Ashish Thapliyal's Blog

The Windows team has made an announcement on W7 Availability

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/04/24/windows-7-release-candidate-update.aspx

RC is on track for April 30th by MSDN & TechNet Subscribers.  Broader, public availability will begin on May 5th

Thanks,

Ashish 

As you would know we announced the of availability of Windows 7 Beta at CES yesterday. Windows 7 can be download with your msdn or technet subscriptions today and will be widely available for download on Friday at http://microsoft.com/windows7 On this site, you will also find scenario videos which provide great introductions and cool things to try with Windows 7, IE8, and Windows Live.  

I have Windows 7 Beta on all my PCs. Some of my favorite features are the new UI innovations that make navigating, window management, desktop search; and “HomeGroup” which makes it easy to share files and printers across my home network with my other Windows 7 PCs. 

I hope you will try and enjoy the great features of Windows 7 Beta

Silverlight 2 Release Candidate 0 (Silverlight 2 RC0) is now available to developers for testing purposes and to help prepare your Silverlight 2 Beta 2 applications for the release of Silverlight 2. This release should not be used for launching Silverlight 2 applications for the general public

More details at

http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/sl2rc0.aspx

Have you heard that PDC2008 is the place to see the coolest new technology? That's right, at PDC2008, you'll discover what is in store for the future of ASP.NET. Have some fun with XNA and game development, or go in-depth with IronRuby. Other topics include: Live Mesh, Office Communications Server, SQL Server 2008, FAST, Silverlight, Oslo, Visual Studio Team System, Virtualization, SharePoint, Dynamics, Windows 7 and more! You can also network with top developers hang out with your friends and colleagues, and have fun in the L.A. sun!

This is the PDC you won't want to miss!  Register now for PDC2008 at MicrosoftPDC.com.

Here are just a few of the exciting sessions you can attend at PDC2008!

ASP.NET: FUTURE ROADMAP
Come see the roadmap for the next release of ASP.NET. Highlights include: managing control IDs, displaying images using the new Dynamic Image control, better ViewState management in GridView and ListView, and more control over the CSS markup of ASP.NET server controls.

MICROSOFT SILVERLIGHT: BUILDING BUSINESS APPLICATIONS
Learn about this exciting new technology that makes business applications for RIA (Rich Internet Applications) much easier to build. Discover how we've made n-tier application development as simple as traditional 2-tier, and more.

A LAP AROUND "OSLO"
"Oslo" is the family of new technologies that enable data-driven development and execution of services and applications. Come and learn how to use "Oslo" directly to drive the execution of deployed applications.

For a complete list of sessions, visit
https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/sessions.aspx

PDC2008 Dates and Location

WHEN:
October 27-30, 2008
Pre-cons October 26, 2008

WHERE:
Los Angeles Convention Center

REGISTER NOW  http://www.microsoftpdc.com/Registration/

The blog post from Keith Cox discussing Silverlight and WPF in Healthcare, featuring a great reference from Epic Systems is now available on our team blog:  http://blogs.msdn.com/msftisvs/default.aspx

After working for 3 years with Microsoft ISV Advisory Services in Bangalore India, I’ve moved to corporate headquarters (Redmond)  to take up the new role with DPE. In my new role I’ll be working with the global ISV’s for the adoption of our platform. I’m very much excited about my new role and would continue to write about the latest and greatest things happening in technology arena.

Sr. Technical Evangelist Jean-Christophe Cimetiere was is Las Vegas to attend the Interop 2008 Conference. Here is the nice post from him on our team blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/msftisvs/archive/2008/06/16/microsoft-stopped-in-at-interop-2008-it-conference-and-exposition.aspx

Enabling Internet Explorer 8 to display web content in its most standards compliant way by default is the right way to help move the Web forward.  This big step in real-world interoperability allows us to:

• Help web developers and designers drive toward the ideal of “write once, run anywhere”, freeing up more time to innovate vs. modify content for different browsers
• Address several major development and design pain points from previous Internet Explorer releases
• Partner closely with Web standards working groups to be a key contributor in Web standards evolution

IE 8 will have strong CSS 2.1 compliance, owing to this some of the existing sites may break.  The error typically could be like, formatting, alignment or JavaScript issues. We want end users to have the best experience possible when browsing with Internet Explorer 8 and enable content providers to update sites with standards compliant content at a pace that best suits their needs. So, we’ve added the compatibility option for developers to display their web sites and applications in Internet Explorer 8 the same way they did in Internet Explorer 7. Options to make you site compliant are explained here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952030 

Some of the additional resource are listed below

Internet Explorer 8 main site: 

http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie8

Internet Explorer Team Blog: 

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie

Internet Explorer Developer Center: 

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/default.aspx

Internet Explorer Compatibility:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/cc405106.aspx

Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit (for web designers and developers): http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/default.htm

Microsoft Interop Principles:  http://www.microsoft.com/interop/principles/default.mspx

Photosynth is an amazing new technology that will change the way you think about digital photos.

This tool takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space

With Photosynth you can:

• Walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle.
• Seamlessly zoom in or out of a photo whether it's megapixels or gigapixels in size.
• See where pictures were taken in relation to one another.
• Find similar photos to the one you're currently viewing.
• Send a collection - or a particular view of one - to a friend.

It is always good to talk to our partners on latest technologies. I’m attaching the demonstration source code for the event held on 24th April 2008

Here are some good resources to read

BCL Team blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/bclteam/

CLR Add-In Team Blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/clraddins/

Add-In framework at CodePlex

http://www.codeplex.com/clraddins

I recently have found some virtual labs, these are cool labs to start anyhting 

TechNet Virtual Labs for IT Professionals

MSDN Virtual Labs for Developers

Be updated with webcasts

http://www.microsoft.com/events/webcasts/calendar/monthview.aspx

Visit this page for more information,

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/Msdnvista.aspx