I went to YouTube from one of the funny videos of Steve Ballmer - Microsoft CEO and then one by one I got to the series of 11 videos where Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were together on a TV Show (D5 All things Digital) in 2007. It was awesome and I recommend it to go through it once for all.

I would love to pin them on my post.. and so here they are:

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together: Part 1


Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together: Part 2

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together: Part 3

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together: Part 4

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together: Part 5

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together: Part 6

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together: Part 7

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together: Part 8

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together: Part 9

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together: Part 10

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together: Part 11

I admit that these are more than 2 year old videos but I got to see them today on 13th of September 2009 but I am happy I gotta see them.Similar Posts:

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• Included BitTorrent support
• Upload Manager
• Flash Video download
• Audio/Video preview
• Speed selection
• Site Explorer
• and the most exiting Remote Control (Let's you control download from remote machine using a http client)

Free Download Manager

Best FTP / SFTP client(s)/Server:

WinSCP: It's one of the best and open source FTP program available. WinSCP is open source and it is better then commercial alternates like SmartFTP or CuteFTP. I have used many of them but now prefer to use only WinSCP. It's free and download and run executable is available as well so if it's required to download at Client's server then also no hassle.

FileZilla: This is another great piece of open source solution which is both FTP Client and FTP Server, what more we can ask for? FileZilla Client is available for all platforms while FileZilla Server is available as Windows download only.

Best Remote Help/Screen Sharing/ Meeting:

Although at Office whenever I need to Assist someone remotely or do a Web Meeting I use GoToAssist and GoToMeeting, but I have used some of the following services at one time or another or tried sometime for experimenting. Yes, I do LogMeIn regularly to connect to my remote servers when can't do MSTSC (Microsoft Remote Terminal)

LogMeIn Free: LogMeIn Free is a powerful product with very ease of use and proven technology and is being used by professionals. Even in free usage you can sign up/register unlimited number of computers in one profile. You can create multiple groups for better management under one group. This works great for Remote Assistance and one to one screen sharing, we can set speed and quality as per our requirement while working with LogMeIn.

DimDim: Works for conferencing and allows to join 20 users in a meeting/conference while using as free service. It's easy (browser based), but screen sharing quality we can't expect as much as Citrix GoToMeeting. But yes it does allow sharing of screen, documents (PPT), Websites, Whiteboard. As well as there is a option to call on conference number or attendees can communicate using Microphone and speakers. I believe they will improve quality day by day.
The big point is that it's open-source: meaning that you can download source and host your own portal for your organization, I believe it's biggest positive point because with that speed and quality will be dependant on how much Internet bandwidth you provide and your server configuration.

Yugma: Yugma is free Web Meeting and Conferenceing service. It let you invite 10 attendees while using it as free registered user. Skype and Outlook plugins are available. You can use it under Windows, Mac and Linux (beta). I believe they are improving their quality of service but it has been long time I used it now.

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Better Code

Writing a better code everyday is every programmer's job and dream. A Programmer should learn from his past projects and experiences every time he start or initialize with something new. Whether it is using Patterns to solve common problem or be it writing reusable generalized code.

When it comes to writing generalized code/solution the programmer/developer has to think from wide perspective about the problem and divide the solution in a way that it could be used in other alternate situations which are not seen as of yet but could arise in future.

As programmer gains experience he learns from his experience what works out and what not in various situations. Experience teaches a Leader/Programmer by problem. The more no of problem one faces it helps him learn faster by solving them. It highly depends on the kind of work/project (enviornment) one is dealing with..!

Performance Tuning

Recently Vance Lucas wrote on his artical that early performance benchmarking is a disease but actually it is not really. I believe it depends on the kind of project you are dealing with. Although his post has targeted my one of the PHP Performance Tips artical which was related to "Writing better code with PHP... although some of them might not be useful with newer PHP versions but it does really matter.

But the question is if you/clients are more concerned about the performance which in most cases will be than it is good to start thinking about Performance from the day one. I know about firms/companies or clients looking at the Language/Tool/Framework benchmarks before taking decision on which tool/language to choose for the Project. This approach is better than crying after spending time, efforts and money on it.

Actually no one likes build a software which is great by architectural design but when it comes to performance it is real dull.

Conclusion:

Although this artical dosn't provide any tips to improve code in any language but in the end I can say that evaluating any code to Bad/Better/Best Code is relative and depends on the criterias and cases you are evaluating with. Work quality is relative to demand. As anytime we can't have good, cheap and fast all together.

Ultimately the Good code is which performs it's job perfectly and is easy to maintain in future. (It includes writing test cases and following proper commenting and everything..)

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Now when it comes to features I am not able to try much with it but yes I have upgraded from 2.4 to this new release 3.0.

• There is new start center with various applications grouped up.
• Calc can have 3 times more columns then 256 in previous versions (1024 now).
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• Solver and new theme in Calc.
• Native tables in Impress.
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I have never tried with XML forms or ODBC connection for database previously but I got connected with my Sybase db and I was able to check all my tables and views from there. It was cool although procedures and triggers were not available but it was nice that we can even design forms in Open Office Database.

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Now when it comes to Thickbox it gives nice functionality but many a times it leaves us hungry for more. For example here are the few situations where it will be difficult to use Thickbox without further modification.

