If you haven’t stopped by in awhile, you may notice our cloud computing Windows Azure Platform portal site has received a facelift.
It now has a more intuitive UI, with expanded sections:
Check it out and let us know what you think.
Have fun!
Eric
Visual Studio has been the development backbone for any Microsoft enabled developer. Now, the latest and greatest incarnation of Visual Studio is out for the engineering carnage to ensue. (Architorture anyone?)
With Beta 2 we set out to increase stability, improve performance, and finalize all end-to-end scenarios so we can get final feedback from our customers. The feedback from LCTP2 has been positive and shows we are on the right track. Here are just a couple of examples:
· “I have been using LCTP2 extensively. LCTP2 is a packed with features and the stability is an amazing software engineering feat. It has so much productivity enhancements, and is so stable, that I am moving 3 customers and our company to Beta 2.” – Adam Cogan, Microsoft RD
· “Overall setup for TFS is *so* sweet it’s going to put me out of a job.” – Brian Randell, VSTS MVP
In addition to shipping the new (81% smaller!) Client Profile of the .NET Framework, Beta 2 is the first version of Visual Studio to ship the new simplified SKU line up, representing a huge amount of work by marketing, sales, and engineering:
· Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN: the comprehensive suite of application lifecycle management tools for software teams to ensure quality results from design to deployment.
· Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN: a complete toolset for developers to deliver scalable, high quality applications.
· Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN: the essential tool for professional development tasks to assist developers in implementing their ideas easily.
You will find the landing page here, and hope you enjoy the ride.
That’s right, 30 more days until the PDC 2009 conference in Los Angeles. (microsoftpdc.com)
We’ve been hunkering down and gearing up for what will be an amazing launch, and some truly outstanding evidence of what the Windows Azure Platform can do.
I think everyone is going to be pleasantly surprised, and coinciding with Windows 7 and soon, Office 2010, I think this is going to be an outstanding fiscal performance for Microsoft, along with some cutting edge technology coming peoples way, making our platform truly driven by consumer choice.
Anyway, as with all Technical Adoption Programs, we collect feedback from customers on the platform and steer the cloudy weather accordingly. :)
We've made some minor fixes to the Windows Azure Service Management API that we launched a few weeks ago. All requests for this release will need the versioning header "x-ms-version:2009-10-01" specified. Requests that use the older version "x-ms-version:2009-08-08" will fail and code will need to be changed to use the new versioning header. There is a new version of csmanage posted that uses the new versioning header and reflects the API changes at https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=windowsazuresamples&ReleaseId=3233. Note - you’ll need to upgrade from the older version of csmanage as that will fail with a error message about not being the correct version. The actual docs for the API, as always, can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee460799.aspx. We're pushing out new docs and you should see them there in a few hours.
Also, in the next few weeks, pay attention to the Microsoft.ServiceHosting.ServiceRuntime library area on MSDN. There’s bound to be some goodies coming for Diagnostics & Monitoring, Logging, and an enhanced StorageClient namespace. I’ve also been working on getting Expression Encoder 3 up and running on Worker Roles (and I do have that working internally-only) but we’ll require some features to be in place post-PDC to enable that for the masses.
Stay tuned!
You help people every day at work make the most out of your company’s IT resources. You’ve got the leading-edge knowledge to help your company understand how important it is to consider the move to Windows 7. But what about your friends and family? We know that you’re considered the de facto “computer person” for those folks too. With Windows 7, we focused on fundamentals and other key improvements that simplify everyday tasks, make the PC work the way you want, and make it possible to do new things. Want examples? Here are 5 good reasons to share with your family and friends to make the move to Windows 7 and, hopefully, reduce your personal support requests in the process.
1.
Windows 7 helps you quickly find what you’re looking for—use Search to locate a specific file, program, or e-mail in a few seconds.
2.
Windows 7 gives you more control over your Taskbar—use Pin and Jump Lists to keep the programs and files you use a lot right at your fingertips.
3.
Windows 7 gives you more control over your windows—resize and arrange windows simply by dragging their borders to the edge of your screen.
4.
Windows 7 takes the headache out of home networking—easily share files, music (even printers) among multiple PCs.
5.
Windows 7 makes wireless setup a breeze—connect to any available wireless network in just three clicks.
For a closer look at the features in Windows 7 for consumers, click here. For a look at these features from the IT professional’s perspective, visit the IT Pro at Home zone. Do you want your friends and family to make the move to Windows 7? E-mail us at winpro@microsoft.com and let us know why (or why not).