Tweet, chat, do Presentations in Hindi and other Indian languages with Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool

How about sending tweets to your your friends in Hindi or in other Indian languages? And what’s more, it can be done very easily, you just have to type in English and it will be converted to a target language. This is called Transliteration. Don’t get confused with translation, it’s Transliteration. As many of us can speak multiple Indian languages but can’t write in some languages. So just type in English, it will be converted to target language script. All this is possible with Microsoft Indic language Input tool (ILIT).

Microsoft India has developed a tool which makes it very easy to enter text in various Indian languages. It can be used to enter text in any application on the PC or any page online on the web like in the browser.

You can give it a try there on the page itself.

So for this, there are 2 versions available - Web Version and Desktop Version

 

Currently it supports 6  languages- Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. And soon many more will be added to the list.

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EDIT : As I had said in my post, soon new languages will be added, and here they are. As of today 3rd Mar 2010 , 4 more Indian languages added - Gujarati, Marathi, Oriya and Punjabi . That makes support for 10 Indian languages now.

 

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Talking of Web version , its as simple as dragging it to your Favorites bar or right clicking and adding it to your favorites. It supports all major browsers - Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, Opera. Just follow the simple instructions. Once added to the favorites bar as in IE or as bookmarks in Firefox -

So whenever you are online and want to type in Hindi , say you are in Twitter web version,and you want to tweet in Hindi, Just click on this Hindi from Favorites Bar (if you are using IE)

So you will see in the tweet text box this symbol -

 

And you can just start typing, and that button is toggle switch, so whenever you want to switch back to English, just click on it.

Or if you are in Bing or Google or Chatting within Gmail, follow the same procedure.

 

 

 

Now talking of Desktop version, you’ll have to install it for the language you require. Once installed, just follow the instructions given in Getting started. If you are installing it on XP , then you may be asked to insert the Windows XP installation media during this process. Windows 7 comes pre-installed with Complex language support.

Once the desktop versions for various languages installed,  you’ll see -

Once you select the language , it will show the current language

 

All these have been neatly explained step-by-step in Getting Started page. So in whichever application you want say   MS-Word, you can start typing, 'of the applications in which Hindi is being used -

Or in Messenger

or in a twitter Client like Seesmic -

Or in Windows Live Mail

or you can prepare PowerPoint Presentations slides in Hindi -

For any query, please check the FAQ page.

Its really fun and easy to type in Hindi. I enjoy it very much tweeting in Hindi, give it a try now.

Why there is no Office 13 ?

Microsoft is full of oddities and little known answers to mysterious questions. Office 2007 was the 12 the version, that is office 12 and the next is Office 2010, its version is Office 14. There’s no office 13 , But Why ? Find out the answer in this ‘But Why’ video -

 

 

Channel 9 - There is no Office 13 - But Why?

Bloom Box - Energy Machine Unveiled

A Product Promising to Deliver 100kW of Power from a Box the Size of a Parking Space. K.R. Sridhar-  Inventor Unveils Much-Hyped Device That Makes Energy From Air, Natural Gas

Bloom Energy's K.R. Sridhar, holding up fuel cells that are key components of the so-called "Bloom box."  (CBS)

image courtesy – CBS

 

Watch the video here-

Watch CBS News Videos Online

 

How Bloom Works - http://c0688662.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/downloads_pdf_How_it_Works.pdf

For complete story please check the Source.

SOURCE: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/24/eveningnews/main6239941.shtml

[Fix] Windows 7 update to support SD cards that are larger than 32 GB

Consider the following scenario:

• You connect a Secure Digital (SD) card that is larger than 32 GB to a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
• You try to format the SD card, or try to check its properties.

In this scenario, the capacity of the SD card is reported incorrectly.

This issue occurs because the capacity of SD cards that are larger than 32 GB is calculated incorrectly in Windows 7 and in Windows Server 2008 R2.
Information about the capacity of SD cards is provided by the Card Specific Data (CSD) register. If the capacity of an SD card is equal to or lower than 32 GB, the "C_SIZE" (device size reserved) field in the CSD register is 12 bits long (with 10 bits high, and 2 bits low). If the capacity of an SD card is greater than 32 GB, the "C_SIZE" field in the CSD register is 22 bits long (with 6 bits high, and 16 bits low).
In Windows 7 and in Windows Server 2008 R2, the capacity of SD cards that are equal to or lower than 32 GB is calculated correctly. However, for SD cards that are larger than 32 GB, the high bits are shifted incorrectly by 6 bits instead of 16 bits. Therefore, the capacity is calculated incorrectly.

