Have a first look Hannover (Lotus Notes 8)

Hi all ... the much awaited beta 2 of Hannover (Lotus Notes 8 ) has been released....

Check out my blog for updates. I have posted some of the screenshots in this blogpost.
 
http://itkrishna.blogspot.com/2007/03/first-glimpse-at-hannover.html

First Glimpse at Hannover

I was jus browsing at ibm site to see if there are any new updates in developerWorks and Lotusphere , then i stumbled upon a link which said IBM has announced the public beta for Lotus Notes 8, (better known as Hannover in the Lotus notes user community).

just imagine... Hannover is to Lotus notes , what Longhorn or Vista is for windows....

This is the coolest and the most advertised version of Lotus Notes ever to be released... with a Extremely new UI and Functionalities, I didn want to miss a chance in evaluating the latest beta from IBM site.

I jus went ahead and downloaded the 623 MB file from IBM site and installed it on my machine.

I have given some screen shots in here, which are taken from that version.


This is the Defaluts Home Page of Hannover, you can access sametime... you can subscribe for RSS feeds. Read Feeds, Compose mail, Creadee Docs, Spreadsheets , Presentations, Databases ... right from the Hoempage.... Its extremely user friendly





Mail Interface for Lotus notes: This is the coolest thing... we all are gonna have a interface thats gonna compete with other e-mail clients (MSO2007/WinMail) in UI... this is the major innovation from the Notes user prespective.






Calendar looks great with new user interface and a wide range of other options.



Creating spreadsheets and presentations can be done on the fly without the need of using microsoft office.... notes has integrated SOFFICE page built in to it... the Office package offers excellent compatibility with Microsoft office file formats , so the switch over process will be a lot easier


With the New version of Lotus Notes.... IBM is offering a big challenge to Microsoft by offering a solution which integrates the basic needs for office environments, like e-mail, instant messages, creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc...

Notes is all set to crack the market with this innovation.

Forgot Visual Basic

Yesterday i came early home and i tried evaluvating Visual Studio 2005.... Jus thought of trying something different from the world of open-source programming..... These PHP, JS and HTML programming have very much affected my life..... i was struggling hard to write a code for showing a message box.... in Vbasic 6 it is "MessageBox" Function... but it will not work in VBasic 8 .... since the technologies behind are extremely different from each other.... I have completely forgot Visual Basic , years back i was very good at it ... desktop programming was like a piece of cake...

Visual Basic has grown very much from the days of a RAD tool used for application prototyping ... to a enterprise level app- dev tool... its good to hear these things... i will be evaluating the 2005 edition for web-devlopment .. will review the features in next blogs

Funny Pics

Mangalore…..

Mangalore is one nice place….. You know whenever I get bad week of work in Chennai; I jus take my train to Mangalore…. It was the same last week end… I was like workin all days and nights in and out…. And I desperately needed a good weekend…. Where I will forget the website…. Its Mangalore again.

This time it was not a lone travel. I had a company Mr Kannan. I had my train @ 5 in the evening, I thought of taking a leave … but our beloved boss Maddy was relieving on the same day… so I cancelled my leave to accommodate a lunch @ Manshuks’

(I am being vegeterianized … ppl around are tryin to find a goat in me… but I wont give up)

But I end up in troubles….. I was changing the content in some e-mailer till 4.30 … I got my train @ 5… I messed it up this time around too… I pinged davis , told him … “Central in 15 Mins… ?”. He said "yes... lets go..."…. And I jumped off… literally ran out of office… I found a empty purse when I reached central (again)…. The SBI ATM didn’t accept my credit and debit cards (again)… I will be running in some platform to catch hold of some coach (again)…. You know these things have happened so many times that I eventually got used to all of em…. Finally got some cash outta the Canara bank ATM and got into the train in the last minute.

At last made it…. Found that kannan anna was surprised to see me… he was very amazed, that I at least made it to there…. (The things that we came across in train were supposed to be published here… but due to strict restrictions of Google regarding NC-17 Rated content. I am not able to publish more on this). There was not much entertainment… there were some nice scenaries…. But

1. My N72 ran out-of battery


2. Anna K810i ran out of battery


3. The Digi cam ran out-of battery


4. The Back-up batteries in Digicam were also empty


5. I did buy a AA Alkaline batteries…. They too didn work in that digi-cam.


6. The only thing which had some amount of battery was anna’s T610 which had 20/30% power but it went off by the time it was morning.
   

So no pics on our way to mangalore. The only entertainment on the train was over in Calicut. We got cute 4 yr old kid and his dad boarding in salem. That kid was my company till mangalore… very naughty guy.

We reached managlore to find a fat guy (yes deepak has doubled in size). We went to room, took bath, anna met some of his friends.Friends -> Shopping, Did some nice amount of shopping. Did have a good time while shopping purses (J). Then went back to room. From Room to Beach, it’s a pleasure watching the sunset at the beach. It’s a real pleasure... we took some beautiful snaps… we had food somewhere and returned room. Indian/Bangladesh match was goin on…. We lost, I slept.

