Get your image or name flown on NASA's historic mission.

NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Here is a chance to get your image or name on the STS-135 the space shuttle which is to be launched on 8th July, 2011, and you will also win a certificate for free.

STS-135

The 135th and final space shuttle flight is targeted for launch on July 8, 2011. Atlantis will carry the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module to deliver supplies, logistics and spare parts to the International Space Station. The mission also will fly a system to investigate the potential for robotically refueling existing spacecraft and return a failed ammonia pump module to help NASA better understand the failure mechanism and improve pump designs for future systems.
To launch your face into space and become a part of history, just follow these steps:

• Click here to Participate.
• Print and save the confirmation page with your flight information.
• You will start getting certificates on 7/20/2011, so  click here for certificates on or after 7/20/2011.

So enjoy getting certificates from NASA
For more info Click Here.
~source: NASA Face In Space

Apple iPhone 4 in India

After a long wait of nearly about 11 months Apple iPhone 4 is here in India. India being the world's second largest mobile market had to wait for such a long time but finally was launched on 27th May, 2011 by mobile phone carrier Aircel.
Aircel launched it with a  new pricing model in which if a customer chooses a selected plan of 24 months or above is allowed to recover the upfront cost of the smartphone. The launch will be available in two models i.e. 16 GB model(price Rs 34,500)  and 32 GB model(price Rs 40,900).
Some of the attractive features will include:

• FaceTime for video chat.
• 5-MP rear facing camera with LED flash.
• HD video recording, and
• Apple's A4 (operating system).

Bharti Airtel Ltd also made a launch of iPhone 4 on the same day.
Waiting for the user's review by next friday, hope it  to proves to be a boonin Indian mobile market

Giveaway for Microsoft Fans

Here's a chance to win lot of Microsoft goodies, its just a giveaway for the fans of Microsoft Technologies and Innovation Escalator. The goodies to be won are:

• Microsoft Imagine Cup T-shirt.
• Microsoft Cloud Computing T-shirt.
• Authorization to various Microsoft Software (DreamSpark Keys).
• Plural Sight Subscription for 90-days.
• And a bumper giveaway which may include a Windows 7 Ultimate Edition.

There are simple steps which you can follow to make yourself eligible for these giveaways, the more steps you follow more are the chances of you winning and of-course creativity will be another aspect. Steps you may follow are :

• Like Innovation Escalator and the author Shubham Saxena on facebook.
• Follow me on twitter @shubham0987.
• Do something crazy which shows you are a fan of Microsoft Technologies, share any wallpaper or resource kit or any application developed by you, write a blog on this giveaway having a link back to this page, blog about Microsoft Technologies, make videos do anything which shows you madness towards MS Technologies.
• At last leave a comment here pointing point what all you have done.

Last Date: 12th June, 2011
Winners will be chosen by the set of judges who are developers at Innovation Escalator. So get set and GO.

Counter Strike 1.6 modify radio commands

Hello all gamers present out there, this one is for you all... yesterday while returning from the examination center me and my friends were discussing about modifying the radio commands in counter strike (being a hosteler counter strike is the major part of our life), so here i am with the trick to modify the the radio commands in counter strike. It will be a completely new experience when you play your favorite in our own personal or regional language, the time I had done this am not leaving my PC therefore got late to write about it.
The thing you need to know is that the radio commands in counter strike are stored in C:\Program Files\Counter-Strike 1.6\cstrike\sound\radio in .wav format.  Smart ones might have got the clue what to do next. Here are the simple steps you need to follow:

1. Find the radio command which you need to change, they are usually by there name so there shouldn't be any difficulty.
2. Use sound recorder to record a command in which ever language  you want.
3. Save the recorded file with the same name which you selected in the radio commands directory.
4. Replace the new recorded file with the previous one and you are done.

I have recorded many sounds, you may use any pre-recorded sound if u don't wanna record.... it will surely add a new experience to your gaming.
Do share the links if you get any interesting sounds or if you record any. Hope you enjoy, cheers.

