Nowadays the telemarketing calls from Banks, Insurance Companies and Telco's at all times in your mobiles are becoming worser; All of us are very familiar with this menace, so I will just talk about two quotes here and then a possible remedy

Few weeks I got an automated RingTone marketing call from Airtel in my landline and the stupid call doesn't end even if I disconnect that too on a Sunday Afternoon. Last 2 days I am getting calls from CitiBank selling Credit Card, the irony is I am already a Gold Card customer with them. Today my wife answered the call politely, but I interrupted and answered the way I saw was fit - in the call the agent asks me if I refer anyone else, what a stupid question I wonder do I have no other job other than referring customers to them.

After these incidents I spent good amount of time recently in searching the Internet for Don't Call Registries of major Indian banks and listed my name in that. For your benefit the list is reproduced here, please list yourself there. I suppose the recent RBI warning has been the reason for these webpages to be made available.

Don't Call / Do not Disturb webpages of Banks in India

• ICICI Bank (15 Days to remove)
• Standard Chartered Bank (30 days to remove, only bank to give a Request ID)
• Citibank
• ABN Amro Bank
• Deutsche Bank (30 Days to remove)
• HDFC (45 days to remove!)
  

For a similar list containing Telco's, check this The Hindu Article on Rejecting SPAMs. For Insurance company's I am yet to find this service in their websites - if you know about them, please post it in the comments section below.

Read my earlier woes boot (BCD issues) with Vista Beta

After completing the download of Vista RTM, I got ready to setup my Laptop. Used Acronis Disk Director to create 3 partitions (C:\ Vista, D:\Data, E:\WinXP) and formatted all of them using Acronis. Installed WinXP SP2 in E:\, installed Office 2007, AV and other softwares - got the entire WinXP setup completely.

Then I started Vista setup in C:\, Setup copied the contents from CD to HDD and machine rebooted. Nothing happened, I got a blinking cursor and that's about it. 

I guess Vista doesn't like the boot partition to be formatted by any other OS other than itself. So I used Vista Recovery Console

• Format C:\ /FS:NTFS
• Bootrec.exe /fixmbr (Refer earlier post)
• bootrec.exe /fixboot (Refer earlier post)

Now I needed to fix Windows XP to boot. So booted using WinXPSP2 CD and went to XP Recovery console and executed the following:

• FixMBR.exe (this said there is a non-standard MBR, understandable, as we have Vista MBR now, so skipped it)
• FixBoot.exe C:\
• Copied NTLDR and NTDetect.com to C:\ from CD i386 folder
• BootCFG.exe /Scan
• BootCFG.exe /Add to add a new boot.ini file and entry

Rebooted - Windows XP SP2 from E:\ booted and ran perfectly.

Started Windows Vista Installation again. Since this time the C:\ was partitioned by Vista itself and MBR is Vista MBR things went fine and Vista installed & booted fine. I am able to Multi-boot to previous version of Windows (XP SP2) as well.

In my HP nx7010 the display (ATI Mobility Radeon 9200) problem continued, I was happy to see a Windows Update coming up with a new driver for it, but that too didn't work. Then I had to do:

• Boot Vista in safe mode
• Enable Remote desktop
• Login again
• Uninstall the Default Vista Driver for ATI Radeon 9000/9200 (Microsoft), Reboot
• Install the latest HP (SP30204) WinXP driver through Windows Device manager (Don't install through Driver Setup)
   

About a month back, Microsoft came up with a challenge to all its MSDN Regional Directors (which includes me). It was to come up with the best Quote and Photo of the RD in their City landmark. Selecting the landmark for Chennai was tough - how can I manage to take a photo of Marina Beach without professional equipments from air (or) how do I get a photo of LIC / Central Station without Police suspecting me of terrorism . I wanted to go to Mamalapuram - but that whole week was hectic to get out of my desk and when I thought I can, it started raining.  

The rider was that the RD's face, Landmark in the background and the computer screen showing Vista, Office 2007, SharePoint all has to be visible. Most landmarks are outdoor, in that how do I get the screen to show - the natural sunlight's luminosity is hundreds of time higher than your computer screen. I had to hire a professional photographer who gave up after few tries out door. He got permission to do a shot inside the Santhome Church - I felt it embarrassing to hold a PC in front of the sanctum sanctorum and staring for a camera, while in front there were few people doing silent prayers. After 1 hour of waiting for the photographer, 2 hours of posing, I got tired and came home.

The next day I went with my office graphics designer Sukumaran to Valluvar Kottam who got a good shot of me. Thanks Suku and E.Ravi for helping in the photo shot. Incidentally Valluvar Kottam is about a kilometer from my office and the whole thing got over in less than 30 minutes.

