Hans VB's WebLog - For FREE!!!

Read it: Let the Robot Drive: The Autonomous Car of the Future Is Here

Hans VB1 — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:38:51 GMT

“The wheels are primarily there to keep the computers from dragging on the ground.” And… The final leap here is to envision a self-driving car that can be commanded like an elevator. When a car can drive itself to our door whenever we want...(read more)

Big data – Every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created

Hans VB1 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:47:57 GMT

Every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created and 90% of the data in the world today was created within the past two years.[11] via Big data – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. ...read more...(read more)

This morning at our internal meeting…

Hans VB1 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:14:40 GMT

Microsoft Belgium supports its employees (me ) with getting or staying healthy. Cedric Dumont is there to coach us if we like. Pretty cool!!! Cedric Dumont tames the ‘Crack’ gorge in Switzerland’s beautiful Churfirsten mountains. .....(read more)

There’s always something to freak out about!

Hans VB1 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:57:32 GMT

“Microsoft is at its best when it’s freaking out,” he says. “That’s just it’s mentality. It’s a crisis-oriented company.” via Meet Bill Gates, the Man Who Changed Open Source Software | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com. ...read more...(read more)

Unified Communications with Lync is valuable in many ways

Hans VB1 — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 11:48:58 GMT

Take a look at the video case: http://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/US/details/a5c76737-309f-4451-8d01-873d34de8b6b ...read more...(read more)

Windows Azure Platform. Links, more links… and a Twitter account.

Hans VB1 — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:01:01 GMT

A colleague (you know who you are) collected some links related to Azure. Put these in your RSS reader and never miss anything again. The AzureMagic Twitter account (http://twitter.com/AzureMagic) is one of those Azure aggregators that captures...(read more)

10 reasons to move your application to the cloud

Hans VB1 — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:25:00 GMT

The Cloud is happening now. I see ISV’s and web agencies rapidly adopting cloud technologies for a variety of reasons. This is my current top 10: 1. You are an ISV and your customers are changing buying behavior. They want to pay per use and a Cloud platform...(read more)

The Cloud at WPC10

Hans VB1 — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 20:48:56 GMT

Some really interesting stuff has been announced here. You can read today’s full story here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/07/12/realizing-the-promise-of-cloud-with-microsoft.aspx

These are some of the highlights for me:

- Azure in your datacenter with the Windows Azure Appliance: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/appliance/

- Small Business Server Aurore will allow you to manage your hybrid on-premise/cloud(BPOS) environment

- Check out the Windows Azure Toolkit for Facebook: http://facebookazuretoolkit.codeplex.com/

And so much more. Foolow WPC10 on http://digitalwpc.com/. Today’s keynote should be live soon!

Start to Azure – Belgian ISV’s

Hans VB1 — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:47:19 GMT

We have recently launched a program in Belgium called Start To Azure. The program is designed to help our Belgian ISV’s to put their applications on the Windows Azure platform.

Basically we will help ISV’s assess the opportunity Windows Azure presents them after which we will invest in technical/architectural consultancy to get the ISV on the right track.

Ultimately our ISV’s who deploy on Windows Azure will get marketing support.

I posted the details about the program on my skydrive folder. Check them out and let us know if you think you have a great case!

Follow the E3 XBOX related annoucements Live :-)

Hans VB1 — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 05:20:36 GMT

I’m really curious what we will find out about Natal, Natal Games…

And when will we hear more about GoW?

Office, Project, Visio and SharePoint Server 2010 products downloadable from MSDN

Hans VB1 — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:32:19 GMT

What have I been doing the last 6 days to only start downloading now?

The Microsoft Innovation Center has a Call for Multi-Touch Projects

Hans VB1 — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 07:20:19 GMT

If you are planning an interesting Multi Touch project (for instance with Microsoft Surface, Windows 7…) then check out this call for projects from the Microsoft Innovation Center (http://www.mic-belgique.be/default.aspx) in Mons.

Contact me if you want more info and I will put you in contact with the organizers at the MIC.

