[Update 1: Added the link for the Smartphone bits that you can download] [Update 2: Added a Bug and Troubleshooting section at the end of this post] [Update 3: Fixed a few small typos] One of the things that has bugged me for a bit is the lack of integration between the phone numbers in Outlook contacts and a smart device (such as a Pocket PC or a Smartphone) connected to the computer when it comes to making phone calls. ...

I am not really a TV junkie (with the exception of Tom and Jerry and Discovery Channel), but I recently saw a few episodes of a new drama called Numb3rs , which is all about a genius mathematician who uses Maths and helps solve crimes with the FBI. It is pretty cool (and g33ky of course ), check it out if you are into maths - you usually learn something in each episode. ...

Well, Gartner is saying that Vista will be the last of its kind, as for any future versions using a modular architecture as the current integrated architecture is unsustainable. I don’t think this in itself is anything new (most other companies have been doing it for a while). But in practice this is more difficult than it sounds. It will be quite difficult to break the Windows team and the way they do builds, code branches, etc. Also, what will happen to Longhorn then? However, I do hope Microsoft moves to this model as the existing ones will just keep getting more painful. (go this via osnews.com ) ...

Google’s 3D Warehouse is a collection of 3D objects that were created for use with Sketchup and are meant to be used with Google Earth . You can see one of London’s most famous attractions the Big Ben or India’s world famous Taj Mahal . ...

I saw the Carver One in an old Top Gear program and boy it sure is the gadget to end all gadgets! You can see some videos here and more pictures and wallpapers . ...

If you have a Windows Mobile 5.0 device like the one I recently got and were wondering how do I change the screen orientation, well its fairly easy. It is cool that the screen orientation changes between landscape and portrait when I slide out the keyboard. But, on rare occasions I want to change the orientation without sliding out the keyboard and it is a pity that there is no hardware button to do this. ...

If you have not already heard, then there is a new CTP of ADO called ADO.NET vNext which adds support for both consuming and creating EDM (or Enterprise Data Modeling which some people know as Data Modeling or more commonly known as Entity-Relationship Models ). If you want to get a quick overview of what this provides, then check out the 13 min demo (via flash) on what it does. There is also support for LINQ (or Language INtegrated Query). There aren’t any visual designers in this drop, but expect those to be added in the future ones. You can download this from here and get more information on the ADO.NET team’s blog . ...

Observer has a list of the top 15 websites that change the world. I am not sure I personally agree with all of them, but interesting nevertheless.

Thanks to my colleague Rick Pollak for pointing this out. Seems like Google has released Writely.com which is their answer to Word. Registration is open, and you can sign up. I used my Google account and got a confirmation email - however I was able to use the site before I confirmed. My first experience was not good - as IE had crashed - well it was running at almost 100% CPU and eating all the resources (click the image to see details). Which meant at the end of the day I could not kill that process and I had to restart the machine. But, since I am running IE 7 (Beta 3), I am not sure if there is an issue with IE itself or if the problem is with writely. ...

[Update: Once published the maps were askew, so fixed that] Now that I have had a chance to use Live Write for a bit, I thought I’d post my feedback so far. What do I like? Overall, I like it - its so far been the best tool I have used of its kind. I tried using Word 2007, but for me that never worked and it gets stuck in a loop - and keeps asking me for a credentials, which even after entering the correct one does not go work. I do not get any error or exception (though I have not had time to attach the debugger and see - maybe this weekend). ...

BBC is reporting that a new file sharing darknet (what is that?) service called Relakks has launched in Sweden. I think they have been a bit overwhelmed lately, if you check their website , you get the following message. 😉 ...

Google just released a new version of Google Talk, that adds support to send files between users, allows you to leave a voicemail for the person you were calling and share with others what music you are listening to.

Thanks to my colleague, Steve Butcher for this one. Instead of messing around with the registry, there a utility available that will allow you to make tweaks to the HTC TyTn ( the phone I got ). This was also called the HTC Hermes, among a host of other names by different vendors. As the site article says, the utility itself free, but you need to register and download it and the site is in German only. ...

When looking at the Dell battery replacement site, using IE 7 (beta 3), the certificate was expired and even though I said “please ignore that and continue”, I saw this interesting feature as you can see in the screen shot. The address box has a red background - warning me and also a new Certificate error. This is certainly interesting and my kudos to the IE team as it would help the average non-technical user and raise the awareness. ...