Chennai Santhome Church

Chennai Valluvar Kottam

After submitting my entries, I waited. To my surprise, this week Microsoft announced me as one of the Top 10 Photo Entries. I will be getting as gift a Zune Player (WOW). The best quote and photo award goes to RD from Norway - Jonas Folleso, who got as Gifts a Xbox 360 & a new Zune player.

If you are interested the quote I submitted (which didn't win it) is: "With Vista's WPF and Office 2007 Task Oriented UI, a disruptive change is happening in applications usability. The question for every customer now has moved from number of features to how much each of those features will be effectively used. This brings interesting days ahead for everyone"

I don't understand why the media is so intrusive behind what happened on the kidnap and release of Anant Gupta (3 Year old son of Adobe India's CEO). The truth is important but at the same time the privacy of the affected party too.

Everytime I am seeing the news about this incident this week I am reminded of two things. As a father myself of a small kid I feel the pain Anant's parents would have felt; Second I couldn't help to think about hundreds of other kids who get kidnapped around the world every day - who are less fortunate to have a high profile father like Anant. My prayers for them.  

I was mistaken when I thought after all the hype about Origami there is no development happening in the Ultra Portable PC space. Today I noticed in the Internet, news about two new Ultra Portables:

• Samsung's SPH-P9000 - Read this Engadget review and you will understand it is a brand new form-factor combining the best of mobile and PC, but in the size of a mobile. I will reserve my comments until I feel one in my hand and try it out.
  
• Brule Raon Vega - A cute beauty weighing 350-grams / 160×80×27.5-mm

If you have been playing around with prerelease versions of Office 2007 and then try to install the final RTM build like the way I did today, you will get stuck with a error "Uninstall all preleases versions of Office 2007" and setup halting. Although I uninstall all Office 2007/2003 components I can find, deleted the office folders in Program Files, Registry keys, still the setup refused to run. After some search I found this blog post that writes on the same issue.

The post pointed me to two useful articles on this from Microsoft: 2007 Microsoft Office System Known Issues/ReadMe & Support Article on setting up Office 2007. After doing all said in the articles, including uninstaling Office 2003 OWC, I couldn't get the setup working.

Then I went to the last suggestion in the post to use Windows Installer Clean Up utility. I was using Windows Vista RC2 to do the setup - in that whatever reasons the installation of this tool failed with a script error. Then I did the following to get everything working:

1) Unpacked the package file in which the utility came into a folder. In the extracted folder I noticed another installation file "msicuu.msi" I ran it directly.

2) In Mid-way the setup came up with a dialog saying it can't find unicode/msizap.exe. In the extracted folder I saw a file called MSIZAPU.EXE, I copied it to a new folder "unicode" and then renamed it as msizap.exe

3) Pressed retry in the dialog and the Installer Clean Up utility installation went fine.

4) Ran the clean up utility, which showed couple of Office 2007 components that didn't show up in Uninstall applet of Vista - I removed all of them

5) Finally I rebooted the machine, ran the Office 2007 RTM setup again - it went thru' without any more glitches.

Happy working with Office 2007.

One of the common problem in deployment of ASP.NET 2.0 applications is permissions. Developers setup IIS to run there application pool with admin priveleges and applications run fine. But when you deploy it in a production environment where the Application Pool runs in a limited permission account like "Network Service" things start to break - especially if the code accesses resources like EventLog. Today I got stuck in one such situation while deploying an application and I came across this good MSDN Article that helped me out.

A related MSDN Article talks about how to use Medium Trust in ASP.NET 2.0 as a best practise. Recommended read for every ASP.NET developer!

Last Sunday, I had some quality leisure time to spend with my son. I started by opening a Tom and Jerry Puzzle that he has - boy I didn't remember that puzzles were fun and also tough. Being a 3 year restless kid, after 180 seconds he became bored by it and started playing on his own, but I spent the next 20 minutes and completed the puzzle. In this materialistic world, we miss out on these simple activities like a Puzzle. To prove that I did complete it, here is the photo:

The next I did with my son was to watch a DVD with him. Some how the cartoons I consider otherwise kiddish, becomes fun while watching with him. In his School (Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan) for Pre-KG that he is studying they are teaching him Vegetables. So he is excited whenever he sees a Vegetable (with the 't' pronounced bold by him). So while shopping in LandMark my wife picked up this DVD on Vegetables, though I buy many CD/DVD everytime I travel, my wife gets lucky in picking the good ones.  Past experience for me with buying Indian made Kid CD/DVDs were not good - the CDs were not made as interesting to kids as the western made one's like Oswald/Barney/TeleTubbies. The exception to this, was the hugely successful "Hanuman" DVD. To my surprise, this DVD on Vegetables was made very well - the DVD has made a boring topic like teaching Vegetables fun, as it was told in a story format with good animation and characters. I recommend this for any kid below 5 years. I wishes to the maker of this DVD - Gipsy.

