Wela's Blog

From Steven Sinofsky’s blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/23/the-next-chapter-for-skydrive-personal-cloud-storage-for-windows-available-anywhere.aspx

Over the last year we’ve been hard at work building SkyDrive alongside Windows 8, setting out a unique approach to designing personal cloud storage for billions of people by bringing together the best aspects of file, app, and device clouds. Meanwhile, we’ve made our file cloud more accessible with HTML5 and mobile apps, improved integration with Office and 3rd party apps, and built a device cloud for Windows and Windows Phone.

Today, we’re excited to take another big step towards our vision by making SkyDrive far more powerful. There are new storage options, apps that connect your devices to SkyDrive, and a more powerful device cloud that lets you “fetch” any file from a Windows PC. Taken together with access from popular mobile phones and a browser, you can now take your SkyDrive with you anywhere, connect it to any app that works with files and folders, and get all the storage you need—making SkyDrive the most powerful personal cloud storage service available.

Read the full article

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/codefx/archive/2012/04/16/samplebrowserbigrefresh.aspx

Early morning just thought of doing a new UI for my blog ... and didnt want to spend anything more than today for this. Didnt think twice on what kind of a UI I want to create this time. Well! didnt had to think twice ... the hotest new UI format in town is the Metro and naturally I had decided to go for a Metro look.

Few things here and there to be optimized, but overall its almost complete.

Started at 6.00 AM and by 8.00 PM i'm done and the result is quite stunning!

As most of you are already aware Imagine Cup 2011 Sri Lanka Software Design round is OOONN! and the 6 finalist teams are preparing for the big day. This year the Sri Lanka finals event will be held at the Moratuwa University Civil Engineering Auditorium as Moratuwa is our event hosting partner.

Sri Lanka finals : April 27, 2011

Project: makePossible, Team: Vishwa, From: University of Moratuwa Team Members: rumalp, Pasan, akiladarshana, Gayashan	Project: Savior, Team: Team Titan, From: University of Colombo School of Computing Team Members: Tharidu, Moditha, Chandula, Kalindu	Project: Child@EDU, Team: Sentinels 2.0, From: Universiy of Moratuwa Team Members: Madhusha, Thuru, Vimukthi, Yasoda
Project: V-Labm Team: CR-Coderzsm From: Informatics Institute of Technology Team Members: Sabry,  Renien, Raathigeshan, Thiru	Project: Hear through Eyes, Team: PeraSoft, From: University of Peradeniya Team Members: Dinushan, Lahiru, Lakshitha, Madusanka	Project: Project Amma, Team: MISL, From: Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology Team Members: Mastercpj, Pahanimg10, Nim.sathsara, imalkacg

Click here to download the Sinhala Windows 7 LIP via the Microsoft.com Download Center.

Please note that the Sinhala  Windows 7 LIP can only be installed on a system that runs an English client version of Windows 7.  It is available to download for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

Localization was done by Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA)  (Translation and Linguistic Moderation), and Lionbridge (Strategic Engineering Partner). 

Facts about the language:

• Sinhala contains loan words of Portuguese, Dutch and English origin, which reflects Sri Lanka's colonial history. English was official language from 1833 to 1958 (that is until 10 years after independence).
• There is a crucial distinction between "high" and "low" Sinhala: The colloquial form used in everyday life is quite different from the literary form which is also spoken in formal environments and in the media. The differences are so big that the two forms could be considered two different languages. Not only is the vocabulary very distinct, but also the grammar: In the colloquial version there are no inflected forms for verbs, for example. This is a little like having King Edward's English used on MSNBC and slang in everyday conversations.
• There are no sub-clauses - comparable constructions are created with participles and adjectives. Therefore a phrase like "The man who gives information on LIP languages" becomes "The information on LIP languages giving man".
• There are no prepositions but only postpositions. "under the book" would literally retranslate as "book under".

Classification:

Sinhala is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is most closely related to Dhivehi, which is spoken on the Maledives.

Click here for more information on the Sinhala language.

As of now we have 6 technical communities in the country. Now! don’t panic if you have registered only in few of these. Yesterday a dude called trying to figure out which one he should register. So for his sake and for many others who might have similar confused sentiments I just thought of writing this.

In a short summary we have 4 Technical communities, but 6 Technical Community Websites represent them. Total member count goes over 8,000 as of not and expected exceed 10,000 registered members by end of 2010. Student Champ Community is lead by Microsoft Student Ambassadors and currently we have 10 of them. Other technical communities are lead by the Most Valuable Professionals.

