ASP.Net Login Controls: Custom Membership Provider for SQL Server

Monday, December 01, 2008

ASP.Net provides excellent controls for managing user logins in your web application. But some applications require custom database fields and functionality for their user tables. The ASP.NET login controls can be used in these applications by writing a custom membership provider.

This msdn tutorial guides you on the implementation steps required for implementing a membership provider. An ODBC based sample implementation can be found here. This shows the sample database schema for implementing a membership provider on MS-Access. The corresponding C#/VB.NET code can be found on: How to: Sample Membership Provider Implementation.

I have modified this custom Membership Provider's ODBC implementation for SQL Server. The file can be downloaded from here. This file also contains the custom Create Table SQL for the user table. This membership provider should be saved as .cs file and be placed in the 'App_Code' folder. The web.config file should be configured to use this membership provider. This can be done by adding the following between the <system.web> tags:

    <membership defaultProvider="DbMembership">
<providers>
<add name="DbMembership"
type="DbMembership.DbMembershipProvider"
connectionStringName="SqlConnectionString"
enablePasswordRetrieval="true"
enablePasswordReset="true"
requiresQuestionAndAnswer="true"
writeExceptionsToEventLog="true"
applicationName="AFIRS"/>
</providers>
</membership>
After adding this all the ASP.NET login controls will be used according to the functionality specified in the custom membership provider DbMembership.

ASP.NET: Recursively Writing all Form Elements to a Cookie

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

There are instances when you need to write all your form elements on a page to a cookie. Here's a simple recursive function, which will write all form values to cookies with the form ids as the cookie keys:

   Private Sub AddToCookie(ByVal Parent)   'Add form values to cookies
For Each c As Control In Parent.Controls
If (TypeOf c Is TextBox) Then
Response.Cookies("Order")(c.ID) = CType(c, TextBox).Text
ElseIf (c.ID = "Product") Then 'Getting value from a DropDownBox
Response.Cookies("Order")(c.ID) = CType(c, DropDownList).SelectedValue
End If
If (c.Controls.Count > 0) Then
AddToCookie(c)
End If
Next
End Sub
This function finds all textboxes and a drop-down box on the page and writes it onto a cookie. This function can also be modified for storing values in session variables.

To retrieve all values of the cookie iteratively, the following code snippet can be used:
       For cookie As Integer = 0 To Request.Cookies("Order").Values.Count - 1
lblOrderInfo.Text += Request.Cookies("Order").Values.Keys.Get(cookie) & " = "
lblOrderInfo.Text += Request.Cookies("Order")(Request.Cookies("Order").Values.Keys.Get(cookie)) & "<br/>"
Next
This code displays all the elements of the cookie as: key = value.

This VB.Net code can be converted to C# by using this converter.

Microsoft's Web Platform Installers

Friday, October 17, 2008

Here's something really exciting for web developers. Microsoft has come up with a web platform installer for free. It allows you to install IIS 7.0, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express, SQL Server 2008 Express and the .NET Framework. No more painful configuration settings required. The installer automatically configures all these components for a smooth experience and allows you to start working instantly.

Apart from the platform installer, a web application installer(AI) is also there for you to install the most commonly used open-source web applications. This installer can download and configure frequently used .NET web applications for ecommerce, content management, blogs, forums etc. It automatically downloads the latest version of the applications and provides a seamless integration and configuration on IIS.

The installers are in their Beta and the future releases will have much more features including support for PHP on IIS 7 and many more applications will be added to the AI. These are similar to XAMP and other installers which install and configure Apache, PHP and MySQL for PHP based web development. So, now we have auto-configure installers for ASP.Net web development. For detailed information about these installers, read about them at Channel 8.

These packages are part of the Microsoft /web, which is a site dedicated for providing web resources for the web developers. The site links to many useful articles, event listings, and relevant and valuable conversation from around the Web.

Just Go Through This

Thursday, September 18, 2008


This post was for all my friends who think MS in US is fun. Yes, it seems that I am having good fun solving these equations. Do you still think so?

P.S.: This post has been written on a night prior to an assignment submission date, which was still not completed and I was getting bored doing it.

