Automatically change your wallpaper

I am a big fan of wallpapers as I have a cool 17 inces wide screen Lenovo laptop. Whenever I want to chill out, I will start searching for cool photos, wall papers for my Windows Vista desktop. But I found it very tedious to maintain these cool collections and change wallpapers when I get some time (only). I wanted a program to change wallpapers automatically with out giving me any side effects.

I found this cool tool called Desktoptopia (beta) doing a great job on selecting a right desktop wallpaper from awesome collections. It’s tiny, nifty and cool. It can change my wallpapers at given intervals, or allows manual change as well. You can find loads of wallpaper collection which are configurable with your tiny tray utility.

 

Download Desktoptopia

Hyderabad Barcamp 5 – Live ! Part 7

12:40 PM

Session : Women in IT By Kavita Vemuri, Technical Manager, IIIT-H

Kavita Vemuri delivered a splendid Off-beat topic on Women in IT and problems and how people think different, studies and statistics. The statistics that were demoed are very compelling.

She also talked on how things are seen from Women perspective.

I think this is one of MUST NOT MISS session for most of the barcampers out there. It really helps them to mature in their views about fellow women workers in IT field. She hit the nail on the right point where the word “Diversity” is becoming a multi-definition word as per people’s comfirtness in this corporate jungle.

She has also pin pointed on the need for Gender Insensitive policies rather than Gender Sensitive policies.

I liked the quote on her last slide 🙂

“They” Say : Women are key to economic growth, but then they keep changing the lock !!

Disclaimer from Kavita : “They” –> Governments

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Hyderabad Barcamp 5 – Live ! Part 6

11:45 AM : Tea Break ! It’s suffocating due to some problem with AC system in Google !

Session : Amit Aggarwal talks about Build a Successful Blog.

Amit talks about his experiences around doing blogging for living….i.e Professionally…he is a well known tech blogger who get indexed by techmeme.com from India.

He blogs @ labnol.org.

Amit has shared his invaluable blogging experience such as keeping the visitors in touch, focusing on content, frequency of blogging, Using Google Alerts, SEO (Search Engine Optimization)  etc. Definitely a good session for young tech bloggers out there.

-more to come

Happy BarCamping !

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Hyderabad Barcamp 5 – Live ! Part 5

11:24 AM

Session : Lighting the Web, Silverlight 2 By M.S.V Janakiram, Microsoft.

I somehow feel people tend to show MS as a devil and people doesn’t like them, but the fact remains that they use MS technology in and out in thier life. This session was started with a disclaimer that Janakiram will be talking much about generic technology but not specific to Microsoft ! (In Contrast …Check the ealier session I covered in Part – 3 of this series.) Community Spirit seems to be UnCommunitized now ! 🙂

This session is focusing on Rich Internet Application platform and usage of SilverLight. Janakiram started with Quote “Media is embracing the Web” and a mind blowing movie trailer demo with high definition sound effects using Silverlight on Fox Movies website. and… there it comes 🙂 A jazzy bollywood, tollywood movie application shown with high definition video experience in Firefox.

Janakiram described how do developers and designers co-exist and work together using Rich Internet Application platforms like Silverlight and Microsoft Expression and Visual Studio .NET 2005.

Janaki has demoed an application mashup built-upon Google Maps and Silverlight which shows the movie trailers on the pin points of movie theatres across Hyderabad.

-more to come

Happy BarCamping !

 

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Hyderabad Barcamp 5 – Live ! Part 4

11:00 AM

Hysea Representatives talked on their activities and events. Boring  for developers like me 🙂 !

Session : Prasad Y, CMD of  teleonto talking about his experiences about Product development. Boring again. More like self perspective session and people seems to be taking an unofficial break in Bar Camp….:-)

I will take a break too….

-Happy BarCamping !

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Hyderabad Barcamp 5 – Live ! Part 3

10:47 AM

Session : Building Low Cost Scalable Web Apps – Ramesh Rajamani, Compassites, Bangalore.

Session seems to be focussing on High Availability, Performance and Storage solutions planning for such demanding applications. I feel, this session is more technology centric rather than practice centric (which I hate to listen in events like barcamp where people think technology is just a way to implement systems).

Most of the things sound obvious to me and few things are going above my head.

One funny thing…the speaker talks about Amazon S3 to save time on performance while S3 is sleeping in woods at the same time 🙂

more to come….signing off for now…

-Happy Blogging

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Hyderabad Barcamp 5 – Live ! Part 2

10:30 AM

The first session is kicked off post introductory welcome by Ramesh Loganathan, VP, Pramati.

Sanjeev is doing Behavioral Driven Development  (BDD) now. He is from a little startup called “Corners“

This session started with Test Driven Development introduction…

BDD focuses more on defining the behavior of the system rather than designing the code. This comes out when developer thinks about system in terms of domain specific language (DSL).

The session was planned to end with a demo with Ruby On Rails with BDD, but for some reasons the demo was not given.

I just looked back in to hall…and…..WOW ..I can see too many Students 🙂

 

– Happy BarCamping…

 

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Hyderabad Barcamp 5 – Live ! Part 1

Barcamp 5 @ Hyderabad is scheduled today and Google India is hosting the show for us. Thanks to Google 🙂

9:30 AM : I reached Google’s office at around 9:30 AM. Entry is super smooth (took just 5 mins including an official entry for my laptop) with pleasant welcome from Google’s reception.

Googlers turned their Cafe in to BarCamp conference hall to accommodate large set of audience. The first instant benefit I got from Google the moment I entered in to thier office is “GOOGLE GUEST WIFI”. No Hungama, nothing. I had to enter my email id and nothing else. I am connected to a high-speed internet pipe on the fly.  🙂

Seating seems to be not so good as it’s a canteen. I am not sure if I can sit for long in these fibre chairs. I also observed that there are no power hubs down on the floor as its a canteen in real. Google has quickly arranged few Power strips to us.

