Cleared MCTS 70-573

Today was a landmark day in my career, after achieving the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) certification in 'SharePoint 2010, Application Development (70-573)'. I believe the certification would act as a testimony of my skills in SharePoint 2010 application development. 

Before opting out for the certification, the thought that prevailed my mind was, nowadays majority of the certified folks are wholly relying on dumps to get through, which is not at all fair, if they are just cramming the answers without actually understanding the objective behind these certifications. This being said I was sure on one thing, getting certified is not going to make me stand out from the crowd because of all these malpractices. So the question was, would it be worth the effort spending time and money on getting myself certified? After putting down my thoughts on this, I came out with the following set of points, which rationalize's on, why one should opt for certifications.

1. If you are seriously preparing for certification, you will be covering the breadth and depth of the syllabus, than just skimming though the basics. So preparing seriously by spending quality time and effort is definitely going to pay off both in terms of monetary and non-monetary aspects. Non-monetary aspects like giving you an edge over others in terms of knowledge and boosting your confidence level. 
   
   
2. Suppose if your company is a 'Microsoft Gold Partner', which stipulates a minimum number of certified professionals to retain their Gold Partner status or a client who wants all the team members to be certified who's going to work on their projects. In such cases, those certified is going to get an upper hand over non-certified ones.
   
   
3. If you wish climb up the organizational ladder, your qualifications and certifications is definitely going to be counted as one among the many parameters for appraisals and promotions.
   
   
4. I you wish to showcase your technical competency in Microsoft 
   products\solutions which no *dumps* certified individual can catch up with. For those creamy geeks, Microsoft had rolled out two different certifications which is considered as the 'creme dela creme' in Microsoft parlance, under the title 'Microsoft Certified Master' (MCM in short) and 'Microsoft Certified Architect' (MCA in short) which is the last word in Microsoft Certifications at the time of writing. Those awarded with these certifications are tagged as the Gurus in IT industry. So to be frank, if you want to be a MCM in a Microsoft product, the stepping stone to an MCM in a vertical, is going to be the lowest denominator certification available for that particular product\solution, like what I achieved today. 

So after evaluating the aforesaid points. I came to see that point 1 and 4 was particularly more relevant and sensible, which made me to go for it.

Words Of Wisdom By Warren Buffet

I came to read an article by honcho of Berkshire Hathaway. I would say its a must read for everyone including entrepreneurs, looking out on how to be financially secure especially in times of a turbulent world economy.

(Click to view in original size)

Google Plus

Finally the stage has set for the next biggest 'Clash of the Titans' involving Google and Facebook. Its seems like Google has no plans to give up, even after repeatedly failing with products targeted towards the collaboration and social networking fronts like Orkut, Buzz, Wave, Friend Connect and Latitude. 

I believe by this time Google had learned the tricks of the trade the hard way from their past failures; this should be the reason why Vic Gundotra had decided to take his brain child's(Google Plus) maiden voyage right into turbulent channel where Facebook had been ruling for the past couple of years without any rivals as such.

Its seems like the Google+ is the fastest product I had ever seen to go from beta to live in a matter of months. If you are a frequent Googler (I mean who uses Google Search) possibly you might have noticed some new icons with "+1" in search results and the main google search page's top link color changed to something dark. All these were the stepping stones towards the next major outcome from Google under the title "Google Plus".

So for the first time when I logged into Google Plus, to me it felt more or less like a revamped Facebook. Everything seemed to be like Facebook except for the circles feature. This was my very first impression, but the moment I started exploring G+, it seemed like there was something more out there than what I saw at first.

The 'Circles' feature in G+ is going to be the most applauded feature in G+. This pretty cool feature lets you to group your friends into circles, there by isolating the activities inside the circles from others. Without this, just think how annoying it would be let your family members or boss viewing your posts you had with your close friends. This bring you a whole lot possibilities to restrict posts from viewed by others. Definitely a boon to those privacy loving chaps. I would say this is one thing Facebook is dearly missing, you can't hide any posts from any of your members, in such cases one had to depend on messages that too wouldn't work if the number of people you are trying to contact is pretty long. So by this time Facebook might have started working on something similar.

