If you are looking for more information Windows Live Wave 3.0 check out what Paul Thurrott has to say in his SuperSite.

• Windows Live Wave 3 Preview
• A Look at the Windows Live Wave 3 Applications
• Making Sense of Wave 3, Part 1: How We Got Here
• Making Sense of Wave 3, Part 2: Windows Live Services
• Making Sense of Wave 3, Part 3: Windows Live Essentials
• Windows Live Profile Preview
• Windows Live Hotmail Preview
• Windows Live People Preview
• Windows Live Photos Preview
• Windows Live Groups Preview
• Windows Live SkyDrive Preview
• Windows Live Wave 3 Screens
• A Look at the Wave 3 Applications
• Windows Live Calendar Screens
• Windows Live Wave 3 Preview
• Wave 3 Beta Screens
• Windows Live Wave 3 Leaks

Let me start by saying DANG!

Over the last 2 years I bought hard disks as an when required and the number of Giga Bytes never seems enough. Yesterday i just calculated the total disk space I have.

• One 1 TB HDD
• Four 500 GB HDDs
• One 320 HDD
• Two 200 GB HDDs
• Three 160 GB HDDs
• Two 80 GB HDDs
• Three 100 GB HDDs

The total is a whooping 4.6 TB ... and in case if you are wondering what on earth I have on those ... many things ... MP3s, Movies, Training Videos, Backups, Virtual PCs, Photos Collection from 2004 onwards covering every event, projects from my old offices, artwork created for events and other activities etc. Good that I have everything well cataloged.

Couple more TBs to be added very soon to this ... to power up my next big project ... top secret at the moment.

The 20th consecutive monthly meeting of the SQL Server Sri Lanka User Group (SS SLUG) will be held on the 19th of November 2008 at Microsoft Sri Lanka. Sticking with the norm we have two sessions along with a special redgate segment ready for you.

Discussion 1: Transactions with SSIS by Supun Thrikawela

SQL Server Integration Services introduces a new method of handling multiple transactions from within a package. It also allows for distributed transactions and checkpoints. Join first time SS SLUG speaker Supun Thrikawela, as he shows you how transactions are implemented in SQL Server Integration Services.
(Duration: ~45 minutes)

Discussion 2: Peer-to-Peer Transactional Replication by Dinesh Asanka (MVP)

Peer-to-peer replication provides a scale-out and high availability solution by maintaining copies of data across multiple server instances. Because data is maintained across the nodes in near real time, peer-to-peer replication provides redundancy, which increases the availability of data. Follow SQL Server MVP Dinesh Asanka as he explores the intricacies of peer-to-peer replication.
(Duration: ~45 minutes)

Date & Time: 19-Nov-2008 1800hrs Onwards

We all know that there is tons of video based training material available on www.asp.net, www.silverlight.net and www.windowsclient.net. If any of you have trouble downloading or watching these videos online ... let me know. I have downloaded all the videos in these sites and nicely arranged in folders so it is easier to refer.

If any of you want is you can take a copy from me ... it's only about 35 GB :) ... but the amount of knowledge and wealth in this collection is in peta bytes for any .net developer.

Full list can be seen @ http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1852747_1854493_1854113,00.html

Time Top 50 Inventions 2008

1. The Retail DNA Test
2. The Tesla Roadster
3. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
4. Hulu.com
5. The Large Hadron Collider
6. The Global Seed Vault
7. The Chevy Volt
8. Bullets That Shoot Bullets
9. The Orbital Internet
10. The World's Fastest Computer
11. Green Crude
12. Housing Funds
13. The Memristor
14. The Bionic Hand
15. The Direct-to-Web Supervilian Musical
16. The Dynamic Tower
17. The Mobile, Dexterous, Social Robot
18. The New Mars Rover
19. Montreal's Public Bike System
20. The Everything Game
21. The Synthetic Organism
22. The Shadowless Skyscraper
23. The Branded Candidate
24. Bionic Contacts
25. Thin-Film Solar Panels
26. The Speedo LZR Racer
27. Bubble Photography
28. The Invisibility Cloak
29. The 46th Mersenne Prime
30. The Internet of Things
31. Einstein's Fridge
32. Facebook for Spies
33. Biochemical Energy Harvester
34. Made-in-Transit Packaging
35. Airborne Wind Power
36. The New Ping-Pong Serve
37. Smog-Eating Cement
38. The Baseball Instant Replay
39. Enhanced Fingerprints
40. The Seven New Deadly Sins
41. The Peraves MonoTracer
42. Disenvoweling
43. High-Tech Running Shoes
44. Sunscreen for Plants
45. The Short Refinance
46. Aptera Electric Car
47. Google's Floating Data Center
48. The Time Eater Clock
49. Sound-Enhanced Food
50. A Camera for the Blind

"""" Computers ... are everywhere. it's not only for specialists or engineers today. Over the years it has become an everyday device which many of us find very hard to live without. Also it is not only a device used for office work. Today we can find computers in many different forms. when you goto an ATM, when you listen to music using your MP3 player, when you use your Mobile phone, when you play games using a game console ... you are using a computer. So it is in every part of our Digital Lifestyle.

