Now you can travel in trains in India, without having a hardcopy(printout) of the e-ticket. Previously we have to take a prinout of the e-ticket booked from IRCTC. Now you just need to show the screenshoot of the e-ticket through laptops/palmtops/ Mobile phone and this is called Virtual Reservation Message (VRM). VRM along with any one of the eight prescribed ID proofs in original and the indication of the passenger(s)’ name(s) in the Reservation Chart will authorize the passenger to travel.

VRM along with one of the prescribed proofs of identity in original will also authorize the passenger to enter the platform on the day of journey and he/she will not be required to purchase platform ticket. ERS/VRM along with original id proof will be required to be produced on demand of Ticket Checking Staff on the platform.

This is a good move because many passengers have laptop/smart phone and they can show the e-ticket though that and there by saving the paper and ink.

One of the disadvantage of this method is, if we the passenger have to show a ticket as VRM though the laptop and if the laptop is not power-on, TTR have to wait till the passenger boot and logon to his/her system. And what will happen of the laptop’s or the mobile’s charge is completely drained/it is not working? So I think most of the people will not depend only on the VRM but they will take a printout of the e-tiket also.

The following photo identity cards are considered valid.

• Voter Identity Card
• Passport
• PAN card
• Driving License
• Photo identity cards issued by Central/State Government for their employees.
• Student Identity Card with photograph issued by recognized School / College for their students
• Nationalised Bank Passbook with photograph

Amazon launches 7" Android-powered tablet called Kindle Fire. This is a WiFi only model, priced $199. The operating system of this tablet is a customized version of Google’s Android, so it will not be like a normal android tablet. You might not be able to install apps from android market place etc. Kindle Fire will be released on November 15, 2011.

Main features

• 7" vibrant color touchscreen that delivers 16 million colors in high resolution.
• Fast, Dual-Core Processor
• Magazines in Rich Color
• Over 100,000 movies and TV shows, including thousands of new releases and your favorite TV shows, are available to stream or download, purchase or rent – all just one tap away. Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, commercial-free streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows.
• Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies, The Weather Channel and more, plus a great paid app for free every day.
• Web browsing using Amazon Silk browser
• The Kindle Store offers over 1 million books, including 800,000 titles
• Kindle Fire gives you free storage for all your Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud.
• Built-in email app
• Document reader(Text, DOC, PDF etc.)

Technical Specification

Watch demo || More Details

The Windows Developer Preview is a pre-beta version of Windows 8 for developers. It may not be stable, operate correctly or work the way the final version of the software will. The features and functionality in the prerelease software may not appear in the final version.

Windows Developer Preview with developer tools English, 64-bit (x64)

DOWNLOAD (4.8 GB)

Sha 1 hash – 6FE9352FB59F6D0789AF35D1001BD4E4E81E42AF

All of the following come on a disk image file (.iso), you can burn it to a DVD using a DVD Burn software.

64-bit Windows Developer Preview

• Windows SDK for Metro style apps
• Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Developer Preview
• Microsoft Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview
• 28 Metro style apps including the BUILD Conference app

Windows Developer Preview English, 64-bit (x64)

DOWNLOAD (3.6 GB)

Sha 1 hash – 79DBF235FD49F5C1C8F8C04E24BDE6E1D04DA1E9

Includes a disk image file (.iso) to install the Windows Developer Preview and Metro style apps on a 64-bit PC.

Windows Developer Preview English, 32-bit (x86)

DOWNLOAD (2.8 GB)

Sha 1 hash – 4E0698BBABE01ED27582C9FC16AD21C4422913CC

Includes a disk image file (.iso) to install the Windows Developer Preview and Metro style apps on a 32-bit PC.

System Requirements

Windows Developer Preview works great on the same hardware that powers Windows Vista and Windows 7:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
• Taking advantage of touch input requires a screen that supports multi-touch

Apple’s Board of Directors today announced that Steve Jobs has resigned as Chief Executive Officer, and the Board has named Tim Cook, previously Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, as the company’s new CEO. Jobs has been elected Chairman of the Board and Cook will join the Board, effective immediately.

Steve Jobs Resignation Letter

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.
Steve

The official release date of Mozilla Firefox 5 is on June 21, but the Mozilla has posted final builds for Firefox 5.

