IDNs (www.بالعربي.eg)

IDNs or Internationalized Domain Names are domain names represented by local language characters. Such domain names could contain letters or characters from non-ASCII scripts (for example, Arabic or Chinese).

Last Friday Oct. 30 2009 ICANN (the organization responsible for managing assighnment of domain names) approved non-latin domain names, it is designed to accept local alphabet characters, it is considered as biggest technical change to the internet since its birth 40 years ago.

This change will allow URLs to be writen in native characters such as Arabic, Chinese, Greek, etc... and that should allow people who do not read/wirte english to use there own language to surf the cyberspace.

Initially, the change will apply for local country codes only, such as (.kr for korea, .eg for egyypt, etc...) the Major Top Level Domains (TLDs) such as .com, .net and .org will not see non-latine charachters but it will one day.

It is really intereseted to have your native language characters in the URLs although it will raise new development issues to to include non-latin characters in the URLs (from developer point of view :))

looking forward www.بالعربي.eg

New blog

Having one blog for technical and nontechnical posts confuses me so much, and also having different languages posts in the same blog adds confusion.

So I am thinking of publishing new blog and distribute posts between them according technical and non-technical, I think it will help to have one purpose for my blog, design wise and topics wise.

My issue now is which blog hosting should I use? I am kinda going to use www.wordpress.com as second blog option with www.blogger.com I just wanna to decide which one for technical and which for nontechnical posts.

Google Voice.

Google Voice is in its way for public, it is a service from google where you can have google number (or using your own number, it is new feature) to place calls, accept calls, screen calls, get voicemail, conference calls and more.

This service is available now only for people already have google number, and will go to puplic soon according to the news.

Using Google Voice you have the option to use your own number or to get Google number and below are features for both options:

If you sign up for Google Voice with your existing number, you'll get:

• Online, searchable voicemail
• Free automated voicemail transcription
• Custom voicemail greetings for different callers
• Email and SMS notifications
• Low-priced international calling

If you decide to also get a new Google number, you'll get all of the above PLUS:

• One number that reaches you on all your phones
• SMS via email
• Call screening
• Listen In
• Call recording
• Conference calling
• Call blocking

Read more and follow Google voice blog.and more features in youtube.

VS 2010 and .NET 4.0

It is my first time to have step ahead and install Visual Studio Beta version, I read many blogs about VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 new features and enhancements and I like these new feature, I am sure you do not need to read my blog to know about those new features but I like to share my experience.

VS 2010 Beta 2 version is available in this link I installed this version on my laptop Vista Home Premium, it required 5 GB free space to be installed. You can install VS 2010 side by side to other VS versions (VS 2008/VS 2005/ VS 2003) and .NET 4.0 framework side by side to other .NET framework versions, this last option already exists since .NET 2.0

VS 2010 has nice blue look and feel with new VS logo, and when you fire VS 2010 for first time you’ll have a new option to default your development environment to (Web Development (Code Optimized)) which is optimized to web developer who do not want to use WYSIWYG designer and like to work with HTML and ASP.NET code, and thus maximize the code displayed in the screen.

Also now you can select target framework when you create new project with the start project templates screen which has great enhancement in intellisense feature which becomes 100% accurate according to selected framework.

Another great feature in my opinion is multi-monitor support so VS 2010 allows editors, designers, and tool-windows to be moved outside top-level window, so it allows you to put different windows in different monitors to improve your use of screens.

You will be amazed too with the new clean web.config file, .NET 4.0 include new version of machine.config file which automatically registers all of ASP.NET tags sections, handlers and modules that were added by Microsoft over the years, which means default web.config file will be clean and simple. Also VS 2010 support multiple versions of web.config files i.e. by default new web application will have two web.config files one for debugging and the other one for release, and according active configuration correct web.config will be selected.

Amazing URL routing feature also is included in ASP.NET 4.0, which is first included in ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 and used in ASP.NET MVC, which allows you to map friendly and Search Engines Optimized (SEO) web 2.0 URLs, it means you can use http://www.website.com/product/laptops

instead of

http://www.website.com/products.aspx?category=laptops

.NET 4.0 also comes with built in MVC 2.0 framework, and MVC 2.0 project templates, with bunch of HTML helper methods.

Also VS 2010 has great new real-time searching and navigation code window which enhance searching feature in Visual studio and bring real-time search concept and great highlighting feature that highlight all variables/methods/types of selected text in the screen.

And according to this podcast there is boost in VS 2010 performance in many areas.

I am really excited to play around with VS 2010 and .NET 4.0, you can find more information and valuable details in Scott Guthrie posts about VS 2010 and .NET 4.0

Google Wave

Google rocks again, what I like in Google is that: these guys bring future to us now, these guys enable us to share in building that future, and these guys have no sealing for their ideas.

Just today I was chocked with a new product for Google called Google Wave, it is basically a collaboration and communication web tool, they were able to combine tons of tools we need in our day in a wonderful, real time, and web accessed tool.

• Messaging; including e-mails, and instance messaging.
• Posting files: they showed only images posting in wave (they called communication unit a wave)
• Extensions to Google Wave, so now you can have google wave inside your blog, or you can have your Twitter inside google wave.
• many gadgets (Maps, Bugy, Linky, Twitty, ....)
• Documents tracking and collaboration.
  
• a wonderful feature (Playback)
  
• ,,,,

It is still in early phases but I am sure one day it will replace many tools we are using now for communication and collaboration. you can see an 80 minutes demo for Google Wave on their web page and I am sure you will be inspired by them.

and guess what it is open source, and we can contribute to that, I did not get invitation yet but I will for sure.