Here’s the Fix for it, an update for it -

Update for Windows 7 (KB976422)

Install this update to support Secure Digital (SD) cards that are larger than 32 GB. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Note This issue also occurs on a computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, Please refer to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=976422

Dalai Lama joins twitter – Yes, its verified account !

Yesterday I saw the twitter CEO, Evan Williams tweeting about his meeting with Dalai Lama and suggesting him to be on twitter.

And today His Holiness Dalai Lama’s twitter account @DalaiLama was listed and badged with ‘Verified Account’

It says:” Welcome to the official twitter page of the Office of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.”

Follow him at http://twitter.com/dalailama 

So is it time for China to ban twitter also ?

Free ebook: Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions (Second Edition)

Mitch Tulloch has updated his free ebook of last year; it’s now updated for Windows Server 2008 R2. You can now download Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions, From the Desktop to the Datacenter in XPS format here and in PDF format here.

Six chapters adding up to 466 pages. (size: XPS format:22.6MB    PDF format: 10.4MB)

Download links:  XPS format   PDF format

(Source: Microsoft Press Blog)

Get this Free ebook from Microsoft Press now !

For other Free ebooks posted earlier please check - http://vasudevg.blogspot.com/search/label/books

Bill Gates on energy: Innovating to zero!

At TED2010, Bill Gates unveils his vision for the world's energy future, describing the need for "miracles" to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he's backing a dramatically different type of nuclear reactor. The necessary goal? Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.

 

Google now providing an option to hide or disable Buzz

Google has started providing option in Gmail to disable Buzz or to hide Buzz. It also has option not to show the lists of people you are following on your public profile.

But is it too late after its Privacy Flaw ?

Click on image to Zoom

Use Bing, if you want to know about Winter Olympics

Many, many of us do not know about various sports , games being featured in ongoing Winter Olympics 2010. Sports and Games in the regular Olympics are well known and popular in most part of the world but Winter Olympics features sports which are very curious and we can learn a lot of new things about them. The best way is Bing. Bing is featuring 4 images a day , related to these Winter Olympics 2010 during the games. And the ‘hotspots’ on the bing homepage takes you to treasure of information.

Google also is providing its Daily Doodle on Olympics which takes you to what’s happening , latest medals tally etc. But nothing of the sort of info provided by Bing. Bing not only does all this providing latest medal tally, results etc but also enriches your knowledge on these curious Winter games.

For example, few days back Google had this doodle -

 

So one doesn’t know what it is? Can’t recognize what it is.  Its the ancient sport called Curling, but what it is? Many of us don’t know. It’ll be hard way to find out what’s it all about. I came to know about it from today’s Bing Homepage.

And compare it with today’s Bing page showing this sport of Curling-

 

Bing not only provides these stunning sports and games picture but via its hotspots one can learn, what’s this ancient sport of Curling is. As this is what one of the hotspot links shows- Chess masters don't use terms like sheets, stones, and sweeping.So why do they call it chess on

Go to the Bing Homepage and start enriching your knowledge about strange, curious, interesting sports and games in Winter Olympics. And what’s more Bing is providing 4 images a day during the Olympics and you can always scroll through back images with its option. Bing NOW !!

MSE (1959) now available on Microsoft download center

Microsoft has released the Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) current build 1959 on the Microsoft download center today.

“…this makes it a bit easier for those who need to go through
re-installs...no longer needing to start from scratch with the beta (1676)
build listed on Connect, and then waiting for it to upgrade.”

You can download it from here -

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=e1605e70-9649-4a87-8532-33d813687a7f

 

Btw for those who are new to MSE -

Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

I would highly recommend this as its very light, one of the best in catching viruses, spyware and it provides high quality anti-virus protection and its FREE.