Nothing spl in Mangalore other than ice creams…. Had so many of these ice creams that I eventually got tired of eating ice-creams…. So –many … ppl here should be stupid….

Took the train back home exactly at the last minute… travel back was dull nothing spl…I was clicking snaps all the way…. So many of them, I had a target of clicking 500 snaps, but I could only make some 160 odd. Something special here... the train stopped at some unknown station in karnatake... i desperately needed some water/coke and some food. so i got down and ask ordered for the same.. this shoopkeeper guy was packing em up for me.. i was staring at a beautiful face stiitng out there... all of a sudden this girl comes up to me askin... will this train take me to mangalore.... (i was like... oh shit... if you told this earlier... i wouldn have left to managlore... ). i told her the way out.... by time the train had started... i forgot to notice the horn sound in the discussion... i quickly got my things and got the change...and had to catch the train on the run. but i had forgot the "Lays Pack" .... 15 Rs Loss.... forget it... while in train , I learnt the fact the late night temperatures in tamil nadu is lot-lot lower thane the temperatures in Kerala/Karnataka.

We reached Chennai in good time... I reached home, I had brought some macrons. They had an excellent response in my office. And work started as usual….. ha ha…

Life sucks. And then you die!

Pranav is creating a brand for himself with his hilarious collection of jokes....

Have a look at this awesome blog from pranav.

Life sucks. And then you die!

Windows Vista vs Mac OS X

I have some clips comparing features of Microsoft's Windows Vista vs The OS X

NYT: Did Microsoft rip-off Apple Mac OS X in Windows Vista?






Apple WWDC 2006-Windows Vista Copies Mac OS X

Most HARD WORKING INDIAN EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi Folks,

The time is 6.45PM and i suppose many of you are in your office or on your way back home.

Thats not the case with a friend of mine who works like from 11 in the morning till 2am in the morning and this guy does not get enough time to sleep either..

So what does he do to keep him so active through out these long hours, let us solve this mystery ( Not Nancy Drew Mystery). Now Coming to the best part of life ?? must be wondering what is that right! Being a bachelor.. and i am really proud to be belong to this family of high-spirited free birds.



So kindly look at the evidence yourself and do have a small piece** of Laugh at my friends cost...

So here the toast to the most HARD WORKING INDIAN EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- Siddarth

Cricket

Lets blog....

I haven been blogging for more than a week now... so i thought like why dont i blog,
about what is the next question, what to blog ? .... aditya showed me his blog post for the most hilarious and confusing definition of cricket.....

The definition of Cricket as explained to a foreigner--
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out.

When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When a man goes out to go
in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.

When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those
who are not out, that is the end of the game!
Simple! ... »

Cricket ... its a really funny game ..... :)

Tok.. Tok.. Tok..

Tok.. Tok.. Tok.. I am knocking the door at home my home... its 3 am in the morning and its shivering like anything.... i m not able to remove the socks off my foot.... i m extremely tired. my mom will wake up in a couple of mins to open the door. Its been the third consecutive week of resultless work for me since i have started fiddling with that stupid software.... Yesterday evening i was training someone on the same damn thing... (Hilarious right... you don't know something and train someone on it.... )

Day by day this new assignment is growing in size. and you know what life was much easier and comfortable a couple of months ago. now its like i am running in a race, which doesn't have a deadline , neither an end point...... and the race is only with yourself... (its exactly the same...i don't find any kinda help anywhere on earth.)

College life was fun....... you know... you don't care a shit about anyone else on earth. you do a lot of things but all of them end up in no use... its like you mess up so much with everyone and walk away cool saying....." Final year eanna appidithan...." . You cant say that now....if you do they will say.... "Fresher nna ippidithan....:-(" .... you got a brand name for yourself......

Those were the days when you thought ... i should be punctual to office.... i will go to office sharp at 9 and leave exactly at 5:30. and once you joined you came to know that you will never reach office by 9 and will never leave before 9.

Life has taken a u-turn. that IT-Krishna has gone missing .... he is probably doing his engineering somewhere ... You know the better part of the joke.... i never studied in engineering... never did i carry a book to college.... but now... you will find user manuals... advanced configuration guides.... ajax research papers.... all of them in My Bag.... I don't know how i call it my bag... since all these things are here, i cant term it as my bag any more.... say its the bag of the web-server-guy. life sucks .... you cant help it...

This IT life has changed my life miserably in the past 9 months... i very much miss the days of college.....

Custom Apache log Formats

Log Files. ..... he he .... i hate em...

Apache Servers can be customized to create log file to record hits of user activity on a certain website. These logs are automatically configured by default. The Default log format called as "Extended Log Format" provides you exhaustive information about User's IP , browser agent, file requested, server responmse HTTP Referral,  etc.

but the default log format is not usually compete. in the sense, the default log format wont help me to identify a user session. ( because default session tracking uses ip/user agent config. if i am browsing from my company the entire company has the same external ip and almost the same browser agent. so i cant be uniquely identified ). SO in order to provide a stong Session Tracking machanism . We will need to use a modified log format which can also track cookies. This is called the combined cookie format.

