Is Skype losing it or is it me?

Is Skype loosing it or it is just me (which I don't think is the case). Lately I am seeing that I am not getting messages that were sent to me while I seemed to be online to the other person. Also when I sending messages, it seems that the message is send but I don't see messages in the chat window for a while. Also I have noted that when I am chatting from Computer A and then log off and login on Computer B and start using Skype, I still get offline messages and history which was recorded on Computer A! What is going on? Is this how Skype is supposed to work? I see Andy is having similar problems with Skype. Technorati Tags:

Installing Microsoft Office Service Pack 2 and getting "The update cannot be applied."

I was a bit lazy installing the updates on my home computer with Microsoft Office Service Pack 2. I got the service packs on the CD as part of Microsoft TechNet. I started installing and after were extracted I got a message "The update cannot be applied.". I tried it again and again closing all the programs including the antivirus software on my system. No luck. Searching on Microsoft website brought me some luck. Looks like the problem persisted as there was no source path found (CD,DVD or Network installation path) in the registry. I might not have this path (my guess), as I installed Office 2003 out of an ISO file and not from a CD or DVD drive. I use virtual Drive program called DAEMON Tools. I created the path and viola, the service packs for all my Microsoft Product was installed without a hitch. The instructions can be found at Microsoft Help And Support Site with a title "You cannot install an Office 2003 service pack". I hope this helps anybody else out there facing the same problem. Technorati Tags: , ,

One of my favourite, Del.icio.us gets bought out

Oh, so you have heard it all by now that Yahoo bought Del.icio.us. Congratulations to all who were involved. Who would have thought that Del.icio.us which had to good UI and such a simple tool as such would be bought out by Yahoo when it first came out. Yesterday, when I turned my computer ON, the buzz on the Internet was all about this deal. Check this memeorandum page and Del.cio.us blog entry here. What will this mean for users? 1. It will be integrated (or should be) with Yahoo login, so one less login ID to remember 2. You might see it integrated with more of Yahoo products and services 3. You might even see link to Del.icio.us straight from Yahoo Search page. At the moment it has a link where we can save straight to My Web. I haven't used My Web a lot, just because I am more comfortable using Google Search History. I like the services and products offered by Yahoo, but haven't really taken on any except Yahoo chat which I have been using it for years now and quite a few of my friends are on there and lately have started using Yahoo Podcasts site. I have been using Del.icio.us a lot lately and will still continue using it. So now since Yahoo bought Del.icio.us, I can say that I use few of Yahoo Services. Talking of Del.icio.us, I would like to have a feature where we can just make some of the bookmarks we make private. I have been wanting it for a while and if I get it, then I will ditch bookmarks for ever I think :). Technorati Tags: , , ,

Where is Google's Calender?

I have been looking around for Google Calender for a while now. Hey Guys at Google, any ideas as in what time frame are you all planning to release this? I would love to have this tool to make a complete package of Calender, Email, RSS Reader & Search engine ofcourse. What about adding note taking functionality in Google Personalised page as well? Remember The Milk is what I am trying these days for jotting down tasks. Technorati Tags: ,

Gmail's new feature: - Web Clips

So what is new at Gmail today you ask! It’s Web Clips. What is Web Clips?

Web Clips shows you news headlines, Gmail tips, blogs, any RSS and Atom feed, relevant sponsored links, and more -- right at the top of your inbox and messages. Receive updates from your favorite sites without having to leave Gmail! “

I logged into one of my Gmail accounts today to find out that Gmail has a new feature. A bit more fiddling with it and I was on my way to use the new feature with feeds that I wanted to see. But why bother with this feature when Google already had Google Reader ? If you are like me then you probably subscribe to a lot of feeds and then when the week is busy, you just don’t get time to read, even the feeds that you really care about and want to read. So at times I don’t get to read any feeds at all.

I use Gmail a lot, when I think email, I think Gmail. Even my work email is mirrored to Gmail account. So now using Web Clips I can subsribe to the feeds that are on my top priority reading list and just read them while still using Gmail. I don’t have to switch windows or open new ones. It’s cool!