Watch videos to help you get the most from Microsoft Security Essentials -

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/support.aspx

Amazing Tiger Mosaic with Deep Zoom

Check out this Tiger mosaic image comprising of hundreds of photos of the many threatened habitats and species around the world. This has been made using Deep Zoom technology.

 

Please go to http://www.fauna-flora.org/tiger_mosaic.php  for the amazing experience. Click and roll your mouse to zoom in or move around the images easily, or use the tool bar.

(Source: @shanselman )

EDIT: Thanks to Steve Clayton , here’s a small video clip of it, but to experience it yourself , please check the above link.

 

BSNL 3G for Bangalore soon and BSNL new Broadband plans

Its already late for Bangalore getting the BSNL 3G service. BSNL Bangalore has announced that its launching 3G mobile services shortly, in this month only, Feb2010. And has started ‘Privilege Customer Offer’ for its landline customers providing following offers –

Free 50min of Local/STD Video calls

Free 500 Mb of data download to access internet, watch mobile TV etc

Free subscription to mobile TV for 1 month

For more details visit any Customer service center or call http://www.bangaloretelecom.com/new_csc.htm

 

Some features of 3G -

High speed broadband on mobile.

Download speed of upto 3.6 Mbps

Mobile TV

Video calls and Video conferencing

BSNL 3g is offering video/voice calls at 30p/min  (100p = 1 INR)

Also BSNL Bangalore  has launched some more new BSNL Broadband plans-

Click on the image to zoom

http://www.bangaloretelecom.com/dataone/bbplans.html

Source: http://www.bangaloretelecom.com/

More details on 3G here : http://bsnl.co.in/service/3G/3GHomepage.htm

UPDATE: BSNL 3G in Bangalore being launched TODAY !! (19th Feb 2010) A big Ad given in the Newspaper.

Useful links for Windows Phone 7 Series

Windows Phone 7 Series was introduced at Mobile World Congress today. Here are variety of resources pulled together to help you -

• Windows Phone on the Microsoft News Center
• Press Release
• An interview with Andy Lees, senior vice president of Microsoft's Mobile Communications Business
• A video that goes behind the scenes of the Windows Phone 7 Series design
• The Windows Phone 7 Series web site
• Windows Phone on Twitter
• Windows Phone on Facebook
• Windows Phone channel on You Tube

And  finally a great Channel 9 video interview with Joe Belfiore,  corporate vice president of Windows Phone Program Management

New contents will be linked here as and when are available, so keep checking.

 

(Source: The Official Microsoft Blog )

First Look: Windows Phone 7 Series Hands on Demo

This is it! What you've all been waiting for: your first look at Windows Phone 7. Corporate Vice President of Windows Phone Program Management Joe Belfiore gives us a full demo of the announcements being made today at Mobile World Congress, including:

 

• The new user experience
• Integration with social networks like Facebook
• Internet Explorer
• Photos, videos, and music
• E-mail and texting
• GPS and maps
• Search integration
• Hardware standards

 

Watch the video at : http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LauraFoy/First-Look-Windows-Phone-7-Series-Hands-on-Demo/

Windows Phone 7 series Features video

 

Source: http://www.windowsphone7series.com/

Windows Phone 7 Series demo

(Source: http://www.windowsphone7series.com/)

Bing to rotate 4 images a day during 2010 Olympics, Google with daily doodle

Microsoft Canada had tweeted that

“…#Bing Homepage will rotate 4 images a day during #Olympics…..”

So will get to see 4 magnificent pictures of Winter Olympics 2010 during the Ongoing Olympics.

 

 

Even Google is coming with its daily Olympic 201 Doodles, but the doodles look dull compared to magnificent colorful bing images with their Hotspots to increase our knowledge, capturing the true colors of Winter Olympics 2010 at bing .

 

Just search Winter Olympics on Bing for important dates, links to the schedule, breaking news, all brought to you conveniently in the form of an Instant Answer.

Also check http://www.nbcolympics.com/

Bing and MSN your Olympics Hub

Add Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool to your blog, website

 

From today, bloggers and site owners can embed the Web version of Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool to their blog, site. This facilitates easy search, form-filling and discussions in your language on your site by anyone who visits it, without requiring them to install anything.