Chrome - The Google's Browser

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Google has finally come out with its much anticipated browser - "Google Chrome". It comes with a clean and simple look with no frills attached.

Chrome comes with a horde of innovative features. Its just got one box which acts as an address bar, a search bar and a suggestion box. The new tab comes up with the list of the most visited sites, most used search engines, and recently bookmarked pages and closed tabs. Then there are application shortcuts, instant bookmarks, incognito mode, a simple download manager and the list goes on. One of the most intriguing feature is the integrated task manager for the tabs. So, if one of your tab is not responding or eating too much of your resources, you can just exit that tab without affecting the other tabs.

I have been using it for a week now and find it good. It seems to have combined good features of IE and Firefox and some great additional functionality like task manager to bring out a cool Beta package. Lets see what more will Google offer in its bag. As a web-developer too, I don't think it requires any overhead coding for cross-browser compatibility; though there will be an additional overhead for testing in a new browser.

Its deemed to be the fastest browser in processing JavaScript according to this cnet report. Its been a week since it has been launched and it has started eating up the visitor share of browsers like Firefox and Safari (view detailed report).

You may read more about the browser on the launch post on the Google blog. You can download Google Chrome from here.

First Post from the US of A

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Here comes my first post from the United States of America. I'm here for my Master's in Computer Engineering at the University of Florida. I reached Gainesville, FL on August 5 making a journey of around 30 hours from New Delhi; with stop overs at New York and Charlotte, NC.

University of Florida, the "Gator Nation" is a huge university, 4th largest in the US having approx. 50,000 students. Its situated at Gainesville (pronounced, gain-s-will), a small town in Florida with a very small population, majorly consisting of university students. A beautiful and clean city, Gainesville has a plush green cover all around. The city has its own bus service - RTS, which is free for all UF students.

I guess that was enough advertisement stuff and I should move on to my experiences out here in the last 10 days. So, here am I to set up an all new life 1000s of miles away from home. I moved into a new apartment at Tuscan Bend with two other housemates. Its a 3BHK apartment fully carpeted, centrally air-conditioned with basic kitchen equipment. The apartment complex has a good gym and a swimming pool. Its connected to the university by the RTS bus service.

Our first few days went into buying some basic necessities. A large shopping complex, Butler Plaza is at walking distance from our apartment. It has stores of most of the large retail chains - Walmart, BestBuy, Publix, OfficeDepot, Lowe's and a plethora of eating joints. We buy our groceries from Publix and for most of the other stuff we go to Walmart, where we have been paying almost a daily visit, most of them being after midnight till dawn. There is so much variety for everything in stores out here. I remember how difficult it was to select a simple tubelight from Lowe's. There were more than 10 types of tubelights. It was so confusing to select one that we needed the help of a sales assistant who seemed to have a Ph.D in lights. He told us that tubeX is good for general reading, tubeY for working on computer, tubeZ if you wan't to read magazines and so on. It was such a pain deciding which one to take. Also, there's an Indian store nearby where we can get many common Indian stuff like spices, pickles, pulses, sweets etc.

Out here, I had to start doing things I had seldom or never done before. I lost my cooking virginity. Surviving on sandwiches and burgers was not possible, so had to start cooking. I never knew cutting onions wasn't that difficult ;). Apart from cooking, I have attempted doing almost all the daily household chores. From washing the dishes to cleaning the floor, I have tried them all. Living here is definitely not an easy thing to do.

Now something about the life outside the apartment. Here in Gainesville, we need to walk a lot. The only mode of public transport is the RTS bus service, which as any other bus service has limited connectivity. The buses are good and air-conditioned with friendly drivers. The university campus is very-very large. Though RTS provides service within the university, still to get around most places we need to walk, walk and walk. As pedestrians we have the first right of way, ie. cars would stop for us to cross the streets at crossings. All roads have bicycle and padestrian paths on the sides. At buzy traffic intersections, we have to press a button to get a signal to walk. Its very well-organized, calm and peaceful city.

P.S.: There's a lot more to come out here. I would continue writing posts about my experiences at UFL. Its on the special request of my friends in India, who asked me to do so once I reach here.

