update: When I tried to contact them via error@google.com I got a “Mail delivery failed” error

Say if you are going to enter in to a world where there are n number of similar applications, how will you attract the users? A great example may be GMail, IMHO they entered to the party when Yahoo and Microsoft where ruling email market. But now GMail is much popular than other email service providers. One reason I could think of for this success is the experience that you get as a user.

Not sure whether anybody has noted this or not but today when was about to send an email to my friend, I got a message box saying “Did you mean to attach files?”

Yes, GMail reminded me to attach the file. I was surprised to see this, GMail has intelligently scanned what I have typed in the email message and gave me suggestion before sending…. WOW!!!!!. I checked whether Yahoo mail has got this feature, not yet. That makes GMail stand-out from others.

Our national animal is fighting for its life. From around 40,000 at the turn of the last century, there are just 1411 tigers left in India.

If we don’t act now, we could lose this part of our heritage forever.
Speak up, blog, share the concern, stay informed… Every little bit helps.

You want to create simple GUI cross platform application without knowing the high level programming languages like C++, Java, C#~(using mono)? XUL is that answer.

Yes it is possible using XUL, the prerequisites  for this is, knowledge of a declarative programming language(like HTML or XHTML, XAML etc…) and JavaScript.

XUL is basic building block of the Firefox UI and as we know Firefox works in Windows, Linux and MAC.

Actually XUL is a language which run on the XULRunner(Gecko) runtime from Mozilla.

If you really wants see how Firefox created this UI, go the FireFox installation folder. Normally it will be “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\”. Under that installation root folder, find a folder named “chrome”. Firefox has packaged the xul files in a zip format and they have renamed it as “.jar”. So look for a file “browser.jar” and rename it to zip. Extract it and have a look at “content\browser\browser.xul”. This file holds the UI definition for Firefox.

To learn more about XUL, refer these web sites

1. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/
2. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-xul1/

You can share or relive a vacation destination or explore a distant museum or landmark. With nothing more than a digital camera and some inspiration, you can use Photosynth to transform regular digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience. Anybody who sees your synth is put right in your shoes, sharing in your experience, with detail, clarity and scope impossible to achieve in conventional photos or videos.

- photosynth.com

Below is one of the synth I liked most, you have to install a plugin to view this

Note: this plugin doesn’t support google chrome

Silverlight 2 is out now with new features like rich set of controls, improved Text Rendering capabilities, rich networking support including calling secured(SSL) services etc…

Moreover Microsoft is partnered with Soyatec to sponsor tools for developing Silverlight applications using cross platform Eclipse development platform. eclipse2SL is first of that kind.

eclipse2SL is an open source tools integrated with the Eclipse development platform that enable Java developers to use the Eclipse platform to create applications that run on the Microsoft Silverlight runtime platform. Specifically, the project will be an Eclipse plug-in that works with the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) to provide both a Silverlight development environment and greater interoperability between Silverlight and Java, to facilitate the integration of Silverlight-based applications into Java-based web sites and services.

As an addition to the control set Microsoft is releasing Silverlight Toolkit by end of this month with more UI controls.

Silverlight 2 resources

To get the basic understanding go to Get started

And here are some good articles written by Scott Guthrie

There was no way for me  to narrow my search because I couldn’t select any of options listed under "Narrow your  Search" section, but after sometime i.e after doing some scrolling and switching tabs checkboxes appeared on the left side of this list

Initially I thought that, it will a problem with the way that page was developed(may be some JavaScript issues), but when I opened the same page in Firefox(3.0.1) it was rendering properly, even in IE 6 is rendered that page correctly.

  I think this is a Chrome bug; I have reported this , follow this URL http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=3151 if you have experienced same problem.

But the site is working very well in IE6 and firefox

public override object EditValue(System.ComponentModel.ITypeDescriptorContext context, IServiceProvider provider, object value)
        {
            if (provider != null)
            {
                editorService = provider.GetService(typeof(IWindowsFormsEditorService)) as IWindowsFormsEditorService;
            }

            if (editorService != null)
            {
                DockableItemCollection items = value as DockableItemCollection;
                if (items == null)
                {
                    items = new DockableItemCollection();
                }
                DockableCollectionEditor itemEditor = new DockableCollectionEditor(items, editorService);
                editorService.ShowDialog(itemEditor);
                value = itemEditor.Items;
                context.OnComponentChanged();
            }

            return value;
        }

I hope the above sample code is highlighted and formatted properly

Check this girl http://cubo.cc/