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.

The mounting suspense of an eager audience was broken by the triumphant out-roar as a team of students from the University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) were proclaimed the proud winners of Imagine Cup Sri Lanka 2010. After an enthrallingly intense competition between 8 Teams from Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT), UCSC, University of Moratuwa and University of Peradeniya, the Team: Collectivists, comprising of the 4th year students: Gayan Garusinghe, Sudam Liyanage, Chanaka Upendra and Hasini Adhikari, bagged the magnificent Challenge Trophy for the first time, taking it to its new destination: the University of Colombo.

The Winning team: Collectivists, proposed a software design solution called “Speak-Up” which offered a common networking platform for social workers around the world to communicate their efforts, needs and the requirements of silent victims to compassionate hearts who are willing to provide financial and material assistance. The system included a number of innovative features from direction of financial assistance, to provision of relevant logistics, forums and more.

This project was proposed in adherence to Imagine Cup 2010’s global theme which encouraged competitors “to imagine a world where technology helps solve some of the toughest problems”, reflecting along the United Nations 8 Millennium Development Goals.

Close behind the Collectivists, Team HELY from SLIIT emerged as the 1st Runners-Up whilst Team SAGGEZZA from the University of Moratuwa emerged as the 2nd Runners-Up. Team HELY presented a project named iSponsor aimed at combating the problem of Poverty by creating an environment where sponsors and beneficiaries would be able to interact and link up in a direct partnership. In contrast, Team SAGGEZZA proposed a solution to counter the same problem through its system: Ideal Lanka, a technology based platform for facilitating micro-investments in agriculture by directing funds from investors to required agro-bases.

Having offered fierce competition, Team JIIB from SLIIT, Team 4-Alliance from Moratuwa, Team SATURNIN from UCSC, Team Make-IT from Peradeniya and Team GREENBROS from UCSC emerged as the finalists.

Team GreenBros from UCSC Team Members: Nitish Kumar, Sahan Maldeniya and Charith Pathirana	Team JIIB from SLIIT Team Members: Janaka Bandara, Boominda Anushka, Iresh Bandara and Isuru Jayasooriya	Team MakeIT from University of Peradeniya Team Members: Rasika Bandara, Charitha Ranabahu, Mouly Gunarathne and Dhananjaya Dodanwela
Team Saturning from UCSC Team Members: Kalana Wijethunge, Chathika Gunaratne, Ajith Karunarathna and Lasantha Samarakoon	Team 4Alliance from University of Moratuwa Team Members: Madhusha Nanayakkara, Chanaka Herath, Madhuka Udantha and Mithila Karunarathna

For more details about the projects and teams please refer to http://imaginecup.lk/finalistdetails.aspx

This premier event, which was held on Thursday, 29th of April 2010 at the HNB Towers Auditorium, was attended by a number of students, faculty members, parents, members of the Industry and more, and was considered to be yet another successful execution of Imagine Cup, being hosted locally for the 6th consecutive time by Microsoft.

In high-spirits, the Winners from UCSC are now embarking on an extensive preparation as they get ready to represent Sri Lanka and present their ideas to the world at the Imagine Cup World finals which is scheduled to be held in Warsaw, Poland in July.

For the past 6 years I have been using Adobe Photoshop and it has been a fantastic piece of software. Recently I self learnt how to use Illustrator and InDesign because those two also became quote essential for me. But started trying a trial version of CS4 few days ago and ... its awful. I have no clue whats going on here. Seems like Adobe have put a significant effort to enhance the UI. But by doing that seems like they have sacrifised performance.

I dont think this is due to something wrong with my laptop. It's a super fast laptop with a Vista Experience Index at 5.3 and a whooping 512 MB dedicated VGA. Above all I was using Adobe CS3 applications without any problem. Now with CS4 I have to wait after every brush stroke. Anyways i'm not a expert designer. Can any experienced designer help me? Am I missing anything here?

Guys … this should be one of those must see type software apps. It’s another cool one from Microsoft Research Labs and it’s amazing. It’s called Songsmith.

What is Songsmith?