Firefox 5 has no major changes in the user interface. Main changes are

• Added support for CSS animations
• The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
• Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
• Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
• Improved spell checking for some locales
• Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users
• WebGL content can no longer load cross-domain textures
• Background tabs have setTimeout and setInterval clamped to 1000ms to improve performance
• The Firefox development channel switcher introduced in previous Firefox Beta updateshas been removed

You can download the latest build from

• Windows (32-bit)
• Linux (32-bit) or Linux (64-bit)
• Mac OS X

I have downloaded it from http://napoleon.acc.umu.se/pub/mozilla.org/

Download Paths

• Download Windows – US English or for other languages - http://napoleon.acc.umu.se/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0/win32/
• Download Mac Version – US English or for other languages http://napoleon.acc.umu.se/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0/mac/
• Download Linux Version – US English or for other languages http://napoleon.acc.umu.se/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0/linux-x86_64

Main Features of Firefox 4

• Firefox 4 includes an updated interface for all platforms that’s sleeker and easier to use.
• Firefox 4 contains huge performance enhancements, including our brand new JägerMonkey JavaScript engine. From faster start up times and graphics rendering to improved page load speed, you’ll notice the difference instantly.
• WebM and HD Video : As pioneers of HTML5 video standards, Firefox also supports the WebM format so you can watch open HD quality video.
• Protecting Your Privacy : Firefox puts your privacy first, fixing flaws in some web standards that allow bad guys to snoop around and expose your browser history.
• New JS values: Changes to the C++ representation of JavaScript values allow Firefox to execute heavy, numeric code more efficiently, resulting in cleaner graphics and a better browsing experience.
• Multi-touch Support: Firefox now integrates multi-touch support for Windows 7, enabling you to interact with your browser in a whole new way.
• 3D on the Web: WebGL brings 3D graphics to Firefox, opening the door for developers to create vivid games and new kinds of visualizations and experiences for the Web.
• Audio API: Firefox is changing the way media is integrated on the web: exposing the raw audio data housed within the <video> and <audio> elements in HTML5 makes it easy for developers to use JS to read and write audio data.
• Retained layers: Experience super fast scrolling on complex web pages. Simply awesome.
• XPCOM: Firefox starts up even faster thanks to XPCOM module improvements that pave the way to a better extensions framework.
• Styling Pages with CSS3: Support for new CSS3 features like Transitions and Transformations makes it easy to add elegant animations to Web pages. Learn more
• Fabulous Fonts: Firefox 4’s OpenType font features gives designers and developers more control over a variety of font features—like kerning or ligatures—to create gorgeous websites.
• Upgrading Forms: Firefox integrated Form features like list attributes and HTML5 validation provide the tools to make annoying form implementation development a thing of the past.
• HTML5 Support: A new HTML5 parser and full support for web video, audio, drag & drop, and file handling means Firefox 4 is ready to run the best web apps of both today and tomorrow.
• Web Console: With this experimental analysis tool for modern sites, Firefox allows you to peek under the hood of dynamic web pages.
• JetPack SDK (Making Add-on Development Easier): Add-ons can be installed without restarting the browser, and can be developed more easily using the new JetPack SDK and js-ctypes
• Full Hardware Acceleration: Experience super-fast graphics acceleration with Direct2D and Direct3D on Windows, XRender on Linux and OpenGL on Mac, now enabled by default, on all supported hardware.
• SVG as Images: SVG files can now be used as images and backgrounds in Firefox, meaning that developers and designers can have stunning, performance-conscious websites with lighter, resolution-independent image files.
• Compartments: Firefox can now better manage JavaScript objects with Compartments, offering improved cache utilization and garbage collection mechanisms for better security, memory management and overall performance.
• Crash Protection: Firefox provides uninterrupted browsing for Windows, Linux, and now Mac when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins. If one of these commonly-used plugins crashes or freezes, it won’t affect the rest of Firefox. Instead, you can simply reload the page to restart the plugin and try again. Learn more about plugins.
• HSTS: Sites can now keep attackers from intercepting sensitive data while accessing the site by telling Firefox to automatically establish secure connections to their servers (https).

Google Docs allows us to quickly view documents online without leaving your browser. You can also upload and share these files in Google Docs, so that anyone can view the content using their browser.

Now the Google Docs Viewer launch support for 12 new file types.

• Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 / 2010 (.PPTX)
• Apple Pages (.PAGES)
• Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
• Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
• Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
• Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
• PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
• TrueType (.TTF)
• XML Paper Specification (.XPS)

In Gmail, these types of attachments will now show a “View” link, and clicking on this link will bring up the Google Docs Viewer.

Goto Google Docs Viewer

The Document Foundation has launched the free office productivity suite LibreOffice 3.3, now available for download. LibreOffice 3.3 is it’s first stable release for Windows, Macintosh and Linux.

Document foundation is an independent self-governing meritocratic Foundation, created by leading members of the OpenOffice.org Community.