The very next feature I liked the most is the 'Sparks'. This is more or less a kind  of subscribing to a feed, but here the catch is you need to just key in your area of interest and the rest is taken care of by G+. All your 'Sparks' show up in the page like small article snippets fetched from popular sites.

Google has taken due care to get their G+ into the mobile platforms with Android users being the first to get a hands on experience with G+ on their mobiles, while for iPhone users the G+ apps are still under development, which might hit the apps store in a month or so.

So whats in for developers?. As per Google, they had put developers on wait mode as said in this page. Once the APIs are out, its going to a shower of G+ apps. The entrepreneurs are keenly watching this space on how to profit from Googles new initiative.

By the way here's something which I was expecting with G+.

There's no way you could restrict others from adding you to their circle. What I did to get over this was; I created a Circle named 'Strangers' and moved those to that circle, now all the strangers together in a secluded room of their own. To me the Facebook way of friend request is better than this one, which gives you the choice to accept or deny those requests.

The fonts really look bigger when compared to the once in Facebook. This bigger fonts eats up the screen space, ending up with lot many scrollable content and only few in the visible area.

Then the other feature I was looking out was setting 'Disable Reshare' by default in specific 'Circles', which would prevent from sharing the contents of my post in his\her Circle.

The very feature they had missed out is integration with Google Calendar and Google Docs which unfortunately I couldn't find any options for this in my G+ page. Just think of the how nice it would be to have Calendars and Docs shared with some of your members in a specific circle.

To conclude, I would say Google isn't that late into this Social networking arena dominated by major players like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn et al. Even now Social networking is in its infancy like Internet was in 90's, there's still lot to explore and innovate in Social Networking arena with more and more people using the Internet as never before. Well wait and watch how things are going to turn out this time for Google and also don't forget to tap out the vast business opportunities laying ahead in this sphere.

Quality educational content at your fingertips

In a densely populated country like India, where quality education is still outside the reach of millions especially those in the rural areas, where one could hardly find a school even with the basic amenities. The case is not so different in the urban areas, where students are being charged astronomical fees, and at the same time not delivering the quality education as promised. The reason being, education is seen from the business stand point with top priority being 'profit from it' and not on the age old way, where the Guru(teacher) and his deep rooted knowledge on the subject was considered to be of paramount importance in those times.

Fortunately many of the world renowned institutions like MIT, IIT, IISc had voluntarily started to publish their courses(lectures) to the internet. This had literally opened up a whole new realm of possibilities in the educational sector, where the lines got blurred between the genius and common student, in terms of accessibility to quality education. I believe information of this sort should be made available to those employed in the educational sector, which could eventually help to build a nation of our dreams prevailing with peace, prosperity, unity and power.

Here are some links on specific subjects which I came across while trying to help a friend of mine with his college chores.

Khan Academy -  A library of over 2,400 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 125 practice exercises, we're on a mission to help you learn whatever you want, whenever you want, at your own pace and that too free of cost.

MIT Open Courseware - MIT OpenCourseWare is a free publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT. To explore the different courses available, you can see by clicking on the 'Courses' link.

Practical Chemistry - This site provides all teachers of chemistry with a wide range of experiments to illustrate concepts or processes, as starting-points for investigations and for enhancement activities such as club or open day events. It also enables the sharing of skills and experience of making experiments work in the classroom. Lots of information for technicians too.

Practical Biology -  provides teachers of biology at all levels with experiments that demonstrate a wide range of biological concepts and processes. The website also promotes the sharing of skills and experiences of making experiments work in the classroom, and includes information and guidance for technicians.

Practical Physics - This website is for teachers of physics, enabling them to share their skills and experience of making experiments work in the classroom.

PUMAS - Practical Use of Maths And Science an initiative by NASA. The website contains a collection of brief examples showing how math and science topics taught in K-12 classes can be used in interesting settings, including every day life.

Lectures from IIT\IISc - A Govt. Of India initiative on E-learning through online Web and Video courses in Engineering, Science and humanities streams. The mission of NPTEL(National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning) is to enhance the quality of Engineering education in the country by providing free online courseware.

If you come across resources of this kind, please drop me a comment on that. I will be updating the post with your inputs.

