Rest azured

Australian Windows Azure Innovation

2012-04-24T04:30:11Z

Since joining the Partner Team to help partners adopt the Windows Azure platform, I have met many companies producing awesome apps powered by Azure. As such, I created this collection of stories to share with you. If you would like more information, or have your own story to share, please let me know.

My thanks go to the following Australian partners, who are featured in this first Windows Azure catalogue:

Artis Group: www.artisgroup.com.au
Assessment Portal: www.assessment-portal.com
Breeze: www.breeze.net
ClickView: www.clickview.com.au
CoolTrax: www.cooltrax.com
Expanz: www.expanz.com
FoodStorm: www.foodstorm.com
Hands on Systems: www.handson.com.au
Hyperlocalizer: www.hyperlocalizer.com
Intelledox: www.intelledox.com
Inzant: www.inzant.com.au
Sweepshake: www.sweepshake.com
M-Bytes: www.m-bytes.com; www.kineticeducation.com.au
Mokom: www.mokom.com.au
OneNimbus: www.onenimbus.com
Open Windows: www.openwindows.com.au
Resonate Solutions: www.resonatesolutions.com.au
Saasabi: www.saasabi.com
Tapit: www.tapit.com.au
WebXact: www.webxact.com.au

Download the book from: http://download.microsoft.com/documents/australia/azure/Windows-Azure-eBook.pdf
or http://aka.ms/azureebook

Let me know what you think…

REMIX10 Last Chance to buy Early Bird Tickets

2010-05-13T02:07:00Z

Tomorrow (Friday 14 May) is your last chance to buy early bird tickets at $195 including GST for REMIX Australia 2010.

We really hope you can join us to hear more about the future of the web. There’s plenty of content on developing for Windows Phone 7, Silverlight, Azure and and so much more.

Visit the REMIX site for more info on the event which takes you to the registration site here: https://www.microsoft.com.au/events/register/home.aspx?levent=829742&linvitation

Save $100 on REMIX10 Australia Lovefest tickets

2010-04-29T10:40:27Z

As you may have seen on Michael’s blog, REMIX10 has been announced. Please find below the invitation and keep and eye on the REMIX Website for more information and the latest news.

Take the Donkey Work out of web development

2010-04-20T11:19:31Z

We launched a new campaign today to promote the Web Platform Installer. Very simply, WebPI is a tool that installs IIS7, extensions, tools, runtimes and applications in a easy to use manner.

Get complimentary apps for everything from blogging to
e-commerce at the Windows© Web App Gallery. And why not let Web PI handle the download, installation and configuration?

Check out Jorke’s blog for a little more information or visit the Web PI home page.

MSDN Australia Book Club #3: Building on the Windows 7 User Experience to Delight Your Customers

2010-03-12T09:15:00Z

Join us for this MSDN Book Club to discuss “Building on the Windows 7 User Experience to Delight Your Customers”

When? Friday 26th March 2010 @ 12-1pm Sydney time. Click here to add the event to your diary

Join the meeting

Chosen video to review? click here to watch the TechEd video before the Book Club and come armed with questions for the team

What’s the Book Club?
A regular LiveMeeting community discussion on a chosen presentation or video. This time we’ll be joined by Dave Glover, Joseph Cooney and Tatham Oddie to discuss "Building on the Windows 7 User Experience to Delight Your Customers" on Friday 26th March 2010 @ 12-1pm Sydney time.

Agenda:

5 minutes: Speaker Introduction
40 minutes: Discussion (with 3 potential points being):
- How do I take advantage of the Windows 7 platform
- What are the new features in VS2010 and .NET Framework 4 that allow me to light up my application on Windows 7
- What are 3 steps to application greatness?
5 minutes: Feedback and vote for next topic

Resources:

·Video Link: http://www.noisetosignal.com.au/chlong/bookclub/dev360/default.html

[UPDATE] I have just added this discussion topic to the MSDN Forum: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-AU/bookclubau/threads

Building upon the Windows 7 User Experience to delight your customers

View more presentations from chlong.

·LiveMeeting not installed? Download it here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101733831033.aspx

To join a meeting from your phone, dial in using the following information:

Phone: +61298702923 [English (Australia), English (United Kingdom)]

Conference ID: 203791917

Azure in Australia

2010-03-04T22:56:49Z

Our Azure Lead, Greg Willis, was busy last week with the Australian Launch Event on Tuesday 23rd here in Sydney!

