Facebook

I didn't find that much of interest in social networking sites - so, was very much reluctant to get going. After ignoring a whole set of invitations to Hi5 finally I decided to have a try - a year or two ago. But, to be frank - it's so simple to be very much of a dull site. Facebook, is very much great - it has the real sense of Web 2.0 - bringing the desktop environment to the web and building up a connected world. I can now acceess and list my stuff in YouTube, SlidShare,Flickr and get feeds from my blog into the Facebook profile. The ability to pugin applications to the Facebook is a great feature - those who are interested this links to Microsoft Facebook Developer Kit - have a go.

Sri Lanka a safe destination

http://www.news.lk reports:

Sri Lanka is one of the safest destinations for tourists and the security situation in the country has been exaggerated overseas by false propaganda, Chairman of the Faith Task Force, UK, Anthony Bailey said in an interview with the Daily News.

Bailey, an advisor to the British Prime Minister, was spending his honeymoon in Sri Lanka and had traveled to the South, Dambulla, Sigiriya and Nuwara Eliya over a period of ten days.

He observed that there was a concerted effort to tarnish the image of the country overseas focusing on the conflict in the North and East.

Bailey who wedded Crown Princess of Austria, Franz Ferdinand, said that now that has seen the reality first hand he will carry the message to other countries that Sri Lanka is a safe destination with a unique scenic beauty. He also noted that the country has a unique spiritual harmony with people from all communities and subscribing to different religious co-existing without any conflict.

Linus Torvalds on git

Paul Fremantle on the State of WS-*

In this interview, Paul Fremantle, WSO2 co-founder co-chair of the OASIS committee that standardized WS-Reliable Messaging, talks to Stefan Tilkov about the state and relative importance of web services standards, the role of open source software for SOA, his views on the eternal REST debate, and WSO2's business model.

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

Microsoft released .NET framework 3.5 on last Friday - can be downloaded now.

A good day for my country

Today is a very good day for my country.

The government was able to pass the crucial 2008 budget by 16 votes and Sri Lanka cricketers raised the hopes of winning the first test against Australia in Australia.

WS-* vs. REST

Dr.Sanjiva Weerawarana, the current Chairman & CEO of WSO2 speaks at QCon, San Francisco.

Web Services with Apache Axis2 made easy

Developing and deploying web services with Apache Axis2 is made simple with Eclipse WTP. Lahiru Sandakith of WSO2 explains all you need to know, chek this.

How to compile Linux Kernel

WCF, WF and .NET 3.5 Whitepapers

David Chappell released 4 white papers on the subject, last Friday.

Can be downloaded from here.

Mashup

Also please check this out as well.

Movie codec for VMWare avi movies

Downloaded few torrents from http://elbitz.net which are in the .avi format. When played with Windows Media Player 11 - it gave the error 'Required Codec Missing' - but did not figured out what exactly missing. You can use GSpot to identify which video codec and audio compression method is used on .avi files and whether the matching codec is installed. With this it figured out VMnc is missing and had to installl VMware Workstation 5.0 Movie Decoder. With this it worked fine with both the Windows Media Player and the RealPlayer.

Neokernel Web Server for ASP.NET

[Extracted from the official web site - this is not freeware :( - 30 days free evaluation copy is avaiable to download]
The Neokernel Web Server is a fast, lightweight replacement for bundled servers like WebDev.WebServer.exe, PWS (Personal Web Server) or the Cassini sample webserver. The Neokernel Web Server supports features like SSL, http-auth, keep-alive, multithreading, web services, logging, XML based configuration, and more.

-Embed a web application server in your .NET solution instead of relying on
Internet Information Server (IIS).
-Build dynamic web applications with Visual Basic or C# server plug-ins
-High performance multi threaded execution.
-Supports ASP.NET, SSL, passwords, virtual hosts, proxying, and redirection.
-XML based server configuration.
-Includes APIs for working with certificates and cryptography.
-Runs as a Windows Service, in the Console under the current user account, or embedded in other applications.
-The Neokernel assembly is small (500 KB).

Future directions in computing

This is a good on the subject which gives a very highlevel overview.

Clean, Colorful and Horizontally Divided

One of the web 2.0 design and layout trends which the author of this article terms as "clean and horizontally divided". Read it - quite interesting. You might have already noticed this...

An Indian man marries a bitch

BBC Reports: An Indian man has married a female dog, believing the union will help him atone for stoning two other dogs to death.

Android

Android is a Linux-based smartphone software platform announced by Google and the other members of the Open Handset Alliance in November 2007, after months of rumours that Google was going to release a mobile phone product, tentatively known as the Google Phone or gPhone. Parts of the Android platform are free software available under the Apache open source licence. The release of the Android platform was combined with the announcement of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 34 hardware, software and telecoms companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices.

Android™ will deliver a complete set of software for mobile devices: an operating system, middleware and key mobile applications. This will be released On November 12, for an early look at the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) to allow developers to build rich mobile applications.

A hack to get IIS running on WIndows XP Home [?]

As per this from Microsoft;

Windows XP Home Edition does not include or support any versions (1.0, 2.0, 4.0) of Microsoft Personal Web Server (PWS). Users that need Web server functionality in a desktop operating system should use Windows XP Professional.

But, this says there is a workaround. Anyway I tried it, but did not worked fully - [may be prevented from a patch] - I could see the IIS appearing in the 'Windows Components' window - but could not selelect any.

[Update]
This works fine. You have to use IIS.DL_ and IIS.IN_ from Windows 2000 Server CD and also point to the same CD when ask for the CD. Earlier it didn't work for me, since I copied the above two files from a Windows XP Professional CD.

LTTE Child Soldiers

Tiger cadres carrying the coffin of former LTTE Political Wing leader S.P.Thamilselvan to a cemetery in Kilinochchi yesterday. He was killed on Friday morning in an SLAF raid. This was the first picture released by the LTTE to the media yesterday. In the original photograph a small boy in LTTE uniform was present. Subsequently the picture had been cropped deleting the boy from it.

Reference: The Island

Tips for your first interview

This is a good link on the subject...

VS 2008 to be shiped before the end of November

Somasegar mentions in his blog...

My first day at WSO2...

Today is my first day at WSO2.

It's really nice to be here and I'll be mostly working with the security team on the WSO2 Identity Solution.

Looking forward for a great, challenging experience.