Idera's SQLcheck quickly investigates, organizes and explains critical information about your server’s hardware, operating system and SQL Server. With SQLcheck's performance dashboard, you can quickly view detailed explanations and receive recovery suggestions. Get the information you need to efficiently manage your SQL Server environment.
Via Stefano.

Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003 and IIS 6.0 provide the services to support a secure, available, and scalable Web server on which to run your Web sites and applications. Whether you manage a single Web server or many, Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Resource Kit will help you effectively plan, deploy, operate, and troubleshoot your IIS 6.0 solution. This comprehensive technical resource delivers an in-depth description of the new IIS 6.0 architecture, as well as reference information about IIS 6.0 features and services. It also includes practical information and tools to help you accomplish everyday administrative tasks. Deployment scenarios in part one of this book include installing a new Web server, upgrading an existing Web server from an earlier version of IIS, and migrating existing Apache or IIS Web sites and applications to a newly installed Web server. Part two of this book includes information about running IIS 6.0 as a platform for Web applications, managing a secure IIS 6.0 solution, administering servers programmatically, and capitalizing on built-in scalability features to manage large-scale deployments. In addition, part two includes a thorough discussion of IIS 6.0 troubleshooting concepts, tools, and procedures. Via Stefano.

As you Iranians might have noticed, there was a major down time in most of Iranian web sites yesterday. Cirrus Hosting, an Iranian managed hosting company based on Canada, was changing its customers' IP addresses so many of Iranian hosts went down as well as AliParvaresh.com. The funny thing about my web site is that, www.aliparvaresh.com functions correctly, but aliparvaresh.com, which is more critical for .Text rather than www., has been down without even word out of mouth of the hosting company. Just we noticed after the down time that they have announced the down time on their web site, but when it comes to SPAM, they send you 3-4 emails a day concerning a discount or an special sale, but when it comes to down time, there is no talk on it. Isn't it funny?

The Mountain of Wothless Information and a lesson for any web application developer.

Robert Scoble, the Microsoft Geek Blogger, has driven three hours to North of Vancouver for eating an Iranian food in Pink Elephant Restaurant.

"N" has become the most magic letter for me. We don't have any problem using UTF-8 characters in MS SQL database when using nchar, nvarchar, ntext or what so ever only with "N" at the beginning of data type. Now I noticed that if you add a N' to your INSERT INTO command, there will be no problem for Arabic letters either. Like Arabic numbers. I know using Adapter and Datasets, automatically solves these all issues, but we had to use SPROC yesterday for some parts of our new project, so there was a need of INSERT INTO command running from ASP.NET and I noticed everything is being inserted ok other than Arabic numbers and it was solved with The Magic "N".

Peter Pathos, president of The Planet, our data center which we moved to 4 months ago, has been interviewed by Rich Miller on netcraft. Some highlight:
"The Planet has experienced a monthly growth rate of 20-percent plus in both January and February, after selling 1,500 dedicated servers in December."
"In the last two months, more than 37,000 hostnames have moved to The Planet from other hosting companies, a net gain of more 31,500 hostnames."
Why I like them: "Being an engineer myself, The Planet has always been a very technology driven company. To date, we have taken the monies most companies spend on advertising and invested in our network, datacenter infrastructure and hardware."
Here is their network at a glance.

English version of AXBlog, Iranian English photoblog, is finished by Hamed.

The Issue Tracker enables project teams to keep track of outstanding issues, assigned owners, history and related issues through a Web-based interface.
Create Projects
Define project name and description
Create issue categories and custom fields
Add project members and permissions
Create and Track Issues
Assign issue owners and add notes
Track issue status, related issues and history
Query and sort issues using a boolean search
Technologies and Design Approaches Demonstrated:
Best practices for building applications in preparation for ASP.NET 2.0 Mobile web application development

Hossein Derakhshan is introducing a new blogging engine called, Textpattern.

In this month's Web Server Survey the number of IP addresses with sites using ASP.NET has overtaken those using JSP and Java Servlets. The number of IP addresses found with ASP.NET has shown very strong growth in the past year with a 224% increase from 17.2K to 55.8K. JSP & Java Servlets despite being overtaken is the next fastest growing in percentage terms with a 56% increase. Read More . . .