My New Dell XPS

Thank God, finally the long wait is over and my new Dell XPS got delivered a day late. This was the first time in my life I had placed an order this big through an e-commerce site; i.e. through the Dell online store. Initially I was hesitant to place an order online, especially because of the security and reliability issues which were being reported by most daily's with respect to e-com businesses. This made to pull back from placing an order online. But after making some visits to some of the prominent laptop dealers in and around the city. I came to conclude that, they could only provide me with pre-configured ones (the customization's they could offer were limited to components like RAM, Outer cover [Skin] and Video cards), but not customized versions which I was  looking for. This made me to go back to square, the Dell online store.

After visiting the Dell online store, I was quite surprised the number of options for one to choose from, in terms of components and accessories; not only that, one could see in real time, on how much each component you add or takeout is going to cost you at the end. Finally I built my customized Dell XPS laptop configuration in Dell Online store with all these components and accessories.

• Intel Core i7 2630QM - 2.00 to 2.90 Ghz
• 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333Mhz
• 500 GB HDD (7200 RPM)
• 16x DVD+/-RW
• Wireless LAN - WiFi
• WiFi and Bluetooth
• Integrated Gigabit ethernet 10/100/1000
• Camera: 2.0MP HD with single digital mic (H.264)
• JBL 2.0 Designed n Certified Speakers
• Bluetooth v3.0
• All together 3 USB ports 
• 1 USB 3.0 port
• 1 eSATA/powershare combo
• HDMI 1.4
• Small DVI Port
• 9 in 1 card reader
• NVIDIA 1GB Graphics card
• 15.6-inch HD (720p) WLED Display
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
• 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery

After booting up the laptop, which was itself was noticeably fast, after which I was guided through a wizard to fill in details like TimeZone, DateTime, User Account creation blah blah etc. Once the desktop was up, I was surprised to see the number of gadgets running on there, to me it seemed like a kiosk kinda screen. So what's next?, I fired up the task manager to see whether the number of processor cores they(Intel) had promised were there or not. Seeing the Performance tab of the task manager, my eyes almost popped out seeing the number of cores shown there. See it for yourself.

Literally I counted with my fingers on the columns\cells shown as cores. All together there were eight; Wow how did this happen, I thought Core i7 was just quad core processor, so how on earth they moved from quad to octal, when was this announced? After a brief search on this my Wow effect bursted into laughter. The eight core what I saw in the task manager was the hyper threading in action, which means  each core runs two threads, that why its showing eight cores. The hyper threading(HT) feature was re-introduced back with iCore series. Before this, it was newly introduced with Pentium 4 processors, a feature that made one physical CPU work as two logical CPUs. 

I though it would be better to show off my 'Windows Experience Index'. The components which didn't perform up to Microsoft exceptions where the Graphics Card and definitely the storage. I now feel like I should have gone for the SSD, but hearing the costs made be pull back its best suited for the deep pocket professionals. So here's my index of 5.9 not that bad, isn't it. 

So let me talk about features I liked the most with my Dell XPS 15.

The overall build quality is good with backcover built out of silver anodized aluminum, which makes it standout from the crowd. When turned on the XPS logo glows giving out a cool white ambient feel, which definitely will catch others eye. The frame surrounding the screen are built from high quality plastic. I would appreciate the jet black used for the frame around the display, as I felt like this will help to concentrate on the matter without any color distractions. 

Aesthetics

The moment I powered my new Dell XPS, the status lights located just next to the power button started glowing in a synchronized fashion giving a feel of festive season, during the booting process, which actually was doing the Power On Self Test routine.

WiFi

The next thing I liked the most was the placement of WiFi enabler button along with the function keys, now I just have to toggle the function(fn) key along with the function key for WiFi, previously with my Lenovo thinkpad, I had find that on\off swtich located by the side of the laptop to enable or disable the Wifi and Bluetooth access, which was a bit awkward to locate.

Touchpad

Coming to the touchpad, I really love the different options provided; including multi touch capability to zoom-in and zoom-out images by merely moving you fingers from inside out and vice verse. You could even rotate images by moving your fingers in a circular motion on the touchpad, there's still lot many patterns in the manual which came along with, which I need to go through.