Auto-Format your Code in Visual Studio

Friday, July 18, 2008

Many a times we often come across unformatted code, which is almost impossible to understand. For instance, some lines of code may be indented properly while others might not be. Visual Studio provides a great feature for auto-formatting your unformatted code. Just press Ctrl+K followed by Ctrl+D and voila the code is now in a well-indented, easy to understand format. It works for markup code like HTML, XML etc. as well as for language codes such as C# and VB.

If you have code like this:

<table><tr><td>val1</td><td>val2</td></tr></table>

It can be auto-formatted to:


<table>
<tr>
<td>
val1</td>
<td>
val2</td>
</tr>
</table>

So, next time you copy some code from the net you can easily reformat it by using the key combination. Alternately, you can also use Ctrl+K followed by Ctrl+F.

Using Public Computers Securely

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

If you are using a public computer, the chances are high that your personal information might be at risk. There is a probability that a key-logger might be installed on the machine. Key-loggers are programs, normally used for malicious intends, which log each key stroke of the keyboard. For instance, if you open your computer and type in a url and then enter your username and password, all these would be stored in a special file generated by the key-logger. These programs run in hidden mode and you won’t be able to realize that they are working behind your normal applications.

So, how do you protect your information from these malicious spywares? A nice way would be to confuse the person reading your personal information. Here are a few tips you might want to follow:

  • Before entering a URL, open the drop down list of a browser to see if the website is present. Open the website by clicking it. That ways, the key-logger won’t be able to record the website you are browsing.
  • Don’t enter your username, password, credit card numbers or any other secure information directly on the text boxes provided for these. Instead, open a notepad file and type some random text. Between this random text put your passwords or other information split into multiple parts. Now copy-paste these parts of your information on the website. It would be almost impossible for the person reading the key-logger file to decode any of your information from this file.
  • A number of banking websites, like icicibank.com and hdfcbank.com have introduced the concepts of virtual keyboards. These also allow a sound level of protection as you need to select your password by selecting the alphabets using the mouse buttons. Always use them for enhanced security.
Following these tips can prevent you from potential threats of identity thefts. A little extra effort is certainly worth the extra protection you get.

P.S.: Public computers still don’t provide a very high security level. There might be machines which are monitored through virtual networks and video recording of your sessions could be made easily. So, always try to avoid sharing your private information on these systems.

New URL and a New Design

Sunday, July 06, 2008

I have moved my blog from gsmodi.blogspot.com to blog.gsmodi.com. The blog has been redesigned to give it a great new look and feel.


» » »


Both these changes were awaited from a long time. I had wished to change my blog domain from a long time. The new domain sounds much better and syncs with my website: www.gsmodi.com. The blogging platform remains the same, ie blogger. I had thought about changing it to wordpress, but blogger allowed complete redirection of my old posts to the new custom domain.

The blog design needed a makeover from a long time. The new design is a 3 column layout which caters to the more common larger screen sizes. I found this layout here. A number of modifications have been made to the layout to make it look better.

Apart from these, a number of new things have been added to the blog:
  • E-mail subscription option from feedburner.
  • Custom search engine from Google.
  • A favicon for associating an icon with the bookmarks.
  • The new subscription widget from Blogger.
  • Social bookmarking and other sharing button from ShareThis.
  • Tag (Label) cloud whose code can be found here.
Do give your feedback about the new layout and these exciting features.

Fuel Price Hike and the Chaos

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

The fuel prices across India were set to rise at midnight. Petrol is to get dearer by Rs. 5, diesel by Rs. 3 and LPG cylinders by Rs. 50 (news story). The official announcement was made around noon and soon it became the most common talk of the town. Fuel stations saw hordes of vehicles piling up to get their tanks full.

The petrol in Delhi would now cost Rs.50.52/litre. The chaos at petrol pumps was inevitable. Everyone was out there to save some bucks. I too went out at around 11:15pm, browsed through a few pumps - some of them were closed, some had put out-of-order notices on half of their vending machines resulting in long queues - finally, found a pump which was operating normally. I was successful in placing my vehicle just before the entry of the pump leaving behind those who were waiting before me.

