AJAX Seadragon

Seadragon Ajax is a Seadragon viewing library implemented in pure JavaScript. It supports the same single image file format that Silverlight Deep Zoom uses, but does not support Deep Zoom Collections.

A version of Seadragon Ajax source code is included in the Ajax Control Toolkit. That version has been optimized to take advantage of features built into ASP.NET AJAX, reducing code size while improving integration with the ASP.NET AJAX framework.

More Details

Seadragon Website
Microsoft Ajax Toolkit

Top 10 IT Certifications In Demand

IT certifications have always been popular among IT pros to bag the right job or seek the right jump. With the economy back in green, IT jobs too are back. Keeping this in mind, technology research firm Foote Partners recently listed IT certifications that could be considered "hot" in the coming months.

1. VMware Certified Professional: With virtualization technology becoming hot, it is little surprising that VCP program is in demand. Research shows that enterprises often face lack of required expertise specific to virtualization.
2. Certified Information Systems Auditor: CISA is a professional certification for Information technology audit professionals sponsored by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA). Candidates for the certification must meet requirements set by ISACA.
3. GIAC Security Audit Essentials: This is for professionals planning to enter the information security industry who are tasked with auditing organization policy, procedure, risk, or policy conformance.
4. Certified Information Security Manager: CISM is a certification for information security managers awarded by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA).
5. Check Point Certified Security Expert: Designed for experienced security professionals, Check Point CCSE certification is claimed to be one of the most respected vendor-specific security certification. CCSE is an advanced Core security certification built on CCSA NGX, confirming in-depth skills and expertise in managing and supporting Check Point products
6. Check Point Certified Security Administrator: Another Check Point-specific certification, CCSA aims to validate a security administrator's ability to maintain day-to-day operation of vendor's security solutions and ensure secure access to information across the network.
7. Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (Security): MCSE certification provides an individual's skills in designing, implementing, and administering infrastructure for business solutions based on Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows 2000 Server.
8. Certified Wireless Security Professional: CWSP is claimed to be an advanced level certification that measures the ability to secure any wireless network. A wide range of security topics focusing on the 802.11 wireless LAN technology are covered in the coursework and exam, which is vendor neutral.
9. GIAC Certified Intrusion Analyst: GCIA is an information security certification entity that specializes in technical and practical certification as well as new research in the form of its GIAC Gold program. SANS Institute founded the certification in 1999.
10. Cisco Certified Network Professional: Another vendor specific certification, Cisco Certified Network Professional or CCNP aims to validate the ability to plan, implement, verify and troubleshoot local and wide-area enterprise networks and work collaboratively with specialists on advanced security, voice, wireless and video solutions.

Source : Silicon India

Google Sidewiki

Google Sidewiki is a browser extension which allows users to make and view comments about a given website, providing feedback and information, and discussing a page's content in a separate browser frame. The contributed comments are editable by the users who made them. It was launched September 23, 2009.

Google uses ranking algorithms to determine comment relevancy and usefulness using criteria such as users voting up and down a comment, and past users' contributions. Anyone can look up a contributor and, from accumulated entries on the user's Google profile, verify the contributor's credibility. Sidewiki is available for Internet Explorer and Firefox through Google Toolbar, and the Google Chrome browser through an add-on. For other browsers like Safari it is available as a bookmarklet.

Sidewiki allows users to interact with a web site in ways that the site owner cannot control, which has concerned some critics of the application, as there is no way for site owners to prevent people from commenting in a Sidewiki entry for a page.

Source : Wikipedia

Microsoft Photosynth

Photosynth is a software application from Microsoft Live Labs and the University of Washington that analyzes digital photographs and generates a three-dimensional model of the photos and a point cloud of a photographed object. Pattern recognition components compare portions of images to create points, which are then compared to convert the image into a model. Users are able to view and generate their own models using a software tool available for download at the Photosynth website.

Photosynth is based on Photo Tourism, a research project by University of Washington graduate student Noah Snavely.

Capabilities

• Walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle
• Zoom in or out of a photo
• See where pictures were taken in relation to one another
• Smoothly change viewing angle between nearby photos
• Smoothly zoom in and out of high-resolution photos
• Find similar photos to the one you're currently viewing
• Send pictures

More Details

Go to Photosynth Website

Source : Wikipedia

Google Latitude

Google Latitude is a location-aware mobile app developed by Google. Latitude allows a mobile phone user to allow certain people to track their location. Via their own iGoogle accounts, the user's cell phone location is mapped on Google Maps. The user can control the accuracy and details of what each of the other users can see — an exact location can be allowed, or it can be limited to identifying the city only. For privacy, it can also be turned off by the user, or a location can be manually entered. Users have to explicitly opt in to Latitude, and may only see the location of friends who have decided to share their location.

Google's 2005 acquisition, Dodgeball, offered similar facility to users by way of SMS. With Google Latitude, the service has expanded to PCs (it uses IP geolocation as well as user driven input) and automated location detection on mobile phones using Cell-ID, Cellular Positioning, and GPS.

More Info : Google Latitude

Source : Wikipedia

What's new in Outlook Social Connector

Connecting Outlook to each social network requires a provider. To get started, download and install social network provider for Outlook.

The Outlook Social Connector included in the Office 2010 Beta is not compatible with the beta providers currently available online. Office 2010 Beta users must install the Outlook Social Connector 32-bit Beta in order to successfully use the social network providers currently available. Also, you cannot install the 32-bit OSC Beta on Outlook 2010 Beta 64-bit.