Speakers

If you are a music enthusiast, the powerful JBL speakers is going to keep your ears tuned to the music flowing from these small yet powerful speakers even in the middle of a crowd. If I were to compare the speakers which came with Lenovo Thinkpad, its now where near by in terms of loudness and sharpness. The output from JBL is powerful enough to reach out to a distance of 15 to 20 yards without considerable degradation in quality. If you want to listen to those favorite tracks  without invading others privacy, there's an option to plug in your head set including mic just next to the optical drive, which I am yet to explore.

Extended Function Keys
Dell had integrated more set of functionalities to the existing set function keys by integrating features like "Multimedia Function Keys", "Contrast Control", "Display Switch", "Enable\Disable WiFi", "Enable\Disable Touchpad" so using the function keys with the "Fn" key combination will make the functions keys to execute those extended functions. 

There's a lot more to jot down regarding the features I liked the most and I hate(not a quite good design) the most. I will be updating this post soon, so watch out for more.

Beyond Microsoft - Nokia Partnership

If you were watching the investing trends of venture capitalists in IT sector, most likely you would have noticed that, in recent years the trend had actually shifted more into mobile applications, which is set to grow at an exponential rate in near future. With the introduction of 3G in a bandwidth constrained country like India, which is to open up a whole lot of opportunities not just for telecom players but for the entire industry at large. Also not to mention that the purchasing power of people had grown like never before, which had started attracting international players to tap this vast opportunity. 

So mobile applications being the buzz world in and around the technology sector, industry giants like Microsoft, Google, Apple to name a few had joined the fray to get hold of the mobile application market with their platform offerings. 

Recently Microsoft made headlines in most daily's, by partnering with Nokia to get their Windows Mobile platform deployed on Nokia smart phones, by replacing Nokia's proven Symbian OS platform. I read this news twice to confirm what I read was right or not. My initial reaction was, did the people at Nokia had gone nuts to accept such an offer from Microsoft. Why don't they refine their existing Symbian OS or why not go for the proven Android platform, which would seem like a better choice from a normal persons standpoint. But later only I came to hear the real crux on what made Nokia to cut a deal with Microsoft. Did you know that, Microsoft had offered Nokia a staggering of $1billion (i.e. Rs.4,500 crore) to materialize the deal and Microsoft will be paying this  in a five year time. What crossed my mind was that, Microsoft is playing out the same strategy they had with Hotmail. 

Microsoft didn't stop there after making a deal with Nokia. See for yourself what Microsoft had announced at 2011 International CES; they are stepping out the x86 province and is reaching out to new platforms. The next version of windows is going to support System on a Chip (SoC) architecture like, ARM based processors from NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. All this points to the fact that, Microsoft is keen to make their windows OS support over a large set of devices, and not just restrict to x86 machines.

So what one can infer from this deal is that, Microsoft had virtually acknowledged the fact that mobile platforms is going to be the next generation computing platform, which is going to supersede Desktop\Laptop computers for those who primarily use computers for stuff like surfing th web, mailing, office apps, movies, music, presentation, calendaring, Instant Messaging et al. 

So whats in here for developers? Definitely its a great opportunity in disguise that you could take advantage of by diversifying your skillets to cover mobile based development platform, which itself should not be limited to Windows Mobile development but to other platforms like Android and iOS (Apple). 

Before concluding there's a good news for Silverlight developers. Knowingly or unknowingly you guys now posses mobile development skills on Windows 7 Mobile platform because Microsoft is supporting Silverlight on Windows 7 Mobile platform for delivering rich UI apps.

So start updating your skill set arsenal with new skills and be ready for the mobile computing era.

My Blogging Experience

After stepping into the blogosphere. I got to see that, the search engines weren't showing up my blog in search results, even I tried keying in my blog name, that too didn't fetch me the expected results; and moreover I was keen to get some analytics data on my blog. While trying to find answers to these questions, I happened to meet a friend of mine, who was into SEO domain. He was kind enough to provide solution to my problem on getting my blog visible to search engine's and on getting analytics data for my blog. After getting putting his mantras in practice, I started getting desired results. So if you already own a blog or planning to starting one, then this post should definitely get you some insight into SEO and Analytics.