Songsmith generates musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice. Just choose a musical style, sing into your PC’s microphone, and Songsmith will create backing music for you. Then share your songs with your friends and family, post your songs online, or create your own music videos.

Where can I get it?
A free trial download is available on our download page.

What if I don’t know how to write music?
Songsmith is for you. Get your first taste of songwriting just by singing into a microphone, then explore different styles and arrangements, even if you don't know the first thing about music theory.

Download
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=24da89e9-b581-47b0-b45e-492dd6da2971&DisplayLang=en

Source: Bink.nu

Just installed the latest Skype version and noticed that they have added some cool new features. I think the one most noticeable is the phone number detection on web pages. Every time it when there is a phone number appearing on a web page it'll be automatically identified as a phone number and Skype will display it in the following format with the country flag. I think it is nicely making the change to where the phone number is displayed without ruining the overall look of the site. Well! it'll depend on the look of the website.

I had about 700 SMS messages in my inbox in my old iPAQ and was looking for a method to download all those into the PC as there were many important stuff among the SMSs. Checked with several Windows Mobile users but nobody had any clue on how to do this. It's a shame that ActiveSync or new Windows Mobile Device Center in Windows Vista doesn't allow to download or synchronize SMS message. Found an add-on for Outlook named Microsoft Outlook SMS Add-in (from Microsoft) which is a pretty good one which integrates SMS inbox with outlook, but still I couldn't find an option download the existing messages into Outlook.

After searching for couple of days found this tool called Jeyo Mobile Extender from Jeyo Inc. Thanks to this tool now I have all my old SMS messages inside outlook. Woo! Hoo!

I' going to purchase the tool soon :)

Couple of months back when I first installed Windows Desktop Search I mentioned that it was annoying because it occupied about 180 MB of RAM and I even asked ''is it ever going to stop'', but after couple of days this process stopped and it started fireworks ... and now ...  

now, all the search functions works suprt fast. I can search through my 5.2 Gig Outlook Datafile instantly. Same lightning speed for files on the system. So .... hats off to Windows Desktop Search.

I couldn't write about how cool this is earlier, because I forgot due to I was enjoying the speed of this.

I have installed Windows Desktop Search Beta 3 because every time I open Outlook 2007 it says ... dude .. you need Windows Desktop Search to perform search stuff. And now it is taking up about 200mb of memory and a considerable percentage of the processing power. I have kept the machine on for several hours for it to do it's indexing stuff and give all the resources to me, but the dang! thing stays up all the time.

What to do? I badly need the folder wise search facility in outlook. Without it I'll be lost and will be wasting lot of my time to look for things. Maintaining several mail accounts and many folders is not an easy task. Windows Desktop Search Beta 3 is very useful but very resource hungry.

I'm wondering .. is it ever going to stop this indexing process?

Just now uninstalled Windows Desktop Search. Why?   My experience with it is not good. It Sucks!.

I installed it because Outlook 2007 was giving a message to install it for fast search results. After installed it always stayed loaded, and eats about 25 - 100 Mb of my RAM, also sometimes processor usage goes wild. Not sure whether this was due to a problem in my machine, but I doubt it because everyting else was and is running sommothly expect this. It was not a 'happy computing feeling' at all. So I removed it. Considering the number of times I perform a search in outlook or in a drive within a week, it's not worth to waste such a big load of memory and processing power for that.

Almost all my files and outlook items are properly organiszed, I know where things are ;) So very rarely only I perform a search. Good lessen to me for installing what I don't want

So guys ... don't install what you dont want ... even when it is free

OMG!

1. Open Notepad
2. Type 'AAAA BBB CCC DDDDD' (or any other 4-3-3-5 letter combination)
3. Save the document, and close notepad
4. Open the saved file

The resulting text has been turned into Unicode - hopefully Microsoft will issue a Critical Security Bulletin for this soon.

Source: Bink

Well! This is not about the movie. Just an idea.... We all know that Vista, Office 2007, IE 7 and Media Player 11 are in the pipe. Currently I'm using all 4 beta versions. Even though there are lots of bugs at the moment it really feels like these 4 are going to be a kick ass combination.

