepakg.blogspot.com/ He is now ready to KLICK OFF his new Web Site at http://www.deepakg.com/ . Good work Deepak!

Windows XP SP2 - Blocks some ports - some applications may not work!

After you install Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), some programs may seem not to work. By default, Windows Firewall is enabled and blocks unsolicited connections to your computer. This article discusses how to make an exception and enable a program to run by adding it to the list of exceptions. This procedure permits the program to work as it did before the service pack was installed.

This is a good KB article I found which details the issues with Applications. You will learn about how to identify Ports and PID's here.

This link is a must for me, since I am using Win XP SP2.

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