I got my tank full and was billed just 10 minutes before midnight, i.e. at 11:50. Thus, was successful in saving Rs. 150 from the 30 litres of petrol I bought. There were others who could not make it to the midnight "deadline" due to the long waiting time.

The scene at the fuel station was both of chaos and excitement, wherein everyone coveted to fill in their tanks before the price hike. Here are some shots of "the fuel station @ the night before the price hike":




Cars moving into the fuel pump.





Queued up to get the sought after fuel.





The filling up of the tanks. It took around 10 minutes / car.





Finally, payments!



Location: Prem Service Station (Moolchand Petrol Pump)

The Ephemeral 4 Years

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Finally, my engineering degree has come to an end. The four years have passed by in the blink of an eye. Now with the completion of the degree, the nostalgia is boggling all around.

I still remember my first day in college; the ragging by seniors - those 90-degree bending and wishing them - the all white dress-code with no accessories (belts, watches etc) - repeating the same intro in multiple languages multiple times a day - and the other fun stuff... Soon the studies started and in no time we had our first sessionals - then the second - and then the end-sems.

Semesters came and went - the cycle continued: 1st sessional, 2nd sessional, end-sems. These were the only times for study - that too with one night stand policy before the exams. A week was all we studied during the sem. With virtually nil attendance in classes and no idea of the syllabus - we always landed at the photocopy shop to get the xerox for the notes - or relied on friends to scan and email them - or search for the topics on the Internet - or just leave it, I don't intend to top the exams :P.

But, college was a lot fun too. Working for DLC (thats, D'LangChaps - the literary society) events and the college fest, GATES are the most memorable times of the college. I would never forget those long meetings - the strategy discussions at Bindra pakore waala - the brainstorming sessions at the 'den' - working till late night in the college - the hide and seek games without any lights - the overnight stays - the sleeping on the chairs - the lunches and dinners at Deepak ka dhaba - the outings, the trips and the videos we shot ;) - and a lot of amusing memories to cherish.

There were times we attended some classes too. Our favorite activities during lectures included: sleeping - aptly using the free SMS's by chatting with a friend sitting in the next row - playing games on the phone - eating our lunch - discussions on philosophy unrelated to the subjects. The missing of the deadlines - the long library queues - the copying of the assignments - the xeroxing of the files before the practicals - the multiple canteen visits - the visit to the labs for surfing the internet - the seminars and sessions - the projects and the presentations... There's a long list of things we did, but there are restraints on being candid.

These 4 years were really amazing. These unforgettable years have gone by and what they have left behind are memories, sweet memories...

P.S.: Here are a few lines on college memories which were circulated via SMS:
Wo College Ki Sidhi Par Pyar Bhari Baate,
Wo Syllabus Ki Tension Wo Exam Ki Raate,
Wo Canteen Ki Party Wo B'day Ki Laate,
Wo Ruthna Manana Wo Bunk Wo Mulaqate,
Wo Lab Wo Library Wo Sona Temporary,
Wo Movie Wo Music Wo Cards K Magic,
Wo Proposal ki Planning me Raat Ka Gujarna,
Fir Class Me Piche Ki Seat Pe Sona,
Wo Library Me Jakar Chehro Ko Padna,
Betuki Baaton Ko Seriously Le Lena,
Na Rahenge ye Din Na Rahengi Wo Raaten,
Bachengi Kuch To Bas Yeh "Yaadein".

Screenshot Utilities for Web Pages

Saturday, May 10, 2008

I need to take a lot of screenshots of webpages for my presentations, projects and websites. I have been using some easy to use browser screenshot utilities for quite some time now. After observing some friends taking screenshots the hard-way (by coping multiple parts on paint and joining them), I thought it would be wise to share these tools.

When you take screenshots of webpages from the browser, it is mostly impossible to capture the complete webpage. Also, you might not like the browser window with your shot. There are many utilities to help you solve these problems. Here are a couple of them which I use:

FireShot: This is an extension for Firefox that can capture the screenshot of the webpage you are viewing in just two clicks. It provides an option to capture the entire web page or only visible part of the page. The captured image opens up in an editor having a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify captures and insert text and graphical annotations. Screenshots can be uploaded to server, saved to disk (PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP), copied to clipboard, e-mailed and sent to external editor for further processing.