There are 2 modes in which you may enable Indic Language Input on your website: the Opt-out mode and the Opt-in mode.

In the Opt-out mode, all supported input fields on the page are transliteration-enabled except those that you specifically wish to disable. This is recommended when you want most or all of your site to be transliteration-enabled, such as your intra-website search box and various form fields and comments boxes but not, say, a URL or email address field.

In the Opt-in mode, only those input fields are transliteration-enabled that you specify. This is recommended if you want only a few input fields on your site to be transliteration-enabled, such as, say, only a comments box and nothing else.

It only requires to copy-paste HTML code into your website or blog template, and possibly adding an attribute to the opening tag of some HTML controls

Separate instructions for adding the Web version of Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool to your website are available for each language, check the following links for instructions -

 

Bengali  Hindi  Kannada  Malayalam  Tamil  Telugu

 

This service is provided free for non-commercial use only.

(Source: Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool Blog )

Bing Maps’ Augmented-reality demo at TED 2010 – A must watch

In a demo that drew gasps at TED2010, Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos new augmented-reality mapping technology from Microsoft.

(Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 8:14)

 

In the end of the video a very nice demo of WorldWide Telescope (WWT) integration

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/766

http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera.html  Check out the comments, what people are saying about.

 

Blaise Auguera y Arcas from Bing team demos cool Augmented Reality for Bing maps. The Bing team working on an app which is integrating with flickr geo registered imagery for augmented reality.

Augment reality for bing maps is basically taking one view and laying on metadata of other views on top of that.

In the video the Base view that they start with is the street level view from Bing maps. They zoom down to the downtown Seattle and goes to Pike's Place market and shows how the market looks like when Microsoft Bing went there and took pictures and catalogued the first time for the Bing maps. Next he gets flickr geo registered imagery and uses photosynth to connect it to bing maps imagery as these user sourced images overlay on top of existing bing maps images.
Shows how they are integrated in deep way in to the map itself. Photosynth figures out its pictures and corresponds to particular locations in bing maps and overlays on top of it. So map and the real pictures overlaying for better experience.

Next he goes one step further- 
He shows inside of market which has been shot with backpack cameras for bing maps. And then he dials to his camera crew Live in the market, they turn on the camera and starts panning and zooming of the market .Bing maps takes the video and it transposes in real time on top of bing maps. You have to watch it to believe it. Overlaying in real time , these video to the bing maps images.That's amazing !!

 

Check the video Now !!

Bing4Free – Bing images wallpaper Download and Changer

There are number of methods to use beautiful images from Bing as desktop backgrounds. Some of them I had mentioned earlier in this post - Bing Homepage image Tips .

Bing4Free is another bing.com Image Downloader which makes it very easy to get the Bing images and set them as Wallpaper. But it does more than that with its various options. You can schedule it to download wallpaper from Bing.com daily or even hourly. The application also act as wallpaper changer

Its available at http://bing4free.codeplex.com/

 

Here are some of the features of Bing4Free Version 1.0 (Beta) -

>> You can download wallpaper from United States, China, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand (you can extend it by manually adding new country locale in config file)

>> Supports automatic change of wallpaper (you can schedule or disable it)

>> You can manually change selected wallpaper by right-click on the wallpaper thumbnail

For more details, source code and the app please check  http://bing4free.codeplex.com/ 

Btw Bing is working on an option to set automatically, Bing images as desktop backgrounds.

Bing to provide option to set automatically Bing Images as wallpaper

You all must have seen amazing images provided daily by bing homepage and wanted to set them as Desktop background.

Few days back, Bing Team had tweeted that its working on the option of displaying the Bing homepage images as wallpaper automatically, when asked by a Bing user.

This is what Bing tweeted – “…but we r working on it. until then, if u r on Win7, u can set bing images as ur desktop background via control panel. ^mp “

 

And this is what was asked by a bing user on twitter -

Yes, if Bing bring this feature it’ll be nice as many will use this option.