You can download, install and distribute LibreOffice freely, with no fear of copyright infringement.

What’s outstanding about LibreOffice?

LibreOffice is a feature-packed and mature desktop productivity package with some really great advantages:

• It’s free – no worry about license costs.
• No language barriers – it’s available in a large number of languages, with more being added continually.
• LGPL public license – you can use it, customize it, hack it and copy it with free user support and developer support from our active worldwide community and our large and experienced developer team.
• LibreOffice is an Open Source community-driven project: development is open to new talent and new ideas, and our software is tested and used daily by a large and devoted user community; you, too, can get involved and influence its future development.
• Because the development process is completely open, LibreOffice has been extensively tested by security experts, giving you security and peace of mind.
• You get a simple-to-use yet powerful interface that is easy to personalize – Microsoft Office users will find the switch easy and painless, with a familiar look and feel.
• Compatible with all major competitors’ file formats. You can easily import files from Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint and many other formats, and can easily save to Microsoft Office and other formats when needed.

What does LibreOffice give you?

Writer is the word processor inside LibreOffice. Use it for everything, from dashing off a quick letter to producing an entire book with tables of contents, embedded illustrations, bibliographies and diagrams. The while-you-type auto-completion, auto-formatting and automatic spelling checking make difficult tasks easy (but are easy to disable if you prefer). Writer is powerful enough to tackle desktop publishing tasks such as creating multi-column newsletters and brochures. The only limit is your imagination.

Calc tames your numbers and helps with difficult decisions when you’re weighing the alternatives. Analyze your data with Calc and then use it to present your final output. Charts and analysis tools help bring transparency to your conclusions. A fully-integrated help system makes easier work of entering complex formulas. Add data from external databases such as SQL or Oracle, then sort and filter them to produce statistical analyses. Use the graphing functions to display large number of 2D and 3D graphics from 13 categories, including line, area, bar, pie, X-Y, and net – with the dozens of variations available, you’re sure to find one that suits your project.

Impress is the fastest and easiest way to create effective multimedia presentations. Stunning animation and sensational special effects help you convince your audience. Create presentations that look even more professional than the standard presentations you commonly see at work. Get your collegues’ and bosses’ attention by creating something a little bit different.

Draw lets you build diagrams and sketches from scratch. A picture is worth a thousand words, so why not try something simple with box and line diagrams? Or else go further and easily build dynamic 3D illustrations and special effects. It’s as simple or as powerful as you want it to be.

Base is the database front-end of the LibreOffice suite. With Base, you can seamlessly integrate into your existing database structures. Based on imported and linked tables and queries from MySQL, PostgreSQL or Microsoft Access and many other data sources, you can build powerful databases containing forms, reports, views and queries. Full integration is possible with the in-built HSQL database.

Math is a simple equation editor that lets you lay-out and display your mathematical, chemical, electrical or scientific equations quickly in standard written notation. Even the most-complex calculations can be understandable when displayed correctly. E=mc².

LibreOffice also comes configured with a PDF file creator, meaning you can distribute documents that you’re sure can be opened and read by users of almost any computing device or operating system.

Download LibreOffice now and try it out today.

These scenarios can be done using the free SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Services edition. This edition includes the SQL Server 2008 Express database engine as well as graphical administration tools and the Reporting Services server components for creating, managing, and deploying tabular, matrix, graphical, and free-form reports(SQL Server 2008 Express Advanced can be downloaded here).

URL: http://ssrsphp.codeplex.com.

SQL Server Reporting Services SDK for PHP in a nutshell

The SDK offers a simple Application Programming Interface (API) to interoperate with SQL Server Reporting Services. The API provides simple methods to perform the most common operations:

• list available reports within a PHP applications,
• provide custom parameters from a PHP web form,
• manage the rendering of the reports within a PHP application.
•  

The API is built on top of the SQL Server Reporting Services Web Service API using SOAP as the underlying communication mechanism. PHP applications can then manage reports, parameters, credentials, and output formats with SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services.

The design of the report is created with Business Intelligence Development Studio which comes with SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Services. Developers can alter the style of the output formats to fit their needs.

From Reporting Services in SQL Server Express Edition,your access to remote data sources (SQL Server, OLEDB, ODBC, MySQL, Oracle and others) goes through a SQL Server Express instance installed on the same server, using either:

• a linked server feature to allow your application to connect to a data source by creating views pointing to the original database.
• importing of data so you can extract data from the original datasource and import it into the SQL Server Express instance.

View more details and sample application on: http://blogs.msdn.com