We all live in a very interesting era which we call the 'knowledge society', where computer skills are an essential element. All the big players in the IT industry are envisioning about the next evolution of computing which we call 'could computing'. Big things are about the happen ...

But, how can we forget the past? The journey, the 'computer' has taken over hundreds of years, to become what it is today is remarkable. We should indeed thank several individuals and organizations for the remarkable contributions they have made to build the digital world we all enjoy today.

Let the journey begins ... """"

This is a big announcement for Indian Students. Bill Gates - Founder & Chairman of Microsoft Corporation today at IIT, Delhi announced the launch of Microsoft DreamSpark™ for India. Microsoft DreamSpark™ makes professional-level developer and design software available to students in India for FREE. These are the same software used in the industry, so ones the Students starts using them , they will make easy transition ones they step out of college.

Will students in Sri Lanka also get this wonderful opportunity anytime soon ... wait and see ;)

Session: Optimizing .NET Data Access
Speaker: Joy Pradeep (MVP, MCT)

Have you got any performance bottlenecks in your Data Access Layer? How do you know, you are using best practices to transform data between Data Layer and the Presentation Layer? Are you using optimization features of ADO.NET in your application?

It’s time to talk about ADO.NET.

It’s going to be a Level 100 session and I will be covering asynchronous data processing, caching, paging, batching, and creating a provider independent data access layer (if time permits).

Guys, it’s time for Demos, not for theory.

Date: 6th November 2008 (Thursday)
Time: 6.00 PM Onwards
Venue: Microsoft Sri Lanka Training Room. No42, 11th Floor, DHPL Building, Nawam Mawatha, Colombo 02
Entrance: FREE

Windows Live Hotmail just now got a face lift. this new UI is much faster than the previous and it looks cool.

Finally :)

Well! it's not me. So far in the movie industry there has been only 3 movies that has exceeded a total revenue of billion dollars. Those are Titanic, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Actually both pirates and lord movies have just exceeded a billion wheres Titanic have reached a whooping 1.8 billion. Amazing!

There are many other movies who have made it very close to get the membership in the billion dollar club. Among them Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Jurassic Park are there. But there is another one ... The Dark Knight ... which is still in theaters and have already toppled up 992 million ... just a tiny bit short. Hope it'll get there because it is a fantastic movie.

You can find the list of top 100 revenue generated movies here
http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegross?region=world-wide

One feedback I got from readers of my blog is that my blogging frequency has gone down considerably. Yup! Yup! That's normal when in a busy busy schedule like mine. But, what the hell! I think i should find some time in my schedule to fill this blog with something useful.

So folks ... i'm going to give it a try ... blogging everyday :)

It's been a while since this was launched. But i never got a change to dig deep into this. Finally managed to spend some time with the WWT (WorldWide Telescope) and it's amazing. Too bad i'm not much of a space guy. But i'm sure those who are really space geeks are getting the best use of this. Also school kids can learn a loads of stuff through this. Imagine teaching the grade 8 star constellations lessons through WWT.

Just goto http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/ and download and try this fantastic piece of software. Hope one day this will directly link to the Hubble Space Telescope or some kick a** telescope somebody (probably NASA) sends out there so we can have live peeks into space. Hope it'll happen soon ... otherwise it'll be too late for Hubble ... it's getting old.

from the site ...
http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/whatIs/whatIsWWT.aspx

The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope—bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.

Choose from a growing number of guided tours of the sky by astronomers and educators from some of the most famous observatories and planetariums in the country. Feel free at any time to pause the tour, explore on your own (with multiple information sources for objects at your fingertips), and rejoin the tour where you left off. Join Harvard Astronomer Alyssa Goodman on a journey showing how dust in the Milky Way Galaxy condenses into stars and planets. Take a tour with University of Chicago Cosmologist Mike Gladders two billion years into the past to see a gravitational lens bending the light from galaxies allowing you to see billions more years into the past.

