My Image Carousel Mashup

My Image Carousel Mashup! Picks images from Live Image Search and makes a carousel.

Click here.

Sweet isn’t it? You want to make one? Go to www.popfly.com

Enjoying music, videos, podcasts on My Zune v2

Okay, I admit it. I just have 30GB one, but have upgraded it to the new software (in the device as well as the PC Client). Both of them look awesome!

PC Client is the most innovative, stunning software I ever used. It looks so nice, the UI is awesome, the links, navigation – fantastic!

The most important one is the Podcasts feature now available within the Zune. There are a lot of free podcasts available in the Marketplace to subscribe. You just got to Subscribe, Download and Sync!

Good job Zune team!

One of my favorite Oldie!

This is one of my favorite song of all times! Sivaji Ganesan at his best. Everytime I watch or even hear this song, I remember my dad. For some reason, this song reminds me about my dad, may be because he looks like Sivaji in this song, or may be because of the love he had on his sister, or the character Sivaji played on this movie. Anyway, this song will get me tears whenever I watch it.

A sentimental post, may be a tribute to my dad. I miss you daddy!

Boring Weekend – got interesting at the end

This weekend was little boring for me, nothing much to do. Saturday went just like that. Today, I thought I would meet two of my old friends. I called them up in the afternoon and fixed up the meeting place as Forum Mall, Koramangala, Bangalore. I would say that this is the most happening place in Bangalore. Lot of people, shopping, food, movies, et al.

I went to Forum Mall and parked my bike and entered the mall. I could see a cute little girl standing alone in front of Forum and crying so loudly. People see her and just pass by. I wonder why no one stopped by the girl and ask why is she crying or at least why is standing alone. No one really cared.

I went to her, and asked her why she is crying. She told that she don’t know where her mom and dad are. I asked her not to cry and told her that I would take her to her mom and dad. She immediately cooled down and started walking with me. Immediately I went to the announcement table (opposite to McDonalds) and told the lady sitting there about this little girl. Asked her dad and mom’s name and announced that this little girl is in search of her parents.

After sometime, her mom came and took her and went away. She never cared to thank me. Well, yeah, I don’t expect a thanks from anyone I help. But, isn’t that an important one in this situation? I still wonder why her mom didn’t thank me. God knows why. One thing which pissed me off was her mom didn’t even bother to know where her child was. She was crying near the parking area entrance, but her mom took her from the announcement table. May be she is in great tension that her child is lost and she forget to thank me in that tension. Well, if this is the case, I’m okay.

Later, I joined with my friends and had a veg-burger @ McDonald’s and came back home.

And yeah, blogged couple of things on IIS7 on my MSDN blog. Here are they:

IIS7 – Running 32-bit and 64-bit ASP.NET versions at the same time on different worker processes

IIS7 – Backup Restore UI Module

Have a good week ahead!

Microsoft India – The Best company to work for India – Business Times 2007 Survey

As I’ve mentioned earlier, Microsoft India is a great place to work with. This has been now proved by this survey by Business Times which rated "Microsoft India" the best companies to work for in India.

You may be surprised to know that this is the first time Microsoft India had participated in this kind of surveys and to the no. 1 spot. It is truly amazing.

Many would be surprised by this, but definitely I’m not. Because I know how good is to be a Microsoftie and how great is this place to work for. Just linking this article which also talks about something on the similar lines explaining how great is Microsoft, as a company.

"Microsoft’s focus for years has been the conversion to digital documents, which is hugely environmentally friendly. The company’s chairman is trustee for a charitable organization with billions of dollars to give away. Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential program seeks to use technology to empower people in emerging markets."

Remarkable!

War of Social-Networking Sites

Its becoming more and more interesting in the space of Social Networking sites. There are a lot of sites which were born after seeing the MySpace and Facebook success. But, not sure how many of them would last in the online world for a long time. There was a time (2000), when the dotcom burst happened, but soon after the internet era had begun. It had done a lot to many companies around the world, the most important company to note in this is Google. It made simple products, but yet powerful.

On the social networking sites, Google also has its product. www.orkut.com I would say that this site doesn’t offer you a lot of features which MySpace and Facebook offers, but yet this is the site I use mostly than the others. The reason is simple: My motto here is to connect with my friends, and most of my friends are in Orkut. I do started using Facebook lately, but don’t have much friends in my list.

Coming back to the social networking sites, I would put Live Spaces as my top site, just because of the features this gives me. Just to name a few – Blog, Photos, Events, et al. Keep watching, this list would definitely grow. I do use Spaces/Blog as my personal blog, use Spaces/Photos to great extent. Orkut doesn’t give Blogs inside – Blogs are simple, but yet powerful. I wonder why Google didn’t still integrate Blogger and Orkut. Those are two great things to be clubbed together.

So, coming back to the war of social networking sites, I’m not too sure how many companies are here to stay. I would definitely say Live Spaces, MySpace, Facebook, Orkut are here to stay, but how long? Not sure if there would be any social-networking burst and boom like what happened to dotcom industry on 2000.

Let’s wait and watch!

BTW, what are your thoughts on this?