Be a Microsoft MVP

Microsoft MVP Award is a program that recognizes exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who voluntarily share their high quality, real world expertise in any Microsoft technology with others. There are no exams to write. MVP nominations are reviewed by a panel of Microsoft personnel...

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Usability Tips

Smashing Magazine offers 8 usability check-points you should be aware of -Avoid Pop-upsDon’t change users’ window size.Don’t use too small font sizes.Don’t have unclear link text.Avoid dead links.Have at most one animation per page.Make it easy to contact you.Open internal links in the same window.The...

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Free ASP.NET Charting Tools

Luckily for ASP.NET developers there are some cool free ASP.NET Charting Tools that are as good as the commercial ones.1. Microsoft Chart controls -Some interesting facts:Microsoft acquired Dundas Data Visualization Intellectual Property in April 2007 and is integrating this technology in different...

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HOW TO create your own IE8 Accelerator

Roughly a year after it has been in Beta, IE8 was released last week. It is more standards compliant than the versions before it. This is good news for web developers as they won't have to write browser specific code. IE8 also introduces new features like Accelerators and Web Slices that will surely...

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Free Programmable & Searchable Dictionaries

If you had to build a custom spell check functionality or something similar for your application, there are thankfully free Dictionaries in text and database format.FOLDOC is a searchable dictionary available as a text file and offered under the GNU Free Documentation License. You can use a database...

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Reach out for the stars with WWT

If you are fond of astronomy, you shouldn't miss Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope (WWT)The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope—bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes...

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HOW TO perform mouse-like navigation with your keyboard

If ever your mouse stops working midway while working on your PC, the Mouse Keys feature can be a savior.In Windows Vista, go to Control Panel, Ease of Access Center and in the second panel of the dialog box that opens up, you will find a section "Control the mouse with the keyboard". Select the check...

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Accidental Discoveries

Did you know Anesthesia, Iodine, Penicillin, the Telephone, Photography, Mauve Dye, Nylon, Vulcanized Rubber are all accidental discoveries? I enjoyed reading the funny stories behind them and this reminded me of how I ran into or discovered (if I may call it so as it is on a different note than the...

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Web Platforms

Web Platform refers to an API or SDK provided to external developers by a product to build applications on.Top 10 Web Platforms of 2008 is the tenth in the "Top 10" article series on web based products compiled by ReadWriteWeb -iPhone SDKOpenSocial, an open API framework from Google for social networks...

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HOW TO customize Search Engine results programmatically

All the popular search engines offer APIs to programmatically access results. The Live Search API 2.0 reportedly serves more than 3 billion queries/month.Google offers specialized searches like Local Search and Blog Search that narrow down the scope of results. These specific category search results...

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HOW TO execute a SELECT query Without Column Names

A developer posted an unusual T-SQL question on an online Message Board I frequent. He wanted to know how to find a column's value without specifying the column name. I guessed syscolumns would be part of the puzzle and rather than construct the query I searched & found a complete working snippet...

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The History of Microsoft

Channel 9 is running a series called "The History of Microsoft" that chronicles the struggles and successes of Microsoft covering a year per episode starting with it's inception in 1975 (the same year I was born). There is a new episode every Thursday with rare foota...

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IE8 Developer Tools Tips & Tricks - #6: Count links in a page

Google Webmaster Guidelines recommend keeping the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).Matt Cutts explains that although not following "100 links" recommendation will not result in Google automatically considering the page to be spammy, it is a good idea to follow the guideline...

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HOW TO speed up a ASP.NET AJAX web app

Just like making web pages cross-browser doesn't have a straight-forward solution, speeding up your ASP.NET AJAX based web application requires an understanding of it's internal aspects. Outlined below are some performance tips compiled from various sources -UpdatePanels can sometimes be dangerous....

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New Free ASP.NET Learning Resources

Kobe is a getting started resource kit on planning, architecting, and implementing Web 2.0 style apps and services using the Microsoft Web Platform.(Kobe also is a prominent port city in Japan and the name of a popular American basketball player)The new ASP.NET MVC framework is about to ship and Scott...

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Windows 7 will let users turn off Windows Features, IE

In December 2007, Opera filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission against Microsoft to unbundle IE from Windows.PPK asks a pertinent question -Opera, how would an end user get the Internet to work on his shiny new unbundled Windows computer? Which icon does he click? Which program starts...

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Beat the Recession with Tip Jar

Wikipedia has long leveraged the wisdom of crowds. Similarly Google's Tip Jar, probably built during some Googler's 20% time, gathers money-saving tips in one place and invites people to rank them in order of usefulness with the expectation that over time, the best and most useful tips will rise to...

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Geniuses

In the Forbes article "How to be a Genius", Scott Berkun mentions two personal attributes among two others that aspiring geniuses can take note of -Be obsessed with workDon't strive for fame in your own lifetimeAn aggrieved reader sarcastically pointed out if being male should also be a criterion as...

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