10:00 AM :  Conference agenda is being prepared. There is a big Queue out side the office and folks are checking in….

more in next part…

Happy Barcamping !

Technorati Tags: barcamp5,hyderabad barcamp

Mac Book Air launched in India

Apple has launched it’s new product Mac Book Air in India. In next two weeks, the product will be available in all Apple Stores across country.

Mac Book Air measures at 0.76 inches thickness as it’s front line feature. Well that feature comes with some sacrifice too. There will be no Optical Drive ! This optical drive comes at an additional cost of 5500 Rs which cannot be used with any other PCs or Laptops.

The Technical Specifications are as follows…

Screen Size : 13.3 inches (LED Backlit)

Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo

Hard disk : 4200rpm (slow) – 80 GB  – [ 64 GB Solid State Drive is Optional ]

Ethernet, Firewire, Media Card Slots – MISSING !

USB Drive : Just 1

Battery : Not Replaceable (like in iPod) 

Expected Price : 96,100 Rs.

Can I Trust my Open ID ?

This is what I see, when I try to use my Open ID credentials to comment on a blogspot blog. 🙂

I seriously doubt, how reliable is this so called “Single Sign On” solution for the Web 2.0.

Poor exception handling ? Huh ?

PicLense – Browse the Web like a 3D Presentation Show (Firefox Only)

PicLense is a highly creative and performant Add-on for Firefox which can give you a decent experience for any website with lots of pictures on it. You can literally turn the website in to a showcase of pictures with an interactive zoom in, zoom out, drag feature set. Download PicLense

 

Try the following page once you are done with PicLense Installation.

China declares war on Plastic Carry Bags

China has banned usage of plastic carry bags as a part of their war on “White Pollution”. This is a very good decision taken by a country which has responsibility as big as it’s population.

Now It’s the India turn ?

Read more at NG Web

How to be Idle anytime on Google Talk (GTalk)

GTalk is simple. And sometime simplicity sucks you know. It doesn’t have any options on privacy. Many times you might wanted to be Idle on your  GTalk, but felt helpless. Google doesn’t seems to be updating the updated client very soon too.

Here you go for a little tool that adds a very cool option to GTalk menu “Always Idle”. gAlwaysIdle adds a menu option to your IM client so that you get your privacy back.

Download gAlwaysIdle

Merry Christmas…The programmer’s way..

The guys @ Channel 9 (Developer Community site managed by MSDN) had found an ultra cool way to wish people a great Christmas season. Chris Anderson, Don Box and Amanda Silver presenting a special song for you to enjoy the Christmas with a spirit of Programmer.

Listen to the Song here

Song Lyrics are as follows…

‘VS-indenting
Module VB
Dim myvar As Integer?() = {3 * 3}
Sub Main()
For Each i In myvar
      Console.Write("Hello VB")
With i
       Console.Write(.Value)
End With REM a language so true
If i IsNot Nothing Then
               Console.WriteLine()
End If REM
            Console.Write(<some>xml</some>)
Next
End Sub
End Module

Personal Email Analytics, People and Attachment Management

This is one such tool, every business user would dream to have in thier Outlook. It fills most of the gaps which could be found by any serious Outlook user.

Xobni Insight is a tool/addon for Microsoft Outlook which makes it atleast 10 times productive. It does a faster email search (Can I uninstall Windows Desktop Search?), Builds a relational database on your contacts, the files and conversations. More to add…It is probably the first “Social” software built on Outlook (I don’t consider Plaxo as one :-))

Download Xobni Today to Power your Outlook

FxLabs aquires Knibble…and you get 10566 games

FxLabs has aquired Largest Online gaming portal Knibble.com last week. And the coolest part of deal is going to make you very happy. You get 10,566 games absolutely free of cost to play online and enjoy.

Play as much as you can @ http://www.fxlabs.com

Windows Vista Codecs for more than 355 movie and Music formats (Free)

This is a gold mine of Codecs for Audio and Video. More than 355 formats are supported in one single installation of Codec pack. This is a good news for all Windows Media Player users on Vista for sure.

Storm CD Perfect Edition 3.0 does the above magic for you.

Go Get It

Track your package using Google

I accidentally found this.

Enter your package number in to google search box and hit submit…

Google suggests you the links to track the package automatically…

Carry your Browsing Experience to anywhere with Google Toolbar now.

I must say “Hats Off” to Google for this. Google Toolbar 5 Beta has been released with very cool features today. One of the best features is “Sync up Toolbar” feature. I have posted recently on a Google Addin for Firefox which can sync up your favourites to any computer using Google credentials. I have search for a similar add-ons for IE but failed to find one. Now this toolbar solves my problem with IE bookmark sync 🙂

Install Google Toolbar 5 Beta

One the toolbar is installed, you will be prompted something like this. If you enable this, You are ready to carry all the stuff you do on your computer to anywhere.

With new Google Bookmarks integration, Google has almost challenged del.icio.us bookmarking system seriously. If Google could make it’s toolbar users addictive to their bookmarking system, I am sure everything else will be done automatically.

Sync your browser to any computer (Firefox only)

I use multiple computers at home and office. Some of them are portable and some are desktops and servers too. For me, the biggest problem on this earth is using browsers at different computers with different set of settings and bookmarks. How cool it would be if I can have my browser be with me all the time.

Google Browser Sync addresses this issue by syncing up all of your settings to any computer you intend to use. All you need is a tiny plugin installed on your browser.

Well it doesn’t work with Firefox 3 Beta.

Sync Wizard

 

Sync Tool Status

 

Download Google Browser Sync for Firefox 1.5+ (!= 3.0)