Google Earth Outreach Introduced

Google has launched Google Earth Outreach, a new program designed to help the nonprofit organizations around the world giving the power of Google Earth to illustrate and explain what they do. As a nonprofit organization or a group, you can use Google Earth to capture the work you are doing, the people you are helping and all visually. Just create your own KML files and submit to Google Earth. Several Tutorials and examples help you to know about KML files and creation of KML files. You can find tutorials and examples at Tutorials Section. Know more about KML and the tags used by accessing the KML reference section.There are many categories where your files get placed like

• Social Services
• Environment & Science
•  Public Health
• Education & Culture
• Global Development
• Current Affairs

You can find examples at Google Earth Outreach Showcase. If you want your content to be submitted to Outreach, submit your KML files here.

About Google Earth

Google Earth makes world's geographic information easily accessible and useful by making maps and the power of searching through satellite imagery. Google Earth can be downloaded at http://earth.google.com/

Visual Studio 2005 - Get your Free copy

You can grab a free copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 offered by Microsoft. Visual Studio 2005 has an estimated retail price of $299.00. All you need is just register to Labcast and attend their Labcast series. These series helps you to get in depth knowledge from visual studio experts. Here are some of the labcast subjects

Learn how to

• Modernize and simplify installation of Visual Basic 6.0 applications
• Add new data-bound forms to Visual Basic 6.0 applications
• Introduce simple background threading to Visual Basic 6.0 applications
• View and edit SQL Server™ data
• Create data-centric Web applications with your Visual Basic desktop development skill
• Keep Microsoft Word documents in sync with your database

This offer is for a limited time and attend for any two labcast series and submit the evaluation form for each session, you could win a complementary copy of Visual Studio 2005. Try it out. If you are lucky, you would get the free copy or else you would gain knowledge on Visual Studio 2005. Anyway's, it is beneficial to us.

FireFTP - FTP Extension for Firefox

FireFTP is a firefox extension for free, secure cross-platform FTP client which provides easy access to FTP servers. It's a easy add-on so that, you can transfer files to and fro without leaving the browser. FireFTP offers many features that a normal FTP client provides. Some of the features are

• Quick and efficient
• Multiple login accounts
• Directory comparison
• Synchronizing directories
• SSL encryption
• File hashing
• Resume downloads
• Import/Export list of FTP sites
• Logging

Install FireFTP extension

After installing this extension you can access FireFTP by clicking on Tools menu and selecting FireFTP. Also, FireFTP toolbar extension is also available and can be installed from mozilla site.

Screenshots of FireFTP

Transferring Data quickly and efficiently

Accessing FTP servers made simple

Managing files makes it easy with FireFTP

New Compatibility Feature in Visual Studio 2008

Recently, Microsoft has released it's new version of Visual Studio i.e., Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.  This new version is named as "Orcas". One of the new feature of Visual Studio 2008 is the ability to target multiple versions of .NET framework with your application. One of the problems with Visual Studio 2005 is that it only allows you to develop applications in .NET framework 2.0. It is not compatible to its earlier version of .NET 1.0.

Here comes the nice feature in Orcas. So, if you have an application which is built on .NET framework 2.0, and if you have installed visual studio 2008, you can continue to work on the application built on .NET 2.0. If you want to upgrade your project from .NET 2.0 to 3.0 and .NET 3.5, you can achieve this by simply changing the target framework version in the project properties. This doesn't mean that there wont be upgrade issues to think about, but at least you don't have to change tools and upgrade your projects to see what happens when you upgrade to the latest framework - which should make the upgrade process significantly easier.

Group Chat in Google Talk

Google has integrated Group chatting feature in it's IM Google Talk. Already Google Talk popularity is growing. This IM is also integrated in Google IM as a gadget. It enables us to add Google Talk in our personalized home page.

To start using Group Chat, Logon Google Talk with your gmail account. Start your conversation with a contact, then click on the drop down menu at the top and select Group chat. Add as many contacts to you want. You can launch Google Talk Gadget here. This feature is available only with the Google Talk gadget and hope this would be integrated into the desktop client in future.

Source via [LifeHacker]

Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Silverlight

The current buzz around technology today is Microsoft Silverlight. See my previous article on Moonlight is Linux's Microsoft Silverlight who are unfamiliar with Silverlight. Silverlight has the power of programming animations. Now it goes beyond the simple animations. It has provided to work and integrate with any application and now it has grouped up with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team has developed this application and the demo was presented at TechEd 2007.

What is Microsoft Dynamics CRM?

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management (CRM) solution developed by Microsoft. It is a solution that provides the tools and capabilities needed to create and easily maintain a clear picture of customers, from first contact through to purchase and post-sales. It is a part of the Microsoft Dynamics family of business tools. It offers

• Tight integration with Microsoft Office and Outlook
• Quick and easy access to Data
• Customized workspaces
• Powerful reporting and analysis tools
• Mobile support

You can know further information at Microsoft Dynamics CRM site.

More about the Demo

The above picture shows the demo application. The authors details and his/her related books, pictures and other information are shown in nice animation. Dragging and dropping the pictures gives you detailed information which makes the application more lively. This information is brought from CRM records. This site has the information on the components used in the demo. The source code is also distributed and can be downloaded. Also has a readme file which describes the installation process and steps to run the demo. Download the Source code.

Microsoft Acropolis online Video Tutorials

Microsoft Acropolis is a set of components and tools that make it easier for developers to build and manage modular, business focused, client .NET applications. One great thing about Acropolis is that separation of concerns between presentation and business logic. You can look at the Features of Microsoft Acropolis on my recent articles. Here are some of the videos about Acropolis.

Introduction to Acropolis

Using Acropolis PartPanes

Using the Acropolis Designer

Using Transitions in Acropolis

Acropolis was announced publicly at TechEd 2007. Here are some of the videos about Acropolis at TechEd 2007.

David's talk: Introducing the "Acropolis" Client Application Framework

Kathy's talk: Building Rich Client UI with the "Acropolis" Framework