April 2nd is World Autism Awareness Day. I do not personally know of any individual who is Autistic, but I am well aware of the lifelong challenges it poses to those who have it and their families and the hardships caused by it. I wish those reading this post, spread the word and let parents know the fact that "if they feel something is wrong with their child, they should consult 2/3 doctors. And if they tell them that their kid is normal, but can't convince you that there is nothing wrong with their childs they should consult a 4th and a 5th". - This is from the mother of a 5 year old autistic boy I saw tonite on CNN.

While the great brains are hard at work finding a cure… I hope to do my bit by spreading awareness, I hope my readers too.

If you haven't watched the trailer of THE DARK KNIGHT yet, I highly recommend you do! If you liked Christopher Nolan & Christian Bale's approach to Batman, it doesn't really take a genius to predict that you will like this summer 2008 release. The high definition trailer is available is available on the official website in QuickTime & Windows Media (as zipped files). Here's the direct link to the videos page.

This year's biggest FPS game for the PC - CRYSIS™ (Crytek/EA Games) was released worldwide yesterday. Every FPS fan out there must get this game. I can see that the CRYSIS™ Nanosuit will gain the iconic stature shared by the HEV Hazard Suite adorned by Gordon Freeman. It's a shame though that I can't even buy the just-announced nVidia 8800GT priced at a sweet price of $250 I'll need to play it on my home desktop.

The game contains -

An Epic Single Player Campaign – Players are thrust into the middle of a global conflict between the US and North Korea over a mysterious artifact that turns out to be extraterrestrial in nature. Fortunately, players are outfitted with a high tech Nanosuit that allows them to alter their strength, speed, armor and cloaking abilities and an arsenal of fully customizable weapons, helping to even the playing ground against a highly mysterious and intelligent enemy threat.

Multiplayer Reinvented – Crytek has also focused much of their development efforts in creating two unique multiplayer experiences. PowerStruggle is a new, team-based multiplayer mode where players need to work together strategically to capture resource points throughout the map to win the ultimate arms race for nuclear technology. And for those who are looking for a more action-packed experience Crysis also features Instant Action, traditional deathmatch made even more frenetic as every player is outfitted with the revolutionary Nanosuit.

CryENGINE 2TM Sandbox Editor – Also included with Crysis is the complete version of Crytek’s Sandbox Editor. Extremely powerful with a simple user interface, the editor will give the community full access to one of the most powerful design tools in the industry.

Yesterday, Microsoft released a refreshed build of Internet Explorer 7 for Windows xp that no longer requires WGA check. If you're wondering why Microsoft decided to do it or why now? Mary Jo Foley has pretty much nailed it.

It's obvious that it's in Microsoft's best interests to let pirates install IE 7 more easily (not that it was impossible) to improve its market share rather than let Firefox gain over it due restrictions enforced by Microsoft itself.

So all you pirates out there, if you weren't able to download IE7 for obvious reasons. Get it now!

The Ultimate Aero Twin Turbo built by Washington State based Shelby Supercars (not affiliated to Carrol Shelby's Shelby Automobiles) now holds the crown of the fastest production car in the world. To help you understand what an incredible feat it is; to attain such speeds on a production car, I'm going to quote Captain Slow from Episode 2 ,Season 9 of Top Gear (Feb.4th 2007) - "And when you think that the Veyron has airbags, air conditioning, stereo, a boot and all the other stuff F1 cars aren't burdened with, you realize what an incredible machine this is".

One thing that I found quite interesting with Ultimate Aero is that given the Bugatti Veyron is 987 HP and Ultimate Aero TT is 1183 HP, with its Lamborghini Diablo kit-car appearance it looks deceptively half as powerful as the Veyron does.

Bugatti Veyron image clip from Top Gear 9x02.

Ultimate Aero TT image courtesy of Shelby Supercars.

