KoolBuddhi's Blog

Cool Official GMail Themes

koolb — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:43:42 +0000

Google have just activate the Themes in GMail. Now you can enhance the look and feel of GMail without any 3rd party tools. There are 30 cool themes including “terminal” theme which show the GMail like are you accessing it from old terminal screen. These themes are not only color customizations; some themes rain on your mailbox, some changes the image and some with fun characters etc..

So check out your gmail settings for the themes tab to select your favorite theme.

KPI viewer Vista gadget development on Windows 2008 64Bit

koolb — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:24:15 +0000

I wanted to display some KPIs as a vista gadget. I had to use the PC which I already setup SQL SERVER, MOSS and PPS on a Windows 2008 Server. I googled to find a way to setup Vista sidebar on Windows 2008 and found a great post from reggies blog with simple instructions. Sidebar worked like a charm on Windows 2008 after following the instructions on the reggies blog.
I also found a sample Vista gadget code from hanselman.com. Download and copy the code to gadget directory and add the gadget to the side bar. The method he has followed is to get the RSS feed from Sharepoint KPI List and setup the feed URL through the options dialog. After setting up the RSS feed the options dialog, it displayed the message “connecting” but nothing happened. I went through the Javascript code and couldn’t find any problem. Next, I setup the same gadget on a Vista Box and it worked without a problem.
I identified the problem is in the Windows 2008 and looked for a way to debug the code. Vista Gadgets cannot be debugged in a normal way and I found some good information from Keith Elder’s blog and howtogeek.com on setting up the debugging. When I debug, the problem was in the line where the XMLHttp.open ” g_XMLHttp.open(’GET’, g_WsUrl + “&kalle=1234″, true);” and it was throwing an exception saying “Microsoft JavaScript runtime error: Permission denied”. But everything was fine on IE and there cannot be a problem with JavaScript engine. so I looked google for a solution. Couldn’t find the exact solution but some one has resolve the issue by coping vista gadget files to a FAT partition and coping them back to NTFS partition. I understood that the issue is not in the JavaScript but with file permissions. When I right click on the files and I got the following dialog.

I saw something different as there is a Unblock button. I pressed the Unlock button for the all the files related to Vista gadget and retried again. This time it work with out a problem. This is the first time I have come across the “Unblock” button scenario. I found some information on the “Unblock” functionality after some searching. If you get “Microsoft JavaScript run time error: Permission denied” again, don’t forget to check file permissions first, specially on Windows 2008 and Visa.

I’m Back

koolb — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:23:23 +0000

I was ignoring my blog for past 2-3 months. I was mostly in to flickr and photography after I bought my new camera, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi. Madhawa helped me to bring it down from Canada while he was coming to back to Sri Lanka. I was really excited and I spend more time reading on the photography and went on 2-3 trips to get some good photographs. I have updated my flickr with the new photos and I’m learning new things every day.
Work wise I got a job offer from another company with a different challenge. I accepted the offer as I was expecting a some change for some time. So end of next week I’ll be leaving Kandysoft and joining IronOne.
It was a very hard decision for me as I have a very long history working almost 9 years with some of the guys there. Everyone was very good friend and I really enjoyed nice atmosphere which we build there.
But I think it’s the time to move to a different challenge and I had to take the hard decision. So bye bye Kandysoft.

Google Chrome (BETA) for Windows is now available for download

koolb — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:53:43 +0000

Google Chrome is now available to download you can download it from http://www.google.com/chrome

Here are some of the images of the installation.

Overcoming Flickering in PopupExtenders

koolb — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:19:44 +0000

When ASP.NET Ajax popup extenders are used sometime you may see a small flickering in the form. You can avoid this by hiding the panel used by the popup controls using the following code block

PanelPopupControl.Style.Add(”display”, “none”);

Process is like a bicycle

koolb — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:13:46 +0000

Process is like a bicycle. You have to use it to get to the destination. But what happens in most cases is to go to the destination by hook or crook and then go back to origin and carry the bicycle on your head to prove that bicycle was used!

