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Microsoft–Research In Motion (RIM) Partnership

Moments ago, Steve Ballmer announced a new partnership between Microsoft and RIM at the Research In Motion conference. As a part of the partnership, Bing Search and Maps will be the default on BlackBerry OS. Ballmer also said Microsoft would invest in Blackberry services.

JQuery in Ajax.Net Update Panel

If you are a have a control with JQuery binding inside an Ajax.Net update panel, you will be stumped on as to why the JQuery stops working once the update panel is refreshed. The reason is that once the update panel refreshes, your Jquery binding is lost. This problem is simple to solve. Whenever an update panel refreshes, it calls javascript pageLoad() function. So all you need to do is place all your JQuery that needs rebinding inside this pageLoad function. Here is an example:

<script language=”javascript”>

function pageLoad()
{
RebindAll();
}

function RebindAll()
{
//Jquery that needs rebinding after postback
$.document.getReady(
//Some jquery stufff
);
}

</script>

Technorati Tags: jquery,ajax.net,asp.net,updatepanel,ajax.net updatepanel

ThreadAbortException in Response.Redirect

If you ASP.Net application has catch all error logging, don’t be surprised if you find ThreadAbortException [Exception message: The thread was being aborted] very often. The culprit could be the following code.

try

{

//Some error thrown

throw
new
DivideByZeroException();

}

catch (Exception ex)

{

//Some logging code here

//Finally redirect user to error page

Response.Redirect(“Error.aspx”,false);

}

The reason is that Response.Redirect end the current response by calling Response_End internally. Response_End always throws a ThreadAbortException by design. To avoid this you can do either of the following

1. Catch the ThreadAbortException and call Thread.ResetAbort to cancel the abort. Do keep in mind that there is no guarantee that the thread will ever end.
2. Ignore it. Which means, catch the exception; but do not log it.
3. Finally, Response.Redirect takes two paramters. The URL itself and a Boolean parameter telling whether the current response should end or not. To avoid ending the current response, pass a Boolean value of false. So we can rewrite the above code as

   Response.Redirect(“Error.aspx”,false);
   

Silverlight and Virtual Earth

Have a look at silverlight put into use for mapping technologies. This one is cool. The images loads pretty fast!!! Check it out…

http://deepzoom.soulclients.com/VE/

TFS Groups Management Tool

Finally my dream of publishing a project in codeplex has come true. The idea came from my current project where we have to manage 150+ TFS groups. These groups had to be added to subgroups and the default group management in team explorer was very difficult to work with. Choosing a group individually and adding it was a tedious work. On top of that the group window refreshed every time we added/deleted a group.

 

This tool makes the process of creation, deletion and grouping TFS groups a breeze. Using this we have reduced the effort up to 95%. The client wanted to know how we managed these groups easily. That’s when I decided to publish it in codeplex. This will also be recommended to Encore.

This is a basic version and will built on it to improve user experience. Feel free to have a look at the tool at:

http://www.codeplex.com/TFSGroupsTool

Google Chrome & Secret of name

Well as you all know, Google Chrome is the new browser from Google that’s once again again heating up the internet browser space. The opensource browser is launching tomorrow in over 100 countries. I am not here to explain about the features of the browser since you can read about it in official google blog here. What I am here to tell you is about how Google still loves messing with Microsoft.

So whats the secret of the name I was talking about? The name “Chrome” is no coincidence. Chrome apparently was a highly anticipated multimedia technology project from Microsoft which was killed days before shipping. The project became a victim of reorganisation at Microsoft. You can read more about its demise here. 

Is this a message to Microsoft? “If you cant do it, we will”.

Infosys to buy Axon Global

Infosys Technologies LTD has offered to buy UK based SAP consulting company Axon Global for £407.1m ($750 million or INR 33.1 billion). This was a special news for all the Infosys employees including me that the deal is almost at the verge of being success. If you are not aware, nearly 1/4th of Infosys revenue comes form its unit called Enterprise Solutions which specializes in enterprise tools like SAP, Siebel, Oracle, Tibco etc.

Infosys has always been trying to spread its operations in UK and this would definitely a major breakthrough. Today morning I proudly watched our CEO, Mr. Kris Gopalakrishnan talk about the details of the deal on CNBC today morning 10:10am. Infosys stocks were trading 10 points down as soon as the markets opened (overall BSE sensex is down) because the investors were not confident about the deal. Infosys profit margins are 30-31% whereas Axon’s profit margin is just about 14-15%.

As soon as Kris clarified certain details of the deal, market sentiments turned the other way and by 10:20 Infosys stock was trading 20 points up. The confidence with which he talks is simply amazing. I could see the same confidence in him with which the company was started 27 years ago with just 7 employees and INR 10000.

Here are some interesting things to note about the deal:

• Infy buy is largest outbound acquisition by Indian IT company
• Infosys targets to touch $5 billion mark in profit this year. Axon’s revenue is $ 1.6 billion and considering this, we need to wait for a new guidance from Infosys once the deal is trough. (And don’t be alarmed if the new guidance is $6 billion )
• According to Economic Times Mr.Nandan and Mr.Murthy played a significant role in this deal. Whether they are involved or not, good work Infy team!!!
• Axon’s share rose a whopping 20% in London stock exchange as soon as the acquisition news was released.
• 20% increase is the highest for Axon ever since year 2000.
• Axon’s revenue also increased considerably this quarter due to increase in sales from speculation of a take over from Infy.
• The entire amount of the deal is paid entirely in CASH!!!

Axon board has asked its share holders to vote in favor of the deal. The only reason why this deal wouldn’t happen as of now is a counter offer from other companies like TCS, Wipro etc to Axon. Considering the current market situation and the decline in revenue of other IT majors, I doubt whether any other IT company would be able to beat Infy’s offer of $750 million.

There are much more details that floats inside the Infosys network. But those details cannot be published here. So just wait until the deal goes through. Proud to be an Infosion!!!

Teach India

Ok, here comes a post from me thats completely out of topic. Check out http://teach.timesofindia.com/ and if possible spread a word. I know what I am doing is only a drop in the ocean, but my current schedule and location prevents me from doing anything more. So looking forward to some of you readers to take it forward.

Great Indian Developer Summit- Live!

I am here at IISC, Bangalore for the Great Indian Developer Summit at Bangalore. I will be attending .net tracks on 19th-20th and Web track on 21st May. But alas, I have missed 19th track due to a project meeting. WIll have to go thourgh the DVD given out at the end of 3rd day to see the sessions that happened yesterday.

Anyway, currently I am in the main hall attending the track- “Increasing Developer Prodcutivity” by Erik Doernenburg. For more details log on to http://www.developersummit.com.