Our keynote speaker, David Chappell, delivered an excellent presentation on cloud platforms in general which was very well received by the crowd in both Sydney and Melbourne. David was followed by Dianne O’Brien, with a review of our commercial models, SLA and promotional offers. Dianne also announced the commercial availability of Windows Azure in Australia for next month (April 2010) so watch this space for promotional offers and MSDN benefits.

Gianpaolo Carraro wrapped up the day by showcasing some early adopters, including appearances by adslot, ajiliti and Joomla! We also highlighted the strong early support we have from customers and partners here in Australia who are working with us on Windows Azure, from the likes of MYOB and ninemsn:

We’re looking forward to the commercial release in April. In the meantime, visit www.windowsazure.com for everything you need to start building apps on the Azure Platform.

MSDN Australia Book Club #2: Developing Azure Applications for PHP, Ruby and Java using Eclipse

2010-03-03T03:28:51Z

We hope you can join us for our second MSDN Australia Book Club.

What’s the Book Club?
A regular LiveMeeting community discussion on a chosen presentation or video. This time we’ll be joined by Vijay Rajagopalan to discuss Developing Windows Azure Applications for PHP Ruby and Java using Eclipse" on Friday 5th March 2010 @ 11.30-12.30pm Sydney time.

Please click here to watch the Channel 9 video before the Book Club and come armed with questions for Vijay.

Agenda:

· 5 minutes: Speaker Introduction

· 40 minutes: Discussion (with 3 potential points being):

o What's the latest on Windows Azure in Australia?

o What’s the new interoperability support to allow PHP developers to use the Eclipse IDE to develop for Windows Azure

o How is Microsoft working to make Eclipse itself a great Windows 7 application?

· 5 minutes: Feedback and vote for next topic

Resources:

· Video Link: http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/The+Knowledge+Chamber/Developing-Windows-Azure-applications-for-PHP-Ruby-and-Java-using-Eclipse/

· Interoperability s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/interoperability/

· LiveMeeting not installed? Download it here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101733831033.aspx

Click here to add this event to your diary.

Register to hear Robbie Bach on the future of technology and entertainment

2010-01-31T10:09:00Z

When? Tuesday 9th February 2010 at 6.30pm

Where? University of Sydney: New Law School Auditorium

Who? Developers who are interested in hearing Robbie Bach’s (President, Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division) view on the future of technology and entertainment

How do I register? Click here to RSVP

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Just Got Easy

2010-01-13T09:22:02Z

Optimise for and more!

Microsoft announced today a new extension for IIS: the SEO Toolkit.

Once installed, you can review your website via the IIS Manager to make tweaks fast. The SEO Toolkit includes detailed analysis and search engine friendly suggestions which may help to improve the relevance of your website in search results.

The SEO Toolkit will help you to:

Increase website traffic and revenue
Influence and update search engines
Improve customer experience

For more information or to download, visit the SEO Toolkit page.

PS – visit Jorke’s blog for more info on the Web Platform Installer

MSDN Australia Book Club #1: Big Algorithms Made Easy

2010-01-11T13:04:00Z

Andrew Coates and Joel Pobar have organised our first MSDN Book Club! Review Joel’s TechEd presentation, download the slides and join this Book Club LiveMeeting to have your questions answered and to discuss the finer points of “Big Algorithms Made Easy”.

More info here.

HTC HD2 coming in January

2009-12-19T13:53:00Z

It is the Christmas present that is worth the wait ‘til January! The HTC HD2

You can win 1 of 5 HTC HD2 Windows phones by visiting

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-au/meet/HTC-HD2.mspxand telling the team in 25 words or less how the HTC HD2 will improve your life.

Needless to say, I WANT ONE.

MSDN LinkedIn Group

2009-12-18T10:27:00Z

Most of the Aussie DPE Team are on LinkedIn and I thought I’d create a local MSDN group for Australian Developers to enable some discussion.

Click here to join.

We’re going to use LinkedIn to ask Developers if there’s interest in participating in the Azure platform community technology preview (with the launch scheduled for March). If you receive a message via LinkedIn, please let me know what you think.

If you would like a token to join the Windows Azure and SQL Azure CTP let me know.

Introducing FranklySpeaking

2009-12-18T09:42:26Z

Two of our Developer Evangelists, Andrew Coates and Michael Kordahi (as seen in the “we’re looking for a boss” video) have setup a new podcast, “FranklySpeaking”.