Qui est un candidat éligible de l’appel à projet

Cet appel à projet vise à encourager une dizaine d’entreprises à développer une ou plusieurs applications « Multi-Touch ». Les entreprises qui souhaitent s’y porter candidates doivent répondre aux critères suivants :

Etre une entreprise ou un professionnel situé en Belgique ou au Luxembourg
Disposer de la connaissance technique minimale : programmation .NET et, idéalement, connaissance de base de WPF.
Présenter la nature du projet.

Description du projet et des ressources disponibles dans l’entreprise pour le mener à bien dans le délai imparti :

Lettre de motivation
Description des équipes ou du participant et démonstration de sa/ses compétence(s) technique(s)
Nature de l’application à développer
Description du marché envisagé et/ou de l’utilisateur cible

Le MIC soutient les candidats dans le développement de leur projet

Le MIC met à la disposition des entreprises candidates une série de sessions d’encadrement et de formation, organisées selon le planning suivant :

Du 26 au 29 mai 2010 :

Une formation de 3 jours sur l’utilisation et l’intégration des technologies Multi-touch dans le développement d’application sur les plateformes Microsoft Windows 7 et Surface.

Juin et Juillet 2010

Un coaching personnalisé et spécialisé sur l’ergonomie et l’interface homme-machine par des professionnels du design

Septembre 2010

Un comité sélectionnera les meilleures applications ; celles-ci seront mises en démonstration permanente au MIC à Mons et pourront l’être par ailleurs dans les bureaux de Microsoft, à l’Executive Briefing Centre de Microsoft à Bruxelles (sous réserve du sujet), dans les bureaux du siège de Hewlett-Packard à Diegem ainsi qu’à l’événement REMIX de Microsoft en septembre 2010.

Develop Touch applications for Windows using Microsoft Surface controls

Hans VB1 — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:13:37 GMT

Microsoft Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch Beta (NEW)
This beta package includes the advanced Microsoft Surface controls, templates, and samples to easily create applications that are optimized for multi-touch interaction and that run on Windows Touch PCs. With the .NET Framework 4.0, Windows Presentation Framework 4.0 (WPF), and this toolkit, Windows Touch developers can quickly and consistently create advanced multi-touch applications for Windows Touch PCs. This toolkit also provides a jump-start for Surface application developers to prepare for the next version of Microsoft Surface.

My Week in the Cloud (8)

Hans VB1 — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:12:53 GMT

Sharing some bits that I found interesting during the last week while reading about cloud computing.

Windows Azure Platform

A nice collection of tools and learning resources listed by Wintellect: http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/pmehner/archive/2010/04/20/learning-windows-azure-platform-resources.aspx

Microsoft Townhall (http://www.microsofttownhall.com/) runs on Azure. It’s a tool for politicians and other public officials (among others) who want to host online social experiences that drive richer discussion around top interests and concerns with the American public.

Read about the interesting TicketDirect case here: http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2010/04/22/real-world-windows-azure-interview-with-matthew-davey-founder-of-ticketdirect.aspx

Visual Studio 2010 and Windows Azure best used together: http://cloud-computing.learningtree.com/2010/04/18/windows-azure-and-visual-studio-2010/?utm_source=AzureMagic&utm_medium=twitter

Also check out our Azure topic page on MSDN: Dutch, French

Other Cloud Related news

Hockey Stick Cloud Growth Ahead: http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224400787

Also read what Gartner predicts: By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets.

At Microsoft, we say We’re all In when we discuss Microsoft and the Cloud. A clear sign of that we got this week at the Microsoft Management Summit 2010: https://www1.mms-2010.com/public/home.aspx

Windows Intune: Managing your PC’s gets easier for small and medium sized businesses with this cloud service: http://www.microsoft.com/online/windows-intune.mspx

Use the Windows Intune cloud service beta to:

Manage updates

Protect PCs from malware

Proactively monitor PCs

Provide remote assistance

Track hardware & software inventory

Set security policies

System Center Virtual Machine Manager:http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2010/04/21/what-s-coming-up-with-the-next-versions-of-scom-and-vmm.aspx

Service lifecycle management, including creation, deployment and updates to cloud apps/services - Leverages app virtualization technology and service modeling to perform image-based service composition, deployment and updates.