Robert Green had met Joe Wikert, the published of Wrox, and it sounds they are going to be alive again. Great!

GoogleGuy, the person who answers Google questions of people in Web Master Forum, has claimed:
"Namaste, AdWords/AdSense has no impact (positive or negative) on scoring/ranks".
But, I am sure if at least affects the time you will be indexed by Google. I have seen my web sites indexed faster than usual when I used AdSense.

Software giant Microsoft is launching its own online music store to rival services by Apple and Napster. Microsoft will launch the store this autumn via its MSN service in the US, but it would not say whether it planned a sales or subscription service. It unveiled the service at the South by Southwest music conference in Texas. Retail giant Wal-Mart is also launching its own US music download service after a three-month test, offering songs at $0.88 (0.48) each. Read More . . .

PARIS (Reuters) - Iran's first high-speed, DSL Internet network will be built by Alcatel (CGEP.PA) after it won a contract from technology concern Asre Danesh Azar, the French communications equipment maker said on Tuesday. Alcatel said in a statement it had won the contract, whose value it did not disclose, under a government plan for DSL privatization in Iran. The contract will provide high-speed Internet access in Tehran and other parts of Iran, which has controls on access to some parts of the Web and where Internet access is prized as a window onto the rest of the world. DSL, stands for digital subscriber line and provides high-speed access to the Internet over existing, copper telephone lines. Alcatel will install and support 100,000 DSL lines over the next three years. The first phase of the contract covers 23,000 lines and will be completed in May.
I hope so!

Another great job by Brad.
.NET Developers is a community web site, devoted to bringing you the best free information available on .NET development. We are looking for article contributors and reviewers.

Scott Hanselman is giving his advices on load balancing and session issues on ASP.NET. I also forgot to give the URL of my ASP.NET session FAQ. Here you go: http://www.asp.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?tabindex=1&PostID=7504.

This white paper gives an overview of the differences in clustering technology between Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server. Some of the areas covered in the article are installation, integration, Network Load Balancing, and the new Network Load Balancing Manager.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The head of the Russian navy has ordered the Northern Fleet's nuclear-powered flagship, "Peter the Great", into dock, saying it is in such a poor state it could blow up at any time, Interfax news agency says. "The ship is in such a condition that it may blow up any minute," the agency quoted Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov as saying. "It is especially dangerous since the vessel is equipped with a nuclear reactor," Kuroyedov said, adding he came to this conclusion when visiting the vessel last week. Read More . . .

Try www.googlism.com to find out who you are!
I am an English!
Via Jason Haley.

Mehr News, Iranian news agency which is crawled by Second News, is offering a text service on www.mehrnews.ir so you can read news easier. Good job.

Pluck brings the best of the web directly to you. Pluck automatically retrieves updated headlines and articles from your favorite web sites and blogs, in the Pluck RSS reader. Searching large sites like eBay and Amazon is a snap when Pluck delivers the results for quick scanning and customized sorting. Pluck transforms Internet Explorer into a web workhorse!
Via BuzzMachine.

Scripting News: "We all use Google, for sure, but we all used Netscape too. Google misses the same clues that Netscape did, and like Netscape makes enemies where they should be cultivating relationships. Google needs to transition into a leader, once Microsoft has made their move it will be too late."
MSN is moving slowly toward becoming Google...

Do you write web applications for intranet applications? Have your users ever asked for the ability to export a certain report to excel? Do they complain about formulas not being there? Read More . . .

100 Most Often Mispronounced Words and Phrases in English. Via MetaFilter.

Google sent me an email containing new features of Google AdSense:
Detailed account reporting: With the introduction of 'channels,' you now have the ability to track the performance of your pages to any detail level of your choice. By grouping your pages into channels, you can view detailed reports by domain performance, ad format, content topic, or any other criteria that you choose.
Downloadble reports, new alternate ads and framed pages support are the rest of new features.