It’s a great listen and if you’re interested in technology, I think you’ll enjoy it too… Let the boys know what you think…

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 Update

2009-12-18T09:13:00Z

Big news today from ScottGu’s blog is that there will be another public preview release of VS2010 and .NET 4 before shipping the final product. Read on for an excerpt from Scott's blog for why…

In October we shipped the public Beta 2 release of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4. The feedback on the new features in VS 2010 and .NET 4 has been really great. I’ve been working on a blog series about some of them (lots more posts to go!) and have also had a chance to present them to a broad range of audiences – and it has been great hearing the excitement people have about them.
At the same time, though, we’ve also received feedback that the performance and virtual memory usage of VS 2010 Beta 2 is not where people need it to be before we ship.

We’ve been doing an intensive performance optimization push the last two months that is delivering significant performance and virtual memory usage improvements across the product. The early feedback from a small set of customers testing interim builds since Beta2 has been positive about these improvements. We still have several big performance fixes in the process of being checked in that will improve things even further.

Public Release Candidate

In order to make sure that these fixes truly address the performance issues reported, and to help validate them across the broadest number of scenarios and machine configurations, we’ve decided to ship another public preview release of VS 2010 and .NET 4 before we ship. Specifically, we plan to make a Release Candidate build available in February that everyone will be able to download and test. It will be a public build and include a broad “go live” license that supports production deployment.

The goal behind the Release Candidate is to get broad feedback on the readiness of the product. In order to ensure that we are able to receive and react to this feedback, we will also be moving the launch of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 back a few weeks.

Please continue to send us your feedback about the product, as well as details on issues you encounter with the current Beta 2 release. Your feedback is invaluable, and really helps ensure we deliver the right product. Feel free to send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) if you have a specific issue you are running into that you don’t think has already been reported.

Hope this helps,

Scott

scottgu

Are you a Hero? Sign up for AU$150

2009-12-02T00:07:25Z

The Search is on... we are looking for Australia’s Certification Heroes!

We want to hear from you if becoming Microsoft Certified has helped change your career by making you more valuable in your current role or by helping you gain a promotion.

Every month we will be showcasing a new Australia Certification Hero as well as furnishing the lucky person with $150 credit to spend with Microsoft Press!

There are only 12 spaces available so make sure that you become one of our 12 Certification Heroes by filling out the 6 simple questions in our survey today...

Innovation Day Tour 2009

2009-11-16T23:17:39Z

Sarah in the Partner Team is organising a lap around the map for a series of Innovation Days.

The morning sessions is on emerging opportunities for the web, mobile and beyond:

To deliver innovative experiences to attract and retain loyal customers.
To create products and services that are integral to customers' lives - from social experiences with Microsoft Surface to mobile experiences on Windows Phone.
To learn how Silverlight is enabling Australian companies to deliver unique, compelling and most of all interactive services on the web.
To learn more about game-changing tools like Expression Blend, Sketchflow and Visual Studio 2010 which will allow you to envision, design and deliver your ideas faster and cheaper - driving down costs and time-to-market.
To drive revenue and manage traffic with Microsoft's range of advertising platforms and tools, from Microsoft Advertising, to Bing and beyond.

This session is designed to inspire you, demonstrate latent opportunity, and make partnering with Microsoft simple.

Please visit our site at

https://partner.microsoft.com/Australia/40047632

In the afternoon we are running sessions for ISVs covering:

Professional Developers Conference (PDC) Highlights
xRM (Anything Relationship Management) - understand Microsoft's CRM strategy and how you get to market first with world class business solutions.
Windows 7 and Windows Server Application Compatibility
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010 - what's new for developers including the tooling in Visual Studio 2010 and simplified debugging & integration with Team Foundation Server.
Windows Azure - Understand the new platform announcements from the PDC
Windows Marketplace for Mobile – how to manage and distribute your applications, and directly connect with millions of Windows Mobile users worldwide

Please visit our site at

https://partner.microsoft.com/Australia/40047632

and register for the morning session only, or for just the afternoon, or come along for the full day. Places are limited.

City	Date	Time	Venue
Adelaide	1-Dec-09	8.30am - 5pm	Microsoft Adelaide, Level 2
Perth	3-Dec-09	8.30am - 5pm	Level 2, QV1 Building Perth
Brisbane	8-Dec-09	8.30am - 5pm	Microsoft Brisbane Theatre 1 & 2
Melbourne	10-Dec-09	8.30am - 5pm	Microsoft Melbourne Exhibition Room
Sydney	15-Dec-09	8.30am - 5pm	Microsoft Sydney Theatres

Office 2010 Beta Available via MSDN

2009-11-16T22:56:33Z

If you are an MSDN subscriber, Office 2010 beta is available for download.

