Free SQL Server 2008 Hosting

Again, MaximumASP has comeup with free SQL Server 2008 hosting like Free IIS 7 hosting account. This SQL Server 2008 account comes with 100 MB Space. Worth to try!!

http://www.sqlserverbeta.com/

Open Source Initiative approves few Licences of Microsoft

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has approved the Microsoft Public Licence and Microsoft Reciprocal Licence, officially branding them as open source licences.

The OSI approves licences by validating compliance to 10 rules set in the Open Source Definition.

The decision was reached with an "overwhelming majority" of the votes, but not unanimously, OSI president Michael Tiemann said in a posting on the group's website.

Few weeks back news had flown out that Microsoft has planned to give out .Net Framework code under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL). Hope these things are great initiatives from the Software Big B.

Scott Hanselman's 2007 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

Computer ZEN presents the updated list of tools. Many tools, from the List is what Im using, and also the list is only making me to learn those-which are mostly new to me!! Thanks to Scott.

  Link to Scott Hanselman's 2007 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

Prototype for Software(s)

What is a Prototype ?

Prototype is used to help the consumer of the software and the developers to understand the requirement. In general, Prototype can be defined as : pseudo system to validate the requirements.

Prototype can be used to give the end-user of the software a clear vision of the system. Also, it helps the developer(s) to identify their work product clearly.

Types of Prototype :

• Evolutionary Prototype &
• Throw-away Prototype

Microsoft Windows Live Messenger Beta

Screenshots

Atlast in the form of Windows Live Messenger, we can send offline messages to MSN users. As usual, the UI is great and attractive. And it can only sit on top of Windows XP.

IBM, the industry giant is also ready to give its UDB DB2 for free. Last year Microsoft offered, SQL server 2005 Express Edition  without any charge. Also, Oracle in the same time offered its 10g Express Edition for free.

Database giants set their basic version for free, which is mainly due to the free & open source databases like MySql, Postgre SQL etc.,  Basically I work in Microsoft Technologies/Products, but for certain things I still use MySql. Also many hosting companies provide Windows hosting with free MySql database. Even Sun lets its source out & making Solaris 10 free to download. 

So, now a days people are more interested in going for free packages rather closed source / paid softwares. In 2003, when I was working in Indian Red Cross Society, New Delhi, I used to meet many people across the globe & who are from non-IT field talking about free softwares. And now many people here in India prefer free / open source products. In general, students are very much interested in open source softwares, so these are the main reasons for the giants to let their basic versions for free.

The electronic giant Sony's enters into instant voice & Video service market. The service is named as Instant Video Everywhere (IVE). They work with Glowpoint, a US based firm providing IP solutions like IP broadcasting etc., Alreay IM giants Yahoo, AOL etc., are providing the same service.

Well, the software is about 15MB, and its on download, & im on my way to office. So will be posting more later.

After giving free registration codes for its 10th Annivesary on last August, now Opera v8.5 is Ad free. That means no more ads, its totally free like IE or Firefox. I hope its time to modify my .CSS files, so that it can fully support Opera

Opera, the much liked browser is free to use from December 2000, challenging IE & Netscape. But there was an Ad bar seen while browsing. It can be removed by registering the copy for $40. For its 10th anniversary, the registration charge is kept free, may be for a day or two. So,  soon who are using/interested in Opera, can register by giving your email Id. The registration process is very simple. Go ahead !!!!

I have used Opera & its was really nice. But the Ad bar was the problem. Once told, I found that it ate more than 10 % of my 56.6Kbps dial-up bandwidth. Since then, I didn't use it. Now its free, so im gonna give a try

Updated : 8 - August - 2005, 5:45pm(IST)

    Thought of reviewing Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1. But im bit busy... So I have just added the snapshots here and the remaining will come soon..

After a month Google released Google Earth, Microsoft (MSN) released its own version, MSN Virtual Earth as like it said two months back. The main difference between the two is : Google Earth is a (windows application)client application sits in your computer & access the Google's Site for the image & data, whereas this MSN Google Earth is a web based application. Secondly only basic services are offered for free by Google, here it supports many features which comes in the Google's Paid service.

Coming to MSN Earth, it has the same feature like Google, but the Map is somewhat blured/ not clear. I hope they are their way to new stuffs. But this 2-D map is very good to locate a place. when you goto VirtualEath site, its first shows USA's map, then just by double clicking or even by scrolling the mouse you can zoom in :)

I tried searching CITIBANK, NY and it opened a drop down list, with the address of all the  Citibank(branches) in NY.

