Cellphone as Web Cam

You can use your camera phone as a webcam
check out the site http://motvik.com/
Summary from the site
wwigo (pronounced 'vigo') stands for Webcam Wherever I Go. With wwigo, a camera phone can be used as a webcam with PC or Laptop using bluetooth as the transmission medium.
It consists of two software components.
1. mobile component that resides on phone and streams video to PC.
2. PC component that recieves video.
Features
Use Camera Phone as Wirless Webcam
Record videos with wwigo PC application.
Use along with Skype, Yahoo messenge and MS Live Messenger to do video chat.
Live Upload with You Tube and Grouper to share video.
Video Quality better or comparable to off shelf webcam*
Works with popular Bluetooth Stacks on PC
Supported devices Nokia Series 60 v2.0 and Series 60 v3.0 phones ( see devices in download page)
*Better or comparable depends on the specific phone used.
System Requirements
Desktop/Laptop with Windows 2000 or Windows XP SP2
Bluetooth enabled with any one of these bluetooth Stack, IVT BlueSoleil Bluetooth Stack, Microsoft Bluetooth Stack, Widcomm Bluetooth Stack, Toshiba Bluetooth Stack
Mobile Phone : Nokia Series 60 v2.0 or v3.0 phone.

.Net Reflection Tools

Reflection is an amazing concept from Microsoft to write generic programming by browsing the meta data of a dll. If in case if you want to analyze are extract methods from a dll there are some tools to to that. One such tools is .Net Reflector.

.Net reflector [http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/ ] to explore any .net assembly. You can use its add ins to generate code in any .net compliant language.
http://www.aisto.com/

Google Movie

Here is another interesting service from Google.
Want to know, which movie is being showed in which theater at what time?
Just enter your city name. It lists everything. Really
http://www.google.co.in/movies

When we enter any big city name, say NY, the UI is very rich

Dummy Data Generation

In the SDLC phase of the project, dummy data creation is the task given less important then it requires. Creating a quality and quantitative test data will defiantly increase the application strength. There some good tool to generate dummy data for the database.

I liked the tool datagenerator from SQL Manager for its simplicity. You can configure the data generation rules and you can save that as template. Whenever you want to load data you can use the generation templates, that ways you can repeatedly generate similar data without doing the hard work once you set up.

To get the evaluation version, visit http://www.sqlmanager.net/products/mssql/datagenerator

Expertise your MS Office Skills

There is a real good service from Microsoft which sends tips and tricks every day to your inbox on MS Office product. The tips are simple and useful. Which will really improve our performance.

If you'd like to sign up, visit http://www.microsoft.com/office/greattips/special.mspx.

Tips and Tricks

Most of us experienced with the sites which send nice quotes every day. Once such site I could remember is PravsWorld.com. Similar to that I come across a site which list handy tips and ticks
http://www.timeatlas.com/mos/5_Minute_Tips/
I felt it is very useful. May be you can give a try...

My first day at Hyderabad (Microsoft)

Most of you asking me about the first day at Microsoft. It is time for me to pen down my experience on 31st March 08.