If you’re interested in exploring the developer investments in Office 2010, visit the Developer Centre.

SharePoint 2010 is also available via MSDN Subscriber Downloads.

There’s plenty of Office + SharePoint 2010 content on Channel9 as well.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Developer Training

2009-11-09T22:26:45Z

Check out this set of nifty Windows Server 2008 R2 training tidbits for developers:

New R2 Learning Center

Explore this significant Windows Server release via a self-paced training course of videos and hands-on-labs with a focus on performance, web, management, and other server solution scenarios. Learn about developing applications for “many-core” scale, enable efficient “trigger-started�� services, explore new Windows PowerShell features, create integrated solutions with the File Classification Infrastructure, and build Web Platform extensions.

New R2 Developer Training Kit – Learning Center Edition

Download and share the Developer Training Kit. The kit includes self-paced hands-on-lab exercises with corresponding video resources on the new Channel9 Learning Center. Topics include:

“Many-Core” Application Scale
VHD and Hyper-V API’s
Designed for Efficiency
Extreme Web Services
The Extensible Web Platform

Hammer Time

2009-11-09T22:12:32Z

Today at 1.30pm (Sydney time) is HAMMER TIME. We will be holding our first LIVE Smooth Streaming event in Australia with MTV interviewing MC Hammer (who also appeared on Rove last Sunday).

Hammer is Down Under promoting the new Xbox game Lips featuring MC Hammer’s 1990 hit “You Can’t Touch This” as one of the tracks).

We have teamed up with MTV, the Xbox team, Akamai, Inlet Technologies, Viocorp, and Readify to take the feed direct from the MTV studio out to the web using Silverlight Smooth Streaming, Windows Server 2008 and IIS7 Media Services. The feed will also feature an overlay of what is happening on Twitter as Hammer is being interviewed, Hammer will be taking questions live from the Twitter stream. The overlays also include a tag cloud most popular words from the feed to get the mood of the event as well as a list of the top Tweeters.

To watch, please go to www.mtv.com.au/mchammer

Other times include:

US Seattle = 6.30pm Monday
US NY = 9.30pm Monday
UK = 2.30am (sorry) Tuesday
Singapore = 10.30am Tuesday

---

Congratulations to the team for a great smooth stream and with twitter overlays (stream to the right + a ticker along the top).

Visual Studio 2010 Australian Road Show

2009-11-04T03:50:43Z

The developer solution team are visiting eight cities over the next couple of months to tell Australia about the new Visual Studio 2010. Register now as places are limited.

New look for Aussie MSDN Flash

2009-10-26T03:50:37Z

We published a new look for the MSDN Flash and I’d be interested in your thoughts: is this a useful resource for you? How would you improve it?

A lot of the feedback I received at TechEd was to make the newsletter shorter by making it a snap shot of what’s available via the MSDN site.

After sending last weeks Flash, about a dozen people asked for a bigger listing of events so we have included more of our user groups. If you have an event you would like listed, please contact me.

Click here to read previous versions of the Flash and to subscribe to the MSDN Flash click here.

As always, please let me know if you have any other suggestions or comments.

Harvey Norman Plan To Sell The World’s First Copy Of Windows 7

2009-10-21T00:55:03Z

Gizmodo have reported that Harvey Norman will be open at midnight this evening which makes them one of the first retailers in the world to sell a copy of Windows 7. Click here to find a store near you or visit their Windows 7 promo site.

You can even follow Harvey Norman on Twitter.

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is Here

2009-10-20T00:23:00Z

Microsoft announced today the immediate availability of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 to MSDN subscribers with general availability following on 21 October.

Check out and download Beta 2

Featured overviews and walkthroughs

Tell us what you think so far

Submit a bug

Ask our product manager a hard question

We also announced a simplified product lineup and pricing options for Visual Studio 2010 as well as new benefits for MSDN subscribers, including the Ultimate Offer, available to all active MSDN Premium subscribers at the official product launch on March 22, 2010.

What’s new?

