Mohammed Jeelani

Mind over (Digital) Matter

Mohammed Jeelani — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:42:26 GMT

When I first heard about it - found it hard to believe, when I read about it on emotiv.com, found it hard to believe, but when I read about it on news.com and saw a video on youtube - this truly does sound revolutionary.

Emotiv has come up with an almost complete product which seem to have impressed everyone who has had a chance to play with it so far.

This is mind blowing - well atleast not literally for now, thank god for that.

R.I.P Netscape Navigator

Mohammed Jeelani — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 10:44:49 GMT

Its finally over... Netscape pulled the plug yesterday on its browsers. Announced on a post on its official blog Netscape Navigator died a long painful death.

Though I'm a hardcore IE fan all through my Internet life (after IE4 that is), I can't help but take a moment, a deep breath and actually realize, its over for NN.

I was looking back all those years of the browser wars between NN and IE, here is an interesting graph on Browser Market Share from Wikipedia.

IE's dominance over the Internet is remarkable. It hasn't been an easy journey for Microsoft, reading through this article on Wikipedia on History of IE brings back so many memories and the hardships that the company had to go trough to keep the browser alive and keep the innovations going.

NN does deserve a huge round of applause and a standing ovation for its job in the browser space as it bows out. ...and we continue to look forward to IE to innovate more and give us the worlds best browsing experience.

Windows Vista Clock

Mohammed Jeelani — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:51:30 GMT

I stumbled upon this cool feature while meddling around with the clock on Vista. I recorded the below video which shows you how simple it is to look up a date in a different year/month. In this video I try to look up on which day does Jan 1st fall in the year 2084.

Video: Windows Vista Clock is Cool

'JackAss 2.5' to premiere on Dec 19th

Mohammed Jeelani — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 10:36:20 GMT

On December 19th, Blockbuster will premiere the first full-length feature film, Jackass 2.5, directly to online audiences on Windows and Mac using Microsoft Silverlight. Jackass 2.5 will be made available for free, for anyone in the US 17 or older, courtesy of Blockbuster at www.blockbuster.jackassworld.com beginning December 19th through December 31st, 2007

Silverlight is a 1.5MB cross-browser, cross-platform plugin for IE, Firefox and Safari users. Details and download at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight.

The ecosystem around Silverlight is continuing to grow, with an impressive line-up of customers like MLB.com, BMW, Sony Ericsson, Baidu (#1 search site in PRC), NBA.com, Entertainment Tonight (CBS/Paramount) and UVNTV.com, to name a few. See more at http://silverlight.net/Showcase/

206.16.223.63/65

Mohammed Jeelani — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 23:12:56 GMT

http://206.16.223.63/

http://206.16.223.65/

Need For Speed : Pro Street Announced

Mohammed Jeelani — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 17:39:08 GMT

I just noticed that Need For Speed Pro Street has been announced - slated for release on 31.10.07.

http://www.ea.com/nfs/prostreet/home.jsp

From the video and screen shots - it fails to impress me so far ... maybe Need For Speed Most Wanted was just too good - its tough to make a NFS version better than that...

Speaking at Tech ED India this Saturday

Mohammed Jeelani — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 20:54:54 GMT

Rajesh Sampath and I will be speaking at Tech ED India (or Techmela as it’s called in its new incarnation, which is an amalgamation of Tech ED, Mix, MEDC and ITPC all happening at the same time, same place!). We will deliver a talk titled Model Driven Development using Microsoft Domain Specific Language Tools. We will start with a background on Model Driven Development, touch upon Software Factories and then dive deep into Domain Specific Language Tools, what they are, how you can create your own Domain Specific Language and at the end take a look at an implementation of a DSL within Microsoft IT.

So if you are in Mumbai attending TechMela this Saturday (16th June) and are interested in Domain Specific Languages then do drop by for our session slated at 16.20.

Gates vs. Jobs @ All Things D

Mohammed Jeelani — Wed, 30 May 2007 10:07:40 GMT

What is it ?

http://www.dowjones.com/Pressroom/PressReleases/Other/US/2007/0220_US_TheWallStreetJournal_2683.htm

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/announcements/all-things-d-if-youre-going-lets-meet-up-263113.php

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/wsj/gates-and-jobs-to-share-stage-at-wsjs-no+holds-barred-tech--conf-238244.php

Holy $@#!, When is it ?

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/29/jobs-gates-and-hawkins-times-in-approximate-for-tomorrows/

30th May - 7:15PM PST
Bill Gates & Steve Jobs 2getha 4eva

Joost Invites up for grabs!

Mohammed Jeelani — Sat, 26 May 2007 09:02:48 GMT

Just in case you need a Joost invite, leave a comment on this post...

I dunno whats wrong but Joost just doesn't seem to work for me - keeps erroring out after playing a few seconds of video. Not very impressed by it so far though...

..anyways if you need an invite drop a comment with yr name + email address.