India in Imagine Cup 2011 - author's desk

Hello friends !! am here with the statistics of Imagine Cup 2011. Imagine Cup is a world's premier student technology competition and am here to highlight India's position in Imagine Cup 2011. I also participated in this competition but unluckily didn't survived to world wide finals at New York which made me curious about the statistics of India. I was shocked when I saw the result for the world wide finals, only 3 teams from India survived to finals when we had about 10 competition categories, total 124 teams from 73 countries. If you say that more than 100 countries participate in this competition so 3 finalists from a country are enough, but according to me India is a technically rich country and 3 finalists doesn't sound enough to me.

According to my recordings we don't lack in talent we lack in awareness, Imagine Cup has been a great platform since past few years but yet we don't have enough number of participation's, just give a look at the fig. below :

the fig. clearly states that we didn't participated in many of the competitions, all the categories of Game Development, Windows 7 and Orchard Challenge seems just resting, only 2-3 participants.
We do had a great no of entries in IT Challenge but still no finalist.

• 2383 participated.
• 511 advanced to round 2.
• 0 survived for world wide finals.

I don't have the actual records of Software Design but roughly:

• 56 participated
• 15 advanced
• one finalist

comparing the above stats of IT challenge and Software Design a question came into my mind, Do we have just bookish knowledge and we don't apply them practically ??

Look into the stats and get yourself motivated for Imagine Cup 2012. We can't change minds of people but we surely can spread awareness among students, go and register yourself use my referral code M643, and let the journey begin.

Get Free Recharge on any Network

Hello guys am here with a trick for free recharge, you can get unlimited free recharge on any of the network you use... i personally got recharge of about 300 Rs.
Steps you need to follow:

• Like Shubham Saxena on Facebook and follow this blog. (Optional ;-) )
  
  
  
• Compose a text message from your phone
• Write PEPSI  FxxxDxx (replace x by random numbers 0-9)
• Send it to 09213092130
• You will get a reply... It will say Thank you for participating.... it means you have a hit. If you get a reply saying Nah... it means you have a miss. Try to get as many hits as you can, more the number of hits more are your chances to get a recharge, you will get your recharge within 30 mins if you are lucky.
• At a time your phone may get a recharge of any random amount, but normally its 25 Rs. I got it 12 times (25x12 = 300).

Hope you enjoy trying trick and get a good amount of recharge. And yes the first point I mentioned is not the part of getting recharged but doing so will be appreciated.
Note - You will be charged for messages to send at a normal rate (your messages card will also work)

Microsoft Accuses Intel for Spreading Wrong Information about Windows 8 for ARM

On 17th May, 2011 Renee James revealed some details about the upcoming version of windows i.e. Windows 8 she said - ARM version won't run legacy Windows apps (which were designed only to run on Intel's x86 family of processors). She also said that Microsoft would release four versions of Windows for ARM processors, none of which would run apps for the other versions.

"There will be four Windows 8 SoCs for ARM. Each one will run for that specific ARM environment, and they will run new applications or cloud-based applications....They are neither forward- nor backward-compatible between their own architecture – different generations of a single vendor – nor are they compatible across different vendors. Each one is a unique stack."

- Renee James

Microsoft was absolutely not pleased by the statement of Renee. Windows President Steven Sinofsky who really don't like leaks was really annoyed... few day back 2 Microsoft employees were fired for leaking early details of Windows 8.
Microsoft can't exactly fire Intel as a partner. So instead, it offered the following statement

"Intel’s statements during Intel Investor Meeting about Microsoft’s plans for the next version of Windows were factually inaccurate and unfortunately misleading.  From the first demonstrations of Windows on SoC, we have been clear about our goals and have emphasized that we are at the technology demonstration stage.  As such, we have no further details or information at this time."

- Microsoft Corp.

