Indian Students getting attacked in Australia particularly in Victoria State (in Melbourne Suburbs) is the news everywhere in the past weeks. And some people are blaming the Media for blowing this up.

I have couple of stories.

First one is mine happened last year. At this time I was in Melbourne. Melbourne Central Business District is a very small area which we can cover by an hours walk. Central Business District is the city part of Melbourne. The suburbs are surrounded as like other places. On 14th June 2008, a colleague of mine SenthilKumaran came back to India few days before me. I dropped him in Bus Depot to Airport with my friends Sudarshan, Bala and other Senthil and few more. Few of them had Australian PR too. It was midnight, I was coming alone to my Hotel by walk. Just near the hotel, I was about to cross the road and a car possibly a Toyota crossed very fast. A chewing white colored gum came out and fell near me. Someone from the car spitted a chewing gum and shouted something, due to the cars’ music system I couldn't hear what they said.

Second one, an incident happened few weeks back to my friend in Sheffield UK. When he was coming back to home in the evening few teenagers playing in the street shouted “Fu**ing Indian” and few days later one guy may be around 15 came and asked for some money to him. These things happened when he came via a dark road from the train station.

Coming back to the Australian Racism news… I just asked few of my friends in Melbourne and both of them immediately replied its just exaggerated. Even lot of  “Indians” in Australia in have mentioned the same.

So what's the big deal ? If we go out of our own country or area we must always try to maintain low profile and adjusting with the new community. e.g.., In the trams/trains/buses shouting in some Indian language calling or communicating with a friend who is sitting four or five rows after , when mobile rings, without putting it on mute, making it to sing the latest bollywood song and thinking whether to attend the call or thinking who it is…. etc are very bad. Things like this will irritate the people. It doesn't mean that is the reason behind all these attacks. Wherever we go, we can find few miscreants in all the community. My friends in Melbourne say its not Racism, its business. Its the business the media is oiling up… It is happening for years. Just Bing. You will then know whether its a business or the real Racism.

It doesn't mean that if it happens for years its not Racism. Its the matter of “blowing up”…

Even I do agree with my friends. Medias in India is as usual playing the game after the Election 2009.We are going abroad just to study or to work or get settled. But whatever we do, will be called “Indians” did. Everyone of us have a morality when we represent some community.

ie.., if you go abroad

# on a business trip, in your client place you are representing your company (“The Companies in India”) in the customer place,

#  to study, you are representing the “Indian Students” community &

# to settle we represent “The Indian Origins”.

So we must know the responsibility. Developed nations are not India. Shouting in a public place, cracking the rules etc will affect the whole big community called “Indians”.

Whatever the case may be, its our life, our near and dear ones are here in India looking for us. Even when we get attacked by words, its always better to leave the place as soon as we can. I do accept in few circumstances we cant do anything other than getting “attacked”, but lets be safe. We cant stop any unexpected happenings, lets only try to reduce that by not doing these mistakes which kindle those “miscreants” more….

WSS 3.0 SDK v1.5 released

The new version of Software Development Kit for WSS 3.0 is released today after 8 months of releasing v1.4 with OfficeServer SDK 1.4

[Download]

WSS 3.0 SP2 and MOSS 2007 SP2

WSS 3.0 SP2 & MOSS 2007 SP2 are expected in this month end….. Along with the update for all MS Office 2007 products...

Microsoft Office team has streamlined the release of Service Packs for all the MS Office products together, but what is the use in that ? Atleast server products and clients products can go differently ?

[Source]

Sharepoint Designer is Free now

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007 is now a FREE download. Just register and download a copy… Sharepoint Designer is the MS Office 2007 – version of Frontpage. No more frontpage, its only SPD.

