After a gap of few years, I am happy that Microsoft premier event "TechEd" is happening again in India. For many of the regular speakers in the event, TechEd India is an annual ritual that we enjoy and look forward to eagerly. It gives a rare opportunity to meet, interact and network with brilliant participants, to hear what they are working on currently and how they are using Microsoft technologies in real life.

When the organizers told me the venue is Hyderabad I was at a loss - why on earth anyone will hold an event in Hyderabad at the middle of peak summer?. After few minutes of reaching the venue "Hyderabad International Convention Centre" I understood why. The Convention Centre was great, with world class infrastructure and I guess the best in India for years to come. And commuting to and from the new Hyderabad Rajiv Gandhi International Airport was not bad either. Though it is far from city, the roads are not that crowded like in Bangalore. I reached from Airport to City in about an hour and while returning from Hi-Tec city to Airport through the new ring road it took less than 45 minutes. The ring road named after Rajiv Gandhi (like many other things in Congress  ruled AP) was good, they allow only four wheelers (cars and vans), trucks and two-wheelers are not allowed to ply in the road to prevent accidents. I couldn't say the same pleasant things about Paramount Airways - which delayed my return flight by some 4 hours (8:30PM flight took off at 12:30AM).

This year, I presented on Windows Azure - an overview session where I covered the need for Azure, Azure fundamentals and few demos on using Windows Azure.

I searched for articles on India's performance in Beijing Olympics so far and so I typed in Google "India Olympics". I was surprised to the see the first result as the medal count tally (see screen shot below). Checked it in Live Search as well on how smart it was behaving. It too gave similar results and added more details than Google. If Search Engines improve at this same rate, I guess we will one day have them answer any question we throw at them (Do you think this will happen or it is only a science fiction, please post it in the comments)

Both in my home and work I have powerful 8GB Quad-Core Desktops running Windows Vista x64 and I love the machines. I use extensively Windows Live Writer for writing my blog posts and Live Messenger for IM. Now they come as a single install package (Windows Live Suite) easy to install. When you try to install it on 64-bit Windows the installer fails. I then found this article on how to get the individual MSI files and install the programs from C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\WindowsLiveInstaller\MsiSources.

I was telling someone yesterday on why I love the new messenger control. This is the control that you see on left hand side of this page titled "Chat with me" that allows any anonymous visitor to the page to chat with me in real time when I am logged in to Live Messenger.

I love the opportunity this simple control gives me to interact with visitors around the world. I am sure they are finding this easy to use this, rather than writing a comment and it also gives them instant gratification. Today I was having an interesting conversation with an Facility Manager from Saudi Arabia on how he came across my blog (actual chat snippet below)

What I like most is the convenience of using and the control I get with this service. I don't need to sign in to yet another site or install a client application for being available for chatting. The only thing I need to do is to be signed in to my regular Live Messenger. And including this in the blog page couldn't be more easier - other than the Microsoft style of plethora of different sites you need to go before you understand it.

To include this control in your page, there are three steps.

Step 1: Enable Permission in Messenger settings page to "Show your Messenger Status on the  Web"

Step 2: Click on the "Create HTML" on the left hand navigation on the same page. In the page select the style of the control you want to display in your page

Step 3: Copy the HTML at the bottom of the page and paste it in an appropriate area in your blog page.

For more details refer to dev.live.com/messenger. But please spare yourself by not starting with this page, it takes you to a complex looking MSDN page which finally redirects you to these 3 simple steps I have said above.