The efficient way to share code snippets

Being a developer its not unusual to find yourself mailing code snippets to your colleagues or friends who might have rang up for help with their coding chores. So after Googling or trying out some samples you might straight away mail him the code, which is perfectly  acceptable at that point of time. 

Me too was doing the same thing while sending code snippets to my friends. One fine day, I encountered the same scenario which I had happened to solve for a friend of mine some weeks back. I remember the code was around 100 plus LOC with some hex values and bitwise ops. I was reluctant to code that again so I started searching in my send mail items, unfortunately I had deleted that mail from my send items as well as from the outlook recycle-bin; to make matters worse, calling my friend to whom I had send the mail was not reachable. It was like Murphy's law in action, after which I had to reinvent the wheel by coding all those again from scratch.

So as to find a solution to this, I turned to Google which ended up with Gist a handy feature crafted for the very same purpose by GitHub. The best thing with Gist is that its free and you could share the code snippets by sending the hyperlink to your friends. Before sharing your code snippets, create an account for yourself so that you can come back and see those code snippets shared by you; not only that the code snippets shared using Gist is indexed by search engines, which might help others too from reinventing the wheel.

Click here to visit the site

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.

SharePoint Tutorials

I was overwhelmed by the number of SharePoint 2010 training videos available out there in the net and that too free of cost. The best thing about these videos are, most of them are from Microsoft itself and hosted by sites like Channel 9 and Technet. The contents of these videos are of exceptional quality, with SharePoint veterans themselves as hosts.

So if your are new to SharePoint or looking to upgrade your skills from SharePoint 2007, then I would highly recommend to go through these videos, as it will gives you better insight from a developer point of view, as well as on the new set of  features introduced with SharePoint 2010. So go head and get ready to update your skill set arsenal.

SharePoint 2010 E-learning clinic - Grab this one first as this offer is only for a limited period.  These resources can help you improve your technology and job-role skills and help you earn certifications that are highly valued by employers.

Learning SharePoint 2010 Development - This is the most comprehensive set of videos released by Microsoft which guides you right from 'Getting Started' to Advanced topics like enterprise search.

SharePoint 2010 Developer Training Course - This set of videos are targeted for developers for those with basic understanding of Microsoft Office, SharePoint and using Microsoft Visual Studio.

P&P SharePoint 2010 Guidance - Do visit this link, if you are looking out to sharpen your SharePoint 2010 skills with the best practices in the industry. Here in this page 'Developing Applications for SharePoint 2010' you can download an e-version which includes a written guide, eight reference implementations, source code for a resuable library, and 25 How-to topics.

'SharePoint How To Videos' - If you are moving from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010, this one is a must to see set of videos, which shows you how to leverage the new set of features and how to get things done in SharePoint 2010.


Yaroslav Pentsarskyy's SharePoint 2010 videos - If you want to dig into more advanced topics like branding, FAST Search, Ribbon et al. These free web casts should definitely quench your thirst. 

Here are some more links especially for those looking to master the craft


Video Tutorials for IT Pros

Preview of SharePoint 2010 Work flows

Workflow enhancements in SharePoint 2010

Creating reusable workflows in SharePoint 2010

End-to-End workflows with InfoPath

Video Tutorials covering basic to intermediate topics in SharePoint 2010

Installing SharePoint 2010

Hope you find the tutorials informative.

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.

Good News for .NET Reflector Users

The good news is that, Red-Gate had bowed down to the developer community request by making .NET Reflector v6 available free of cost. It was a sigh of relief, when I came to read about this in their forum. 

If you have ever used this tool for debugging applications, I would say this is something which any ace .NET developer couldn't live without. It is that crucial from a developers point of view, especially while trying to pin point the root cause of hard to find bugs.

While the bad news is that, Red-Gate has released .NET Reflector v7 with lot of enhancements and bug fixes. For those sticking with the v6 is going to miss all those goodies packed with the new commercial version. 

