Saturday, May 03, 2008

IT event at University of Bahrain, and I am presenting!

talking to furniture [practice] makes perfect

First off, today is Shutdown Day and apparently, I will not be participating this year. I need every minute I can with all the CPUs around me today.

April has been such a crazy month! Which brings me off to announce that tomorrow an IT event (a.k.a. Supernova) will kick off at the University of Bahrain in Sukhir campus. This event has been organized by the students of the IT department in the same university.

I was invited by Microsoft to present two sessions during the 5 day event that begins on May 4th until May 8, 2008. A closing ceremony will be on the 11th of May.

My first session will be tomorrow, at 11am, so if you’re around drop by! I will be talking about Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and in my second session on May 7th, also at 11am, I will be rambling about XNA Studio 2.0. Hopefully they’ll have some gamers out there in the audience, I have no idea! It will definitely be fun, I am bringing in an XBOX 360 for a lucky winner.

(11) Comments | Filed under: Microsoft | Bahrain |

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Bahrain Air, SharePoint and E-Gate!

The past few days have been really awesome. I was able to attend the first Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Dubai. (link: http://www.sharepointconferencedubai.com )

I bought my tickets online from Bahrain Air since it was the earliest flight available. Arrival would be 9.20am and the conference starts at 9am. The good news was that it takes place at Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel - just five minutes away from the airport. The booking process was very similar to Jazeera Airways, except that you don’t get to choose your seat on the flight.

This was my first time on Bahrain Air. The plane was small and packed with people. Once we landed, I decided that Jazeera was way better in comparison! First, Dua’a elSafar (travel supplication) was announced on speaker so fast by some attendant’s voice and I couldn’t follow up! Then, after the plane took off, TV screens were all up and running shows like “Just kidding” followed by an Arabic comedy. But that wasn’t the problem at all, they had the audio playing on speaker, so no one could get any rest if they’d wanted to. The plane had a weird smell to it, and it wasn’t because it was packed. I was glad I had the conference to look forward to, so I just tried to be patient. Yes, water was served - in the smallest plastic cups possible. Other than that, everything was good.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000

A few days ago, I received my Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 and its by far my favorite toy! I feel like Harry Potter and his ~~Nimbus 2000~~ Firebolt right now.

Its a bluetooth wireless mouse on one side and if you flip it over, it becomes your presentation remote control. For a long time, I would use my dad’s Logitech cordless presenter which I had enjoyed endlessly. All it had was a trackball and 3 buttons. Years have passed and technology always amazes us with newer features that make our lives much easier and enjoyable.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Lovely Charts

I have previously blogged about Smart Draw, and today - after testing it for over a few weeks I decided to share my thoughts on Lovely Charts. It is an online free diagramming service that allows you to create flowcharts, site maps, organization maps, wire frames and network diagrams. I have always wished there was an online version of Smart Draw and I must say, Lovely Charts is looking good and almost ready to be the next big thing in diagramming.

The service is completely free but a premium membership will soon be available at a very low rate. I would love to see it available for multi-user collaboration projects but that is still in the making. Once you have completed your diagram, you can publish it for the public to see or keep it in your account for your own reference. Charts and diagrams can be exported in Image format.

I believe this is an excellent service and look forward to seeing more of its upcoming features! It’s exciting to see all these services available on the Internet. One day, I believe, we will not have any softwares installed on our machines because it will all be available online!

service website: http://lovelycharts.com

Whats your favorite online application? Or what non-existing online application would you love to see?

(7) Comments | Filed under: Reviews |

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Microsoft Heroes Happens {Here} - Bahrain

Microsoft has been touring the Gulf region to show off and launch the new Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. On March 17, the launch kicked off in Bahrain at the Gulf Hotel Convention Center. It was great!

The program begins with the keynote, where Joseph Landes, the Director of Marketing from Redmond introduced, with great sense of humor, whats new and whats happening. He also went over who this new technology is already in use worldwide and even in Bahrain - by Batelco.