Can't fight the (Microsoft) Silverlight...

Mohammed Jeelani — Fri, 25 May 2007 15:38:47 GMT

LeAnn Rimes may have found geeks to have no problems to fight the moonlight , however, its tough to fight the Silverlight that Microsoft has unleashead on the Web. Truly Web v.Next has arrived - here is just a simple Flickr Mashup created using Microsoft Popfly rendered using Microsoft Silverlight (U'll need the lightweight 1.x MB download to view it).

Halo 3 release date announced!!

Mohammed Jeelani — Wed, 16 May 2007 09:58:52 GMT

Halo 3 comes to you on September 25th...

Entertainment Event of the Year
"Halo 3 is much more than a video game release—it's the biggest entertainment event of the year," said Peter Moore, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business. "On September 25, we intend to deliver a finale that will go down in entertainment history and leave people around the world with an experience that will be shared and enjoyed for years to come."

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/news/2007/0515-halo3releasedate.htm?WText.camp=HR1a-Halo3News&WText.campSrc=Home

Charles in Space!

Mohammed Jeelani — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 19:52:00 GMT

http://www.charlesinspace.com/

Space...
The Final Frontier...
These are the voyages of Charles Simonyi...
His first mission, to the Internation Space Station...
To seek out possibilities in Space Tourism...
To boldly go where few tourists have gone before...

...Charles who led the Word and other office apps teams at Microsoft where he worked for 20 years before starting his own company, is all set to blasts off into space in about 6 hours from now..He is currently blogging from Kazakhstan (yeup, I know - kk-kz and how difficult it is to code for that locale!!) on the Final Countdown on the above web site. Tune in to www.charlesinspace.com (btw - about time you blocked <yr name>inspace.com as well I guess :-) ).

Tune into Charles journey on charlesinspace.com

One of the best event log messages ever!

Mohammed Jeelani — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 23:35:00 GMT

A couple of days ago - all templates in my VS disappeared! I got an error message asking me to look into the Event log ... and this is what I found

The Visual Studio template information is out of date. Regenerate the templates by running 'devenv /installvstemplates' or reinstalling Visual Studio. Note: corrective action requires Administrator privileges.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

an unlisted command in devenv /? ..but it did help solve my problem... wow if only all event log messages were this useful. Kudos to the dev who wrote this piece of code... :)

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241279(VS.80).aspx

Enter BOne – My first Lego NXT Bot

Mohammed Jeelani — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 04:41:00 GMT

I got a Lego Mindstorms NXT kit last week – I was buried with work during the weekdays to give it a spin. It had to wait till last night for me to actually play around with it. Boy is it amazing! I managed to complete what’s called a “Tripod” robot – I nicknamed it BOne – short for Bot One – since it’s the first ever Robot that I created. Here are some pictures of Bone (excuse my messy desk – no it doesn’t always look so bad :) ).

Here are some Videos of BOne in action –

In the below video BOne is programmed so that it could tell the difference between colors – It detects the Ball colors correctly when I hold it out to him in the below video (with a slight bug for the Blue one).

Video: BONE detects Color!

We programmed the Ultrasound sensors to detect objects so that BOne can steer away from them (thats Amit in the video - blocking BOne's path with his hands). Also we have programmed the Sound sensor to tell BOne to start moving around when I clap in the below video.

Video: BONE detects Sound and Obstacles

In both the above videos I used the software that came along with the NXT to program it. I haven’t yet explored integrating it with Microsoft Robotics Studio or NXT#. Itching to see how it works especially with Microsoft Robotics Studio, however, MSRS can communicate with the Lego NXT only via Bluetooth and the Bluetooth radio on my Toshiba M5 Notebook isn’t compatible with the NXT :( – will have to go out and get a Bluetooth dongle sometime soon.

Wow!

Mohammed Jeelani — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 07:40:00 GMT

Wow - What a ride its been - the past few days have been more than exciting in more than many ways for me. Maybe I’ll just stick to the Vista launch today – It’s not yet time to blog about others. The $6 billion block buster, most widely used piece of software ever made by man finally made it into the hands of the consumer on Jan 30th! Here are a few glimpses from around the world when it was time...

Japan -

Paris -

India –

Hollywood Tries out Windows Vista

Launch Event Photos

Times Square Launch with Bill gates and Steve Ballmer Webcast

Bill Gates on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (ABSOLUTELY Hilarious!!)

HP Launches Windows Vista Touch-Screen PCs

…and this is just the beginning of the Wow – Windows Vista is an operating system, a platform and not just another cool application. It enables developers to create applications that were never thought possible before to get a feel of what Vista Apps will look like check out the Windows Vista Innovation café. One of my favorites’ is the new British Library's “Turn the Pages” application that allows you to almost really hold some of the finest books ever written – though this app does use XBAP (XAML Browser Application) it does work on a Win XP / 2003 system – but you’ve got to see it on a Vista machine to believe it – it just ROCKS!