High Hopes

There is a big offer from Microsoft Learning centre. Download the entire contents of the print books, Introducing Microsoft Linq, Introducing Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX, Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 1.0. The download link is here

Karl Seguin of www.codebetter.com wrote a great ebook. You can download it for free from here . For more details about the book check here

The vote to lift restrictions on top level domain names wins the approval. The net's regulator, Icann, voted unanimously to relax the strict rules on so-called "top-level" domain names, such as .com or .uk. The decision means a domain name can be anything.anything . So the big debated .xxx is going to happen. So far Icann has rejected calls for a .xxx domain on the grounds that it might be forced to act as a censor. But now it could get the green light. A second proposal, to introduce domain names written in Asian, Arabic or other scripts, was also approved. Read the full news here

The net's regulators will vote on Thursday to decide if the strict rules on so-called top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed. If approved, the net could see its biggest transformation in decades. The new plan will allow companies to turn their brands into domain names while individuals could also carve out their own corner of the net. See full story here and express your views here

Contacts Reader .NET 1.0 from Idea Bubbling is an open source project to import contacts from different e-mail providers. Currently it supports Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL Mail, Rediffmail. Demo Page | Downloads Page

If you want to give a "View now" option for your PDFs and DOCs simliar to the "View as HTML" in Gmail you can use the free service by http://view.samurajdata.se/ This is an online viewer, with which you can view PDF and PostScript files as browsable images and Word documents as web pages. Its really fast and easy. Just give your pdf link as the parameter and it will automatically convert it. Example http://view.samurajdata.se/ps.php?url=http://www.uddi.org/pubs/Iru_UDDI_Technical_White_Paper.pdf

Joe Stagner of Microsoft has made a list of WYSIWYG editors for Asp.Net.. You can see it here Personally I like TinyMCE

Take part in the game build contest Dream-Build-Play 2008 launched by XNA team and win $75,000 in prizes and receive an Xbox Live Arcade Contract. Create and deploy Xbox360 games using XNA Game Studio 2.0 $75,000 in prizes and the chance to receive an Xbox Live Arcade Contract. Everyone who registers will receive a FREE 12-Month Trial Creator Club Membership For more information log on to www.dreambuildplay.com

After using the simple sql server 2005 data transfer utility for some days I thought to add more functionality such as import export data from excel, CSV, flat file etc. Before start coding I just did a Google search and found this big and interesting discussion in MSDN forums. In the first page developers were really annoyed with the fact MS is not giving a data transfer utility with Sql Server Management Studio Express. I read the conversation one by one and in the 5th page I found this posting by Bill Elicson. MS actually has a really great DTS tool for sql server management studio express. Thanks Bill.. you saved alot of time. STEPS TO ADD DTS WIZARD WITH SQL SERVER MANAGEMNT STUDIO EXPRESS 1. Try "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\DTS\Binn\DTSWizard.exe" If it worked, you already have the DTS Wizard. Start using it right away. If it will not work, continue to step 2 2. Download the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Toolkit (223.9 MB) from http://go.mi...