Happy Norouz (persian new year) to you all. Wish you a year of health.

Scott Watermasysk showed me a nice way through Jesse Ezell to solve the postback issue which is availble while you using URLRewriting.
But let me give an example in which I used URLRewriting and it was useful in contrary to what Scott believes. We are already using URLRewriting for some parts of KhyalGallery.com which the artists and galleries are going to use a URL on their own business cards and things like that. Imagine I had to make a new folder for all upcoming new artists!
So, in my opinion, it can be used in such cases which the user really does not need to come www. itself and instead goes to the page directly.

Port Reporter logs TCP and UDP port activity on a local Windows system. Port Reporter is a small application that runs as a service on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.
Via Stefano.

Google Pagerank Reporting Tool can be used to find out your rank in Google.

Thanks to Yahoo! Customer Care Service and The Planet company for solving the spam issue we had last week. They both helped us and we solved the problem. Thanks a lot!

They sent me an email last night asking for a 1-2 day(s) wait so they solve the problem. Thanks God!

Khyal Gallery updated two days ago, but I didn't get time to write on it. We got 3 new artists and also one artists artworks updated which you can take a look at them all using main page.
Our Norouz gifts is Khyal Gallery Artcards section in which you can send artcards to your friends with ease, without facing so many troubles and banners you experience in other web sites!
Also a special section for our artists so you can view them all in one place.
Suggestions are welcome.

Today's A.Word.Day RSS Feed
Week's A.Word.Day RSS Feed
Via Scripting News.

Let me add one another to reasons of Scoble about RSS and email. Email really ... these days! Instead RSS is just rocking.
UPDATE: 6 reasons why RSS is better than email.

Yahoo! and MSN might better think of doing other things rather than giving out such terrible services. Sorry for saying that! From that Yahoo to this Hotmail, both are same, don't make me wrong!

The IranPerl.com website is up and running. It is powered by Xoops and running on FreeBSD. Read More . . .
Congratulation to Babak Farrokhi.

I noticed some days ago that all outgoing emails from on of our servers is being sent to Bulk folder of Yahoo! users incorrectly although the emails were not spams and the funny part is that, all advertisement emails were in inbox. Microsoft Outlook could detect same spam correctly on my local machine but this YAHOO couldn't. So we started resolving the issue and after long term of searching and discussing the problem with others, I was advised to ask my ISP to setup a reverse DNS for our server and I did and things are looking promising on DNSStuff. During the time I am waiting for changes to propogate across 'net, I filled a form in Yahoo! customer care section which can be found here. I should notice one very important thing, 3 biggest internet data centers are facing this problem including Server Matrix, The Planet and EV1Servers (known as RackShack still).
If you have any other suggestion on how to solve the issue, let me know please.
Other people who has noticed same problem are A Netzien's Diary and FarsTec.

YAHOO! WE ARE NOT SPAMMERS!

Another great job from Google, 20 year archive of Usenet on Google Groups. How was the world in 1981?
Via Stefano.

Lockergnome: "A simple checklist - with links to explain terms that may be unfamiliar - to help you secure Windows. The more of you that use it, the less potential virus and spyware removal business I’ll have!"

Quote of the Day from Scott:
"The scope of this analysis is to demonstrate that so far the subjects who expressed an opinion about the Linux/Windows level of security didn't have any idea of what they were talking about."

BBC: "A flaw in Microsoft's popular e-mail program, Outlook, is worse than first thought. The software giant has upgraded a recent security warning to "critical", urging Windows users to download the latest patch. The vulnerability was originally rated as "important" in Microsoft's monthly security bulletin issued on Tuesday. It subsequently learnt that the flaw could be used to download and run a program on an affected computer."

Iran has the highest rate of "brain drain" in the world. That's the conclusion of the International Monetary Fund, which recently surveyed some 61 countries. The IMF says every year more than 150,000 educated Iranians leave their home country in the hope of finding a better life abroad. RFE/RL correspondent Golnaz Esfandiari spoke to young people who have chosen to leave Iran and experts to see what is driving the country's future to find opportunity somewhere else. Read More . . .
Via Scoble talking about his wife, Maryam, who moved to USA in 1986 and went on to graduate from UC Berkeley.