Currently Support

1. LinkedIn
2. myspace

Coming Soon

1. Facebook
2. Windows Live

Stay up-to-the-minute with the people in your networks by accessing everything from e-mail threads to status updates in one single, centralized view.

Synchronize your contact data right into Outlook 2010 and obtain information about your friends and colleagues. See status updates from various networks and recently posted files—even view shared photos

Connect to SharePoint Server 2010 social data and receive updates from your workplace, such as newly posted or tagged documents, site activity, and more.

Easily track your communication history. Use the Outlook Social Connector to display a quick view of related Outlook content when you click on a contact’s name, such as recent e-mail conversations, meetings, and shared documents.

Developers can connect and feed social streams from line-of-business applications or integrate their solutions directly into Outlook.

Source

Google Earth's Flight Simulator

inside Google Earth is a secret Flight Simulator that takes full advantage of Google’s extensive satellite imagery.

To access the hidden feature, open Google Earth and hit Command+Option+A (note it must be capital A) or Ctrl+Alt+A if you’re using a Windows Machine.

The Google Earth Flight Simulator comes with two aircraft options, a F16 Viper and the more manageable SR22 4 seater. Players have the option of commencing the game from their current location in Google Earth or can pick from a list of pre-determined runways.

For More Details

Go Here : Google Earth Flight Simulator

Sharing the music track to which you're listening Via Gtalk

If you'd like to show your contacts what music you're listening to at that very moment, select Show current music track from the Available or Busy section of your status drop-down menu in Google talk

Your status will automatically update each time your supported music player starts a new song, listing the track name and artist information:

Supported Music Players:

• iTunes
• Windows Media Player
• Winamp
• Yahoo Music Engine

SketchUp

SketchUp is a 3D modeling program designed for architects, civil engineers, filmmakers, game developers, and related professions. It also includes features to facilitate the placement of models in Google Earth. It is designed to be easier to use than other 3D CAD programs.

Google SketchUp

On April 27, 2006, Google announced Google SketchUp, a freely-downloadable version of SketchUp. The free version is not as capable as SketchUp Pro, but it includes integrated tools for uploading content to Google Earth and to the Google 3D Warehouse, a repository of models created in SketchUp. They have also added a new toolbox where you can walk, see things from a person's point of view, labels for models, a look around tool, and an "Any polygon" shape tool.

While the free version of Google Sketchup can export 3D to SKP, .dae and Google Earth's .kmz file format, the Pro version extends exporting support to include the .3ds, .dae, .dwg, .dxf, .fbx, .obj, .xsi, and .wrl file formats.

Google SketchUp can also save "screenshots" of the model as .bmp, .png, .jpg, .tif, with the Pro version also supporting .pdf, .eps, .epx, .dwg, and .dxf.

Source:Wikipedia

CSS Transparency Settings for All Browsers

Transparency is one of those weird things that is treated completely differently in all browsers. To cover all your bases, you need four separate CSS statements. Fortunately they don’t interfere with each other really, so using them all every time you wish to add transparency is no big hassle and worry-free. Here they are, and are currently set to 50% transparency:

.transparent_class
{ 
       filter:alpha(opacity=50);
       -moz-opacity:0.5;
       -khtml-opacity: 0.5;
       opacity: 0.5;

}

Here is what each of those CSS properties is for:

• opacity: 0.5; This is the “most important” one because it is the current standard in CSS. This will work in most versions of Firefox, Safari, and Opera. This would be all you need if all browsers supported current standards. Which, of course, they don’t.
• filter:alpha(opacity=50); This one you need for IE.
• -moz-opacity:0.5; You need this one to support way old school versions of the Mozilla browsers like Netscape Navigator.
• -khtml-opacity: 0.5; This is for way old versions of Safari (1.x) when the rendering engine it was using was still referred to as KTHML, as opposed to the current WebKit.

Source: CSS-Tricks

Keyhole Markup Language (KML)

Keyhole Markup Language (KML) is an XML-based language schema for expressing geographic annotation and visualization on existing or future Internet-based, two-dimensional maps and three-dimensional Earth browsers. KML was developed for use with Google Earth, which was originally named Keyhole Earth Viewer. It was created by Keyhole, Inc, which was acquired by Google in 2004. The name "Keyhole" is an homage to the KH reconnaissance satellites, the original eye-in-the-sky military reconnaissance system first launched in 1976. KML is an international standard of the Open Geospatial Consortium. Google Earth was the first program able to view and graphically edit KML files, and other projects such as Marble have also started to develop KML support.

Ref:Wikipedia

HTML5

HTML5 is being developed as the next major revision of HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the core markup language of the World Wide Web. The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) started work on the specification in June 2004 under the name Web Applications 1.0. As of March 2010, the specification is in the Draft Standard state at the WHATWG, and in Working Draft state at the W3C.

HTML5 is the proposed next standard for HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0 and DOM Level 2 HTML. It aims to reduce the need for proprietary plug-in-based rich internet application (RIA) technologies such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Apache Pivot, and Sun JavaFX.

The ideas behind HTML5 were pioneered in 2004 by the WHATWG; HTML5 incorporates Web Forms 2.0, another WHATWG specification. The HTML5 specification was adopted as the starting point of the work of the new HTML working group of the W3C in 2007. This working group published the First Public Working Draft of the specification on January 22, 2008. The specification is an ongoing work, and is expected to remain so for many years, although parts of HTML5 are going to be finished and implemented in browsers before the whole specification reaches final Recommendation status.

Ref:Wikipedia