New testing options will help ensure quality code
Enhancements to the integrated development environment mean that whether modeling, coding, testing or debugging, developers can use existing skills to deploy a growing number of application types
Built-in tools for Windows 7 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010
New drag and drop bindings for Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation
interoperability with innovative technologies (such as those for the database, ASP.NET model view controller, unified modeling language, Expression, and multicore) allow developers to bring their visions to life

But wait! There’s more:

With the .NET Framework 4, developers can experience immensely smaller deployments with up to an 81 percent reduction in the framework size when using the Client Profile. Other .NET Framework 4 developer benefits include additional support for industry standards, inclusion of the Dynamic Language Runtime for more language choice, new support for high-performance middle-tier applications (including parallel programming, workflow and service-oriented applications) and backward compatibility through side-by-side installation with .NET Framework 3.5.

How do I get “the Ultimate Offer?”

Active MSDN Premium subscribers will be transitioned to a higher-level Visual Studio 2010 with MSDN subscription at launch. This provides access to an unprecedented amount of resources, including test and development rights for Microsoft server software (including Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008), Microsoft Office, and premium Visual Studio tools.

What’s the new line up look like?

In the next version, customers will be able to choose from three main versions of Visual Studio 2010:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN
The comprehensive suite of application life-cycle management tools for software teams to help ensure quality results from design to deployment
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN
A complete toolset to help developers deliver scalable, high-quality applications
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN
The essential tool for basic development tasks to assist developers in implementing their ideas easily

Also today, Microsoft unveiled new benefits for MSDN subscribers, including these:

Unlimited access to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 (upon release)
a server product that drives down the risks and costs of developing software by enhancing team collaboration
Azure Development
which enables MSDN Premium subscribers to develop on the Windows Azure platform (Microsoft’s cloud services platform) with compute hours, storage, data transfers, SQL Azure databases and .NET Services
Complimentary e-learning
up to 40 hours per year, per subscriber to help developers access the wealth of online resources in a more streamlined fashion, Microsoft has also updated the MSDN Web site, which now features an updated user interface, a faster version of the MSDN Library and more community resources.

Video from our PR statement:

Next steps:

Want to be the first to know?

Get the Visual Studio 2010 datasheet

This 11-page datasheet gives you an insider's view of the next generation of Visual Studio.

Download now: XPS | PDF

Follow Jono

Jono Wells is twittering away about what’s going on with Visual Studio 2010.

Follow @onojw on Twitter

#vs10 RSS

New look for MSDN

2009-10-15T01:08:29Z

Beth’s blog has some really good discussion about the new look for MSDN just around the corner… the Visual Basic Developer Centre is a good preview of what’s to come...

The current look:

What’s new?

New colour – from red to blue…
Better layout on the home page for easier navigation.
Essential resources are centred right in the middle with a rotator of sorts that allows you to pick a tab on the left to hone in on the content you want on the right.
You’ll see featured articles and library content, VB team and MVP blog posts, our Channel 9 videos, and VB samples & projects on Code Gallery and Codeplex all right there in the middle of the page.

Beth also blogged that we added ratings and comments on the videos a while back + a video scroller that lets you browse the most popular videos with ease.

I received a lot of feedback from TechEd Australia about finding the right information and how to engage with communities… there’s a lot in the pipeline but please give us your feedback in the MSDN feedback forum where folks from MSDN will be participating. Of course, you can always tell me your thoughts here as well.

3 weeks to submit your AIMIA Amy nomination

2009-10-13T11:22:43Z

AIMIA is calling for entries into the 16th Annual AIMIA Awards, which celebrate the very best examples of digital media in Australia and New Zealand. Known affectionately as “The Amys” by the industry, the awards showcase work undertaken by Australia’s Interactive Media and Digital Content sectors across a broad range of consumer, business, government and not-for-profit categories.

There are loads of categories including 3 new ones:

Best Sport: Given to the best sports-based interactive media or digital content which demonstrates best practice, innovation and excellence in promoting and covering a sport, sports brand, product, service or event.
Best Online Video: Awarded to the entry that shows appropriate, relevant and best use of digital video as a creative and distribution medium in the application.
People’s Choice: This award is voted for by AIMIA members. The most voted entry from the total pool of 16th Annual AIMIA Awards category finalists will determine the winner of the category.

Awards are now open and close at 5pm AEST on Wednesday 4 November 2009. Finalists will be announced in mid-January. Entries must be submitted via the AIMIA website. For more details and entry criteria, please visit www.aimia.com.au/awards.

Visit www.aimia.com.au/awards or email awards@aimia.com.au for more details!