Google Analytics - This was the crème de la crème among web analytics. With Google Analytics I could get analytics data for my blog in an intuitive manner, the dashboard renders a page with visitor statistics like:

• Line graph of total number of visits on a given Day/Week/Month. 
• Plotting out visitors on a map.
• Listing out articles\pages with the highest number of hits.
• Returning visitors\New visitors.
• How did users got to your blog like whether from Search engine, direct URL, site references etc.
• Landing page optimization and many more options.

If you aren't satisfied with Google Analytics, there's a lot more to explore on the commercial forefront, this includes solution from Yahoo Web Analytics, WebTrends, ClickTracks and Omniture from Adobe.

Promote your blog - The million dollar question of every blogger is that, how to get people visit my blog. Definitely there are heaps of solutions out there in the Internet, which are available for a fee or as a free service.  I will be writing about the free services which appeals me more, as I do blogging as a hobby, and not for any monetary benefits. Some of the sites which could publish your blog links are like Technocrati, Google Add URL, Live Add URL, Yahoo Site Explorer this makes your blog more visible to search engines. 

The other ways to promote you blog, is by placing links to your blog in email signatures, forums, comments, slide presentations, chat room titles, business cards etc. Also email your blog link to friends n colleagues and don't forget to get feed back from them. You could also use social networking sites like FaceBook, Twitter, Orkut, LinkedIn to broadcast updates on your blog.

Here's a couple of points worth noting, to keep visitors coming back to your blog.

• Enable Following on your blog if your using blogger.com, this is a great way to keep your friends updated on the latest activity on your blog.
• Keep your posts and paragraphs short. Go for compact posts that are to the point.
• The more you blog, the more traffic you'll get.
• Always reply to comments posted against your posts\articles.
• Turn on your site feed. This includes RSS\Atom feeds.
• Install Email This Post, this makes people to forward your posts to friends.
• Most importantly write quality content and do it well.

A couple of times, I had seen people working on the same problem as I did previously. This made me to think about sharing, what ever small resourceful stuff I had with others. Earlier I used to mail my finding on programming problems as Knowledge-base to my peers, this method of sharing has its own limitations which made me to look for other ways. Finally my search for an effective way to share Knowledge-base stuff among my colleagues, peers and friends got materialized with rolling out of my blog TechAnnotations.

Hope you enjoy my blog posts and Thank you for you visiting.

Finally World Cup 2010 Is Here

World Cup- Soccer 2010 is finally here, with our favorite teams lining up for the mega sporting spectacle. While for the Internet savvy's there's more to cherish with, as the IT giants Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are gearing up to woo you with their eye catchy gadgets and services to keep yourself updated with the events and news directly from South Africa.


WorldCup Highlights
In case if you missed out those heart throbbing shots? Then here is an opportunity for those tied up with tight schedules. FIFA has put up the match highlights video online here.

Google's World Cup Offerings

Google with its innovative offerings has loads of serves for Soccer enthusiasts. With the very first one from the search engine forefront itself. If you were to key-in world cup to Google search box, you will be presented with the match details straight away.

A Panoramic Walk-through of World Cup Stadiums
While Google Street View is there with more aerial and visual treats, with street and panoramic views focused on to world cup soccer stadiums. Here you can take a walk through of those majestic Soccer stadiums in South Africa.

just in case if you are curious on how the street view is captured, here's a  how to video released by Google.


World Cup Stadiums 3D Video
You tube guys are out there with something different with a three dimensional view of the world cup soccer stadiums. Here you can immerse yourself in a three dimensional treat of those marvelous engineering.

World Cup Theme Songs

YouTube doesn't end there with just a view of the soccer stadiums, theres even more. The 2010 World Cup Theme song which really holds the spirit of the game, is a must watch.  

Here's The Official World Cup 2010 theme song by FIFA

  
 FIFA World Cup South Africa 2010 Official Theme Song.

Ariel Snaps of World Cup Stadiums
The PicasaWeb is there with some really good snaps, where you can find some Ariel view of the stadiums right from construction to completion.


Chrome Extensions
With the World Cup fever caught up with the browser extensions, Google Chrome is now made available with a new extension exclusively for FIFA World Cup 2010. This lists out news, fixtures, results, videos and more from the Soccer forefront. You can download the extension from here.