Many people have already created their own methods to do so. check this for it :  Bing Homepage image Tips

and also bing4free - wallpaper downloader + changer

Google says sorry, making changes to Buzz after the Privacy concerns, feedback

We have been hearing lots of voices about the privacy concerns in the new Google Buzz. So Google has acted on it and making various changes to Buzz start-up experience. First is the auto-following that is , Buzz used to follow automatically active people from the Contact lists on the first use of Buzz. This had created lot of concern. So starting this week, instead of an auto-follow model in which Buzz automatically sets you up to follow the people you email and chat with most, Google is moving to an auto-suggest model

For those who have already started using Buzz, over the next couple weeks Google will be showing a similar version of this new start-up experience to give you a second chance to review and confirm the people you're following. If you want to review this list now, just go to the Buzz tab, click "Following XX people" and unfollow anyone you wish.

Other change its making is - Buzz will no longer connect your public Picasa Web Albums and Google Reader shared items automatically

Next change is its providing a Buzz tab to Gmail Settings. From there, you'll be able to hide Buzz from Gmail or disable it completely. This was requested by many.

“….We quickly realized that we didn't get everything quite right. We're very sorry for the concern we've caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback. We'll continue to do so…...”  Google posted on its blog.

These changes are not yet being reflected for buzz users and will be available over the next few days.

Fore more details Please check - A new Buzz start-up experience based on your feedback

Microsoft’s Valentine Lacy Hearts theme for Windows 7

Microsoft has released Valentine Lacy Hearts themepack for Windows 7. It has 4 desktop backgrounds.

Download it from here . Or can go to the Personalization Gallery where you can get many more goodies.

size 1.30 MB

Fix for Message Size Issue in Outlook 2010 Beta

If you are using Outlook 2010 Beta, you probably need this fix because all of your emails are huge. It is fixed in the recent RC, but most people don’t have access (it’s not a public RC).  The Office team has just posted a fix for this issue for folks using the Beta.

Fix for Message Size Issue in Outlook 2010 Beta

Recently, we posted information on the Outlook blog about a bug in the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta that increases the message size of some e-mails messages sent from the Microsoft Outlook 2010 Beta. The Office team has been hard at work building a fix for this issue, which is available immediately.

Download Outlook 2010 Beta fix for 32-bit Office 2010

Download Outlook 2010 Beta fix for 64-bit Office 2010

This fix prevents future messages from consuming unnecessary space, but doesn’t resize existing messages. If you reply or forward an existing message that is affected by this bug, it remains enlarged. To help reduce the impact of large messages on your Inbox and mailbox storage quota, you can also run Conversation Cleanup (new feature in Outlook 2010) on large folders. On the Home tab, in the Delete group, click Clean Up. Also, consider starting new message conversations or threads when possible.

(Source: MSDN blogs)

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit – Feb. Release

Check out the February Release of the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit. This includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2010 features and a variety of framework technologies.

This version of the Training Kit works with Visual Studio 2010 RC and .NET Framework 4 RC.

You can get it from here.

How to show Google Buzz updates on twitter

Google Buzz has created a lot of buzz on the net, though mostly for the wrong reasons like privacy flaw or the name ‘buzz’ itself etc. And I think its the initial excitement which is making people explore the buzz. You all must have also tried what all this buzz about. How long will this excitement last, will the people accept it in the long run? I doubt.

Anyway, Buzz provides option to connect to various sites including twitter so that your tweets gets displayed in Buzz.

 

But how to do the reverse, that is how to show the Buzz updates in your twitter timeline? Here are the steps -

This can be done by using RSS feeds of Buzz updates. Open Buzz, click on your name to show the link to your Google Profile. Click it to open your Google Profile page. And you can see the RSS icon in the address bar

 

Click on the RSS icon and you will get the Google Buzz feed page. Copy this feed URL from the address bar.

And this feed URL can be used in service like twitterfeed .

If you don’t have an account, signup and paste the Google Buzz feed URL.

And in the advanced settings, you can make the post content as ‘description only’ and can uncheck ‘Post link’. You can also keep the ‘Update frequency’ as you want ‘and post up’ to as 1. That’s all.

So whenever you Buzz, these will also be shown in your twitter timeline. btw, I’m sticking to twitter, though will keep exploring the Buzz.