Thanks to Anil Dash for pointing me to "MS Outlook Keeps Growing as a Platform".
Some MS Outlook plugins: NewsGator, Plaxo, Getting Things Done, Lookout, Cloudmark, Spambayes, Anagram and DateLens.

Marc's Voice is suggesting to name RSS/Atom merge as RSS 3.0.

Alireza Ebadati has translated an article from AP about RSS yesterday in Shargh Newspaper. Shargh Newspaper is the best persian newspaper for the moment in Iran. In this article, they have introduced NewsGator and also some quotes from Robert Scoble is included too.

The MSN Sandbox is the place to play with some new technologies at MSN. It is a chance to experiment and peek behind the scenes at some new ideas. We would love to have your feedback on these projects or hear about your suggestions for improving MSN. It includes:
Newsbot: MSN Newsbot (beta) is an experimental, automated news service. We gather news from over 4,000 sources on the internet and speed your discovery of news stories on the internet. News headlines are clustered together to allow you to compare coverage from multiple sources and each story links to the publisher's site where you can read the full article.
MSN Toolbar: The MSN Toolbar Beta is a free toolbar available from MSN and plugs you directly into MSN Search, Messenger, and Hotmail.
3°: 3° is software that connects a small group of family and close friends, people who know and trust one another, so they can do fun things together in a whole new way. 3° is a beta test of an innovative application that lets users connect online, extending real-world social interactions.
NetScan: The NetScan system data mines Usenet newsgroups to provide tools to discover new newsgroups, select high quality content from the, evaluate the likely reliability of the information, and, possibly, motivate participants to make valuable contributions by providing a service that can be thought of as a reputation system for communities. Try searching for your favorite hobby, software, or TV show to see how it works.
TerraServer and TerraService: The TerraServer-USA Web site is one of the world's largest online databases, providing free public access to a vast data store of maps and aerial photographs of the United States. TerraServer is designed to work with commonly available computer systems and Web browsers over slow speed communications links. The TerraServer name is a play on words, with 'Terra' referring to the 'earth' or 'land' and also to the terabytes of images stored on the site.

MSN on the way of Google!
Via Zhanbo Sun.

The popularity of web servers as a prime target for crackers and worm writers around the globe made IIS a natural place for Microsoft to focus its Trustworthy Computing Initiative. As a result, IIS has been completely redesigned to be secure by default and secure by design. This article discusses the major default configuration and design changes incorporated in IIS 6.0 to make it a more secure platform for hosting critical web applications. Read More . . .

The Microsoft JVM Removal Tool can be used to remove the MS Java Virtual Machine (MSJVM). Use of this tool is the only supported method for removing the MSJVM from a Microsoft operating system. Via Stefano Demiliani.
It has been a long time I have not used MSJVM and using Java Web Start for IE instead.

Yesterday we had too many issues with the automatic change of daylight time in Windows which is changed incorrectly according to Iran's time. First of all, all the emails from friends were sent in wrong time and I couldn't manage to guess when to contact them because I usually contact them via phone during day by guessing the time they are available using the time in which the email has been sent. Also we had to change time on our server so I had to make sure Second News won't make any duplication while I was changing time. The last one which was so funny happened today morning which I noticed our stats software has stopped working as soon as the time was changed, because I think there had been an issue with time sorting of the software and it just stopped making correct reports after daylight change.

The C# Team answers to this question: Why doesn't C# support multiple inheritance?

According to Microsoft.com's VFoxPro Developer Center, this coming June, Microsoft will release a public beta version of Visual FoxPro 9.0 on msdn.com for anyone world-wide to download and install for free! Read More . . .
Via Scoble.

Microsoft confirmed on Friday that it is looking to update its server operating system before the release of next major version of Windows but offered few details on what the new software release will contain.
"We will have a new server release that will likely come up before Longhorn," Gates said.
Via Mack D. Male.

And now... Macromedia Flash for Microsoft .NET Platform. Via Scoble.