About Cookies.

There are two kinds of cookies. First party cookies and Third party cookies.

Cookies which are set and retrieved  by the same we-server are called first party cookies. If  a cookies is set bey a third party website, then it is called TPC. normally Third party cookies have a high rejection rate. So its always advised to use a first party cookie.

Apache Server can be configured to set persistent First party Cookies.

Default Log Format

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" extended

Now Lets examine the Combined cookie log format

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\" \"%{Cookie}i\"" combined-cookie

So once these cookies are configured to log.

We can configure a new session tracking mechanism (Admin Console, select Web Analysis > Options > Session Tracking > add\edit a Session Tracking definition .) in webtrends to process the persistent cookie set by our apache server.

Now you can unleash the power of web log analytics. Most Reports in webtrends can be enabled with this configuration change.

Processing HTML Files as PHP Files

This is one of the most useful configurations that you need when you try to configure php on a apache web server.

Parsing HTML files as PHP Files

There are a lot of advantages in rendering PHP code as HTML files instad of a ".php " file.

• HTML extensions are user friendly
• say if you are migrating a site from some other technology to php, this can be very helpful.

The Process of adding .html extension to php scripts is relatively easy. Jus add the following line to your .htaccess or httpd.conf file

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html

and thats all its done. This works fine with the my version of apache (HTTP Server 2.0.59).

Welcome to Web Analytics

 
"Welcome to the world of Web Trends", this is wat aditya told me when he introduced me to a weird web based charting and graphing tool (thats how webtrends looked like to me when i had m first look at it), For a moment i thought like it is just another customized web based analytics and reporting engine, which generates reports outta databases... But as usual i was wrong. :-) That was when i first began to have a look at the dirty big web analytics engine.

Web log Analytics (or simply WebTrends) is a software technology that allows users to examine webserver log files to understand user-activity, behavior patterns, requirements and client side specs of people who visit a website. The information thats gathered can very much help to increase the ROI of any organization, Web analytics mainly help in understanding user behaviors on a website, understanding their requirements, hurdles in reaching the information you need, conveying the correct information to the correct customer., etc.

In a current day scenario, where web based marketing plays a very critical role in business activity of every organization, web analytics tools like webtrends provide you total control and information you need on the web-activities you get involved in.

Say if you handle marketing for a organization. you will invest in paid searches in various search engines, so in order to analyze data , you will have to access each search engine get data integrate em accumulate all statistics , and then analyze the data. On the other hand if you have a third party analytics engine, you can do all the analysis at you end and be able to access all your campaigns and marketing activities in a single place.

Its not Just about marketing , you generally get data about ever kinda stuff on web , whether it is time zone, or city or the browser version or even the search query they used to reach your website...

I started feeling sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepy now. will blog later on this... more tech(???) stuff to continue....

 

History of Progrmming Languages

I was just browsing around the web when i stopped at his link, about the history and evolution of programming languages.




===> Evolution of Programming Languages




This link depicts the evolution and developments in programming languages since Fortran to current Ruby.

Nike Cricket ad

The World cup fever is on and Nike has come up with its own set of cricket campaigns in india....

Here is Nike Cric Ad.... Really cool one... jus watch the video

Leo's new website

Our design thala.... Mr Leo Jeyapathy has come up woth a new personal portfolio site.. This one is really cool, if you are feeling bored and wanna look at some really creative graphic design work do check it out....

Leodesignstudio.org

and leo has offered the team a treat for this.... thx buddy... :-)

Holy(i) Reunion

It was fine usual sunday, untill somebody called me up to remind me that we have a get-together today.

Jus look at Don in the consecutive pics.... "no matter what happens around , this guy will not step down from giving photo poses...."

Dustbin - Stand

I dont know how siddarth found such a wonderful dustbin holder. It is by far the most advanced dustbin holder in the entire synaptris.... it runs on a pentium 4 processor with 1 gb ram for processing all junk.... and has a hard-disk inside.....

Congrats siddarth .... we all are expecting a treat for this :-) he he

Firefox to FireLion

# Aging Tabs
# Answers
# Colorful Tabs
# del.icio.us
# DOM Inspector 1.8.1.2
# DownThemAll!
# ErrorZilla Mod 0.2
# Extension List Dumper
# Firefox Showcase
# FireFTP
# FlashGot
# Google Notebook
# Greasemonkey
# IE Tab
# ImgLikeOpera
# It's All Text!
# M3U Ripper
# Mouse Gestures
# Nuke Anything Enhanced
# Paste and Go
# PDF Download
# Rewind/Fastforward Buttons
# Sage
# SmoothWheel
# Tab Effect
# Tab Mix Plus
# Talkback

I got this list from Aditya's blog on the list of firefox extensions.. these are the coolest set of extensions around for mozilla/firefox. Jus try them out