Mehrdad's space

Google bomb

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:32:14 GMT

I've started a Google bomb project against the University of Tehran, it's hosted at http://ut-haters.blogspot.com.

Goodbye Spaces!

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:07:54 GMT

Spaces, I'm going!

My new blog is hosted at http://mehrdadafshari.com

Bye!

Happy New Year!

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 06:15:41 GMT

Today is the first day of the new Persian year. I wish a very nice new year!

Online Skill Set: Microsoft Sucks! Google Rocks!

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:43:48 GMT

As Steve Ballmer said at MIX'08, Microsoft is just trying to build a skill set in online business, but it's really supposed to fail! At least up to now, let's face it:
Search: Google rocks, Live search is absolutely irrelevant. Everything is best in Google.
Mail: Windows Live Hotmail features a beautiful interface, I love it more than GMail, but GMail only displays text ads, it's always responsive, light Web page (Live Hotmail: absolutely the other way around!). And when it comes to your own domain, Google is best. Windows Live Hotmail doesn't even allow you to forward you email to other mail providers and doesn't allow IMAP/POP3 access which is neccessary for use with a mail client such as iPhone or Outlook. Outlook has a connector that allows us to connect to hotmail with it, but I really hate it. It's too buggy.
Blog: Spaces is an absolute failure for Microsoft, I like the fancy drag & drop style but it IS A FAILURE.
Photos: I'm not a big fan of photo publishing, but I think Picasa wins this one too!
SkyDrive: No Google alternative. I don't like these GMail drive stuff. SkyDrive is cool. But it really needs a better upload mechanism and integration in the OS, like iDisk.
Calendar: Both are Good, but I prefer Google alternative, it's lighter, just like everything else! It also works on more browsers! I don't like to say that Windows Live doesn't render properly on IE8Beta1!
Docs: No MS alternative.

Microsoft, change the world or go home! (By Microsoft, I mean its online skill set, aka Windows Live!)
At least if you can't give us a great application, give us more services to be competetive. Google apps offers a ton of services, while MS doesn't even give us a simple POP3 on its email, and doesn't allow forwarding at all!

I HATE WINDOWS LIVE!

Ubuntu Customization

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:15:49 GMT

In the past few days, I spent a few hours customizing my Ubuntu 7.10 x64 installation. I think it's very cool now!
It's a combination of Leopard, Vista, and Ubuntu!
Take a look at the screenshot:

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:17:13 GMT

I've just set up the beta release of the latest version of the Web browser; Windows Internet Explorer 8!

It looks much better. No problems so far, the performance seems much better than IE7.

Here is the screenshot:

I dropped my iPhone :(

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 19:25:14 GMT

Today, something bad happened to me. I dropped my iPhone on the street. Fortunately, it still works well, but the left side of it has been hurt badly. It's no longer as sexy as it used to be.

Actually, Apple did a relatively good job in designing the iPhone; it's a solid device, and it's working greatly after such a bad fall.

Tuesday, Jan 01, 2008!

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 20:34:44 GMT

It's already 2008 here!
I wish you a great new year!

Happy new year!

My 18th Birthday

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:46:05 GMT

My birthday! I'm finally 18. But how does it feel? Actually, these days are among the hardest days in life. Basically, it's not good at all that I'm still living in Iran. I should have been in the US. In some points, it feels good to be 18 since you're considered legally independent. And I'm going to attain my driving license as soon as possible!

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest 2007 Asia Regional

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:06:14 GMT

Tomorrow morning, I'll participate in ACM/ICPC 2007 Asia Regional Contest - Tehran site located at the Sharif University.

I'm not good at solving algorithmic problems. My main focus has been engineering problems, software architecture, real world application development, and such kind of things, therefore, there's not so much hope to achieve a good rank at the contest. But it's fun!

What I've done!

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 23:51:42 GMT

You know what this is. Don't you?

I bought this iPhone a month ago, after searching the whole city for a fairly well priced one and I bought it for about $600.

I miss Windows Mobile but this is cool. I really love it!

Kiarash is going to kill me for this! (Well, he likes it too; but he pretends something else )

PS: It made my blog to have a new category called "Apple"

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 shipped!

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:43:15 GMT

In the past few seconds, I heard a great news! Visual Studio 2008 is here!!!
FINALLY!!

Visual Studio 2008 Thank You Gift

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:56:40 GMT

Yesterday night, I received an email from Microsoft about the Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Thank You gift (Everyone calls that ShipIt! cube!). I've received the 2005 ShipIt and I had many problems receiving it (since MS can't ship it to Iran ). Therefore, I have to search for someone overseas once again to bring it for me.

By the way, I'm so happy to see that VS2008 is approaching RTM; and even happier for having the chance to contribute to it.

I'd like to thank everyone who helped making this wonderful product possible.

Thank you guys!!!

Visual Studio 2008 at first glance

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 18:19:57 GMT

I've just installed Visual Studio 2008 on my laptop and of course, the first thing I noticed when I launched it was the slightly redesigned start page.

I felt I should share it, so here it is:

click to enlarge

I'm sure I'm gonna love it!

Personally, I tried to swtich to 2005 since beta 1. And in beta 2 of VS2005, I used it as my primary development environment, and this is what I'm going to do with this build as it looks very stable and bug-free and yes, it does have a Go Live! license!

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 12:56:27 GMT

I haven't blogged for a long time! As you might already know, I'm building a blog service provider myself which is nearly completed and I didn't want to post anything to spaces until it's completion, but this news was so exciting that I couldn't resist!

Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and I'm currently downloading it. The download started a couple of days ago, just after release, and it's going to complete in a couple of hours from now! (Notice how fast the connection is!)

