Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Happy New Year

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Wishing everyone a happy 2010. It has been a long time since I blogged. After around 5+ years of blogging, I guess I was a bit burnt out. Personal and professional life was also demanding more time, and I somehow felt less and less inclined to blog. Without any kind of plans, I suddenly felt like checking my blog today. Upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress. Will fix the theme a bit so that it does not look broken. Let’s see how it goes. No promises if I will be blogging regularly. Hopefully I will get a lot of exciting things to write about, as I am playing with SharePoint 2010, Office 2010, Windows and SQL Azure and a lot of fantastic new technologies. If I feel like, I will start blogging again. If not, I guess I need a longer vacation from blogging.

Thanks to everyone who read my blogs in the past. I has been a very exciting experience. Apologies for drifting away from blogging without telling. I did not have any plans for leaving, however personal and professional life took their toll and I just did not have any time to blog. For those who don’t know, I got married in 2007. I started my own company Toolagen Limited in 2008. 2009 had been a very hectic year for work, as a small startup we were struggling to stay alive and grow in the midst of recession. It was a very challenging time, but we grew from strength to strength and now have exciting plans for times ahead. Let’s see where 2010 take us.

Anyways, if you read so far, many thanks. Hope I get time and the motivation to start writing again, and again get a chance to know you all. Till then, wishing everyone a very happy 2010.

Microsoft Bing goes live

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

I suddenly noticed that Bing.com, Microsoft’s new revolutionary search engine, was now up. It is showing a beta logo, but the search engine is up and running. Have heard lots of good things about it, so going to give it a try for a few days.

Do we have a Google killer here? What do you think?

Happy New Year

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

Finally 2008 is over. What a year it has been. Hoping that 2009 brings lots of hope, prosperity, happiness and joy to everyone. Wishing everyone a very happy 2009 :)

Blog Changes

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

While recently migrating hosting servers, I got an opportunity to re-examine my choice of a blogging engine. I had stopped blogging for a while, and hence was tempted to start anew, however had some good past content which I wanted to preserve for myself.

I initially started blogging with Wordpress, and went thru a painful process to migrate all content to Community Server a few years ago. It was a good system. It still is, but it is meant for very large blogging networks, and not very suitable for a single blog. They do have a new product called Grafitti, however, both suffer from one major problem. A lack of free plugins, themes and tools available from the community. Wordpress on the other has is a fantastic blogging platform, very easy to use and has an abundance of free support to a small blogger like me.

One more major turning point towards Wordpress was the launch of Windows 2008 and IIS7. It now supports URL Rewriting, and hence via Fast CGI it can use mod rewrite to create pretty URL’s :) Have a look at this post URL. Am a .NET developer and hence I always host on Windows servers. This was one of the reasons why I had left Wordpress in the first place. So it’s great to be back with Wordpress.

Lookout for more regular posts soon.

Free CodeRush Xpress

Monday, November 10th, 2008

Just came across this page from Microsoft about an announcement for the availability of a free version of CodeRush called CodeRush Xpress. Might be worth looking into for faster development and refactoring. Definitely worth having a look if you have never used CodeRush before. Good news for those who have been in the sidelines due to the cost involved. Now you get a chance to use some functionality of CodeRush for free.

A new beginning

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

It’s been a while since I posted. I have been involved in bringing my dream to reality. For a quick update, I have left my job to start my own company Toolagen Limited. Currently keeping very busy in giving shape to this organisation while working on several consulting projects on SharePoint / MOSS. Working for myself will enable me to work on even more engaging and complex SharePoint / MOSS projects while creating a service delivery team to develop and deploy complex MOSS solutions.


We are also working on some SharePoint tools which will soon be released to everyone. Hopefully we will be making it to Beta before Christmas.

Article on Microsoft’s proposed offer to Yahoo!

Friday, February 1st, 2008

SearchEngineLand has a nice write up about this proposed acquisition. It discusses the event in detail and portrays a nice picture of what is going on and why. Definitely worth a read.


There are also live blogged notes from the Microsoft conference call for the Yahoo! bid at 8:30.

Microsoft’s offer letter to Yahoo!

Friday, February 1st, 2008

Steve Ballmer’s letter to the board of Yahoo! is available for us to read at the Microsoft Presspass site. Definitely worth a read. I skipped the financial figures, and tried to find out what is Microsoft looking after with this acquisition. Search dominance, online advertising market share, or just an increase in long term profits by bringing Yahoo! financial figures in it’s Balance Sheet.


We keep hearing things about Microsoft and Yahoo acquiring various firms related to Search, Advertising and Social Networking fields. Had never gussed that Microsoft will make a bid to get one competitor completely out of the way by acquiring it.

Microsoft proposes to Yahoo!

Friday, February 1st, 2008

Definitely one of the biggest news I have seen in my career. Microsoft today proposed to acquire Yahoo! for $31 per share. That puts the value of Yahoo! at approximately $44.6 billion.


Financials apart, this will have a BIG effect on the search and online advertising landscape. Combined together, it will become a bigger and meaner rival to Google, and we can definitely see exciting things happening in the search and online advertising space. One thing is for sure. Exciting things ahead in the online advertising front. I guess it is time I try out some ad’s myself and see for myself if they are worth $44.6 billion.


Also two of the biggest email platforms Hotmail and Yahoo Mail will be combining if this acquisition goes ahead. Flickr will also fall into Microsoft’s lap. I am sure there are going to be lots of rampifications to this. More than I can think of. Do let us know if you can think of any significant change this will bring to the industry.

NewsGator for Free

Thursday, January 10th, 2008

One of the biggest new announcements I have heard in a while. Newsgator which is the leader for RSS Clients, has recently announced that it is making it’s clients FREE. Yes, you heard it. They are free to download and use. Yipeeeee. This includes FeedDemon, NewsGator Inbox, NewsGator Go ( most exciting ), and also allows free sync with NewsGator online. NewsGator Go and my Windows mobile is the perfect combination. Head over to NewsGator and download the Free Clients today.