Archive for September, 2008
Microsoft Technology Developers constitute one of the largest technical communities in the world. A significant number of these communities are hosted by external parties other than Microsoft. In addition, Microsoft itself hosts a number of these communities.
Recently, I was invited to deliver a session on community tools that Microsoft developers can benefit from at Delhi User Group. I took sometime looking up these communities and was astounded by the sheer numbers of these Microsoft hosted communities. While I made all efforts to include the ones i could find, I am sure that i may have left quite a bit of them as well. If you know of something that i may have left, please leave a comment here for everyone’s benefit.
I haven’t covered the 3rd party communities in the presentation below. Also, the most obvious resource for technical info on MS technologies – MSDN & Technet have been left out.
If you are someone working with Microsoft technologies, spend a minute looking at these technology communities from Microsoft and i am sure that you would leave with some links u were not aware of.
Remember the success of the community depends on the people who actively contribute.. looking forward to ur mark in the community!
Live Maps from Microsoft is a good product.. and till now it was only good in US.. Microsoft has finally made Live Maps available for India (news via LiveSide.net).. it is still not comprehensive for small cities in India and only has Street Maps for 9 major Indian cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur.
I took the maps for a spin asking for directions from MG Road in Gurgaon to India Gate in Delhi. The result (seen below) are exactly the route that i would take.
Amongst other features are Local Search, driving directions and business listings. The Live Maps seem good as a start but i need more time to verify the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the map data.. hope it meets my criteria 🙂
Check out your city on Live Maps: http://mapindia.live.com and let us know what you feel about the search..
Zune, the iPod rival, has released its version 3.0.. the release further enhances the utility of the hardware available on the device.. Zune distinguishes itself from iPod by including FM tuner and WiFi ability at the same price as iPod.. the v3 release includes additional functionality for FM tuner and WiFi..
“Buy from FM”
This feature lets you download the song that u hear on the radio of your Zune.. this download will happen the next time you sync your device.. i am not sure if this will work for Indian FM stations.. wud check this feature soon..
“Browse Zune Marketplace wirelessly”
You can download music directly to your Zune from any wireless hotspot at home, at a café or wherever else.. earlier u cud only stream wireless music within ur home network.. if ur in US, you can wirelessly sync ur Zune at any McDonald’s restaurants..
Games
Zune 3.0 come preloaded with Texas hold ’em and Hexic. you can now play games on your Zune.. in addition, if u want to create new games for Zune you can using XNA studio (that is available for free)..
Clock
A nifty new feature added to Zune is the clock that gets displayed on top right of your screen.
“Zune Channels”
Zune marketplace introduces a new feature called channels. Channels are predefined playlists. However, this is only available to Zune Pass holders (USD 15).. with this Zune Pass, you can download unlimited no. of songs from the marketplace.. i think the channels greatly enhance the value of Zune Pass.. i especially like the fitness channel there.. also present are radio stations like KROQ and KEXP and by Billboards…
Audiobooks
I use my Zune the most for listening to podcast.. And now Zune natively supports audiobooks from Audible.com and OverDrive..
Some additional new hardware available:
- Both 16GB and 120GB Zune devices have been added to the lineup
- Additional colours added are glossy black front and a black metal back
- More designs are now available to personalize your Zune via Zune Originals
With this update, Zune becomes a complete entertainment device and much more useful than iPod that is still only a music player…
You’ve seen numerous Windows Mobiles in the market from makers like Motorola, HTC, imate, Samsung (in fact only Nokia doesn’t have a Windows Mobile phone!!).. what you have NOT seen is the Windows Mobile displaying local Indian languages like Hindi.. watch these screenshots from my HP Windows Mobile phone:
Watch the day of the week in Hindi alongwith the name of the month. Even the appointments have the days mentioned in Hindi.
So why hasn’t Windows Mobile been able to show Hindi fonts?
While Windows Mobile supported Unicode, the core issue was the font engine in WM did not know (was not built) how to render complex characters. The reason why it was not done for WM, was that made the font engine heavy and OEMs didn’t want to increase memory footprint for that. Also, there were no fonts natively for Hindi on WM. All that changes with this application install that enables the following features.
An inscript Hindi keyboard:
Any WM application that supports Hindi fonts can now actually display them. look at the screenshot of google maps on Win Mobile:
And yes, even Word and Excel documents containing Hindi text render correctly on the Windows Mobile (using Word Mobile):
Earlier, you could not browse Hindi websites on mobiles. Now, websites that render Unicode text are also shown correctly (intentionally rendered in Opera Mini to show that it works in all browsers):
i have tried sending a Hindi SMS to a hindi enabled Nokia phone and it has worked seamlessly!!
However, it should be noted that this solution is not a localization engine. The dates and few other things get localized because they happen to use localized fonts which are installed by this font engine. Hence, most of the menu items of Windows Mobile are not rendered in Hindi but in default English.
Now, if you want your Windows Mobile to start showing you things in Hindi, you can download the solution FREE of cost from here: http://www.eyron.in
The solution is designed for Microsoft Windows Mobile-based devices with a touch screen for Windows Mobile 5 and Win Mobile 6 Professional.
remember, this solution is not to localize WM to Hindi, but rather enable WM to get Hindi input and show Hindi characters on the UI (not changing the UI elements from eng to hindi)..
Let me know what you think of this solution.
when technology is a part of the whole! 