Mayank's Blog

A new feature has been added to OrkPic which lets you download your Orkut friend's photo albums too! (Click for a larger view) Download the new version here ! P.S. - Don't forget to uninstall the previous version first before installing this.

Orkut usage is on the decline. Frankly, hardly anyone uses Orkut nowadays. They have all migrated to Facebook. Naturally, new applications developed for Orkut are very far and few. This may also be the result of Google's apathy towards Orkut and its OpenSocial API. But there was a time when Orkut was hugely popular in India when people uploaded hundreds of photos on Orkut but now have no way of getting them back (except manually going through each of them). That's where OrkPic comes into picture. This tool lets you download your Orkut albums onto your system in a flash (depending on the speed of your internet connection, of course). (Click for a larger view) OrkPic lets you choose the albums you want to download and stores them in your "My Pictures" folder. OrkPic is built on .NET 4/WPF and uses DotNetOpenAuth library. Download the tool and liberate your Orkut photos. UPDATE - You have to install .NET 4.0 Full Setup before installing OrkPic. Pleas...

Clearly the best movie of the Harry Potter series; it is also the most honest one. For once, the movie does not take “cinematic liberties” and make the original story a complete mess. It sets the tone of gloom and darkness from the first scene itself in which Hermione “obliviates” her parents. There is death and despair in the air as we miss the familiar surroundings of Hogwarts and the warmth of Dumbledore. Instead there is Nagini , writhing and hissing, as per Lord Voldemort’s will. Harry as the chosen one, Hermione and Ron take upon themselves the mission to find all the Horcruxes and destroy them and we follow their story as they continue on this dangerous mission. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry) has clearly matured as an actor, as was also displayed in his play Equus. Rupert Grint (Ron) is at his funny best. The icing on the cake is the restrained yet powerful performance by Emma Watson (Hermione). Probably with Hogwarts out of the picture, it was easier for her to stop acting bookish. ...

Few days ago I had a heated argument with my friend about religion. Still fresh from watching " Religulous ", I was countering his every argument. Fed up, he asked me to read Bhagavad Gita and then tell him if I find anything wrong with it. Faced with the prospect of reading a book running into hundreds of pages, I asked him to keep it cool and let it go. He anyways went ahead and gifted me the holy book. Now I don't have the patience or passion to read such a thick religious book (yeah go ahead, judge me), I was thinking of a shortcut. That's when the idea of Bhagavad Gita Reader came into my mind. Snapshot - (Click for a larger view) This application divides Bhagavad Gita into chapters and verses. Then each verse and its translation is shown. There are no extra "interpretations to clutter up your mind." This application is built on WPF/.NET 4.0 with MVVM Light framework - A great framework with a very small learning curve as compared to Prism  albeit ...

Not withstanding the media’s  (TOI in particular) constant attempt to force Halloween down my throat, I have decided again to write about the festival which indeed is part of the Indian tradition – Diwali. Some may criticize me for being uncool, but I guess Delhi need not be any more cold than it already is.   I grew up in an era when SRK-ization of India was happening. Come Diwali and we were inundated by “Say No To Crackers” campaigns which told us horror stories about how crackers led to loss of someone’s limb/life. We were made to believe that one night of cracker bursting led to more deaths than the number of causalities in road accidents everyday. They employed all tricks of the trade to keep us off the fireworks – environment being the oft cited reason. Apparently, it was good for us to plant saplings on the roadside (which will eventually wither away in two days due to lack of care) as it would help in reducing the pollution “others” will create on Diwali night. ...

A few days earlier I was thinking that wouldn't it be nice if I had something which will automatically generate a playlist for me with no artists repeated. Also, it would be nice if I could block those artists which I really hate (like Himesh Reshammiya!). Since I couldn't find anything already available, I decided to code it myself. Here is the outcome -  This application is created entirely in .NET Framework 4/WPF and uses Windows Media Player Library as its source of information. So you have to keep your Windows Media Player Library updated for this to work. It is tested only on Windows 7/Vista. You can download it from here . UPDATE : You can download the Windows XP version of the application here . Please provide your feedback!

(GEEK ALERT : This post is for those who are interested in Microsoft Technologies, especially Silverlight). A while ago I thought of developing my own Twitter client just for fun. And what better way to write it in than Silverlight. Because of the cross-domain policy restriction in Silverlight, I had to write a WCF service which carried the tweets payload. I decided to call this app  TweetAwesome - a homage to my awesomeness and humility. :) TweetAwesome uses TwitterVB as its Twitter API library and wears the Metro Theme for Silverlight . The application is also styled using Expression Blend (although I still don't fully know how to use it). As I don't have the infrastructure/money/time to host a WCF service, this app is just for enthusiasts. Here are some snapshots (sneak preview) of the application. (Click on the pictures to launch a full screen slideshow) . 1. When TweetAwesome is used for the first time, the user is asked to allow TweetAwesome to access Twitter on...