Vista: resource utilization is bit high though, but MS claims that it will run on any machine that can afford Windows XP, let’s wait and see. However I think people will pay that extra buck to go for a better PC and experience the kick ass glass stuff and many other cool things in Vista. Office 2007: What can I say? Over the past 10 years Office applications have changed the way we work in our day to day work. I think Office 2007 will take that to a new level of user experience. But for most of the users there will be a big learning curve. But I don’t think that will be a big issue. Exciting new UI will be the driving factor for them to put some extra effort to learn the things. IE 7: Compared to the previous version this is a big enhancement, but if compared with Opera Browser that has more features than IE. So it’s up to us to choose. Media Player 11: I think it’s too early to say anything about it. Beta released couple of days back looks only like a UI enhancement for the version 10.

What about the Resource Utilization? Memory, HDD etc?
If the same question was asked about 5 years back, I would definitely have given a different answer. May be something like... 'how on earth are we going to machines to run all these software' or 'looks like Microsoft has gone nuts, are they gonna give machines to run these'. BUT now things are in a level nobody bothers of spending couple of extra gigs to install an application.

I’m pretty damn sure that my machine can afford to run any of this stuff . Because it’s powered with 3.06 Ghz Processor, 4 Gig RAM, 256 MB VGA, altogether 660 Gig Disk Space, DVD Burner and a 17” LCD. Once a friend told that I’m nuts to have a machine like that. Another friend asked how I became that rich to afford something like that. Well! That’s a good question. Rich ... ME … naaaahhh! not even close to at least think about that; Secret is I have a ‘Wela’s Computer Renewal Fund’ which I allocate some money almost every month, and also a portion from all the freelanced projects I’m doing. So at the end of some time slot I have cash to get a new PC without any problem. And the next attraction is a Duel Core (may be quad), with 4 Gig RAM, couple of TB of Disk space, 1 Gig VGA (will be available when I’m going to buy the next machine), and most importantly a big ass screen … may be a 30”. What the hell am I going to do with a machine like that? Do coding, play games, of course Movies … and what the hell ... Enjoy the feeling.  Right at this moment I think only a half of the required funds are ready and I have more than 1 ½ Years to fill the rest. Anyways no clue about how the pricing will be. Hey! Any of you buddies want to contribute

I was working on the Vista December CTP and Office 12 for couple weeks and had to switch back to Windows XP because Vista didn't had driver support some of my hardware stuff and it started giving problems. After switching back it worked smoothly. But in last couple of days it started giving problems ... unexpected sudden crashes of office applications, Hibrenate is not working ... etc etc. I have Vista February Build and Office 2007 downloaded, but still couldn't install due to my schedule got busy unexpectedly. 

It sounds like ... my machine is telling me ... I NEED VISTA ... I NEED VISTA ... !!!!!!!

It's a busy day .. but there is no way that I can miss IE 7 Beta 2 Preview. So downloaded and installed on Windows XP. It Rocks!

Strange things is that FreeTextBox rich editor is working perfectly on my site, But it is not wokring on the .net forum. I wonder why?

Microsoft® Codename Max is not like any other product. That's because it's not a product—it's your opportunity to try an exciting new user experience from Microsoft. Today Max lets you make lists of your photos and turn them into beautiful slide shows to share with your family and friends. Tomorrow...who knows? (extracted from Microsoft MAX site)

Checkout the Microsoft MAX website.

btw: the GUI looks awesome.

Got the new about the Google Accelarator from couple of friends. But the morning hours were really busy. It was too late when i checked in the afternoon. it is giving a message saying 'Thank you for your interest in Google Web Accelerator. We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support.' seems like I'll have to wait .

Anyway I was using a similar tool caled OnSpeed. Even though couple of friends from UK comments that it is increasing the speed by several times, here is really sucks. May be because of the band width issues in Sri Lanka.

So ... as for now seems like only way to experience a fast internet connection is to come very very early to office .

Just now read the article about this deal. All over the article it was billion doller figures, felt like getting fainted.

I think this merge (Adobe + Macromedia) will be a cool one. Because during past several year both supported each others file formats very well etc.

M mm m ... i'm thinking about the kind of tools that can come out in the future.