It’s very easy to say that ” I loved reading Pro Silverlight 3 in C#
book and worth my time and money”. The book is very easy to read. All the chapters are arranged systematically, that way it’s easy for readers at every level. It starts with explaining the history of Silverlight and slowly introduces all the basic concepts necessary to develop Silverlight applications.

 I loved that the author has a “What’s New” sections wherever applicable, that way for people like me who is upgrading their skills from Silverlight 2 can jump to those areas if they are only interested in the new features of Silverlight. As far as the depth, the author has done a very good job of explaining all the important concepts and almost all the controls available out of the box and controls available in Silverlight Toolkit.

 What I liked is that the author also mentions the limitations if any or cautions and because I have implemented multiple projects in Silverlight, I can tell that all those tips , cautions and Notes  can save you lot of time and frustration. For example, the mouse wheel event only fires in IE and not in other browsers or how to handle exceptions at an application level and how VS handles them when you are in debug mode vs. release mode. Those types of tips are very useful when implementing a feature and when you put the app in productions. 

All the new features like Out of Browser, Navigation are discussed. Individual chapters  are dedicated to Animation and Sound, Video and  Deep Zoom to go deep in these areas which was very useful for me personally. 

.NET Ria Services is slightly touched, not in depth as its relatively new which can be slightly disappointing for those who want to learn about it .Data Annotations and Data Validation for the forms  and other Data Controls are discussed in depth.

I wished the author has talked a little bit more about  Rest Services as the web Client has some limitations in areas of REST,  Frameworks like Prism and Caliburn and Commonly used design patterns like MVVM  and other TDD  best practices in context of Silverlight.

For that reason, I would say that this book is more suitable for entry level to mid level Silverlight developers. But if you are completely new to Silverlight or just touched few areas in developing Silverlight, I seriously recommend this book to get strong in all core areas of developing Silverlight applications.

It all started by a dramatic moment of me throwing the keyboard as the wireless range is out for my wireless keyboard when i lean back on sofa while browsing net on my lcd tv in living room. i was looking at buying bluetooth mac keyboard and magic mouse.But i dont want to spend that much money. i was lookin at my wife’s iphone and then there is an idea. i was like how come the touch surface of these smart phones be used as mouse. then i got greedy, i was like why stop at mouse, i  can use keyboard too.

Then ofcourse i searched for remote in app store. ofcourse there is an app for that. i bought hipporemote for 4 bucks.it solved my problem. i can use my iphone/itouch as magic mouse on trackpad. it even has profiles for media center and other longlist of commonly used apps. the screen changes that way i can easily navigate through the selected app.

i use media center to watch netflix movies. so i can use hipporemote yo easily navigate. in addition there is login profiles that way when you go to a particular site. you can login using login profile. you can even record macros. so check hipporemote app on iphone store. also visit their site at  http://hipporemote.com/

in short for $5 bucks, i saved 100 bucks . All i need when i am browsing internet on my tv is my iphone or i touch or android phone.that will be keyboard, mouse heck magic mouse and more.

by the way, this whole blog entry is typed using iphone as keyboard and mouse while kicking back in sofa and using my lcd tv as screen.i love technology. makes life so much easier.

Here is a link to Developing RSS Reader IPhone App using Monotouch video tutorial

I love C# and is my primary choice. Having coded in objective C for couple of months, its lot easier to code in C# and one can be very productive and can use all the good features of C#. For example in this tutorial I have used Linq to XML to parse the feeds.

Download the sourcecode here.

The following tutorial helped me a lot when I am trying to deploy my first iphone app to my device. Check this tutorial here

http://mobiforge.com/developing/story/deploying-iphone-apps-real-devices

I was trying to develop an iphone app and i want to use sqllite. Since this is the first time i am using the sqllite. I dont know which tools are available. Upon googling, didnt find any free one other than the sourceforge. I was like common guyz. So i thought why not develop an air based app that way it can run on both windows and mac. Before i started developing I googled and guess what some one has already done it.

Here is the link http://coenraets.org/blog/2008/02/sqlite-admin-for-air-10/. That’s awesome. Most of the times when i get an idea for some product development, I google it and I am not amazed any more that some one has already done that. It’s amazing that we all think differently but yet we achieve the same thing.