Starting from home
I have done the luggage backing a day advance. The Bharathi call taxi driver came at the right time. My father came from Kancheepuram to send-off .
Travel to airport
We board the cab my 4.45 am. In the nearby tea shop we three driver, we had the tea and it was three rupees. Hope you all experienced the feel of early morning. It was a pleasant breeze, calm road, after Guindy, the rood was awesome. The plants at the median and ad-sign with lighting made the airport drive a great experience. Travelling on the road is really a nice experience. Don't miss to enjoyed it. Don't think about the same road at evenings!! Hope roads are girls (why? I leave that to you....)
At Airport
The cab driver stopped at domestic airport. Jet airways counter. We have settled the bills, as we took the cab before 5am we payed 25% (may be the cast to have early morning travel experince) extra charge to the cab. We are at airport one and half ahead. There was Krishna sweets near the boarding entrance. I purchased some sweets, the bill was250, if my father knows this price we would have not been allowed to purchase this. Because the same sweets in Kancheepuram is fifty rupees. But we are used with this fancies!!
Then what to do… just to pass the time… we grabbed a coffee at Coffee Day shop. I ordered two coffees. There was cute Chinese lady also order a cappuccino. She looked awesome. The coffee taste is not good. But the quantity is good. Coffee day guy given the bill it was Rs.102/-. Compare the price at Tea stall and this coffee day shop, what a diverse environment we have. Do you think that we have the same kind of diverse pricing in abroad?
Travel
I quickly did the security checkup and board the flight. The flight started at the right time. I met JSM (HCL, STC Center Head) in the flight. We shared the greetings. It was so cloudy so the flight is keep jerking. There was Hindu paper kept in each seat. I just read the top headlines. Airhostess distributed the bottles of sweet lemon juices. Later they served break-fast, it was Idly, Kitchedy and bread. The flight had the on-seat videos. I watched the London travel guide. The video was so good, I can able to see the most of the London sight-seeing spots like Buckingham Palace, British museum. Once I finish the movie and the beak-fast the captain announced that the flight is ready for land off. It is so quick I reached Hyderabad. It took less than an hour to reach Hyderabad.

Hyderabad - Rajeev Gandhi International Airport

The flight landed at Hyderabad Rajeev Gandhi International Airport. I was thrilled!! It is like Sydney airport. The Airport infrastructure is too good. Marble floorings, Excellent glass walls, traditional wall paintings. It is extraordinary. (Later I will share the photos). There lot of digital signs to help the navigation in airport. In the luggage belt I can see the small baggages are kept in a airport plastic tray. After getting couple of snaps I came out of the airport, there are lot of cab drivers waiting with the sign board. In crowdI found the guy holding my name ‘Guruprasad/Microsoft’ I just signaled him. I took couple of more photos outside the airport. I could not believe that I am in India. It is like the other international airport in Malaysia and in Sydney. I went to the car parking area to get the cab. The airport has a very big parking space. It is open ground. The cab driver took a trip to the airport to get some more photographs.

Welcome at Microsoft
My reporting time is 9; I was there at Microsoft at 9.20!! When I approached the security guy he marked my attendance and given a temporary ID card. He took me to the induction training room. Oh… the room is crowded nearly with 50 people!! All are joined on the week. The induction is about different divisions of Microsoft in Hyderabad and in other Geos. The hyderabad facility has to divisions. MSIT and IDC. MSIT is the division which support different applications used with in Microsoft, like there payroll automation, sales invoice automation. IDC is the India Development Center where the products like Visual Studio are developed. I am part of the MSIT division.
Facilities
The Microsoft campus has all the features we can think off. I have list few...
1. Two GYM
2. Two cafeterias with nearly seven cater ranging from Safeway to south Indian dishes. Cafeteria has four LCD TVs and a big screen.
3. In house doctors for general consultation
4. ICICI bank
5. Cricket ground
6. Tennis court
7. Valley ball court
8. Each floor has the snooker and table tennis
9. There are coffee machines, coke vending machines, Boost, Horlics vending machines
10. Chocolate shops
11. There is huge car parking facility in addition to that there a multi level car parking building.
12. The colorfull corridors
13. Juice shop
14. Dosa shop
15. Subway and more...

Great facility... isn't it?
My feelings
It is really great to see the people joining Microsoft with experience more than ten years. Each one joining Microsoft is having an extraordinary skills and rich experience. The work culture is also very friendly. People are creative and dedicated. In Microsoft the pople will be in fall in to DEV, Test orProject Management stream. They are focusing only on their part and making best out of it. Respectively they have Dev Manager, Test Manager, PM manager. The Dev / Test / PM streams goes in the higher levels too.
No paper
There are only few paper work as a joining formalities. Even that to for external agencies like PF and IT. I still remember when I joined with HCL I need to sign lot of papers. It is good Microsoft is automated it processes.
Diverse Culture
It is really good to see the people from different locations working here. There is no domination of south India or north India. It is in equal in ratio. There are some US guys too working here. It is really a true corporate with different set of peoples.

Will update you more in next blog...