Personally, 2008 has been quite productive for me in the sense that I did couple of projects in MVC (using CodeIgniter) and was able to go through the basic of LINQ as my intern project was based on ASP.NET + LINQ + SQL Server (the project is still incomplete and a bit buggy as well). It was 2008 that I wrote my first unit tests and since then I have been learning and trying to follow TDD approach. And yes I have not forgot Obama got elected the same year and finally I passed my under-graduation in Information Management (though still not received my final transcript).

But 2008 was kinda nightmare for most parts of the world. Shrinking stock market, booming unemployment, near collapse of Wall Street and global financial system (financial power house like Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, AIG, WaMu, Citi Group are gone or being bailed out by the US government), terrorist attack in Mumbai and overall the whole world experience slow down and recession with financial crisis as never seen the great depression of 1930’s.

My short list of resolutions for 2009

• Design Patterns, IoC, MVC
• Test Driven Development
• Developing REST based application(s)
• Ruby and/or Iron Ruby (But I am not so sure I will get enough time to learn and implement Ruby)
• Maintaining the current momentum of blogging + tweeting
• Getting Zend Certification

And here are few wish lists for 2009

• Get involved in some kind of open source project
• Want to see end of this financial crisis (very low possibility though)
• Want to see some permanent and effective solution of energy crisis in Nepal (feels like I am wishing too much)

I guess my list of new year resolutions are kinda achievable but I can’t do anything about my wish lists because it’s human nature always having desire to get extra and in fact impossible stuffs

So, folks wish me best of luck!

Finally, Happy New Year 2K9 to all!

Most of the people around the globe use social networking applications like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and so on to communicate and be in touch with the person they know and give value. This is the social web and we are the one who make them. Creating, sharing and collaborating have been the principle doctrines that drive the Web 2.0 or the Social Web. Like many other people like you, I also use quite a few social networking and user-driven applications. I have a big fan of Facebook like millions of people are around the globe.

Different people use Facebook for different reasons. May be some would like to play games with their friends, share information, make formal or informal communication with their buddies and keen eye on others social activity. I especially use Facebook to share the information (especially related to technology, politics and business) and collaborate on these stuffs. But I have not seen many people doing so may be because they do not like to or they don’t know how to do it. For the people who would like to use Facebook as I do, I hope this post may be quite useful.

I use quite a few social applications and information aggregators beside Facebook like Delicious, Digg, Google Reader, Last.fm, Flickr, Google Picasa, Hulu and so on with also creating  my own contents in the form of Blogging (My own site) and Micro-blogging (Twitter). One of the main reason why I like Facebook is that it lets me integrate these platforms and applications with ease and let me to share with my friends.

Integrating with Facebook

Integrating other popular social applications and aggregators is quite easy.

• In the wall section of your Facebook profile page go to Import tab.
  
• Then you will notice something like this:
  
  Since I have already imported number of available sites so, I can just edit edit these sites.
• Now by just clicking in one of these sites that you use you will be able to import your activities to the Facebook.
      
  By entering your Flickr and delicious user name you will be able to import your information and stuffs of the respected sites.
• This is what you will notice after import is successful:
  
  
  
  I have now imported my blog, Delicious bookmarks and Flickr photos
• After some unspecified time (may be hours or so) you will begin to notice the activities of the respected sites being imported in your profile page and also in your friends’ news feed.
  
  
  Here are my Hulu video link with the rating I have done and Delicious bookmarks activities in my profile page.
• Besides these you can also integrate your Twitter account and facebook. Here is the link.
  
  If you don’t know what twitter is, Twitter is a popular micro-blogging service and quite similar to Facebook’s Status service. One of the main advantage of Twitter is that you can port your twitter statuses or informally called tweets in different platforms and applications. More information here.

I hope you will find these information useful and productive. As usual comments and criticisms are very much appreciated.

Bond, James Bond. You ain’ gonna hear this dialogue in the new Bond movie “Quantum of Solace“. The move can be considered as a sequel of the previous Bond movie by the same actor Daniel Craig, “The Casino Royale“. The movie is about the vengeance, Bond is seeking and the pleasure he is trying to accomplish after the death of his girl during the previous sequel.

This is the second Bond movie by the actor Daniel Craig. In my opinion, the main difference between the previous Bond characters and this one is that this one is a-bit more serious and humanistic in nature.

For the people looking to watch Bond with his dashing and amazing gadgets, you will be quite disappointed because in this movie you will not find any crazy gadgets rather stunning Bond stunts. Gone are the Bond playing with gadgets and girls. The new Bond seems to be much like a person fighting within himself and searching someone he does not know in himself with vengeance always in the mind. The Bond in the movie is somewhat like a killer machine until he acknowledges what he really wanted and what he is really accomplishing.

If one has watch the previous Bond move “The Casino Royale” then, it is certainly not difficult to predict the change of nature in the Bond character. The Bond is slowly becoming more human or I would rather call this Bond “more matured“.