I'm pretty sure this release rocks, and since it has Go Live! license, I'm planning to build many production-class applications on top of it!

It's a new day,

It's a new VS!

I'm certain this release is gonna be HUGE!!!

MS DevDiv Guys,

YOU ROCK!

Since February...

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:23:46 GMT

Not having blogged for a while, I was doing many other stuff. Many things happened in the last month that I'd like to mention here in this post:

Near a month ago, my laptop died. The detailed story:

One night, I ran a simple script to download and install updates for my Ubuntu Linux and shut the system down automatically (due to low connection bandwidth available, I do these kind of things at night). When I woke up, the system was off as expected. I picked it up and went to the university. I tried to turn it on there. Nothing happened. I came back home, opened up the whole system. I couldn't fix it myself. Since in Iran, there's no HP service center due to US restrictions, I had to bring it to a third party for fixing. After 1 week they told me the problem is related to the main chipset of the system (Intel 915GM) which is a BGA (ball grid array) chip that we can't replace; and we couldn't find the mainboard off the shelves; so we're sorry that we couldn't fix it. By the way, my financial situation is not good and I had a project to be done. Therefore, I bought a hard disk box to use my laptop's hard disk as an external drive to finish my projects on my brother's desktop PC. In less than a couple of weeks, its mainboard died too and the service center didn't accept new orders since they'll be closed for a couple of weeks. I called up my dad and asked him to bring his PC from his office for me but he should have done stuff with it and couldn't do that immediately. Nevertheless, he brought it on the next day. Finally, I asked my dad to lend me a couple grands to buy a laptop. And a couple of days ago, I bought a nice, stylish, sexy and powerful Sony VAIO SZ440N11 featuring Windows Vista Business pre-installed. It's a nice machine weighing at 4lbs.

Now, I don't have any money left in my pocket! And I should finish my projects as soon as possible to pay back my debts.

Another bad thing:

There's only 22 hours left for me to be able to get out of this country easily. After that, I can't easily go anywhere abroad due to military service requirement in Iran

Today is the last day of the Persian year, and tomorrow is new year's celebration. Happy new year!

'Intel's newest innovation' or 'Why I love Intel!'

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 16:18:13 GMT

Today, I've really understood the true meaning of INNOVATION.

The new Intel technology is too interesting and too innovative and too powerful and too ... and too much for me to believe; even though I know pretty much nothing on physical aspects of processor production. 300GHz is too much frequency, really!

I really believe in this statement:

"There are no boundaries, except your imagination!"

Microsoft Visual Studio Codename "Orcas"

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 18:37:02 GMT

I just installed the latest community technical preview of Microsoft's upcoming development environment (currently codenamed "Orcas," much likely to become Visual Studio 2007). This CTP is officially called January 2007 CTP but about dialog among other things show that it should have been December 2006 CTP. Anyway, I'm putting a couple of screenshots of it here. I'll definitely post about it later, but since I've downloaded it a few hours ago at the university, I haven't had the chance to play with it. It's just installed on my PC.
So, more on it later!

Microsoft: Bug potential, our problem!

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 13:22:58 GMT

At first, let me mention that Maryam has interviewed Sanaz. It was a great interview. But this is not the main thing I'm talking about. After watching the interview, I tried to post a comment on Maryam's blog. I wrote the comment and clicked the "Add" button; few seconds later, a red bar appeared with a sentence similar to 'an error occurred while communicating to the server', so I clicked the "Add" button once again. The red bar reappeared. I thought for a second and revisited the blogpost page. Two comments where there. I understand that this is a small bug but these kind of bugs totally make me angry. I really love Microsoft products. The big problem is when you're using only Microsoft products (Windows, Internet Explorer 7) to visit a Microsoft Web page, you can't tell that the problem is not related to Microsoft!

Dear Microsoft devs, please be a little more careful.

Microsoft Windows Codename "Longhorn" Build 4008

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 13:21:11 GMT

Today, I was organizing stuff in my Yahoo! account and I suddenly noticed something in one of my Yahoo! Photos albums: an screenshot of my desktop running build 4008 of Microsoft Windows Codename "Longhorn"! The thing that eventually became Windows Vista. I never forget the happy times I had with such an unreliable but full of ideas operating system. I'll post the screenshot here!

[image uploaded to Yahoo! Photos on 29-Apr-2003!]

PS. I haven't blogged for a relatively long time. And, wait...

Happy New Year!

Photo Album: My Blog Photos

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 19:17:06 GMT

My Blog Photos

Longhorn Server Build 5600 Setup Splash

Longhorn Server Build 5600 Setup Screenshot

Windows Vista RTM Availablity

IE team to FF team gift

Longhorn Build 4008 Screenshot

Orcas About Dialog

Orcas Splash Screen

Photo Album: Dubai, UAE (September 2005)

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 10:39:14 GMT

Dubai, UAE (September 2005)

Airport Passport Control

The Business Center (New Horizons location)

New Horizons CLC (Where I took MCP Exams)

My 70-315 Score Report (just after taking exam)

Inside "The Business Center"

Microsoft @ GITEX 2005

Me&My Friend (Amin Sobati, MCSD) greeting in front of MS

Cisco @ GITEX 2005

Apple @ GITEX 2005

More Photos...

Photo Album: Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 Screenshots

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 13:53:52 GMT

Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 Screenshots

Desktop

WindowsVista.com Web site (Full screen)

Windows Vista Release Candidate 1

Windows Photo Gallery

Weather Gadgets

Computer

Copy files

Control Panel

Formatting DVD

Excel 2007 Beta 2 on Windows Vista RC1

More Photos...

Blog list: Links

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:37:04 GMT

Links