ThumbPage: This is a small software application which allows you to generate thumbnails for a webpage. It can be conveniently used to generate thumbnails of any size and type. Thumbnails for multiple pages can be generated together by adding multiple URLs. Its ideally suited for generating icons of the webpages. I have been using this utility for generating thumbnails of my projects, which I've used in the work page on my website.

Mesh up your Data on Live Mesh

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Consider this: You are working on a document from the past few days on different machines and now realize that you have different versions of the document on different devices. Its a fractious task to keep a coherent copy of your work while working on multiple systems. Wouldn't it be great if there was a service which could automatically synchronize the files on all your devices.

Live Mesh is a new service which provides you a virtual desktop and enables individuals and organizations to access, manage and share data and applications seamlessly through the web. It allows you to connect all your devices and synchronize the data. It gives you 5GB space to store your data in the "cloud" (data centers on the internet). You can access your data anytime, anywhere on a simple web browser. So, resume your work from where you left it.


If you think thats awesome, well there are many more features in Live Mesh to be explored. It allows you to remotely access any of the device on your Mesh via the web. You can also share folders on your Live Desktop with your friends or family. Live Mesh updates you about the changes made in your folders. It also facilitates online collaboration through chat and posting messages in a folder.

Live Mesh has been developed by Microsft on the 'software-and-services' platform. It is currently under Limited Technology Preview and an invitation is required to preview this service. A developer SDK will also accompany this service, which would allow application developers to extend their applications using the amazing features of Live Mesh.

Reset Identity Field in MS-SQL

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

There are a lot of occasions when you would need to reset an 'Identity' field in the database table. For doing this in MS-SQL, you just need to execute this statement:

DBCC CHECKIDENT ('', RESEED)

This statement will RESEED the identity field to current maximum value in the column. You may also give a custom reseed value to the column:

DBCC CHECKIDENT ('', RESEED, )

Specify an integer number in place of the new_value. For example, to reset the identity column in 'tblA' to the value 20, use:

DBCC CHECKIDENT ('tblA', RESEED, 20)

BioFuel Debate

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

The scant of fossil fuels has almost led to an energy crisis in the world. Prices of petroleum products are already sky-rocketing, with crude oil costing almost $100/barrel. Scientists world-over are working to produce alternate sources of energy using natural products.

Biofuel, the kind of fuel produced from organic matter, is one of the best alternative being considered to replace the use of petroleum gas. There is a great on going debate on the efficient use of this fuel. The biofuel debate forum is community for people interested to discuss on the subject of alternate fuels. It provides a platform for scientists, academia, researchers, clubs or even newcomers who are interested in sharing knowledge and providing opinion for the effective use of biofuel.

There are many types of biofuels which are being experimented for use in vehicles. These include biogas, bioethanol, biobutanol, biodiesel, straight vegetable oil, and wood gas generator. Among these, biodiesel's use and production are increasing rapidly. Fueling stations make biodiesel readily available to consumers across Europe, and increasingly in the USA and Canada, and a growing number of transport fleets use it as an additive in their fuel. The biodiesel forum provides more insights about this efficient fuel.

Biofuel is considered by some as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing energy security by providing an alternative to fossil fuels. It is considered to be an eco-friendly fuel. But, there may be some adverse impacts about biofuel too. Use of biofuel may lead to increase in food prices used to make these fuel. They may also lead to deforestation, soil erosion and may effect the water resources. There are many such issues being discussed at the Biofuel impact forum. Participate in this forum and share how does biofuel effects the world.

If you would like to learn more about biofuels and alternative energy, do join the Biofuel Debate Forum (sponsor of this post). Its an active and freely available discussion forum. You can even host your public or private forum free of charge by contacting one of the webmasters.

