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Microsoft Bangladesh on Wednesday announced that it would run two online community portals each for developers and IT professionals in Bangladesh.

Microsoft Bangladesh launched msdnbangladesh.net (developers) and techbangladesh.net (IT Professionals) in a ceremony held at the BIAM Foundation auditorium in the Capital.

These portals are the realisation of Microsoft's commitment to create and build strong knowledge based ICT community in Asia and uplift the software development and IT engineering in the country.

The event kicked off with the inaugural speech by Moshiur Rahman, solutions manager of Microsoft Bangladesh, who then introduced Risman Adnan, developer evangelist of Microsoft Regional Asia. Feroz Mahmud, country manager of Microsoft Bangladesh was also present in the occasion along with other officials.

“Internet has created incredible new opportunities for people around the world to meet and share ideas about topics they care about. These portals are the special ones, the first online communities for IT professionals of Bangladesh who are working with Windows systems on Microsoft platform”, said Rahman.

Risman Adnan gave a presentation on the topics 'Lap around Microsoft Web Platform and Technologies' and 'Developer Introduction to Windows 7' to the audiences; who were mostly IT professionals, developers and students of different organisations and universities.

“Every time a new door opens online, it creates opportunities for people to share their experiences, exchange ideas, collaboration and innovation,” said Risman Adnan.

He also provided the main theme of the MSDN and Technet portals as 'Next generation software developer and IT professional community in Bangladesh'.

Risman Adnan also said that a very promising number of IT developers and professionals are there to move Bangladesh forward as a key player in worldwide IT ecosystem. As Bangladeshis have very good English skills, the potential of becoming the second outsourcing option after Philippines are there. And a strong developer and IT professional community is one key indicator of that potential.

The MSDN and Technet portals will provide free memberships with the opportunity to interact with Microsoft's people and partner in the Asia-Pacific region. These portals will create a new gateway of online interaction and collaboration among developers and IT professionals by providing features like online blogs, forums, user groups, wikis, media gallery, media streaming, news letter and job posting.

MSDN Bangladesh portal will focus on next generation software development technologies such as ASP.NET, Silverlight 2.0, Azure Service Platform and parallel computing while Technet Bangladesh portal focuses more on core infrastructure and platform technologies like Windows operating system specially Windows latest beta version Windows 7 (Client and Server), Exchange Server, SQL Server, Sharepoint, BizTalk Server and Unified Communication. Risman Adnan provided a brief description of all the contents in his presentation.

In his concluding speech Feroz Mahmud said, “We can all learn from each other as we are in the knowledge industry. We will share and exchange our views, works and thoughts to other developers and IT professionals through these two portals and to make sure that everyone has access to ICT, even for the people living in remote areas”.

He also told the audiences that as Microsoft basically focus on people to improve productivity in every sector of life, they usually spend a huge amount of money in Research and Development (R&D) to serve the best product to the consumers thus they can enhance their efficiency.

A new partnership between Lenovo and Research In Motion will allow laptop users to receive email whenever their BlackBerry smartphone can access the internet, even if the laptop is turned off.
The integration will be available to US-based Lenovo ThinkPad laptop users from the second quarter of 2009, and will be rolled out to the rest of the world later in the year. The offering will be called Lenovo Constant Connect.
"With more and more mobile professionals relying on both their BlackBerry smartphone and ThinkPad laptop PC, we view better integration between the two devices as a necessity," said Lenovo chief executive Yang Yuanqing.
In order to receive the new integration, a user will need to purchase a Constant Connect ExpressCard for around $150 (£105), which is inserted into the laptop. A series of installation steps will pair the laptop and the smartphone using the Bluetooth radio in the phone, laptop and the ExpressCard.
All emails will be automatically transferred to the laptop, even when it is turned off, via the low power, always-on ExpressCard. Users will also be able to write and send emails from their laptop when they do not have internet access via the BlackBerry's 3G network service.
An additional benefit of Constant Connect is that it reduces the need for laptop users to pay for fee-based Wi-Fi networks, said the firms.
"By leveraging the industry-leading push-based connectivity of the BlackBerry solution, Lenovo Constant Connect will simplify email synchronisation on the laptop, and provide mobile professionals with greater flexibility to manage their email on the move," said Jim Balsillie, Research In Motion chief executive.