.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