Scoble and Knowing .NET discussing whether .NET is for hobbyists or not.
I say, YES. Most of us had done coding as a hobby before it becomes our proficiency, hadn't we? Hobbyists are usually the people who change the world, like many famous scientists who just discovered something by playing around it. And in my opinion, .NET is not such an expensive market, is it?

Lutz Roeder's Reflector is a class browser for .NET components (assemblies). It supports assembly and namespace views, type and member search, C# XML documentation viewer, reference search, IL disassembler, VB and C# decompiler, dependency trees, supertype/subtype hierarchies and resource viewers. Function prototypes are displayed in C# and VB syntax.
Also awesome list of tools from Scott.
Via Jason Haley.

Ravikanth points to 6 pages on 'net discussing same topic, Windows vs Linux.

Microsoft is planning to release a Service Pack for its 2002 and 2003 versions of the .Net Framework and Visual Studio suite in order to insure they will work properly with Windows XP Service Pack (SP) 2. Via Stefano Demiliani.

This suite consists of four packages: Statistics, Discrete Probability, Standard Probability Distributions and Hypothesis Testing which offer the following functionality.
Nice application specially its hypothesis testing module which is helpful a lot, it is priced $179.

BBC Arabic RSS Feed. Via Scripting News.
When will BBC offer RSS for BBC Persian?

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - An Iranian vice president blamed Al Qaeda for today's attacks on Shiite Muslims in Iraq and Pakistan, condemning the terrorist group's rigid thinking for the bombings and shootings that killed more than 20 Iranian worshippers and wounded 69. Mohammad Ali Abtahi, Iran's vice president for legal and parliamentary affairs, wrote in a message posted on his personal Web site that Al Qaeda considers Shiites more dangerous than their political enemy - the United States. Read More . . .
But I don't see such a thing on his weblog, do you?

CNN: "BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Explosions in two Iraqi cities, which killed or injured dozens of people during the Muslim holiday of Ashoura, sent crowds of pilgrims fleeing in panic. In Karbala, 31 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad, several blasts went off Tuesday morning near two of the major shrines in Shiite Islam, sending bodies in all directions. At about the same time, a series of explosions rocked the inside and outside of the Kazimiya shrine in Baghdad."

FreeTextBox v2.0 released. It is just one word, GREAT! The best new feature is its cross-browser support. Via Scott Watermasysk.

I will be working on these subjects for a term to get more idea on image processing. You should know some numerical analyses then dig into Finite Elements and by playing with B-Splines, you will get good idea on how image processing actually works. Reducing degree of complex differential equations with B-Splines can be done easily. Following is a part of an article I found good for starting point.
Consequently, reconstruction methods better than linear interpolation became an attractive filed of research. Hou and Andrews [19] investigated, at the end of the seventies, the applicability of B-splines for image processing tasks like interpolation, smoothing, filtering, enlargement, and reduction. They concentrate on how to choose an optimal and yet easy to implement basis function, the so-called B-spline, and use it for interpolation and data smoothing. Only a visual comparison of B-spline interpolation to other interpolation methods is given by the authors, whereby they compare it only to nearest neighbor and linear interpolation. For testing purposes they performed magnification and minification on digital pictures and come to the result that B-spline interpolation is superior. Read More . . .

Scott Hanselman is talking on ViewState and somehow do_Postback weak points and comparing some ideas on it. Good reading.
I had so much trouble with Session last day myself too, which was hopefully solved by a FAQ on ASP.NET/Forums. I will post about it later.

What is 3DNA Desktop?
The 3DNA Desktop improves the way you work with Windows and the Web. You can choose from different 3D Add-on Worlds to explore and customize for an immersive and entertaining desktop. Within each World you have various areas to create links to your folders, files, and programs. 3DNA will even scan your system to create a custom set of links to get you started. Once you have selected the World you like, you can download additional user-created themes and skies or create your own to share. The interface is intuitive, and there’s an optional Tutorial World that walks you through the product.
Via Scoble.

Ken Brubaker, has created a list of new .NET design guidlines.