"No further details or information" means that Microsoft won't say exactly which parts of James's statements were inaccurate. The part about legacy apps? The part about four versions of Windows for ARM? Both?
Expecting Microsoft to explain itself more fully at its September conference for developers. ;)

Windows 7 Run Commands

There are lots of run commands in windows 7 which makes your work simpler rather than searching that tool in control panel or any where else. Hope this list helps you...

hdwwiz.cpl - Device manager
appwiz.cpl - Add/remove program wizard
control admintools - Administrative Tools
azman.msc - Authorization manager
calc - Calculator
certmgr.msc - Certificate manager for current user
charmap - Character map
credwiz - Stored User Names and Passwords
control schedtasks - Task scheduler
compmgmt.msc - Component services
control folders - Folder properties wizard
control - Control panel.
cliconfg - SQL Client Configuration.
cleanmgr - Diskclean up wizard.
control desktop - Display personalisation wizard.
control keyboard - Keyboard properties wizard.
control mouse - Mouse properties
control color - Window color and appearance.
control netconnection - Network adapter settings
control printers - Devices and Printers wizard
dcomcnfg - Component services
devmgmt.msc - Device manager
dfrgui - Disk fragmenter
diskmgmt.msc - Disk management wizard
diskpart - Diskpartsevice.
dxdiag - Directx diagnostic tools
desk.cpl - Display properties
downloads - downloads folder
dpiscaling - Dpi scaling tools(magnification wizard)
dvdplay - Play dvd using windows player
eventvwr.msc - Event viewer
explorer - Libraries folder
eudcedit - Private character editor
fsmgmt.msc - Shared folder management
firewall.cpl - Windows firewall manager
fonts - Font properties
fxscover - Fax Cover Sheet Editor
gpedit.msc - Local group policy editor
intl.cpl - Regional settings.
iexpress - iExpresswizrd(to create /open self-extraction directive file)
inetcpl.cpl - Internet properties
iexplore - Internet explorer
ipconfig /all - Display Connection Configuration
ipconfig /displaydns - Display DNS Cache Contents
ipconfig /flushdns - Delete DNS Cache Contents
ipconfig /release - Release All Connections
ipconfig /renew - Renew All Connections
ipconfig /registerdns - Refreshes DHCP & Re-Registers DNS
iscsicpl - isci initiator
joy.cpl - Game controller
lusrmgr.msc - Local users and groups
msconfig - System Configuration Utility
msinfo32 - System information
magnify - Magnifier
mmsys.cpl - Sound manager
main.cpl - Mouse properties
msdt - Microsoft support diagnostic tool
mspaint - Paint
mblctr - Windows mobility center
msra - Windows remote assistance.
mstsc - Windows remote desktop connection
ncpa.cpl - Network adapter settings
notepad - Notepad
odbcad32 - ODBC databse administrator
osk - Onscreen keyboard
optionalfeatures - Windows feature wizard(turn optional features on/off)
perfmon.msc - Performance monitor
perfmon - Performance monitor
powercfg.cpl - Power option
rsop.msc - Resultant set of policy wizard
regedit - Registry editor.
rekeywiz - Encryption file system wizard.
soundrecorder - Sound recorder
sndvol - Sound volume mixer
stikyNot - Stiky Note
sysedit - System Configuration Editor
snippingtool - Snipping tool
sysdm.cpl - System properties
services.msc - Services wizard
syskey - Windows System Security Tool
secpol.msc - Local security policy wizard
sigverif - File signature verification tool
timedate.cpl - Time and date updation wizard
tabcal - Digitizer calibration tool
telephon.cpl - Phone and Modem Options
taskmgr - Task manage
utilman - Ease of access center
verifier  - Driver verifier manager.
wmimgmt.msc - Windows Management Instrumentation
wscui.cpl - Action center
write - Word pad


91 commands !!! :)

Intel Polaris 80-core CPU.

The Teraflops Research Chip (also called Polaris) is the first processor prototype developed by Intel's Tera-scale Computing Research Program in multi-core and energy efficient computing. The processor was briefly presented at the IDF on September 26, 2006 and officially announced on February 11, 2007 and shown working at the 2007 ISSCC.
The chip contains 80 cores, each containing two programmable floating point engines and one 5-port messaging passing router. Constructed using a 65 nm CMOS process, the die is 12.64 mm by 21.72 mm (274.5 mm²) and contains 100 million transistors. The package is connected through a 1248 pin LGA with 343 signal pins.
Running at 3.16 GHz the chip achieved 1.01 TFLOPS with a total power consumption of 62 W and an on-chip temperature of 110 °C (383 K).[1] Increasing frequency to 5.7 GHz and power to 265 W increased performance to 1.81 TFLOPS and later 2 TFLOPS.

i know its late but the facts are really amazing... !!!