What’s the down side? It will be distracting me from my real work sometimes. People write catchy headlines and then we are tempted to read what they are talking about. So be careful, don’t get distracted.

One feature I will like is auto rotate news items on a timely basis. I mean keep it 5–10 seconds and give users the option to control that feature. At the moment I either have to click on next icon or I see another news item when I refresh the page.

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Where's your Squidoo ?

Squidoo went live today with their beta product. I did sign up there while it was in private beta last week but did not do much with it ( I was still confused about it). After receiving the email today that Squidoo went public with beta testing, I thought of having a second look at it, also after reading Rajesh's post I thought I will give it a try again.
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My initial thoughts while playing with it was why bother! I got blogs that I can write up things and link to the posts that I like. I can display RSS feeds that I like on my blog. My thought was is Squidoo trying to take place of blogs? After thinking and tinkering on Squidoo website, I think the answer is 'No'. So here is what I think of Squidoo. Squidoo will be playing in parallel with the blogs. It's there to help out blogs and websites. People can use Squidoo to link to the blogs/blog posts they like on a taken topic. They can put down links to their favourite site on the topic. Squidoo can display Technorati tags which can be configured to match the topic and show related posts. For now it can show books at Amazon. People can add their own text on the Squidoo page which can be aggregated through RSS feeds. People can rank Squidoo pages. Squidoo developers are planning in bringing on many more modules (added functionality and features to personal Squidoo pages) in the future. As claimed on the Squidoo faq's, the management at Squidoo is planning to share the revenue with Lensmasters (people who own the Squidoo pages). So all in all, Squidoo can be a static page which the search engines will index well or it can be totally dynamic page where we aggregate many RSS feeds on a given topic. It can be good for people who don't want to have their own blogs (are not interested in having one or don’t' need one). It is kind of Web 2.0's Geocities, Lycos pages, Angelfire, Tripod etc. Am I missing anything really important here? I created few Squidoo's for myself which can be found here. Mind you they are not complete, just a start. For myself, not sure how much value it gives me overall. Money wise it might be more advisable to write for my own blogs and get more visitors and getting more money then getting part of the money from there ;). It will be interesting to see how many people take on this offer and continously nourish their Squidoo's. What is your say towards Squidoo?

Recursive function to display hierarchial data ...

One of the SQL newsgroup member asked the following:
Guys, I have a table by name "TblRecursive" which has following data ID, Name, ParentID 1, A, 0 2, B, 1 3, C, 2 4, D, 2 5, E, 1 Using the above data I just want to generate a result as below A A\B A\B\C A\B\D A\E Can you help in writing a query for this?
My Solution: We can achieve this by calling a "User Defined Function (UDF) recursively". Let me show how to do that with a working example. Table creation: Create table tblEmployeeInfo ( EmpId int primary key, EmpName varchar(30), MgrId int ) Insert test data into it: Insert into tblEmployeeInfo values(1, 'Director', null) Go Insert into tblEmployeeInfo values(2, 'Joint Director', 1) Go Insert into tblEmployeeInfo values(3, 'Secretary', 2) Go Insert into tblEmployeeInfo values(4, 'Joint Secr.,', 3) Go Insert into tblEmployeeInfo values(5, 'Legal Advisor', 1) Go UDF for your requirement: Create function GetEmpPath ( @pEmpid int ) Returns varchar(8000) As Begin Declare @intMgrid int Declare @strEname varchar(500) Declare @strPath varchar(500) Select @intMgrid = mgrid, @strEname = empname From tblEmployeeInfo where EmpId = @pEmpid If (@intMgrid is null) Begin Set @strPath = @strEname End Else Set @strPath = dbo.GetEmpPath(@intMgrid) + '\' + @strEname return @strPath End Go Test the code: Select dbo.GetEmpPath(empid) as Hierarchy, empname as 'Employee Name' from tblEmployeeInfo