Microsoft Certified

I am a Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD). Now I can proudly use any of these logos in my CV :-)

When comparing the MCAD to the MCSD Credential based on the Software development life cycle, it comes to something like this:

Here is the list of exams I went through to get the MCSD credential.
(I have no idea why there is a huge space below, seems like a Blogger stylesheet bug)

Exam ID	Description	Date Completed
300	Analyzing Requirements and Defining Microsoft .NET Solution Architectures	Dec 17, 2004
320	Developing XML Web Services and Server Components with Microsoft Visual C# .NET and the Microsoft .NET Framework	Aug 18, 2004
229	Designing and Implementing Databases with Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Enterprise Edition	Jun 29, 2004
316	Developing and Implementing Windows®-based Applications with Microsoft® Visual C#™ .NET and Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET	May 26, 2004
315	Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Microsoft® Visual C#™ .NET and Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET	Dec 18, 2003

Now, where do I want to go today?

Where the search begins... and ends

Microsoft just launched its latest search tool - MSN Toobar Suite. It tries to unify the searching experience by searching the desktop files, emails and the Internet. The suit installs three toolbars; the clasic MSN Toolbar for IE, another for Outlook, and a one called the MSN Deskbar for the taskbar.

Even at its beta stage, it sure does a pretty good job. The initial indexing ran in the background for about 40 minutes without interrupting me or taking the system to a crawl. Once done, I fired my first search for "Windows media SDK". And within milliseconds, I was shown the results then and there. Pretty impressive. It was really really fast!

Wait, not too impressive when you see that it eats up a lot of your valuable taskbar space! And when you also have the Windows Media Player minimized, it comes to something like this:

About 50% of my taskbar already gone! Good thing is, you can drag it off the taskbar and stash it anywhere on the desktop or remove it altogether.

Now why did Microsoft give us a separate MSN toolbar search without integrating the new ultra-fast search engine to Windows Search itself?

Your own space in CyberSpace with MSN Spaces

Microsoft is giving all the kids and the grandma's a space on the CyberSpace.

They call it MSN Spaces, a place where you can publish all your photos, have your own blog, have your music playlists directly linked to MSN Music, have your favorite links, keep your personal profile, and more... all in one place. Oh yea, think of it as a new alternative to a personal homepage, for every kid, nerd and dog out there.

The new MSN Messenger 7 will have direct access to your contacts' "Spaces". And yes, if you do not wish to make your Space public, you can even limit access to only the people on your MSN contact list.

It's still at its beta, and it has some nifty features using all the cool DHTML magic; with customizable themes, Web Parts, drag and drop layouting, your picture slideshows and whatnot!

Check it out: http://spaces.msn.com/members/hethu