Yahoo World Cup 2010 Offerings
Yahoo had put up a dedicated site for reporting the latest happenings at World Cup Football 2010. The site has loads of details which every football manic expects and many more. You can visit the Yahoo Sports site here.


Microsoft World Cup 2010 Offerings
Microsoft has come up with new FIFA World Cup 2010 themes for Windows 7, upholding the spirit of Soccer. Here you can download the themes for World Cup 2010. 


Microsoft World Cup 2010 Score Card
Keep track of Who's Who at next level with Microsoft Excel Templates. Here you can download templates hosted by community members.


World Cup Live Video Feed
Here is a couple of sites coming up with live video feed from World Cup 2010.
http://watchworldcup.tv/ These chaps are providing live feed for a nominal fee. http://www.streamdirect.tv/ While these guys are said to offer the live feed for FREE of cost !!!. I think I should try out this once the World Cup rolls out into action.


WorldCup - Blogs 
Keep a tab on development at FIFA World Cup 2010 at the forefront and the things behind the scenes at http://www.worldcupblog.org/


Official World Cup Site
World Cup 2010 South Africa
FIFA World Cup Matches

World Cup 2010 match Schedule

You can download the match schedules from FIFA website.


If you want a single snapshot of the match schedules, Teams, Groups, Countries, Locations. Then here's an elegant 360 degree chart presenting with all of the above attributes, click here to visit.

World Cup 2010 

Broadcasters
If you interested to know which channel covering World Cup Football in your country, click here.

So get yourself ready for the mega event starting from June 11th to July 11th.

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The Super Computing Race

        With the technology moving at a fast pace, countries especially the developed ones are on a stiff competition to catch up with the supercomputing  power they posses. While USA and China had taken the supercomputing to the Peta-flop level, with USA at the forefront achieving a landmark of 1.7 Peta-flops with their Jaguar(Cray) super computer, while China taking the second position with their 1.2 Peta-flop super computer.

       The research laboratories had reveled that, in near future the super computing speeds are going to be taken to Exa-flops level, which could crunch a whopping of one quintillion (one million trillion) calculations per second. The Exa-scale system is proposed to process tons of data sourced from SKA (Square Kilometer Array), which are a series of telescopes spread over hundreds of square kilometers.

    Here in a current release of the biannual supercomputing survey, you can find the Top 500 supercomputers grouped on the basis of Country, OS, Processor and many more parameters.

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Business Objects - Crystal Reports

The other day while working with crystal reports for .NET, I was confronted with deployment issues, where "Business Objects - Crystal Reports"  merge modules and redistributable's were missing. After some search all the required components were available from the "SAP" site. You can find Hot fixes, Patches and more in the following URLs


http://resources.businessobjects.com/support/additional_downloads/runtime.asp 
(Packages along with documentation)



https://websmp130.sap-ag.de/sap(bD1lbiZjPTAwMQ==)/bc/bsp/spn/bobj_download/main.htm
(Download Links)

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Online Storage Space

I always wished to have an online storage space which is free of Ads and obviously big enough to hold some Gigabytes and that too certainly free of cost. 

After some search I narrowed down to the best available option, which was Microsoft's SkyDrive online storage service. The Skydrive service allows up to 25 Gigabytes of online storage space for sharing files, images, music, videos and more. To Sign Up for the service you just need to have an Hotmail account and thats it. 

If you aren't impressed with Skydrive, there is handful of commercial services providing more features for a nominal fee, here you can get a comparison of different online storage solutions.

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Tips on Remote Desktop

In the day to day life of a IT Professional, Remote Desktops has come up as an single window solution for managing multiple machines at the convince of without leaving your desk. I was pretty impressed with the features it had to offer. During the initial stages, I came to confront some trivial issues like how to Move files, Copy text, Restarting\Shutdowning Remote Desktops etc.

After some research, I got the solution to all those aforesaid issues, so lets move on to the solution part.

Moving Files

If you happen to be in a situation where, you need to copy files to or from a remote desktop. Enable resource sharing, and here's how its done.

1. Open Remote Desktop(enter mstsc in run window)

2. Click on "Options" Button.

3. Next, Click on "Local Resources" Tab.

4. Under "Local Resources" grouping, Check "Disk Drives".

5. Now after establishing a remote desktop session, you could see your local drives listed in the Remote machine under "My Computer", thats it.