Some of you have asked me what I think of the phone and how does it feel – msmobiles has lots of pictures of the phone I got (HTC TyTn) (via Nino’s blog ). I just think I am not brave enough now to run Linux on this phone quite yet; although I am sure Karan would beg to differ. 😉 ...

Troltech will be releasing a open linux based mobile phone next month which has a user-modifiable linux OS and is a working mobile supporting GSM and GPRS. The phone will be available as part of a SDK and will be available in a candy-bar form. Troltech are hoping the “spirit of innovation” will help it be a success and will be marketed as the “first open Linux mobile device for application developers”. The phone is based on a dual-core XScale processor at 312 MHz with 64 mb ROM and 128 mb flash. The idea sounds very promising (especially to geeks), and it would certainly be interesting if it does take off. ...

Continuing my quest for better offline blogging , this is a test post using Windows Live Writer - first impressions are good despite some people having “interesting” behaviors with this online. I’ll keep you guys posted on how this goes for me.

After struggling thru the weekend, with a hit and a miss to get push email working it seems at the end of it, the problem was between the user and the keyb. 😄 I had active sync setup correctly, with the right Exchange settings. And when I was connected to my wireless (at home), using the mobile it was working. It took the effort of my colleague, Rick Pollak, to point out the obvious that I did not have a data account setup on the phone. (duh!). After having set that up all is well now. So, from now (until I get fed up and switch if off), if you send me an email to my office address at Avanade, I will get that email on my phone, ala blackberry style. ...

I upgraded the blog to CS 2.1 RTM, after a few days of testing and everything seems to be working fine. If you find something thats broken, please do let me know .

I finally got my new phone on Friday. Although I only have had it for the weekend, the little I have used and played it thus far, I love it. And it only hung twice since – which is a *huge* improvement compared to my earlier experience with a phone running the Windows Mobile. I was wanting to install OneNote Mobile (after hearing a lot of good reviews for it) and it is a little different from the usual process. I was going to install the OneNote Mobile that is part of Office 2007 (Beta 2). Once you install the application on your computer, it is from within that you install to the mobile device (using ActiveSync of course). Essentially there are three steps that you need to do: (i) install OneNote 2007 (Beta 2 in my case) on your computer; (ii) install OneNote Mobile on your device and (iii) setup the sync. between the two. ...

Keeping on the video roll, I got this via one of the Avanade communities – the animator vs the animation – very funny!

Thanks to Kumud for sending this out – enjoy the Bush vs. Bush debate.

What is a collation? Before I get into the exception details, a collation is something that defines what the bit pattern looks like for each character and is used sorting, ordering and comparisons. You can read more details here . When I had originally upgraded from CS 2.0 to 2.1 Beta 1, I had started to get a collation error in SQL – but only when I clicked on any specific tag to see posts listed by that tag. I had posted this to the CS forums with no luck . Now, I had selected the default SQL collation when I was installing it on one of my dev boxes at home. After profiling SQL Server, the culprit was the stored procedure called “cs\Tags\Get”. ...

Community Server 2.1 went RTM yesterday and I am not quite happy. Didn’t they just release the RC1 just a few days ago (on August 4th to be precise) What is the point of pushing a RC1 for 5 days! After I spend a considerable amount of time testing and upgrading to RC1, the RTM was released. Yes, I am irritated by the fact I have to do some more testing, but I am more irritated about the fact, why bother releasing a RC if you are not going to be really testing with it? Isn’t the point that let people use it for a while and fix issues found and then go from there? Seems like just releasing it to tick a box on some process. Grr…. ...

I came across ieaddons.com via the IE team’s official blog and till then had not heard of it. I have been using IE 7 Beta 3, and despite my original issues with it, I do seem to like it – Firefox is still my primary browser though. Speaking of IE, there are a few things that I do like which I wish is going to be in Firefox. One of them, when opening a new tab it open right next to the active one, instead of opening all the way in the end – which helps a lot when doing the research. Also I like the clean and smaller look of the toolbar – giving me more real estate for the web pages. One of the things I don’t like though is the Find functionality in a page. I don’t like the window which shows up, I personally prefer the way Firefox does it at the bottom of the page and finding as I type and also the option to highlight all the words on the page. ...