items tagged with Microsoft

When you go to upload photos with LiveUpload version 2.0, you’re given the option to link a particular Photo Gallery tag with a Facebook user. The links you make are saved, so you only have to configure each tag one time. Future uploads will automatically link the correct tags to the correct people.

Facebook users – this one is a must.

Mickey Williams of Neudesic talks about cloud computing and what it takes to get off the ground as small start up with Techzulu’s Geoffrey Emery. Azure Microsoft's cloud computing platform is on the horizon for bringing a huge leap forward for startups in instant scalability at a fraction of the cost that you incur if you were to build your own datacenter. One of the things that Mickey brought up was Microsoft .NET services in the sky which hasn't been talked about as much. BizTalk another Microsoft product that Mickey brought up is a technology for connecting multiple interfaces that don’t have a inherent communication protocol. There are now offering this in form in cloud and calling a service bus. The Microsoft .NET services (or the BizTalk Services as it was previously called) allows enterprises to expose their services to the internet from within a firewall without having to setup a DMZ or allow explicit inbound access to the machines. It used the concept of Relay Binding (extension over the existing WCF) to allow access to the services. Allowing disparate systems to be interconnected through the internet, the .NET services sets up an internet service bus in the Microsoft cloud.  See image Below

Getting interfaces to talk to each other through firewalls using the internet and secure socket layer alone is really powerful.

Azure Resource Video

Links in Video

Mickey’s Blog - http://blogs.neudesic.com/blogs/mickey_williams/default.aspx

Azure - http://www.microsoft.com/azure/

BizTalk - http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/default.aspx

WCF  - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa663324.aspx

The Microsoft PDC 2009 event had some huge announcements and not only concerning Microsoft products.  For those of you that may not know what the Microsoft PDC conference is all about, it is a developer event focused on the technical strategy of the Microsoft developer platform.  Literally people from all over the world come to attend this huge developer event and hear the latest on the Silverlight, Visual Studio, Azure, Windows 7 the list goes on.  This could be considered the Mecca of sorts for all Microsoft developers.  Now, to get into some of the big points that PDC09 had to offer.

Windows Azure Platform was a big focus of the conference. Since it was first announced about a year ago they have added tons of features.  One of which was the support for open-source frameworks.  You can checkout all those features here.  One thing to note is that Azure currently only runs in Microsoft data centers.  Will they allow their partners or some of their larger customers to build their own private clouds in the future?  Would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Microsoft still plans on going after the browser market with it new iteration of Internet Explorer IE9.  The new IE9 is just about 1 month old now, literally, they just started working on it and are no were near a release for us to play with any time soon.  Two of the main upgrades they spoke about was the HTML5 set of standards and the speed.  With the huge boost of speed that Chrome and the recent release of the latest Firefox build it is a must for them to even compete in the market.  One big issue that was not talked about was security.  The mass market are the ones who typically tend to use IE and they are the ones who typically get attacked.  I sure hope they make that a big priority with IE9.

Silverlight 4 is now in beta and available for you to download.  Mr. Silverlight himself Tim Heuer put together an amazing list of video resources from the conference:

• CL01 – Microsoft Silverlight 4 Overview (Karen Corby)
• CL02 – Silverlight 3 Advanced Performance and Profiling (Seema Ramchandani)
• CL06 – Networking and Web Services (Yavor Georgiev)
• CL07 – Mastering WCF RIA Services (Dinesh Kulkarni)
• CL19 – Building Line of Business Applications with Silverlight 4 (David Poll)
• CL20 – Improving and Extending the Sandbox with Silverlight 4 (Joe Stegman)
• CL21 – Building Line of Business Applications with Silverlight and RIA Services (Brad Abrams)
• CL22 – Advanced Topics for Building Large-scale Applications with Silverlight (John Papa)
• CL24 – XAML Futures in Microsoft .NET Framework (Rob Relyea)
• CL32 – Developing Testable Silverlight Applications (Keith Jones)
• CL08 – Custom Behaviors for Advanced Microsoft Silverlight UI Effects (Peter Blois)
• CL36 – Deep Dive on Bing maps Silverlight Control (Keith Kinnan)
• PR03 – Integrate Microsoft Silverlight with SharePoint 2010 (Paul Stubbs)
• FT24 – Building Extensible RIAs with Managed Extensibility Framework (Glenn Block)

Tim has more great Silverlight tips and references that you can checkout here.

Like I told you earlier in the post not all big news came from Microsoft.  Loic Le Meur founder of Seesmic announced their Windows specific desktop application during the keynote at PDC.  It was completely rebuild from the ground up and I must say it is quite a great application.  For now I will let Loic show you the application but we will have a full review and interview with Loic Le Meur that we conducted during The Underground at PDC09.

Overall the Conference had great new products/services/features that came out of it.  If you are a Microsoft fanatic this would be one conference not to miss.  Definitely checkout the PDC website for more information or videos you may have missed if you were not able to attend.

As predicted, today’s Marketplace good news is that Microsoft would back down from their $99 update charge to Marketplace apps.

CNET’s Tom Krazit reports that in a major reversal now all updates or version upgrades for applications that have already been submitted to the store will be accepted free of charge. This applies to minor bug fixes as well as second-generation releases that add new features or capabilities.

Microsoft still plans to charge developers $99 a year, plus $99 per application, to submit applications to Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

On the second point of contention, we can report that Microsoft has still not decided internally whether Marketplace will eventually come to Windows Mobile 6.1 or not.

Read more about the $99 charge at CNET here.

Microsoft has extended the deadline to grab a beta copy of Windows 7, giving interested users until February 10 to download a pre-release version of the next major revision for the Windows OS.

“Because enthusiasm continues to be so high for the Windows 7 Beta and we don't want anyone to miss out, we will keep the Beta downloads open through Feb. 10, "Brandon LeBlanc in a post to the Windows 7 blog.

Here shutdown of general availability for the Windows 7 Beta will occur in 3 phases over the course of the next few weeks acceding to the windows team blog:

• Starting January 27th, the Windows 7 page will be updated with a warning that time is running out on downloading the Windows 7 Beta and that we will be limiting downloads shortly. People will be encouraged to register and start the download of the Windows 7 Beta sooner rather than later.
• February 10th, new downloads of the Windows 7 Beta will no longer be available. People who have already started their Windows 7 Beta download and have not yet finished will still be able to finish their download and are encouraged to do so.
• February 12th, people will no longer be able to complete their download of the Windows 7 Beta. Anyone who hasn’t finished downloading the Windows 7 Beta will be unable to do so.

MSDN and TechNet Subscribers will continue to have access to the Windows 7 Beta bits throughout the Windows 7 Beta phase. The above dates do not apply to MSDN and TechNet Subscribers.