10 reasons why to buy Windows Phone 7

Windows phone 7 has already made a great impact on market, everyone who works on a business class phone says that it has good looks and promising features. Top 10 features in WP7 according to great surveys around the world are listed below :

1. Smooth transitional user interface
2. Informative lock screen and auto-hidden top status bar
3. Good Office integration and support
4. Bing search page and functionality
5. Easy setup for Google, Windows Live, Yahoo! Mail, and others
6. Functional QWERTY keyboard
7. Cool camera software
8. Tellme voice search
9. Powerful Outlook email, calendar, and contacts client
10. Zune HD functionality

Whats Still Missing ??

The top most features in which Windows Phone 7 lacks are -

• Limited multi-tasking.

Just like the previous versions of the iPhone, you can have native apps running in the background so you could listen to Zune HD streaming content while surfing the web and receiving emails on the go.There are several other areas that need work, such as the games in Xbox Live, Twitter support, 3rd party apps, and more.


 But above all mentioned missing attributes of WP7... its still a great deal in mobile market... hope u enjoy WP7... :)

Giveaway : For all those who love windows phone

Are you passionate enough to win a Windows Phone 7 and other Microsoft merchandise ??
Show your passion and take away the gifts...

Here is what you need to do :

• Follow @ILWPin on Twitter (Surprise, surprise!) and tweet this post (shameless publicity!).
• Share some Windows Phone fan thing – A resource (wallpaper, toolkit, etc.) that you’ve created, a useful tip or trick, a fan video, interesting photo, blog post mentioning this giveaway and your thoughts on WP7… you get the drift? Anything, that has Windows Phone ‘interesting-ness.’
• Leave a comment with pointers to your ‘doing’.
• Last date for submissions: May 23, 2011.

Note - You need to post your comments on ilovewindowsphone7 .

Several winners would be chosen for the regular prizes, and a set of judges would then pick the best one of the lot for the winner who takes it all.

Prizes:

• Windows 7 Ultimate: Steve Ballmer signed Commemorative Edition
• Microsoft branded T-shirts
• Random product merchandise – stationary stuff, pouches, laptop sleeves, desk enhancements, et al.

~via -  ilovewindowsphone7

Microsoft CEO at IIT-D on 26th May

Hey buddy want to meet the CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer ?? A golden opportunity for you all, Steve is in India on 26th to deliver a guest lecture in IIT-D on their Golden Jubilee. If you happen to be in or around Delhi on 26th it would be a great chance for you all to hear from such a speaker. He would be talking about emerging technology and importance of research and innovation.

 Technology has an exponential path in front of it, meaning it has the ability to propel science, medicine, business, social issues and personal interaction in ways that are increasingly important to society and our own everyday lives.

- Steve Ballmer

Date:       26th May, 2011
Venue:     Dogra Hall, IIT Delhi
Time:       4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Agenda:  
Opening note by Prof. Surendra Prasad, Director IIT Delhi
Key note by Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft Corporation

"Student & faculty registration can be done at http://bit.ly/iitd-steveb"

hope we meet there... :)

Apps on Facebook.com

Hello everyone I'm here to discuss about how to build a Facebook App. Facebook has millions of user with it and developing an app on Facebook gets you opportunity to deeply integrate into the core Facebook experience. An app developed on Facebook can integrate with many aspects of Facebook.com, including the News Feed and Notifications. Apps on Facebook are the web apps that are loaded in context of Facebook. And a web app can we developed by any of the available languages, the further Blog is based on php.

The apps on facebook are canvas based, we have a canvas (or iframe) in which we load our app.
Suppose the url to your app is http://www.stalwartvision.com/canvas then the app url will be http://www.apps.facebook.com/your_app_name (i.e. this url will load the contents of your original app link).Before getting into anything lets know the size of canvas so that we can build our app efficiently.  
760px (width) - if you build your app on a full app page, and
520px (width) - if you embed your app on a page in Facebook.com

Facebook Integration

Firstly you need to goto Developer App click on Set Up a New App, further you will be asked to enter the name of your app, do it and proceed, cross the security checks and all and doing all that you will be redirected to a page where you need to enter the basic information about your app and this page will also contain the tab Facebook Integration. Under this tab you will get your app_id and app_secret, you need to note these two because they will be used further in your app. Your canvas url gets integrated to facebook now what you need to do is start developing your app.