(Click to view the cover and story brief)

After many years, Microsoft had a ball this week - they had three main platform software going gold. First it was Office 2007 System going gold, then it was .NET Framework 3.0 (WinFX) and last was much awaited Windows Vista. I am sure everyone in Microsoft is super excited (as Microsofties would like to say) . As a partner, I am over-whelmed on the possibility this opens up for us in terms of developing Gadgets, WPF Applications, SharePoint Solutions and more.

For Microsoft India too the week was great - with Steve Ballmer visiting India and the successful run of IndiMix '06 event. In IndiMix I liked the inclusion on stage of celebrities like Anil Kumble & Yash Chopra and they sharing there experiences of how IT Solutions are helping them. Great work Microsoft India.

Some interesting numbers came up during the panel discussions:

• MSN India has 250 Advertisers this year against only 80 few years back - Market is turning to Online advertising seriously
• Online Advertising business in India is roughly Rs.110 Crores; while TV is 6000 crores & has 9000 top advertisers

In connection with IndiMix '06 Microsoft India announced a contest to select Top Bloggers from Indian Subcontient who will get special prizes. Microsoft nominated me as one of the Judges along with two of my good RD friends - Praveen Srivatsa and Sanjay Shetty. Going through hundred of blogs and select a few is a tough job and we thoroughly enjoyed it. My wishes to all the winners - in few of their blog sites I manage to write the wish in their comments. Good Luck!

One suggestion to all the Indian bloggers

1. Post more Original Content - it has to be your own experiences, rather than just collection of Hyperlinks in your posts
2. Keep your Writing Style & UI simple and clean - especially avoid Google Ads clutter and fancy graphics
3. Post often - which helps your writing and also builds readerships
4. Make few posts in your mother tongue - Spice your blog with few posts on Indian Language as well

Being an award from Microsoft I was hoping to find blogs with deep technical content, code/samples and architecture. I would have also loved to see blogs on Vista, Office 2007, Atlas/Web 2.0 & .NET 3.0 but personally I was a little dissappointed not to find any one blog worth mentioning on these topics.

For record, the parameters in the Judging Panel we worked on were:

• Frequency of updates - 20 %
• Originality - 40 %
• Writing Style and User Experience - 20%
• Content and Technical Relevance - 20%

Winners list is available here in PDF format (Source: Microsoft.com)

The other day I wanted to watch a movie and searched for theatres in Chennai, where I can book tickets online. After about 10-15 mins, all I could find was just two theatres offering tickets online. Satyam Theatre and MayaJaal. I am not sure where in Online world the others are hiding. If you know about any other Chennai Theatres for which you can book tickets online, please post in the comments below.

Continuing my story, I booked the tickets in MayaJaal and went for Sillunu Oru Kaadhal, starring Jyothika and Surya before marriage. The story of course was about a married couple and the emotions/bonding between them. A good to watch (though not great) movie, great photography and nice songs. When I was searching this movie in the Internet I was surprised to see a page for it in Wikipedia - these days everything is available in Wikipedia

Update: Prakash has suggested posted in comments links to do online booking for Abirami and Sangam, Ega & Casino.

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending two high profile events in New Delhi.

Number 1, was Microsoft and Hutch press conference announcing the signing of Letter of Intent between the two companies to offer soon Windows Live Services in Hutch Mobile. This will be the first mobile search deal in the country. The service will offer Windows Live Services like Search through WAP & SMS, Live Messenger & Live Mail in Mobile in a phased rollout plan. The event was attended by Senior Leaders from both Microsoft (SteveB, Ravi Venkatesan, Jaspreet Bindra) and Hutch (Azim Ghose, Sandip Das, Naveen Gupta). Felt great to be near these industry stalwarts.

Number 2, was a panel discussion of Industry Stalwarts moderated by Dr.Pranoy Roy of NDTV with the keynote being delivered by President Abdul Kalam. This was the first talk of President Kalam that I listened - his energy and sincerity for the betterment of India is fantastic.

(Courtesy: www.presidentofindia.nic.in)

For two minutes once he reminded, that you can refer more on this in his website including the PowerPoint Slides, if you differ on his views you can please email him and he will respond by 24 hours. I was proud that Indians have such a enthusiastic technology savvy president. SteveB who came next on stage had to say I feel embrassed coming after your president  because I neither have a PowerPoint slide for todays talk or a website for myself.

Some interesting points came up during the event:

• India has One-Third of World's Software Engineers and it has the same number of children suffering from malnutrition (Shame on every Indian)
• President recommended his plan for Bandwidth to be setup and given free - just like how government today does other basic infrastructures like Roads free
• The more someone is educated they will use lesser the bandwidth - Computer Experts People will do Text/Email (lowest B/W), Computer Savvy will use VoIP (Medium B/W), Illetrates will use Video Phone (Highest B/W)

 
(Spot me in Extreme Right in front of the Lady in Cream Dress)