ChocoDevilz.com

Friday, March 21, 2008

Recently, I (along with Rasleen) developed a website for a friend who has started his own chocolate brand, Choco Devilz. Being a website for promoting a brand of chocolates, it had to have a look and feel for arousing the gourmets. The task was a bit challenging for me as I had never developed a promotional website.

We started making a few layout plans on paint, looked for ideas on the web and after long brainstorming sessions settled on the plan of a template which we would be designing. We developed the site structure and wrote the CSS for it. The banner and the graphics were designed next. It was fractious to work with curved blocks both while designing and coding. But, the effect they produce is worth the effort.

So, here's how it finally looks like:


If you wish to give a feedback about ChocoDevilz.com, do leave a comment on this post.

Blogger Play

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Blogger Play is a real-time slideshow of photos being posted on blogger. I read about it in a recent post on Matt Cutts' blog and found it worth sharing.

Its interesting to see what people are posting about at the moment. You can also read the related blog post on which the image was posted. Though, I have observed that non-English blogs outnumber English blogs, atleast there are more non-English bloggers who post photographs on their blogs. Still, its fascinating to view random images ranging from natural scenes to personal photos and even a few technology reviews too ;)

It could also prove to be a great resource for my designer friends who keep searching for royalty free images on the web...lol

Here are some of the kindling images I found using Blogger Play:




Have fun viewing these images. But caution, its truly addictive and intriguing!

Why Do You Worry?

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Do you ever worry? Well, everybody does. So, the question is why do we waste so much of our precious energy worrying? Here's a video by Guruka Singh Khalsa in which he explicates the topic of "worrying" and shows you the way to stop worrying:


So, next time whenever you worry, just cerebrate over the thoughts shared in this video.

Video Credits: Gurumustuk Singh

For more Educational Videos by Guruka Singh Khalsa, click here.

Microsoft offers to purchase Yahoo

Friday, February 01, 2008

According to a recent BBC news update, Microsoft has offered to purchase Yahoo for a whopping $44.6bn, which is 62% above Yahoo's closing share price on Thursday. Yahoo is struggling to fight competition with rival Google, but its ambitions have been thwarted in the recent years. Yahoo's exigence is evident from its recent announcement of slashing 1000 jobs.

The deal would revive Yahoo of its financial crisis. The reaction to the news is clearly indicated by the Yahoo's stock quotes:


Microsoft certainly wants its share of the web. The alliance with Yahoo will help Microsoft to contend with rival Google and forestall its attempt of monopolizing the web. Microsoft has been vying for profits from web for a long time. If this deal works out, it may be a step closer to Steve Ballmer's ambition for Microsoft:
We won the desktop. We won the server. We will win the Web. We will move fast, we will get there. We will win the Web.

Printer Supplies for Less

Every time the printer runs out of ink, we feel the pinch of the exorbitant prices of printer supplies. Here's a website which offers quality ink cartridges at discount prices. Carrot Ink offers high quality supplies which are 30-70% less than what printer manufacturers charge. It is the premier direct marketer of money-saving printer supplies and has been in this space from the past 7 years.

The company offers best quality cartridges which are manufactured under ISO 9001 standards. The output is guaranteed to be as good or even better than the original manufacturer's cartridge. The cartridges are compatible or are re-manufactured original cartridges. The company has a same day shipping policy and also offers next business day delivery. It also has a good customer service via telephone or instant chat. Also, if you are somehow unsatisfied with the product, the company has a no-questions-asked return policy.

You can find print cartridges for almost all brands and models at Carrot Ink. The printer brands include HP, Epson, Canon, Compaq, Dell, Brother and many others. It doesn't matter whether you are looking for an inkjet cartridge or a toner, you can find it all here. Thermal fax films and papers are also available.

Finding the right cartridge for your printer is really easy. First select the brand of your printer. Then select the family of your printer belongs to and finally, select the model to get a list of all cartridges available for your printer. For example, to find a cartridge for HP PSC 1315, select the brand: HP, family: PSC and finally the model 1315. So, its now easy to buy the favorite hp c6656an black cartridge for the printer. You could have also selected your printer model from the page featuring all hp ink cartridges.

So, next time when you order your supplies do check out this website for the best prices.