• It let's open window in a IFRAME and close that but what if you can't give 'class="Thickbox"' to any of your link?
• What if you are not loading those links with page load? (If the links from which you are willing to open Thickbox windows is not available at the time of page load then Thickbox won't work. As Thickbox internally works in a way that it will search for all links with class = "Thickbox" at the time of page load and then customize their onclick events.)
• What if you want to open second Thickbox window as someone close first one and that too without any user interaction?
• What if you want to call any javascript function from the parent window? (parent window is the window from which parent window is getting opened.)

jQuery Thickbox is a great solution for many of our requirement but we don't have any option but to modify actual code to use them with complicated and advance situations which we come across.

I have done some modification in Thickbox.js to achive all above 4 points using Thickbox by adding 2 more functions into this great utility and modifying tb_remove function.

Here are 2 functions I have added, you can understand what they do once you read comments.

// To close one thickbox and then open another, this is quite handy
// when you want to open another response modal window on the action of current modal window.
// Opening more then one thickbox window is not possible on the same page,
// so closing one and opening another could be quite handy and we can change height
// and width as well for another window.
var jThickboxNewLink;
function tb_remove_open(reloadLink){
jThickboxReloadLink	=	reloadLink;
tb_remove();
setTimeout("jThickboxNewLink();",500);
return false;
}
// This function will let you open new thickbox window without specifying
// class="Thickbox" and any href="http://web.com" attribute
// It will be helpful when you are dynamically loading any content and
// from those content you would like to open Thickbox windows.
// As basically the nature of thickbox is such that it scans all links (..) tags
// on load using jQuery's $(document).ready function so if your link is loaded using ajex
// or using any dynamic javascript and was not on page at the time of load then this thickbox
// setup won't work and you have to use this function.
function tb_open_new(jThickboxNewLink){
tb_show(null,jThickboxNewLink,null);
}

And here is the tb_remove function with minor modification which will let us call any function of the parent window passed as an argument.

// Modified to provide parent window's function callback
function tb_remove(parent_func_callback) {
$("#TB_imageOff").unbind("click");
$("#TB_closeWindowButton").unbind("click");
$("#TB_window").fadeOut("fast",function(){$('#TB_window,#TB_overlay,#TB_HideSelect').trigger("unload").unbind().remove();});
$("#TB_load").remove();
if (typeof document.body.style.maxHeight == "undefined") {//if IE 6
$("body","html").css({height: "auto", width: "auto"});
$("html").css("overflow","");
}
if(parent_func_callback != undefined)
eval("window."+parent_func_callback);
document.onkeydown = "";
document.onkeyup = "";
return false;
}

See Demo live in action or download zip with examples and modified javascript file.

Let me know if there are any other mods you have done with jQuery thickbox..! or if this post has helped you achieve what you wanted to do with jQuery Thickbox.
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Wikipedia defines it as "[Virtualization is] a technique for hiding the physical characteristics of computing resources from the way in which other systems, applications, or end users interact with those resources. This includes making a single physical resource (such as a server, an operating system, an application, or storage device) appear to function as multiple logical resources; or it can include making multiple physical resources (such as storage devices or servers) appear as a single logical resource."

In simple words Virtualization is about making Software fool (whether it is system or application). Sorry for my harsh words. This technology makes guest software feel like they are interacting with real hardware/resource while it is nothing but a layer created by Virtualization enabled software application.

Softwares with Virtualization Technology for System softwares/Operating system are called as Virtual Machine(s), I mean we can install Operating System with such softwares and they will be actually Machine inside Machine. All the resources used by Guest Virtual Machine will be using physical resources from Host Machine/Operating System.

It is good to use Virtualization for Software Testing, Deployment over multiple platforms and it's usage has long list. It will require really good hardware configuration for machines we are willing to install VMs.

Here is the list of System Virtualization enabled softwares for reference.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

You can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx
It's freely available and pretty option if you are interested in installing Windows guest over your Windows box.

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2

This is another Microsoft product for Server Virtualization. It can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/default.aspx

VMware

This is one of the big daddy of Virtualization and they are having wide range of products for System and Application virtualization. You can visit it on http://www.vmware.com/. I have been using it since more then 4 or 5 years now and it works great for installation of any Operating System over my Windows Box whether it is Linux / Windows variants.

Oracle VM

Recently Oracle has jumped into Virtualization band and in Nov 2007 they unveiled Oracle VM. Which is based on the open source Xen(TM) hypervisor technology. Oracle VM is server virtualization software that fully supports both Oracle and non-Oracle applications, and is three times more efficient than other server virtualization products as Oracle claims on their website. You can download Oracle VM from http://edelivery.oracle.com/oraclevm.

VirtualBox

This is another promising Open Source Virtualization software from Innotek which is recently acquired by Sun Microsystems. You can visit VirtualBox website http://www.virtualbox.org/ where it is available as free download.
If you know more about any of the products listed or not listed above please mention it in your comment. I will be updating this post soon or will be writing new one in this reference I guess..!
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It's going to be the first service of its kind on the Web and I would like to congratulate Pulkit for his great hard work and efforts.

It's not just Online Face Recognition but it's with following buddies.

• Smart Picture Organizer
• Quick Photo Sharing & Printing
• Multiple Face Recognition
• and so on...

So now searching your photo albums with phrase like "Me & Mom" is possible.

It still is in it's beta version you can check it out on http://www.picporta.com and I wish it become publicly available asap.Similar Posts:

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