It’s amazing that how some start-ups experience growing pains when its business is growing at a rapid pace. If the leaders of that business are not looking forward and thought about the infrastructure that is needed to face the rapid growth, then the business can come down to its needs in no time.

All the time and money that is spent to make business successful can be  fruitless if the leaders are not visionaries.

From what i have seen, some of the  common mistakes that business owners do in this aspect is being reactive rather than proactive . Also not able to identify that there is a growth in a business.  They will be too proud of there success and they will making plans to celebrate but some times forget to plan for scaling the infrastructure needed to support the growing business needs.Here are a few gotchas.

1. Not streamlining processes.
2. Not hiring enough people
3. Not delegating some menial tasks
4. Not empowering people to take decisions
5. Not investing back
6. Not caring about customers

Can you mention some growing pains in your organizations and how people succeeded or failed in such scenarios?

I feel good when i know learn something new and apply it in my daily life. Most people i know , some times myself, feel bad or bored but do nothing and waste our days by spending our time in doing unnecessary thing like watching movies.

Here are some of the things that I do to get wisdom

• Read/ listen  leadership books
• Listen to leaders speeches
• Read or watch religious books/ movies and think about the fundamentals of life and its purpose as a whole
• Read self improvement books
• sharing experiences with people who are smarter and get there point of view on some aspects

How else can we improve our wisdom?

Have you ever observed that there are some things that will pump us up and some events in life that drain us. In a day, if there are events that pump us up, we feel great and some days when events that drain our energy levels we feel bad. And when the energy levels are low , every small decision we should make looks like a big deal and that upsets us and people around us. I didn’t observe this phenomena until recently my professor Chris Mead  in my leadership & ethics class talked about it. But if there are some events that we can generate ourselves to pump us up like Music, workout we can make our days better. Most of us just leave it upon luck or say bad day but we can fix it.

Top 4 things that pump me up

1. Crossing items in my to do list.

2. Learn  something new in technology especially robotics and communication and thinking about start up  ideas.

3. Listen to music

4. Talk to people who are successful and share common aspirations or get inspiration from them, or just go workout.

Top 4 things that drain me

1. Politics in office.

2. A non productive day

3. Work with short temper people

4. Watching TV

So when i feel drained , i listen to audio books about self improvement or listen to music  or get some things done in my to do list.

That’s how I fix my day if it is a bad day. And hope you got the idea, we can make our days better by doing things that pump us up.

I listened to this audio book “Get Things Done”  few months ago and I have to say it is working for me very well. Since I think too much and want to achieve a lot other than my work, i used to get cranky when I was not able to complete few items or forget them. But after practicing some steps mentioned in this book, I am doing lot better in organizing my thoughts, actions and execution. 

My favourite one of all is the “2 minute” rule. If a task takes that 2 minutes and you have everything you want to complete the task, just get that task done. This is helping me a lot in keeping my mind very clear. 

I am writing this blog entry following the same rule too. Just today i found out a web site called nozbe,  a fabulous online organizer that’s designed around David Allen’s methodology for getting things done. This site also has an app for IPhone or Itouch. I just started using it. Will let you guys know if it is working for me. In between if you are interested to know the tutorials for getting this done, follow this link. Good luck and now go and get some things done.

After loosing my father, I pondered on life and its purpose. Life is short and to get satisfaction and meaning out of it, we need to work on a worthy cause and serve others. We need the support of our family to serve that worthy cause we choosed to devote our life for.  After we agree on how we want to spend our life and on the meaning of life, we should make a short, brief and clear mission statement that simply remind us from time to time of what our purpose is.

 

Family Values and Mission : To make each individual of the family, an honest and productive citizen of planet earth and create an environment where the seven classical virtues can be learnt and practiced, while serving others & ourselves and making our life’s better and valuable. To make our life easier, and utilize our valuable  time for  greater good.

Life its meaning and purpose

What do we devote our life ?

To utilize the skills that are gifted to us by god to serve others. Help others who are in need. Mentor others to lead a simple and spiritual life. Make life easier that way people can have more family and spiritual time to grow from both inside and outside and make this world a better place to live for future generations.

How our life been spent?

Improving ourselves and teach others about what we learnt. Using our competence to serve a worthy cause. 

Personally I am still searching for that one worthy cause. Only one thing that I am clear is that the cause has to do with serving others and making  life easier. But I want to narrow it down even more to have a clear goal. Do you have any suggestions?