This is not new, but I recently stumbled on it. If you are developing or wanting to develop for bluetooth developing for Bluetooth technology (exposing Bluetooth services, enumerating devices or services, and connecting to services) the Windows Embedded Source Tools for Bluetooth Technology program provides a Win32 API Wrapper that developers can expose in Visual Studio .NET or the .NET Compact Framework. The class library wrapper provided helps make development for Bluetooth Technology faster and easier by reducing the lines of code necessary to develop for Bluetooth Technology from hundreds to just a few and the components include: ...

Check out how Google managed things a few years ago. Thanks to Eli for the link. :)

If you recall my previous posts about Wireless blues I have been having I did decide to get the Belkin Pre-N device. Well after a order screw up with Amazon where they delivered someone else order to me (with the correct address), I did finally get the device delivered yesterday and set it up last night. First impressions have been good so far; it seems to be working good although its only been 8 odd hours, but atleast it seems to be promising. I’ll post back here with an update this weekend - by then I would have ti up and running for about a week and can give some real world feedback. For those curious, I did upgrade the Firmware with the latest on their Web Site, and I am using only 802.11g devices to connect to this. ...

Now this is something cool that almost everyone will find very handy. If you are a developer, engineer, architect or just an enthusiast and want to play around with a few different configurations, the best way to do that is using a Virtual Machine. So if you got a hold of some beta’s or demo VM and to use it till now you had to have a licence for something along the lines of Virtual PC or VMWare Workstation. Not any more! With VMware Player , you can “play” (i.e. run) those virtual machines without buying a licence. You cannot create virtual machines using this, but you can open them and run them - perfect for the handsouts from the PDC you have been attending. Not to mention, VMware can also read your Virtual PC images, how sweet it that? So, whats your excuse for not getting this? If you are interested you can compare the various versions here and see how they stack up. ...

eWeek has an interview with Don Box , where he talks about what is next from Microsoft in terms of the next-gen apps. He talks about what is most interesting in his space, between Indigo, WWF, LINQ, etc. Also what you should think of as an Enterprise Architect when designing your contracts - WSDL-First or Contract-First.

While I like the new Google Transit and idea you can use public transport to get from Place A to B including getting very specific like what time to get to a certain place by , currently they have data for only Portland. I think this would have been a much better experiment for a European city like London where public transport exists unlike most US cities! ...

From Engaget , just what was needed *groan*: Tesco, Britain’s largest retailer, is introducing the greeting card-inspired musical sandwich for the dreary lunch crowd this week. Now get this, according to a Tesco spokesman (who’ll remain anonymous to avoid your wrath) the music sandwich “is designed to provide busy office workers with relaxing music to make eating lunch at their desks more enjoyable than ever before.” Open the top of your prawn-and-mayo or perhaps, egg-and-pickle-bits sandwich and kick back to a soothing xmas medley dribbled over that piezoelectric tweeter. Is this a joke — are the four horsemen saddling up? Look, it’s bad enough that those one million desk-bound-lunching Brits are subjected to eating rubber-packed triangular sandwiches with salt-n-vinegar crisps every day until they die (or retire, whichever is first). But must they really be subjected to cheap tinny music to accompany those lonely culinary moments as well? That’s just mean. And certainly the only thing more annoying than listening to Jingle Bells is listening to it played from a nearby cubicle-monkey’s coffer. Please, we beg you, someone send us a video of this joyous experience…maybe we’ve got this all wrong. ...

Not sure why one would need this kind of power on a laptop (from a practical point of view), but if you do need it, then it seems like the new dual core laptops are just around the corner . Rumor has it that Dell is going to be releasing some in February next year and Toshiba in Q1. But if I was you, I would probably wait for a x64, instead of a dual-core on the laptop, but then thats me. :) ...

As you might be aware, Microsoft released its OneCare Live service in Beta, below are the screen shots of those on my machine. So far there is not any noticable deprecation in performance.

I am quite fedup of the Wireless Router I have at home; lots of connection drops, lots of reboots. If the Wireless is working then the router packs up or vice-versa. I currently have a Linksys WRV54G and it sucks! Don’t take one even if its free! So, now after living through its irritation for a year+ (what can I say, I am either brave or foolish), This is my second Linksys device with which I have had issues. We also have a Linksys WRT54G at one of our client offices which we use to connect and that is very moody as well, one day it would be perfect and other days it won’t be running for even 10 mins! ...

