Mohamed Salem Korayem's Blog

As for the theme, it will be added to the available themes for BlogEngine.NET.

Mads Kristensen has requested from the open-source community to aid the BlogEngine.NET team in localization and in adding more themes.

I had two ways to contribute back (in case you didn't notice this blog is running on BlogEngine.NET). The first was through creating an Arabic translation resource file to be used for localization. And the second was by sharing the theme I am currently using which I adapted Non Zero theme manually.

Arabic Localization for BlogEngine.NET 1.2: download here. I will try to maintain it in the future Inshallah.

NonZero Theme for BlogEngine.NET 1.1: downloading here.

I know that this contribution, plus my help in the wiki, is nothing compared to what the whole team of BlogEngine.NET is doing, but it makes me sleep better at night ;) 

I just hope that both of those contributions make it on time for the next release. It's due to TODAY.

In a very smart move by Gavin Joyce, dotnetkicks creator, the full source-code of the website is now public on GoogleCode and you can Checkout the code from it's SVN repository.

This move will make things much better as the website lacked a lot of important features that the community will now have the opportunity to add quickly.

To me, this is the first time I've seen anything like that. No website that offered a certain service to the people (example: facebook, digg, etc..) had it's own source code available to the public to enhance and update. The only 'open' thing about some websites is their APIs that you can leverage in your own application.

So far, Gavin didn't announce his plans on how persons will be able to update the actual website, but so far, running dotnetkicks locally is just good to see in your local computer ;)

7/7/7

No, this is not a codename for some futuristic software release. And it doesnt equal 0.14285...Close the Windows Calculator, will you? Just read on...

7/7/7 is the date over 400 people, ranging from students to professionals, left their cosy beds in the early morning on a Saturday weekend, that they usually spent relaxing from their Geekhood life to an event that will awaken their inner geek.

After all, who would miss an event that talks about the latest technology? New CTPs and Betas that will be released by Microsoft in the near future. New stuff that will literally change the future of how we write and develop applications, and what those applications will offer to the end user.

Silverkey really hit the jackpot that day with the broad topics offered in the sessions. There was a topic for everyone. Actually, most people complained that all topics were too good that they couldn't choose what to miss! Thankfully, all sessions were recorded and will be released soon on Google Videos.

The event showed how agile and dynamic Silverkey is. Egypt, IMHO, lacks this kind of business model which seeks to be truly on the cutting edge, and showing the rest of the world the bleeding part. Silverkey takes this model for granted to the extend that are eager to lead the way for other companies by sharing what they know, not on a personal level through their employee's blogs or so, but on an enterprise level through this event. This explains, to people with some doubt, why the event wasn't affiliated with or funded by Microsoft Egypt in any way.

Their target is to hold SKDD every 6 months. If you think that this period is very small, compare the topics offered in the SKDD1 to those in SKDD2. Technologies that were 6 weeks old had a whole session in SKDD2 (see Microsoft Jaspser session).

If you missed SKDD2, you can (besides cursing yourself for missing an awesome event) download the slides, codes and video sessions a week from now on DemoDay's website. (links and details will be posted here as soon as they are released isa).

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