Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

There are 6 new MCTS certification options: TS: .NET Framework 3.5 Windows Presentation Foundation Applications (70-502) TS: .NET Framework 3.5 Windows Communication Foundation Applications (70-503) TS: .NET Framework 3.5 Windows Workflow Foundation Applications (70-504) TS: .NET Framework 3.5 Windows Forms Applications (70-505) TS: .NET Framework 3.5 ADO.NET Applications (70-561) TS: .NET Framework 3.5 ASP.NET Applications (70-562) The first three exams in the list will go live in late March. Each of these credentials will require the 70-536 exam as a prerequisite. The details are on Gerry & Trika 's blogs. Related links: Microsoft Certifications: Where Do I Start? ( 1 & 2 ) Book Review: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536): Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Application Development Foundation Book Review: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-528): Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Web-Based Client Development

Clinic 5045: Inside Look at Developing with Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 - In this 2-hour premium clinic you will learn about the rich capabilities that Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 offers to developers. The clinic will focus on Architecture and List Management, Building and Extending Windows SharePoint Sites, and Packaging and Deploying Windows SharePoint services solutions. Having this knowledge will enable you to determine how to incorporate Windows SharePoint Services into your workspace solution development. Additionally, it will enable you to consider deployment options for your SharePoint solutions. Clinic 5046: Inside Look at Building and Developing Solutions with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 - In this 2-hour premium clinic you will learn about the rich capabilities that Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers to developers. The clinic will focus on Fundamentals of Building Solutions with Office SharePoint Server 2007, Building Business Solutions

Ever wondered what it takes to build & manage LARGE websites like Google, Amazon, YouTube? Here are some case studies: Google Architecture Amazon Architecture YouTube Architecture Flickr Architecture Wikipedia's Site Internals, Configuration, Code Examples and Management Issues Got the links from the ACE Team's Blog Related links: Dan Pritchett on Architecture at eBay Randy Shoup on eBay's Architectural Principles

I have been a long time reader of the 4GuysFromRolla.com website articles. (How long? Since the time it had any ads at all ). I often marvel at how well Scott Mitchell has consistently been churning high quality articles since 1998. He is a prolific writer & his literary output never ceases to amaze me. It is not surprising that someone who explains complex technical concepts so authoritatively is also an avid developer & trainer. Each of his roles is fodder for the other. I keenly follow his blog (as well as that of 3 other Scotts - Scott Guthrie , Scott Hanselman & Scott Allen . I find it is an interesting coincidence that besides sharing the same name, all of them have an entertaining & simple style of writing). In a recent posting Scott Mitchell mentioned about training events he is conducting, one of which is titled " In Depth Website Performance and Scalability ". I was impressed with the way he has organized the course plan - I. Performance and Scalab

J ust like the ambience of the eating place & presentation of the food matter for a good gastronomic experience, to me the way technical information is presented is a key thing I look for when I buy a book. I like checking out the MS Press Certification guides when starting off on new topics (eventhough I may not take the exam) because the lessons are mapped to an organized learning plan & the way the content is presented is easy to read & understand. I feel the curriculum for the 70-536 exam on Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Application Development Foundation, introduced after .NET Framework 2.0 came out, is extremely relevant to .NET Developers & a similar exam should have been included in the .NET Framework 1.x series of certifications as well. In fact, the 70-536 exam will now continue to be the core requirement for both Visual Studio 2005 and the upcoming 2008 MCTS certifications. The multi-authored tome MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536): Microsoft .NET F

This is a question that puzzled me months ago & I also keep hearing this from colleagues. I read the best plain-English description of it in Channel 8's DreamSpark user guide (by Kris Athi) "The best way to think of an ISO is as a “Container File” that contains all of the files that you would expect to find on the product CD. An ISO file is a CD Image. Try to imagine that somebody has taken of the files off the product CD and put them inside in this single ISO file. But what do you do with this now? You cannot burn this file directly to a CD, this will not work. You need to expand the ISO file on to a CD instead. Unfortunately, this is not supported directly in Vista or XP directly, and a free piece of software is needed. There are many applications out there to burn ISO files, but I find ISO Recorder the easiest to use. This can be downloaded from http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm and the site also has a quick step by step on finding out your windows vers

“We are billionaires only for the name. What’s changed is that now I can afford to change all my socks with the same coloured pairs so that I don’t have to match them every time” - Sergey Brin Years ago , I worked with a free IP-to-Country Database and it felt nice to know then that such a nice product came from an Indian company. Browsing through an old magazine, I was pleasantly surprised to know that it's Bombay-based founders Divyank & Bhavin are 2 young folks, now in their twenties who started off as teen entreprenuers . Their company has been valued at $300 million (Rs 1,173 crore). Bravo!

There are basically 3 parts: 1) The "spider", "crawler" or "bot" collects data from the web. 2) The "indexer" analyzes the content, decides on appropriate keywords and makes some preliminary determination about the "importance" of a page by some algorithm (Google uses PageRank, for instance). 3) The "engine" is the component that services the users request and matches the keywords to specific pages or other content. - extracted from a reply by Paul Williams in LinkedIn Answers: Web Development

ko aham kuta aayaatah (Who am I? From where do I come?) - Adi Shankaracharya Geography was my favorite subject in school. So more than a year ago when I heard of the MS Virtual Earth mapping service, I monkeyed around with it & put up a quick & dirty fun app to search for any given place in India & show it's latitude and longitude. The interesting thing about the Virtual Earth mapping service is the low barrier of entry for developers. It works with just plain HTML & client-side Javascript. As such it can be hosted on any web server & used along with any server-side language. Unlike Google Maps which works works only for a real domain, Microsoft's Virtual Earth Map Control works locally and does not require signing up for an API key. I was amazed recently to find that there have been more than 3 versions of the Virtual Earth Map Control since I last tried it out. The latest version Virtual Earth Map Control 6 contains a host of fantastic features . The

“The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.” J. Paul Getty I have a friend who is suspicious of all things Google. He finds all the personalization offered through data mined info clever but fears any breach of his privacy. The conveniences that Gmail offers are however too good to ignore for millions of us. I have a pile of unread mails in my Gmail inbox that I ignored in the past & often wished there was a way to look at just the unread ones. I've finally got the answer from Matt Cutt's 11 Power Tips for Gmail . The trick is to search by Gmail Labels. Within Gmail, just do a search for label:unread label:inbox

One of my favorite sections in the Microsoft Architect Journal is the Architect Profile feature where they interview gurus. Typically the interviewees are asked what advice they would give aspiring architects & the answers are enlightening Scott Guthrie (General Manager, Microsoft's Developer Division) - "Writing code is valuable for an architect. Not necessarily production code you check in, but constantly trying out new technologies, new approaches, and feeling how the system works. I don't write a lot of production code these days, but I spend an hour or two every day writing code. It may be samples, prototypes, or some fun personal project—whatever it is, I'm trying things out, thinking of ways to structure things. Being hands-on is very valuable from a code architect's perspective. The other thing I would recommend is taking a look at core systems theory and how to architect very robust systems. Consider some of the principles you want to think about and