Thanks thushara for the quote

Hurray!. New Broadband Operator

koolb — Thu, 01 May 2008 10:20:43 +0000

Sri Lanka Electroteks to start broadband, voice in May
Electroteks chief B A C Abeywardene says the service will use CDMA
(code division multiple access) based technology to provide up to 1Mbps
speeds and voice calls priced around 1.50 rupees a minute, which is
about half the current tariffs.

ADSL (asymmetrical digital subscriber line) services are now priced at
just under 20 dollars a month, but Electroteks says it will give higher
download speeds.

- LBO

According to the above LBO news item Electroteks will launch its Broadband network in this may. They promised to provide better service using CDMA technology for the same price.

Following are some of my thoughts which need be considered by the new operator when packaging and costing their products.

Better QOS
Most of the European operators publish their sharing ratio of the bandwidth with their packages(e.g 1:50 or 1:10). This way the customer knows what they are paying for. But in Sri Lanka operators promised to give the sun and the moon but in reality the connections are very slow and you don’t know the sharing ratio of the service you are getting.

Opportunity to select packages based on the needs
Currently SLT and Dialog only offers DSL connections. In SLT ADSL you don’t know your sharing ratio and you don’t have the option to go for a better package if you want a good service by paying more(Specially for corporate customers). End of the day you are in the same bandwidth pools(512Mbpspool or 2Mbps pool) what ever your need is.
Same time Dailog broadband offers the maximum of 4Mbps links advertising no quotas. But they shamelessly limit your bandwidth using a Fair Usage Policy. Quota for a 4Mbps packages is 16GB. They even offer you an IP even to run your own Mail or Web servers. If you divide the quota by 20days, you will get roughly 800MB per day. Whats the purpose of having a 4Mbps link with 800MB quota per day?
The above operator are very unreasonable as they don’t offer alternative packages to customers who wants more. Therefore everybody needs to stick to the same package what ever their need is.

Lower broadband equipment and setup cost
Dialog setup cost is Rs. 5000 which is very unreasonable.

Fathers of Software Engineering

koolb — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 04:24:12 +0000

Fathers of different flagship software inventions of all time.

Father of Javascript
Father of Java
Father of C
Father of PERL
Father of C++
Inventor of SQL & Creator of RDBMS
Father of PHP
Author of Structs, JSF, Tomcat
Inventor of Data Flow Diagram
Father of Python
Father of MySQL

(Click to see a large image)
Thank you Anjana for forwarding this image to me.

eBooster - boost your XP, Sinhala interface

koolb — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:07:46 +0000

eBoostr brings the benefits of Windows Vista’s ReadyBoost to XP. eBoostr could be perfect for XP users who want a little extra memory but don’t want to install RAM, or for laptop users who have no way to increase memory. Following is a comment from the lifehacker post which proves its performance

Ok guys, I just tested my Lenovo T61 laptop with the eBoostr

w/Cruzer SanDisk U3 2m memory stick.

For my full system specs, see this:
[screencast.com]

Here’s the benchmark WITHOUT eBoostr:
[screencast.com]

Here’s the benchmark WITH eBoostr:
[screencast.com]

I ran both right after system reboot with no major apps open other than my usual (light) startup list (anti-virus, and a very short list of must-load startups).

As you can see, there is some improvement but it doesn’t seem to be major…

what do you think, should I keep it?

author : avniassa

Special thing I noticed was Sinhala was available in the language selection box. This is the first software from a international vendor, which I have seen Sinhala in the language selection. This is how it looked when I changed the language to Sinhala ( I was so excited and even took this screenshot even before I restart the PC )

Sinhala interface

English Interface

You can also grab a copy from Filenetworks

Introduction to WiMAX

koolb — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 02:24:43 +0000

Here is a very good presentation on WiMAX technology.