Karan pointed me this one, you need to read through the letter - its hilarious! And my dad has encountered a similar thing in real life, except from Australia.

I am quite happy with the case I have for my MCE, but I came across the following to new cases, which if I had to buy now I would seriously consider - they are on opposite end of the spectrum and depending on what you need and your budget one might be a better fit than the other. DIGN X15e Aluminium Enclosure Enlight 7473 Home Media Chassis Drool on! :) ...

A fellow Avanader is on the way to Seattle and I was helping him find deals for Fry’s and that that is probably the only thing I miss about the US! There is nothing close to that in the UK! The trip down memory lane has been quite nostalgic for me. :)

Picked this up on one of the communities at work, and is possibly a true case of Geeks Gone Wild ! Make sure you have your volume turned on to appreciate the effort gone into it. I want to know where does this chap live and the cost of electricity, especially on this cold, foggy, mysterious night here in London :) ...

So, if I want to do something like this , and install Mac OS X on an old machine (with an Intel x86 CPU) then where do I get a version of Mac OS X (10.4.1 I think will work), so I can play around with this? I have never had a Mac so not sure where to start. Thoughts? ...

If you read my earlier post you would know you could not get WinFX running with the RTM version of VS 05, but now that MS publicly just released the Nov CTP of the WinFX that is compatible with VS 05 RTM, so you can breathe in peace. :) As always there are three pieces you need to get to, one is the WinFX Runtime itself (2.68 mb), two is the VS 05 WinFX Extensions (2.32 mb), and lastly the SDK (929 mb - yep its big) if you desire. The SDK is just documentation and does not include the runtime. ...

Office 12 Beta 1 was release today, unfortunately due to various NDA clauses, I cannot get into too much detail at this time. But slashdot has the story and there are screen shots of it by pcmag here . All I can say is that this is probably the only time I am more excited about this than when I moved from Lotus Notes to Outlook 98. :) ...

Microsoft announces that the next version of Exchange, its upcoming Windows Server “Longhorn” Small Business Server and its Centro infrastructure solution for midsize businesses will only be released as 64-bit. More on the story here .

From PCMag, Sony’s incredible gaffe - creating a DRM applet that loads prior to the operating system - has caused an incredible furor. Sony agreed to suspend the program , but that’s not all. Now the rest of the world is piling on. Microsoft now says it will delete the rootkit directly with its anti-spyware program, and it’ll be included in the December version of the Malicious Software Removal Tool. And it looks like the Macintosh, which is also affected by the rootkit , might still be at risk. ...

Well you can’t. As you might be aware that the .NET runtime are different between Visual Studio 2005 RTM and WinFX Sept CTP build, and the only way you can get this to work together is fall back on Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005 - which is the only supported version as of now. On the other hand in about a week or so from now, a new WinFX build is supposed to be publicly released, which can coexist and keeps each other happy. If you can wait for a week I could recommend the latter. ...

Both Meenakshi’s and my parents and everyone else in the family is OK in Delhi after the blasts. Also been calling around and asking and of all the people I can get in touch with from the extended family to friends, as far as I know everyone is fine.

At long last VS.NET 2005 (code named Whidbey) and .NET 2.0 are shipped! You can download them from MSDN, and don’t really need to wait till Nov 7th (the official launch date). w00t! :o)

I guess it was eventually meant to happen, Google has a database coming out soon called Google Base (which will be available at http://base.google.com ), and their intent is if it can be posted online in any fashion then use their database. And all that information will be available through searches and can be integrated with google maps. Seems more revenue for them, and also they seem to be targeting the likey of eBay and Craigslist. You can read up an interesting post at arstechnica on the subject.

Meenakshi forwarded me the post from C Enrique Ortiz, who has a very funny and true, a Developer’s Top 10 replies when code doesn’t work . :) My personal favorites are number 6 and 2.

Thanks to Rohit for pointing this out, but the Curry and Rice girl is a riot ! If you are not Indian (or of Indian background) or don’t have any Indian friends or spouses or boyfriends/girlfriends, you might not get the context. Make sure the volume on your speakers are turned on high! :)