After watching this movie, I am satisfied because I really loved the way Bond is presented - more human and blind folded in vengeance becoming a killer machine. People expecting the same old Bond (with girls and gadgets) will certainly not feel this movie as a traditional Bond movie.

If you can feel the depth of the character of the Batman in the movie “The Dark Knight” and Peter Parker (without any super hero capabilities) in the movie “Spider Man” then, you will also feel the depth of this movie and Bond.

You can find more information of this movie in Wikipedia.

Today is the historic day. America has chosen its 44th president. Barack Obama is the first African American to lead the world’s most powerful country. Beside the charismatic speech of Obama and being a wonderful of debater I am quite impressed by the use of technology by his campaign. As compared to his rival John McCain and Hillary Clinton, the use of Web 2.0 technologies by Obama campaign was fascinating. This presidential election has proved the importance and magnitude of impact the Web 2.0 tools could have. Without any doubt Obama was successful in utilizing those platforms for communicating his message of change.

Just 4 years ago, there were no tools like twitter, facebook, myspace, you tube and so on.  There is even an iPhone application for Barack Obama. This presidential race will be taken as an example how a micro media platforms of blogging,live bloggin, micro blogging, sharing can be a powerful mechanism of communication.

The small individual donation that Obama campaign was able to get via internet was also one of important factor of Obama out spending McCain. The use of the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies has been crucial factors for the unprecedented victory of Barack Obama.

Some public profiles of Obama

• Twitter - http://twitter.com/barackobama

• Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/barackobama
• MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/barackobama

The age of micro media has come so, I request everyone to come to be the part of the world of creating a content, sharing with the world and collaborating. Now, you are the media.

Google Chrome

Today the search giant Google released its own browser based on WebKit framework. WebKit is also used by Apple for its Safari browser. The release of Chrome is significant in the sense that yet another browser is added in the already crowded browser market. But its not any another company, its Google. So. I am
expecting some radical shift of trend in this new browser war. The unique features of the Chrome as mentioned by Google are:

• Each tab has its own process which means if one of the browser tab is hanged whole application will
  not crash as in IE and Firefox.
• New JavaScript engine code named “V8″.
• Task manager for each tab as of Windows Task Manager (Seems to be really cool feature to know which tab is behaving rude or slowing the browser)
• Private browsing or so called “porn mode” available as incognito.
• Web search, address bar and web history in a single bar (This feature is somewhat same as in Firefox 3.x which is also called awesome bar).

Beginning of the new browser war

In this networked information economy, the web is the primary source of information in the form of social networks, blogs, micro-blogs, bookmarking sites, and so on and the browser is the gateway to access those information. Microsoft’s IE still holds more than 70% of the browser market while Firefox has about 20% market share a, Safari with 6% and remaining for other browsers. The success of Firefox has already proved that the consumer can tend to shift from one browser to another if one offers peculiar performance and features. Firefox is also one of the most successful open source and community driven project most of which is funded by Google. The alliance between Google and Mozilla Corporation has proved to be quite successful in grabbing the market share from IE. In my opinion, the success of Firefox within the short time frame has been possible not only from the contribution of the Google and other major Corporations but also from the bunch of enthusiast community. One can find whole lots of add-ons and plugins for Firefox that could make and indeed is making the life in the web quite easier and interesting.

I am calling this the initiation of the new browser war because Google has the tendency to make the impossible possible. As more and more people are using the web as the base of their daily activities Google does need a browser to compete directly with its arch rival Microsoft. With IE still holding one third of the browser market the introduction of Chrome by Google definitely has draw a new line in the already tensed rivalry between Google and Microsoft. Microsoft’s Live search is the default search in the IE. Though Google has the partnership to with various vendors like Dell to make its search as the default one, it may not be enough for them as Microsoft is doing everything it can to challenge Google search dominance.

Basically, if we go through the history, the browser war can be divided into the mid and late 90’s battle between Microsoft and Netscape and the splendid rise of Firefox within 3 years or so. Microsoft won the first browser was with Netscape because Microsoft gave IE free of charge and Microsoft had robust complementary products to compete against Netscape. In the second browser
war that is still continuing, Firefox gained significant share of Microsoft because Microsoft virtually stopped developing any new features for IE from 2001 to 2005 and they also did fail to live up to the expectation of the consumer. With the release of IE 7 and Firefox 2, the battle did intensify. Now with the entry of Google in the browser market we can expect some cool innovation and
neck-to-neck competition among all major browser vendors. Google will certainly wants to make Chrome the de facto gateway for users to perform any web related activities bypassing dependency on Microsoft’s IE.

It is sure that the browser will be everything in the future with people needing only OS to run it. Every computer related activities will be performed in the web with the advancement in the web technologies and the speed of the Internet. So, with the entry of Google and the initiation of new browser war the ultimate winner will be us i.e. the users.