Robert McLaws has put it so well. I wouldn't want to say anything myself. But I'll add this there are many zealots who are not fortunate enough to be in one such programs but very much qualified to handle the responsibilities that come with participating in a software test program. Had I not been in the program that let me install the QFE and test it out, I would have definitely wanted to have it. But that's not because I am a fanboy (which I am) but because I know I have the skills, qualification & skills to handle it. This brings me to say that perhaps Microsoft should prioritize the Vista SP1 beta opportunity to people who made valuable contribution to the Vista beta program (read: qualified for the complimentary copy).

Anybody who has seen O Brother Art Thou would remember what a fun filled adventure it was. The blind man's prophecy in the beginning of the movie about the hidden treasure the 3 convicts were seeking and the treasure they would ultimately find, is probably what would best describe the pursuit of millions of people seeking the ever so elusive Vista SP1 and the 2 updates - KB938194 & KB938979 could yield.

I absolutely adore Jim Allchin, so much; that nobody at Microsoft can ever take his place in my mind. But I think there's been too much of negative speak about Steve Sinofsky on the blogosphere. But Office 2007 is a great product isn't it? And so is the case with SP1, Especially the enormous amount of skepticism about whether SP1 would indeed provide performance improvements. Well turns out, most people may well obtain the performance boost by August 14th, when Vista Performance & Reliability Pack is released to the public. For the lucky ones who are enrolled in relevant programs on Connect you can download it today. And it seems the results are encouraging...

Update: The original forum posting on AeroXP has gone poof! But you can still read about the 2 updates - KB938194 & KB938979

Why? Because China is a huge market and because it is not a friendly market. And because Maxthon is probably the most used browser in China after IE. And most of all, Google did what Yahoo! & Microsoft didn't, buy a stake in Maxthon. That's what Tech Crunch is reporting.

Maxthon is a great browser, although I do admit ever since I've installed ie7pro, my Maxthon usage has dropped in favor of IE. Yet Maxthon packs a lot , giving you a large array of features at half the memory footprint of Firefox.

Jim Allchin finally retired from Microsoft on Jan, 30th 2007 following the public release of Windows Vista, after almost 17 years with Microsoft. I have tremendous respect for him. He has been among the pioneers who shaped 2 of the most popular client versions of Windows today. His leadership on Windows Vista has been commendable. It took great courage and forethought to abort midway into the development and start again from scratch. I wish him good luck into his post-retirement life.

The "Ready for a New Day" Launch Tour made its 2nd stopover in an Indian city in New Delhi yesterday. I attended the business event where Microsoft showcased Windows Vista, Office 2007 System & Exchange Server 2007 to businesses and how they can impact Business Productivity and "lower costs" .

Doug Hauger, Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft India delivered the keynote address. It was a quite informative event overall. The bits I liked more were the EPM presentation by Frank Galahad, the Windows Vista deployment session by Richa Patni and the session on multi-lingual support from the public sector track which I attended simply out of curiosity and was amazed to find out that Vista will be made available in 13 Indian languages. Although I am always "for" English until universal translators come out of the StarTrek universe and are commercially mass produced, it's great to know that Microsoft is investing quite a lot in supporting multi-lingual solutions.

Among the disappointing things about the event were - there was no developers track which has infact been there in the "Across America" Tour. And neither were any sessions catering to Small Businesses. That's particularly disappointing because I was representing a small business myself. I'm know there isn't much utility of Project Portfolio Server 2007 for any small business. But I'm sure a session dedicated to Exchange & SharePoint Server in a small business environment would have been appreciated even in the American Tour as I found out that were no small business session in them either. And a couple of speakers weren't as good as you would expect, I couldn't help but laugh when this gentleman from Southern India (I'm not judging his technical caliber) would pronounce environment as - "envy" + "Ron" (as in Ron Howard) + "met" (although if you pay attention you could hear the faint accent on "N"). I firmly believe a good command over spoken language is a must for any public speaker. And there was this lady (the room was packed, so you gotta know she was a looker) but I rather not say her name for the sake of decency (I am a nice guy impersonating as a bad boy), but her session on Vista security (not actually the topic of her session) was really appalling and I'm not acting out like Simon Cowell as I have just got off watching American Idol it's because she deviated so much from her agenda into topics that were from other speakers and there were many instances where you could tell she seemed a little lost.