I’m Just Being Manan

October 26th is around the corner. Microsoft’s answer to the Macworld is about to happen. Microsoft employees and the internet is abuzz with some amazing stuff. Sitting here in India all I can do is envy the lucky Microsofties who will be partying on the roof of The Standard. It’s kinda pissing off ‘coz there is almost nothing by Microsoft that happened here other than Microsoft’s Largest Launch Event - Mumbai Leg. Some major announcements about Windows Strata (Microsoft’s Cloud Computing platform) and the big Windows 7 hands on.

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PDC is around the corner and Mr. Ballmer let the cat out with an informal announcement that there will be a cloud OS, tentatively named - Windows Cloud. Live Mesh when released was trusted to be Microsoft’s backbone for something like this. The Live brand today has almost everything to offer. From a Picture Gallery, Movie Maker, EMail, Online Storage & something or the small businesses to collaborate.

Mesh added a new dimension of allowing you to sync different devices and files across them, though in it’s nascent stages. I have a feeling that Live Mesh will play an important role in the so-called Windows Cloud. Here are some thing that i as a user would want the cloud OS to do for me:

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A couple of weeks back one of India’s leading banks - The Union Bank of India, unveiled it’s new avatar, a new logo and promotional campaign. Today however when I was writing some assignments and was out of staple pins, I dug deep into my drawer to victoriously find the staple pin box. If that wasn’t surprising enough, the text on the box was.

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Finally the Union Health Joker of India has done something commendable. After targeting the likes of Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and not doing something concrete about the problem, he has now got the law passed to Ban Smoking in Public Places.

Some months ago I had called him the Union Health Joker of India and I still maintain that. IMAO this ban is a half hearted attempt against the problem; if they are so against it, ban the production and sale of cigarettes outside colleges.

However, I am pleased as having a law in place will act as a deterrent to some and will have some impact on the lives of those affected by passive smoking. At least now cigarettes won’t be adding to air pollution as much they did till last week.

PS: A Humble Plea. Break The Habit, Quit Smoking

Many of you might be knowing the Open Source arm of Microsoft - CodePlex. It has some really awesome applications. I have been following the site for quite some time now. It is filled with applications that make software development a breeze and it also has some really nifty tools that help you in efficiently using your Windows PCs.

Here are some projects that I liked, some are for developers and some for making your PC more friendly. So, let’s begin with the list:

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Been sometime since I blogged & I have good reasons to be away. Our college fest was happening and we had LAN gaming, a friend of ours knew a guy at AMD who wanted to setup a gaming arena in our college. This was some jaw dropping stuff from AMD+ATI.

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I wrote an article a couple of days back about why the Windows Calendar in Vista needs to be replaced with a Live Calendar client, which in all probability will happen. Here is a post that should help you make use of Windows Calendar as an aggregator of your calendar events like birthdays & events of your Facebook account. Also, it will allow you to do a one way sync of your Live Calendar events, which is the basic problem of Windows Calendar as mentioned in the above linked article.

What are we doing:

Getting all the events & birthdays of our Facebook account and the tasks listed on Live Calendar, onto the desktop client.

What we need:

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The Web 2.0 Expo that happened in New York had presentations by a lot of people I don’t know and have never heard of; probably won’t in the future either. But, there was one name I’m sure a lot of people know about - Fake Steve. Apart from the presenter name, his presentation too sounded something to download and check out. I was in for a laugh riot. Something I should’ve expected.

These are some of the images in the presentation The Real Future of Technology.

NOTE: Bandwidth heavy. But, it’s worth it.

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As posted hours ago by yours truly, that the Jerry-Gates ads were NOT canceled but the campaign moved into phase 2. The fact was confirmed by the recent Microsoft Press Pass.

According to the Press Pass phase 2 is known as Life Without Walls

Tearing Down Walls

Microsoft signaled the next phase of the Windows brand campaign with full-page newspaper ads carrying the headline: “Windows vs. Walls”. The copy in the ads lays out the driving philosophy behind the new Windows marketing approach. Veghte says: “At the core, Windows is about enabling each one of us, as individuals, to live our lives without walls … I want to work when I want to work, I want to play when I want to play. I want to communicate and share with friends and family and co-workers.”

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It’s really sad to see how some good for nothing, click begger blogger sensationalizes any trivial piece of information.

I recently did a piece on how Microsoft is perceived, this is another example of how stupid people can get. First up, people think that the $300M is for the TV commercials featuring Jerry Seinfeld & Bill Gates. This part is actually funny considering people, literate people, don’t understand the difference between a  marketing campaign & commercials.

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