I was thinking, if the productivity gain from using .NET Reflection is that good, then why not shell out some bucks to get a copy for myself as its only 30$ per dev box. Seems like marketing guys had priced it appropriately to get us hooked. 

Anyhow lets hope, one day Red-Gate is going to make .NET Reflector available as free download, once they recover the expenses incurred in acquiring the tool from Lutz Roeder's. Till then happy debugging...

Microsoft User Group Meet

Its a pleasure for me to invite you for the forthcoming Kerala - Microsoft User Group meet to be held on 9th July 2011 at Orion India Systems, 2nd floor, Tejomaya, Info park. At this event, I will be speaking on 'SharePoint 2010 Programming'. My session will be targeted for those who are new to SharePoint 2010 Development or wish to have a sneak preview of what SharePoint is all about(in short).

Well here's the agenda for the event.



09:30 - 09:40 Community updates
09:40 - 10:40 C# Test Automation by Praseed
10:40 - 11:20 Silverlight - Prism by Mahima
11:20 - 11:40 Tea Break (15 min)
11:40 - 12:30 Sharepoint 2010 programing by Abraham
12.30 - 01:00 Ask the experts

For registration and other details, you can check out here at the K-MUG site. I hope to see you at the event; till then happy coding!!!

Whats New In SharePoint 2010 SP1

This week Microsoft had released SharePoint 2010 SP1 with pretty good number of enhancements on stability, performance, and security fronts. With SP1, there's a reason to rejoice especially for the SharePoint Admins than for the developer community, as majority of the updates are specific to administration side. While on the developer front there's not much except for the Performance Point Server, improved browser support for OWA and support for Open Document Format. Here are some of the new features shipped with SP1.

• Site Recycle Bin - Definitely a blessing to SharePoint Administrators as well as for Site Collection admins, who could now recover deleted site collections or site's without restoring the entire content database. The 'Site Recycle bin' provides the same 'Recycle bin' functionality as for Lists, Libraries and Documents.
  
  
• Shallow Copy - This feature minimizes the SharePoint admins task of moving sites from one content db to another especially with BLOBs (Binary large Objects) data. BLOB data involves files like DOC, PPT, XLS etc, which are stored external to the content database. With 'Shall Copy' the time required to migrate content databases could be significantly cut down, as the admin's only need to update references to these objects in the destination db.
  
  
• StorMan.aspx (Storage Space Allocation) - A page which was taken out from SharePoint 2010 on performance grounds. Here is a link that details on what made Microsoft to do so.  The page helps one to identify the contents(files based on size) in a site which is accessed the most. This helps one to take out contents which are no longer accessed, so as to better manage contents within the assigned quota. The good news is that SP1 is putting back the StorMan.aspx to SharePoint 2010.
  
  
• Enhanced Office Web Applications (OWA) - With SP1, interacting with online versions of Word, Excel, Power Point and OneNote through browsers like IE9 and Google Chrome has been considerably improved. Moreover support for Open Document Format too has been heightened.
  
  
• Cascading Filters - SP1 had introduced 'Cascading Filters' for Performance Point Server. This helps to eliminate the task of going through numerous items in a dashboard, by configuring dashboard filters which are connected to another. This is what 'Cascading Filters' are all about. Click here to know more on this.
  
  
• Storage enhancements - When SP2010 was released the official spec on the size of the content database was limited to 200GB. Now the bar has been raised to 1TB.
  
  
• Cumulative Updates - The SP1 comes with all cumulative updates for SharePoint 2010. So for those who are yet to update can get all this in a single go.
  
  
• RBS Provider for SP2010 - Finally Microsoft had come up with their own version of RBS BLOB Provider for SharePoint 2010. With this you could store voluminousness data outside the content database, like inside SAN/NAS boxes.

To get an complete list of fixes and improvements to existing functionality that are included in SharePoint Server 2010 SP1 and SharePoint Foundation 2010 SP1, you can refer to this document. By the way Microsoft had published some known issues with SP1 make sure you go through this link before going with the upgrade and finally, if you wish to view the list of product fixes shipped with SP1 click here for detailed list.