Copying Text from Remote Desktop

1. If copying text from Remote desktop session to you local PC doesn't work, then possibly "rdpclip.exe" isn't running in Remote Desktop machine.

2. Well start the "rdpclip.exe" at the Remote Desktop. For this keyin rdpclip into the "Start->Run" window. After you enter this command, you wont see anything coming up on the desktop; thats perfectly fine. To ensure the rdpclip is running, open "Task Manager", and see the whether "rdpclip.exe" is listed under processes tab.

Restarting\Shutdown RemotePC

I was surprised to see the "Shutdown\Restart" option in start menu was missing when working on Remote machine. I believe this feature makes sense, as usually there won't be any one to turn on a remote PC, which may be either in a secured room or in a remote geographical office far away in a different time zone. But at times this could turn up into a nightmare for Developers, QA's and Release teams as well. Enough talking, lets come to the solution part.

To Restart the Remote Desktop, enter the following command in "Start->Run" window.

shutdown -r -f -t 0

Please note before trying out the shutdown command, make sure you have access to the machine physically or some one is available at the other end on call, to switch on. 


To Shutdown the Remote Desktop, enter the following command in "Start->Run" window. 

shutdown -s -f -t 0

The user with you had logged in should have privileges to execute the "shutdown" command.

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Impressions of Eyjafjallajokull Volcano

The Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland was in the news headlines these days, crippling down the business and life's of millions. But what ever be the events, there is something pretty for the camera eye to capture on to. Here at Boston.com you can find some find some creative impressions taken from the very heart of the volcanic activity.

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A Truly Motivational Saga

I had a belief that only a sound financial background and knowledgeable parents could make their children to dream for the skies. But latter going through the biographies of some very eminent self made personalities, I came to realize that nothing is of a barrier from realizing your dream, be it monetary, physical or circumstances. If you have that craving desire and passion, then even failure couldn't stop you from achieving what you had envisioned. The only obstacles, one can see is the lack of focus, interest, willingness and at times even procrastinating the goals. Recently I came across a real life story which made this belief even more firm and I definitely recommend this as a "Must to Read".

In a remote village in Tamilnadu, a boy named Veerapandyan whose determination and passion got himself into, what is called as the steel framework of India, against all the odds. I assume none of us had went through the hardships like the one he had faced, even then he made it to the top overcoming all those baffling hurdles, thus setting himself as an example on how to conquer the unachievable, I believe theres a lot to learn from him for all of us.

I am quoting a striking sentence from the article, which really inspired me and certainly each one of you."

"You will accomplish 100% what you wish When you are firm in your goal."

You can find the complete article here. 

http://truthdive.com/2009/05/27/veerapandyan-from-paratha-master-to-ias-officer/

This is another story of a young man, whose had set an example of empowerment through education. You can find the complete article here.

http://smilefoundationindia.org/IAS_officer_jaiswal.htm

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Get yourself reviewed

Its the very instinct of every humanbeing to dream big and high, but what really makes one succeed is the moment when one assess himself/herself and starts to workout in a planned and focussed manner in materializing the dream.

Recently I came to stumble upon a site, that provided a cluster of assessment tests free of cost, if you are interested you can get yourself assessed at http://similarminds.com/, Click on "Personality Tests" link (located on the top left side of the image) and take a test of your choice.

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My First Blog Post

A hearty welcome to my personal blog "Tech Annotations". Its been a long cherished dream of mine to have a personal blog and finally the day had come to get transform my dream to reality. Starting with this post, I am really thrilled to be part of the blogosphere ecosystem, through my modest contributions, moreover i see this as an opportunity to give back to the community. 

Here you can find posts on Tech Innovations, Software Utilities, Code snippets, Puzzles  and what else!!! Oh Yes, my experiences with the IT Industry and then my other areas of interest like Science & Technology, Nature, Photography and definitely some humor stuff too.

I certainly hope you will benefit going through my blogs and I definitely welcome your valuable comments, suggestions and critics on my tidbits of posting in the days to come.

Thank you for you time and Thank You once again for visiting my blog. :)

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