Among these .NET Forum, IT Pro forum and both MSDN and TechNet sites are developed using Community Server. SQL Universe was originally developed using the same but recently was migrated to DotNetNuke. Student Champs websites is 100% developed by students using ASP.NET 3.5.

Sri Lanka .NET Forum .NET Forum is the largest Technical Community in the country with over 6000 registered members, and dedicated to talk about .NET and other related technologies. Started in July 2004 with few enthusiasts and have grown at a phenomenal rate due to the commitment of couple of passionate individuals. Monthly Meeting Date: Every first Thursday of the month URL: http://www.dotnetforum.lk

Sri Lanka IT Pro Forum This community currently have a approx. 1000 registered members. Started in 2005 as the Tech2Guys community and was later renamed to Sri Lanka IT Pro Forum. Dedicated for discussions on Microsoft Server Technologies. Monthly Meeting Date: Every last Wednesday of the month URL: http://www.itproforum.lk

SQL Server universe Started in 2007 by couple of SQL Server gurus, this community now have about 600 registered members. Dedicated to discuss about Microsoft SQL Server and related services such as Reporting Services, Analysis Services etc. Monthly Meeting Date: Every third Wednesday of the month URL: http://www.sqlserveruniverse.com

MSDN Sri Lanka This was is a new addition to the developer community in the country with the focus on adding more blogs and resources into the community. Launched about a year back and this has already grown to a base of 200 members and 20 active bloggers. URL: http://www.msdnsrilanka.net

TechNet Sri Lanka This also was a new addition to the IT Pro community in the country providing more resources. This was also launched parallel to the launch of MSDN Sri Lanka portal. URL: http://www.technetsrilanka.net

Microsoft Student Champs Currently being the largest student technology group in the country this has about 200 student champs as active members. There are 10 Ambassadors who lead the community. Monthly Meeting Date: Every first Friday of the month URL: http://www.champs.lk

So to summarize … if you are a developer go and register in .NET and MSDN Sri Lanka Forums, SQL Universe also can be recommended for developers. If you are an infrastructure professional you should register in IT Pro Forum and TechNet Sri Lanka forums. If you are a hard core database guru you should take the SQL Universe, Since SQL is not integrated with .NET it might help in registering in both developer forums as well. If you are a university students you can register in the Student champs community,in this case your registration will be activated only after considering by the Student Ambassadors.

Was exploring Windows Live Writer a bit more and noticed this nice feature to include a photo album in a blog entry which is directly linked with my Windows Live Photo Gallery.

If anybody needs the high resolution printable versions please feel free to contact me. i can point you to a download location.

I have like a zillion photos and a million albums … well! not really that much. Now my brain is thinking … whether to upload all those into the blog using the Insert Album features in this.

On a separate note … Windows Live Wave 4 release is just around the corner and I the new Live Writer have some cool features packed with it. Just saw some screenshots etc on the web, and I cant want to get my hands on it.

I just uninstalled my antivirus software (too bad I had paid for it for 2 more years) and installed Microsoft Security Essentials. Installation was simple. Just a 7 MB download, and then the updates; all took only 5 minutes. It was worth the risk. It has already detected two major viruses that existed in my machine which my old virus guard didn't detect. In terms of performance it seems like this is far ahead than any thing out there. Over the last couple of years I have used Norton, McAfee, CA, Kasprasky, OneCare etc, but I think the simplicity in this out beats all ... it loads faster, performs the scans like a charm, and the security seems much better ... i'm not 100% convinced yet though.

Surprisingly the UI is so simple. None of those unwanted useless memory hungry features are not there. If you are really tired of those memory hungry bloated security software (bloatware); and if you haven't already tried this yet, I would like to highly recommend. The best part is it FREE.

 

I have had couple of really bad experiences with Windows Mobile over the years ... remember my 90000 paper weight.

Anyways this are a million times better after getting the HTC Fuze. right now i'm super excited about the Windows Phone (or can I call it the version 7). I'm using WinMo 6.5 at the moment with couple of custom applications from Resco and things are nice and smooth. Looking forward for the new and exciting stuff planned for the next major release of WinMo.

Despite all the ups and downs one thing I love the platform is the support for developers to develop apps. This time things are taking a much cooler route by adapting Silverlight into the core UI of the Phone. So ... Developers who cant wait to get their hands on the new device ... goto http://developer.windowsphone.com/ to get started.

Couple of days back I just saw the blog post in bink about the Windows Home Server, Code Name “Vail” and the demo video seemd pretty interesting. Especially the media streaming functionalities. So immediately I started downloading and when the ADSL failed @ home downloaded the balance 1.5 GB using teh dongle. It seems its all worth it. i'm yet to explore it fully. will write some more details next week after playing with it a bit more.