Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Save Earth

It is well-known fact that we, as a generation of Indians are at the threshold of the most humongous threat to our environment. It is imperative that we take as many steps as feasible to reverse this damage. As citizens of the planet,  and as Indians. If we don't then who will? 
  
 
1. There is a cute small round press button at the bottom right corner of almost all monitors: Please make use of this, 

  
  
  
2. Stop printing out Harry Porter, Jeffrey Archer and other e-books. This is a classic example of paper wastage. 

  
  
If you have forgotten to give double-side prints, make sure you make use of the empty sides as scribbling pads or for your kids' imposition 
  

  
  
  
  
Take two minutes from your busy schedule before hurrying back home to shut down the computer. 

  
  
  
  
  
All of us are big time Googlers. Have you heard of the Blackle search engine? Blackle http://www.blackle.com (Google powered) is a search engine designed all in Rich Black so that your system consumes less power. So change your homepage. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
Plastic bags these days indeed come in bright and flamboyant colours and tempt us to take them home with us. But the saying, "Appearances are deceptive" holds true for these plastic things too. Next time, hold back or go prepared to counter temptation with a cloth bag. 

  
  
  
  
  
Roses, Jasmine, Hibiscus and Peas; All these saplings cost hardly between Rs 10 - 20 each. Can't we afford to plant these in and around our houses? Also, more importantly, caring and maintain them as they grow? 

  
  
  
  
  
  
Try to segregate the different kinds of waste into Bio-Degradable (Fruit or vegetable waste) , Recyclable (waste Paper, paper products) and Electronics (Floppy disks, CD-ROMS ). Once you have segregated your thrash, look for specialized trash cans to throw them away. 

  
  
  
Try to minimize the use of horns. Honking drastically increased and this adds to the noi 
se pollution and does not provide a conducive environment to live in. 

  
  
  
Use rechargeable batteries though it's an expensive product, it's one-time purchase. Recharge when required. (Same applies to cell-phones, MP3s, iPods and Laptops) 

  
  
  
  
The best pens to use would be ink ones. Though if you have to use a ball point pen, buy refills instead of buying new pens. Pencils are much better for rough use! (That's why we used it at school!!!) 

  
  
  
  
  
Remember to close water taps before preening in front of the mirror. Of course you are beautiful, but Water is a precious resource! 

  
  
  
  
  
Let's not just wake up and walk out of finished meetings and conferences with a sigh of relief, let us remember to turn off the lights and projectors too. 

  
  
  
  
Take few minutes to learn about topics like 'Global Warming' , 'Air / Noise /Land / Water Pollution ' etc apart from constant surfing of News, Latest Gadgets, Movies and Music. 

  
  
  
  
  
Spread this message; to your friends and foes. They too can make a difference. 

  
  
  
The Earth has already become a dangerous place to live in for the animals and birds. Soon it might be our turn. So let's pledge to save our beautiful planet so that you and your future generations can live happily and peacefully ever after. 

  

Friday, May 15, 2009

Step by Step to Sharepoint..

In these SharePoint screencast tutorials, get step by step instructions on all the features included in SharePoint hosting
and how to optimize your site. The tutorials cover topics from Alerts and Creating Web Parts to
Creating Meetings, Project Team Sites and Wikis

Thursday, May 14, 2009

A New Look for Visual Studio 2010


At the PDC and TechEd EMEA last year we described our new editor support built on the WPF technology in .NET Framework 4.0.  Today I’m happy to reveal the new UI for Visual Studio, also built on WPF:

DvX_ShellBase

In this image you can see several areas of concentration:

  • Reduced clutter and visual complexity by removing excessive lines and gradients in the UX and modernized the interface by removing outdated 3D bevels
  • Placed focus on content areas by opening negative space between windows and drawing attention to the current focus with a dominant accent color and a distinctive background
  • Added an inviting new palette to make VS 2010 more distinctive

 

In the following image you can see floating documents which allows you to utilize multiple monitors while designing your project and writing code:

DvX_ShellFloatWide

This image shows new support in the editor for outlining:

  • Triangle glyphs in the margin are used to collapse or expand your code blocks
  • Collapsed sections of code are marked with an empty triangle (pointing straight) as well as a set of ellipses
  • Colors on the margin indicate edits that have been made

image

The New Project dialog has also gotten an update to include online template viewing, a search box, and easier navigation.  Multi-targeting remains in this version but now with .NET Framework 4.0 included as an option:

image

Visual Studio has a very broad and rich ecosystem of extensions written by our partners and folks like you.  In VS2010 we wanted to make it easier for you to find those extensions and install them.  We’ve enabled the new Extension Manager for this purpose:

image

With the Extension Manager you will be able to browse for templates and tools online and install them easily into the Visual Studio environment.  The next public release of VS will have this new functionality and we’ll be hooking up the online capabilities through theVisual Studio Gallery as part of the final release.

These designs were developed and tested for user feedback by our User Experience team and implemented by the VS Platform team (excellent job!).

We hope you like the new look and feel of Visual Studio 2010.  You’ll be able to play with these bits when we release Beta 1 which we are working hard on right now (no formal announce date just yet, stay tuned).

Enjoy!

Friday, May 8, 2009