WorldWide Telescope is created with the Microsoft® high performance Visual Experience Engine™ and allows seamless panning and zooming around the night sky, planets, and image environments. View the sky from multiple wavelengths: See the x-ray view of the sky and zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then crossfade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago. Switch to the Hydrogen Alpha view to see the distribution and illumination of massive primordial hydrogen cloud structures lit up by the high energy radiation coming from nearby stars in the Milky Way. These are just two of many different ways to reveal the hidden structures in the universe with the WorldWide Telescope. Seamlessly pan and zoom from aerial views of the Moon and selected planets, as well as see their precise positions in the sky from any location on Earth and any time in the past or future with the Microsoft Visual Experience Engine.

WWT is a single rich application portal that blends terabytes of images, information, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a seamless, immersive, rich media experience. Kids of all ages will feel empowered to explore and understand the universe with its simple and powerful user interface.

Microsoft Research is dedicating WorldWide Telescope to the memory of Jim Gray and is releasing WWT as a free resource to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe like never before.

Not that infotel 2008 is over its time for me to write :) ... wanted to write during the event ... kind of a live blogging. But hell! who can spent time to blog when there is a xbox 360 plugged to a big screen right in front of you. It was a tiring 3 days but with a loads of fun because most of the active community fellows were there.

From our MVP team Jinath, Manzi, Dinesh Asanka, Fiqri, Shaminda, Padman and Dinesh Priyankara joined the party. Also representing the student champ team Uditha, Ransara, Senaka, Bhashitha, Charith and Akila joined. Also Chandana and Seminda volunteered. Special thanks to Shaminda and Seminda for the support given at the end of the event to pack things.

Thanks to Lilian for the goodies sent.

Overall quality of the exhibition is questionable at best. Hope to see something better next year as Infotel is the biggest IT showcase in the country.

Announcing the New .NET Logo!

Microsoft .NET has become an incredible success in the years since it was first announced in June 2000. More than 4 million developers around the world are using .NET to build amazing software and rich, compelling Web experiences. And the momentum for .NET continues to grow with the release of the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 last summer and the upcoming .NET Framework 4 release. Conservative estimates from internal research indicate that over 70% of PC’s have a version of .Net already installed!

Given the success of .NET in the marketplace it is kind of a 'right time to create a new loto to this amazing technology. This new logo was first announced in PDC last week.

Why the New Logo and Brand Identity Were Developed
Why change? The original .NET logo was designed just before Forum 2000. It was designed to be attached to other Microsoft brands as a suffix. The result was a logo that did not stand well on its own and lacked impact.

It needed a logo that was in sync with the key values of the technology: consistency, robustness and great user experiences. Also wanted a logo that conformed to the design principles that are driving Microsoft’s brand identity evolution and is reflected in newer brands such as Silverlight, Surface and ‘Strata.’ Finally, a logo that is more strongly aligned with the portfolio of brands that .NET is most strongly aligned with: Silverlight, Visual Studio and the AppPlat server products was needed.

The result is a design that is being referred to as the “wave.” The design is strong, simple and distinctive. The suggestion of the letter ‘N’ in the design will become instantly recognizable over time as shorthand for the .NET brand name.

This is a little bit old news, but i have to mention this in the the blog because it is so important.

As some of you might already know Junior Past Pupils Association in my good old school is a fantastic team who is really willing and geared up to do something valuable to the school. So to celebrate the 70th anniversary we decided to host a mega size exhibition on 25th - 27th October. This became the biggest exhibition ever done in the school and also the biggest ever done in the whole region. We had over 100 different exhibition stalls including 20+ government departments, student talent shows, a carnival with a musical show, and our very own FM channel - 'D' FM.

I was overall responsible for the IT/Computer section. It was not that hard to create a wonderful IT experience to the visitors which eventually became the 'most popular' section of the whole exhibition, because I had a great team to work with ... Rajitha, Charith (Mr. Facebook), Anuradha, Dilum, and several others, my brother midda did some great work in creating most of the artwork. Also there were many school chaps. Among the things we did for the IT Showcase ... we created a 100 foot long poster - 'Computer History Timeline' which elaborates the History Computers ... you name it all the key inventions, important people, incidents ... everything is there in this, next we designed about 50 A1 size posters displaying information about important companies, people, hardware and software in the industry ... and then there was XBox's which kids lined up to get their turn to play. It was a loads of fun to have the game challenges etc. Also I did couple of presentations for groups (approx. 30 students) about PhotoSynth, HDView, Windows Live etc.

It's not fair if I thank the team ... because no point in me thanking for something which we all did ... Let me just say ... we nailed it ... woo! hoo!

So ... another big initiative from the junior past pupils association ended successfully. Stay tuned for the next big extravaganza ... Well! we always aspire to do big things ;)