I can't give you an idea of what an app to develop, so am just proceeding with how to use the facebook pre-defined functions in your app and access the user information. You need a facebook.php, which contains all the required pre-defined functions to be used. A sample code to use these functions and access user information on Facebook is -

 <?php

// Awesome Facebook Application (shubham0987@gmail.com)require_once 'facebook.php';
// Create our Application instance.$facebook = new Facebook(array(  'appId' => 'your_app_id',  'secret' => 'your_app_secret',  'cookie' => true,));
    $app_id = "your_app_id";    $app_secret = 'your_app_secret';    $canvas_page = "your_canvas_url";    $auth_url = "http://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?client_id=" . $app_id . "&redirect_uri=" . urlencode($canvas_page);    $code = $_REQUEST["code"];    $token_url = "https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id=".$app_id."&redirect_uri=". urlencode($canvas_page)."&client_secret=".$app_secret."&code=".$code;       if (empty($code)) {echo("<script> top.location.href='" . $auth_url . "'</script>");}        $access_token = file_get_contents($token_url);        $user_data_url = "https://graph.facebook.com/me?".$access_token;        $user = json_decode(file_get_contents($user_data_url));
echo("Username:" . $user->name);
echo("Email" . $user->email);

         ?>
The above code will fetch user-name on facebook.com and his email-id, you can use this code for your app and further modify it, there are multiple ways to do it but i find it the simplest. This would be the starting or basic step of your Facebook app use this and get a burning idea for your app and show your programming skills and get your app working on Facebook.com.


Hope your find it useful... hope to see your app soon... :)

Microsoft To Buy Skype in $8.5 billion

There was a big blasting news by The Wall Street Journal on Monday. The report published said that Microsoft Corporation is approaching to buy the most popular telephonic company over internet i.e. Skype. According to the published report it would be the biggest deal in the 36 years history of software maker's. If the deal gets final the deal is valued at $8.5 billion, including assumed debt. This $8.5 billion would be Microsoft's biggest previous acquisition, earlier they had a $6 billion purchase of online ad service aQuantive in 2007.

Buying Skype will potentially increase the communication tool for Microsoft over internet, Microsoft always tries to make a splash over internet and this could be a great splash.


"Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice calls and chats over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system. Skype has also become popular for its additional features which include instant messaging, file transfer, and video conferencing. Skype has 663 million registered users as of 2010. The network is operated by Skype Limited, which has its headquarters in Luxembourg and is minority owned by eBay. Most of the development team and 44% of the overall employees of Skype are situated in Tallinn, Estonia."

Speakers from Microsoft and Skype declined to comment on this report on Monday. A statement from either of the company's speaker was awaited till Tuesday morning, but a statement is still to come.

waiting for Windows Live Skype... ;)

Build Your Silverlight Pivot Viewer

Silverlight PivotViewer?

Pivot is research of Microsoft live labs, pivot makes things easy to interact with massive amount of data, it makes the data appear in an interactive manner. The traditional structure of web is that it has media files and html pages, a request is sent from the html page and the media files are invoked on a web page. Silverlight uses DeepZoom technology to make complex things easier and better to understand. The collection used in Silverlight PivotViewer is CXML (Collection extended Markup Language) file.

Prerequisites for developing your first PivotViewer

• Visual Studio 2010
• Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010
• Silverlight 4 Toolkit (released April 2010)
• PivotViewer Control

I will move further in various steps, lets start.

Step 1 – Creating a Collection

Collection used in PivotViewer comprises of two parts

1. XML – The items in the collection are described in XML, in a “.cxml” file.
2. Images – The images in the collection are described in Deep Zoom format.