.NET Book Zero

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Here's an excellent resource for those of you who wish to learn .NET. The .NET Book Zero summarizes all the basics of .NET and C# for the C and C++ programmers who might be coming to .NET for the very first time.

The book is authored by Charles Petzold, who started writing a Chapter Zero for one of his books ( Applications = Code + Markup: A Guide to the Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation ). That's the chapter with the stuff the reader needs to know before reading Chapter One. However it soon became evident that this Chapter Zero would be very long. It occurred to him that he could extract the material and make it a book on its own, and so he did.

The book gives an introduction to C# and those topics in .NET that are typically found in all .NET programming. It does require the reader to have some programming experience with a C-family language.

You can freely download the latest version of the book and the source code from here.

Today's MS Sessions

Thursday, January 24, 2008

The Microsoft Student Group in association with the Divine Circle have formulated a program to take up regular technology sessions in our college under the banner - 'Technology Incubation Program'. As part of the program, three short sessions were conducted today.

I took the first session to introduce the various Microsoft Project Competitions - Imagine Cup, Student2Business Program and the Student RockStar Competition. The session also apprised the students about Channel 8.

The second session was conducted by Angad, who gave an overview the placement process followed by various companies that recruited for on-campus placements. He also briefed the students about the preparation required for placements.

The third session, 'Win the Web', was aimed at novice developers to aquaint them with the various technologies and trends prevalent on the internet. I introduced the Web 2.0 jargon and summarized the various web technologies - client side, server side, web services and mashups. A short video was played before the session, which showcased the various applications that could be developed using MS technologies.

The event saw an overwhelming response from the students. More than 150 students attended the sessions, a few of whom kept standing throughout as the seats were full. I commend the audiences for their attentiveness and the interest shown throughout the sessions.

I would like to congratulate the people who worked hard in organizing and promoting the event. We received a very encouraging feedback about the event and would continue to take up similar sessions.

The presentations delivered during today's sessions are available for download.

Channel 8: The New Look

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Channel 8 is now out of beta and has got a brand new look. The new design looks great and is more user friendly. It also loads a lot faster than before as all that bulky graphics have now disappeared.

The new version also includes a forum. The forums have been named 'Student Union', which is a bit unconventional. To figure out why this name was chosen, you can read this post by Jeff Sandquist.

For those who don't know what Channel 8 is all about, here's an introduction to the place:

Channel 8 is THE place to be for STUDENTS who want to code, connect and create technology. Stay plugged into tech news and share in the experience with students around the world just like you who want to see their creations come to life. This is also a back door directly into Microsoft just like Channel 9 but from a student point of view. This means access to the inside scoop about our products and life working inside Microsoft and information on cool things coming out. This is your community – a place for you to share your tips and tricks and even your problems. Go check out what others are doing and talk about what you think is cool.
It's great to be a part of Channel 8. See you there! :)

2008: The Blog will be Personal Again

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

The title of this post might have reminded you of the HP ad campaign, "The computer is personal again"; wherein they claimed to bring in the lost personal element in the "personal computer". In 2008, I plan to do the same for this blog by bringing back the "personal" factor. I contrive to rejuvenate the original theme of this blog - "something new, something different and something exciting for everyone".

Over the past year, this blog has been rendered somewhat as a tech-only blog. The posts were less frequent and mostly constituted of some code snippets or other technology stuff. I seldom had time to post on the blog due to an extremely hectic schedule.

There were a lot of things which kept me busy in 2007. In the first few months I was occupied with the organization of my college fest held in March. Being the member of the core organizing group and the incharge for sponsorships of the event, kept me busy from Jan through March. In Feb., I was appointed as the Microsoft Student Partner. I attended a couple of MS events, a two-day MSP BootCamp at Gurgaon and took up sessions in my college. I also took the GRE and TOEFL exams in August and have applied for admissions for the MS program in computer science. In the past year, I also had a couple of trips to Amritsar and Jammu respectively. There was a lot to blog about but could not post much due to inadequacy of time.

In 2008, I hope to post more frequently on this blog and on a wider variety of subjects. With this resolution in mind, I wish all my blog reader's a,

Happy New Year 2008