I searched my company Saksoft Inc's  address and it showed the place

There is a option of finiding our current location via Wi-Fi  or thru GEO-IP. I tried with GEO-IP,  as expected it showed Chennai

If you have Wi-Fi access, then you can locate yourself in the map   A small activeX control has to be downloaded for that...

Options like Scratch Pad, PermaLink, email the location, and even you can Blog it(only for MSN bloggers).

"In a world of more to do, more to discover the desire is clarity", says Microsoft Windows Vista.

The official name for Microsoft Windows Codenamed Longhorn will be Microsoft Windows Vista. Like Windows XP, Microsoft plans to puch Windows Vista by enforcing it with a new type of clear/claritative displays. That clearness seen in XP will be more in Vista. Its feature include better search(not using this Indexing), parental controls, home networking & easy to use external connectivity, etc.,

The official release was told in 2004 once, and got delayed many times. Now they are planning to set out Beta 1 this August 3^rd. And  the full release will be in 2006 second quarter it seems. Many expected features like WinFS are not implemented, may be they are for the next release,  Windows 2010 ????!!!!!

Im waiting for August 3^rd, 

Microsoft releases Money 2006, but the trial is for US users, and not for others.  It seems, it will download the bank statements automatically, and moreover it has a support more banks worldwide. Just three months back only I started using Microsoft Money 2005, anyway Im not going to upgrade my Money 2005 to 2006, till I check it. I hope atleast this version of Money supports, the Stock Exachanges in India.

NA - Not Available

Thanks to Scott Hanselman. Once again he list all the tools & utilities he uses regularly in his blog. Im sure that you will find many useful tools, which is a must for Microsoft Platform developer. Don't miss it!!!!

“Acrylic” is the codename for a new professional design tool that brings together the richness of pixel-based painting and the flexibility of editable vector graphics for a more fluid and flexible creative workflow. With Acrylic you can create sophisticated designs and graphic elements for your on-screen, Web, and print projects.  
                                                                                                                                                              -Microsoft

Looks more like Expression, its Predecessor.

Cool one, i tried it, will be posting more later........ [Download]

Though a month back, we got a news that IE 7 will have tabbed browsing, but suddenly today Microsoft released
TABBED BROWSING for IE (v5.01 & above in Win 2k & above) through MSN Toolbar, which already has a desktop searching tool, eMail Popper, POP-up blocker, etc., and was collectively called as MSN Deskbar.

All the major browsers in the market like Opera, Netscape, Firefox was supporting tabbed browsing, but not IE. But there were third party tools like Maxthon(My IE), which solved the need. As Firefox & Netscape made this tabbed browsing successful, Opera is the first to implement it.

Have an Icon to add a new Tab to the Page, icon for opening a link in a new tab & a small downsided arrow like icon to list all the tab's page title.  And also options are there to set a default page, when we open a new tab.

The only Cons, people can say is, it is integrated with MSN Toolbar, so without the toolbar, we can't use the Tabbed Feature.
So the heading goes like, The new MSN Toolbar, adds TABBED Browsing to IE.

Main Enhancements to-do:

                When we close a window with 2 or more tabbed window open, abruptly the window goes away. So a warning/alert message is better saying that there are these many tabbed windows opened.

                Other one is, when we shift from one tab to another, we can see the whole IE window shakes(flicks like anything), which looks odd. You can download from here.

For more than a month im using Microsoft Money 2005. Its pretty good. Its basic features include  Spending By Category, Payee, then Monthly Income, Expense etc., in Reports and to say more, its having options for Investment Planning, Credit Card(even Bonus Point option is there), Loans, etc., Its having all the day-to-day activity categories. Reports in the form of Graphs are also possible(supports Bar & Pie Graphs). Actually its a web based application. And accessing the data stored in a flat file. And another advantage is  many of the indian banks like ICICI, CITI Bank etc., supports Money File Format, means we can download the account statement in Money File Format. Thats very useful, since you can't type all the bank transactions.

As I said before, it supports heavily for Stocks, Shares, Mutual Funds etc., It has a option of getting the latest Share/Stock value. But unfortunately Indian Stock Markets are not there in the list. Hopefully we can expect soon.  So as of now manually we can update it.

Even graphs for the stocks are also displayed with many tailored set of attributes. If you are using any other Personel Financial Package, you can sure try this. A 90 day free-trial is available for download.

I was previously using a PHP based personal accounting software.

http://kiruthik.com/PermaLink,guid,3789392e-7259-4959-ab31-6e1bd47a00cb.aspx

 But now a days I felt like having more features. So I tried many software, but I didn't feel those good. So for the past one week I tried   Microsoft Money, its pretty good. And moreover it lists most of the banks in India too....... And also a option for my investments in STOCKs...