To create collection we have two most effective tools -

• Pivot Collection Tool for Microsoft Excel
• Pivot Collection Tools for the Command Line

Further in this blog i will use Excel Tool for creating my collection, so after you have downloaded Excel Tool open Excel and open the new “Pivot Collections” tab and click “New Collection”

You will see there are four columns created by default in new collection.  Image Location, Preview, Name, Href, Description.  Now you can import all your images at once by clicking “Import Images” menu or one by one using the button choose image. You can add more columns also and add specific details accordingly. You can add multiple values to a column, to put multiply values in the same category, you can Separate the values with ‘||’.Once you are done with all this you can publish your collection with the Publish Collection button.

Step 2 – Adding Pivot Viewer to Silverlight application

• Create a new Silverlight Application.
• Add a reference to “System.Windows.Pivot.dll” located under
  C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\PivotViewer\Jun10\Bin\
• Add Pivot namespace to your XAML file –>
  xmlns:pivot="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Pivot;assembly=System.Windows.Pivot"
• Add Pivot Viewer Control.

• Add collection .cxml file and the files folder to your ClientBin (or if you want, you can upload all under hosting service).
• Load collection using this method – PivotViewerControl.LoadCollection(YourCollectionUri,"");

• You’re done!

I came to know about PivotViewer in my MSP Open days since then i was trying to learn about it and finally am here with my own blog.. feels great… :)

Build Your Deep Zoom Mosaic

Deep Zoom ??

Deep Zoom originally known as SeaDragon is now a Microsoft Presentation. Deep Zoom allows users to interact with high resolution images in a very interactive manner. It allows the user to zoom into a image upto a larger extent, it enables smooth loading and panning by serving up multi-resolution images and using spring animations.
Deep Zoom is a layered format of images, when a single image or multiple images are converted to a deep zoom format it contains the tiles in every possible resolution and stores that image in different folders according to their resolution. The image below will make it more clear to you:

Before creating a Deep Zoom application you need to convert your images to deep zoom formats (.dzc deep zoom collection and .dzi deep zoom image ).  Once you have created a deep zoom pyramid the file format used to access image pyramid is XML. So our primary task is to create a image pyramid (deep zoom collection), for doing this we need some tools the tool provided by Microsoft is Deep Zoom Composer you can simply add images to Deep Zoom Composer and create your own mosaic.

There are two techniques to create your mosaic, you can either create a large image using any tool or create your tiles in deep zoom composer, i used the first option i created a large file using Andrea Mosaic tool, Andreas Mosaic can create a file upto 210 MegaPixels. (tips to use Andrea Mosaic will be with the software itself or if u guys feel any problem using it write it i will post a blog on how to use Andrea Mosaic).

Once you have created you high resolution image import it into Deep Zoom Composer, it will convert it into pyramid form deep zoom format and then preview or export your mosaic… you are done… !!!

Hope you enjoy making your mosaic…..
(Make necessary setting you need according to your mosaic)

Shortcut to Sample Text in MS Word

This is an interesting little trick for inserting sample text if you use Microsoft Word.

1. Open a blank Microsoft Word document.

2. Enter =rand() and press the “enter” key.

In MS Word, the use of rand() function automatically adds several sentences and paragraphs that repeat the words, The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. These words are often used for testing because, together; they contain all the letters in the English alphabet in one concise and coherent sentence. Such a sentence is known as a pangram.

In Word 2007 and later versions, the rand() function adds information about using specific Word features in order to create a more realistic document for testing. However, if you wish to use the “Quick Brown Fox” pangram in Word 2007 and later versions, you can still do so by inputting the function =rand.old(). Another Word option is to use =lorem(), This function automatically adds the familiar Lorem ipsum dummy text that has been used by the printing and typesetting industry since the 1500′s. Nowadays, Lorem ipsum text is also used extensively by web developers and publishers to add random text to such things as templates and website prototypes.

You can alter the results of the rand() function by adding numbers in the round brackets. The first number controls the number of paragraphs while the second number controls the number of sentences in each paragraph. For example, using “rand(3,5)” will add three paragraphs of five sentences each. Leaving the brackets empty will add the default number of paragraphs and sentences, which is set at three sentences and three paragraphs.