Neither Zero Nor One

iPhone Unlock $99 – Now Shipping!

Nikhil Roy — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:14:49 +0000

Looks like the guys at iphonesimfree finally delivered (they have been promising this for sometime now) and the iPhone unlock is now selling online! I think I am ready now to go out an get one! 99 bucks for an unlock is steep – but it’s still better than 175 termination with t-mobile. Here is where you can buy it.

IIS 403 issue with image files

Nikhil Roy — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 17:21:17 +0000

I spent a good amount of time last night trying to figure out why my IIS7 (Windows Vista) would not serve a few new images that I had just added to my images folder. As soon as an image was requested it would throw up a login box (Windows authentication was enabled), which led me to believe it was an issue with the ACL. So i go and reset the ACL – but no luck! Finally figure out that the images had the property “encrypt contents to secure data” turned on – thats what was killing me. Here is a another post that I ran into that might be of help.

Which super hero are you?

Nikhil Roy — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 16:04:30 +0000

Here are my results:
You are Iron Man

Iron Man		90%
The Flash		80%
Superman		75%
Spider-Man		75%
Green Lantern		70%
Catwoman		55%
Batman		50%
Supergirl		50%
Robin		50%
Wonder Woman		45%
Hulk		35%

Inventor. Businessman. Genius.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

IE 7 Is Here! [Released today]

Nikhil Roy — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 06:04:05 +0000

The IE teamat MS is reporting that IE 7 for Win XP is now available for download! I have been using it since beta 1 and I have seen the improvements over other preview releases that followed and I definitely think its a *must* download for current IE users and worth a look for current FireFox users. I really hope that the development support has gotten better and people will build extensions like FireBug and many more. All I can say is it is currently “impossible” to develop Ajax application without firefox and I hope IE7 changes that a little bit.

Gotta give it to Google…

Nikhil Roy — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:52:55 +0000

No – this isn’t a post about gooTube (Google + youTube) , it’s about the new solar panel installation that Google is about to put up on their Mountain View campus. According to the San Jose Mercury News they are going to cover their rooftops with 9200solar panels which should generate 1.6 megawatts! That is enough to SELF power 30% of the Mountain View campus or 1,000 average California homes!

Google’s installation will be the largest in the valley toppling over current front runner Microsoft. Check out the PressPass release here.

Big up to all these companies that are moving forward with self-power initiatives.

Flickr – What are your coordinates?

Nikhil Roy — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:34:11 +0000

Flickr – the best photo sharing site is now ready to talk in terms of latitudes and longitudes says the flickr blog! Thats right flickr now supports geo-tagging! That is absolutely awesome! What is geotagging? Wikipedia has a detailed answer. The interface is pretty sweet (all ajax enabled) and you can drag multiple photos onto a location on a map and it will automatically geo tag it for you. The map is Yahoo Maps based and the searching could use some help. But overall its a step in the right direction and I give it a big thumbs up.

Here’s a screenshot – GeoTagging in action:

Developing with Visual Studio 2005 on Windows Vista

Nikhil Roy — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 21:46:31 +0000

I encountered a few issues when starting to develop on Windows Vista. I had my whole enviornment setup and I decided to write a quick little asp.net app and test it out….Once I hit F5 in studio – I got a msgbox:

Unable to cast object of type ‘System.Web.HttpDebugHandler’ to type ‘System.Web.HttpApplication’.

————————————————

Unable to start debugging on the web server.

[InvalidCastException]: Unable to cast object of type ‘System.Web.HttpDebugHandler’ to type ‘System.Web.HttpApplication’. at System.Web.Hosting.PipelineRuntime.ExecuteStateHandler(IntPtr& managedRequestContext, IntPtr nativeRequestContext, IntPtr moduleData, Int32 flags)

So I figured it was probably something to do with the new Integrated mode in IIS and VS2005 has no clue about it. So I moved the app to a new Application Pool in IIS7 that runs in ISAPI mode and now everything works!

Windows Vista Security Pains!

Nikhil Roy — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 03:26:50 +0000

I have recently installed Windows Vista Beta 2 and started playing around with it. First impressions are good….although as a developer the security features like UAC are pretty in your face (probably good for end users). I immediately disabled that by editing the local system policy by running:

secpol.msc -> Local Policies -> Security Options -> Disable the policy “User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode”

That definitely made those annoying messages go away! I had to install Visual Studio 2005 and I was thinking of playing with Atlas. Once I got that installed and tried to create a sample website Visual Studio was barking back at me saying:

Error HRESULT E_FAIL has been returned from a call to a COM component

Now what? Well supposedly vista will not start application in admin mode even if you are logged in as an administrator. The fix: Right click on the shortcut to studio and click Run as Administrator and it works like a charm.

Here is a link to Microsoft KB which shows how to configure specific applications to always run as admin.

-Nikhil

JetBlue Comes to Houston!

Nikhil Roy — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 23:59:50 +0000

During the dot com boom I used to fly to Florida a lot from NYC, thats when I discovered jet Blue. Hands down it has to be the *best* airline in the country. I moved to Houston about 3 years ago and one of the things I hated was I had to fly these other airlines everytime I went back to New York. Well no more….starting September 7th jetBlue is going to start servicing Houston’s Hobby airport! Jet Blue brings low cost flying with a fresh attitude and great staff to top it off.

5 reasons to fly jetBlue:

Live DirecTV in every seat with 36 channels (yup watch the news Live in the air)
5 paid movie channels (for long flights) and XM Radio – 100 channels
Great snacks and to top that Dunkin’ Donuts® coffee! (don’t get to see too much of that here in Houston)
Great airplanes – youngest fleet with mostly all new Airbus A320‘s
Everyone is a first class citizen – No first class cabin!

Got the Samsung Q1 umpc !!

Nikhil Roy — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 03:52:08 +0000

I went down to frys electronics on Friday [since they told me they had a unit on display]…and i made the terrible mistake of asking if they had any in stock! They had only one in stock…i had to buy it!! Watching all those videos on jkOnTheRun and getting up to speed with all da buzz on umpcbuzz helped convince me that i needed one! I have been using it over the weekend to browse the web, check the latest scores for World Cup Matches, check email etc. and its working out great till now.

The dialkeys onscreen keyboard is simply awesome! If you learnt to type using a typing tutor software then you should have no problems adjusting. The only awkward thing is the enter key is for the left hand….I wish that was customizable. I would however like the guys from jkOnTheRun maybe do a piece on setting up the Q1, talk about things like what programs are safe to uninstall (since the system tray seems to be overflowing) and also maybe list out a few 3rd party software programs that are a must have. I know they have something like that for the tablet pc but tailor it more for the UMPC. Also I’d like to know about accessories, specifically more on GPS connectivity.

Tomorrow I’m going into work and I need to setup my umpc so its totally optimized for taking notes and generating tasks. Do any of you out there use some 3rd party utilities? I have put OneNote 2007 on it. Let’s see what happens tomorrow at work when the rubber meets the road. I know scoble said he would buy one, did you drop 1G on this toy yet scoble?