Forget not to check the Related Resources section in the download page…

Sharepoint Designer Related Resources

1. Video of SharePoint Designer 2007 FAQ (6.2MB)
2. Video of SharePoint Designer 2007 FAQ (82.9MB)
3. Video of SharePoint Designer 2007 FAQ (16.8MB)

Service pack for Sharepoint Designer is also there… Download it…

Google launches a link/website for Indian Election 2009

Even the HOT Indian Election spree is now with Google too. They have launched a site (link) for the forthcoming Indian General Election 2009

Good to see the Google India team to do something that is going hot...
For sure Google could have seen the reports of the Search terms ( with respect to Indian Parliament Election) in Google Search engine which will be in Millions by now, as my site (ArasiyalTalk.com) itself is getting thousands of clicks a day from Google

http://www.google.co.in/intl/en/landing/loksabha2009/

Using Credit cards

Credit card fraud is a big issue in India and abroad. I still know lot of people who never uses internet banking and earns more than a million rupee a year in IT field. Most of the time I have felt why these people are more reluctant?? Sometime back a colleague of mine used to give me money every week for booking him a rail ticket in IRCTC. He had a debit card, he was eligible for a Corporate Credit card but he never used those in the internet.

Even last week one of my ex-Manager who is yet to start a interior designing business came to my home to buy some softwares and domain name using my card in the internet. Lot of times I have used my cards for my friends’ purchase online.

But lot of Credit card based fraud are really making me to think twice before helping others to use my card... Visa & Master card gives a new way to secure your card information online called Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode. Most of the companies comes with their own way of securing or some good proven way to secure that. Nearly two years back I criticized in my blog about HSBC over killing the users by giving a security device.

 BBC claims that they have purchased UK residents credit card details from New Delhi. [More] This new issue and other stories are really making me to feel that those reluctant people are better!

Application Pages Vs Site Pages

Remember the difference between them in SharePoint (MOSS 2007)

Yesterday, somebody asked me the difference between the application page and site page in Sharepoint. Having developed five custom site and application pages in Sharepoint, I couldn't explain what exactly it is. I really got confused over time, as usual my brain was blank.

In a second after opening a SharePoint VS solution file, I got it. Just remember as the name indicates, Application pages can be used across SharePoint Web Applications and the Site pages are used across the Site(s). When you remember this, then you wont get confused. If its across applications then its the only _layout folder which is helping us. Wherein the site pages are the ones what we want to be specific for a site or to its contents and OOB example are AllItems.aspx, default.aspx etc.

Yes, I agree that working in a dozen of pages will also help you to remember, but in the beginning, even after a year,  lot of things in SharePoint is confusing and time consuming. Main reason behind this is our lack of basic understanding and poor memory. I strongly recommend every SharePoint developer to read the Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and a SharePoint administrator to read Microsoft SharePoint Services Administrator's Pocket Consultant.

 Multiple Inboxes for GMail

Last month Gmail Team announced a new GMail Lab feature called Multiple Inboxes. I really thought its about having Multiple Inboxes. Its not so. It wont allow you to see multiple Inboxes at the sametime. Its just a Multi-view or Multi-pane view of messages in some order or pattern. ie., You can create a view and define that to display all the mails labeled something, or from some account etc.

I have five accounts in Gmail (my old Gmail Id, other 3 ids for three different reasons created in the Google Apps - Kiruthik.com account). All the four are forwarded to the id mail-at-kiruthik.com. So mails from those account would reach this mail@kiruthik inbox.

Best example is, I have a mail Id created for all the Bank & Money related messages, and I want to maintain it in a different Inbox. So I have created a mailbox  fin.at.kiruthik.com  This id is the one I have registered with all the banks for email communication. And, I have set an Archive & Mail Forward from fin@kiruthik to mail@kiruthik

 Preferred to have other mails in a different area or pane, as the number of mails we get increases. But we dont have anyother option(Label ing it and checking those is not an option for a lazy guy like me).

Now this Multiple Inboxes for Gmail lets you to create a view and tell the source of the message to be some label, or a condition used in Gmail Search.

ie., Label:moss  or TO:some-email@domain.com or subject: <somevalue>

Free ASP.NET MVC eBook

Source : Hanselman & ScottGu

Twin Oscars for AR Rahman

A.R. Rahman, the Legend holds up his Oscars for best original song and best original score for 'Slumdog Millionaire' backstage at the 81st Academy Awards in Hollywood.