· Creation of private clouds - Enables “Infrastructure as a Service” for the enterprise datacenter and allows self-service scenarios; discovery and assignment of logical/virtualized network and storage pools to apps/services

· Federation across clouds - Enables workload mobility between on-premises, service provider and public clouds (e.g. Windows Azure) in a secure manner

Bye!

Hans

Belgian eID integrated with ASP.NET applications

Hans VB1 — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:14:45 GMT

A couple of weeks ago we had a Windows Identity Foundation workshop in Belgium delivered by Vittorio Bertocci.

Frank Cornelis from FedICT was very quick to apply this knowledge and make it so you can now easily use the Belgian electronic ID cards with your ASP.NET applications.

Here’s how: http://groups.google.com/group/eid-applet/browse_thread/thread/1aeb06c82792273

Also a video was created. Very nice!

Thanks Frank and thanks Vittorio!

Hans

Get serious about the Windows Azure Platform – 6 week training!

Hans VB1 — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:43:05 GMT

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032449971&Culture=en-GB

Event Overview

The “Microsoft Azure Self-paced Learning Course” is a free, interactive, self-paced, technical training course covering the Microsoft Azure platform – Windows Azure, SQL Azure and the Azure AppFabric. The course takes place over a six week period from May 10^th – June 18^th 2010, with weekly coursework assignments. During the course you will work from your own home or workplace, and get involved via interactive Live Meetings session, watch on-line videos, work through hands-on labs and research and complete weekly coursework assignments.

It’s a self-paced course, so you can work in your own time, and wherever is most convenient. There are weekly checkpoints to help keep you on track. The mentors and other attendees on the course will help you in your research and learning, and there are weekly Live Meetings where you can raise questions and interact with them. The course will require around 4 to 5 hours per week to complete the core elements, with the option for additional exercises and labs.

This is a technical course, aimed at programmers, system designers, and architects who want a solid understanding of the Microsoft Windows Azure platform, hence a prerequisite for this course is at least six months programming in the .NET framework and Visual Studio.

The course outline is:

Week 1 - Windows Azure Platform
Week 2 - Windows Azure Storage
Week 3 - Windows Azure Deep Dive and Codename "Dallas"
Week 4 - SQL Azure
Week 5 - Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Access Control
Week 6 - Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Service Bus

That ‘other’ mobile business at Microsoft

Hans VB1 — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:03:13 GMT

We have heard a lot on Windows Phone 7 since February. Today, there’s another interesting announcement made about Microsoft mobile solution for industries.

Up until now these two operating systems resided in different business groups at Microsoft. The Windows Embedded Business (WEB) has overseen Windows Embedded CE, while the Mobile Communications Business (MCB) managed Windows Mobile.

That’s changing. To help us better meet current and future customer needs, today we’re announcing that handheld terminals and ruggedized devices will be part of the Windows Embedded Business. For our customers, this move provides them with closer connection between the Windows Embedded CE and Windows Mobile product line enabling Microsoft to respond to their business needs in a more unified way. WEB is adding this effort to its overall strategy and vision as we’re committed to help specialized device manufacturers deliver rich user experiences and seamless connections to the world of Windows.

Read more… http://blogs.technet.com/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/04/07/windows-embedded-business-aligning-handheld-terminals-and-ruggedized-devices.aspx

My Week in the Cloud (7)

Hans VB1 — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:10:07 GMT

Sharing some bits that I found interesting during the last week while reading about cloud computing.

Windows Azure Platform

.NET 4 is coming to Windows Azure within 90 days of the RTM of .NET 4. In fact, you can read here that .NET 4.0 is already in the current Windows Azure OS but that it cannot not be used just yet for running your own applications. Exciting development nonetheless.

Windows Azure gives you high availability. When you deploy your application to 2 instances or more, your application will be deployed over 2 or more fault domains and upgrade domains. A very clear explanation about how this works can be found here: http://blog.toddysm.com/2010/04/upgrade-domains-and-fault-domains-in-windows-azure.html

Deploying applications to Azure is very specific and limited process. So how does this impact your development process? Read this article by Eugenio Pace for some insights.

CSC Offers Legal Solution Suite as SAAS on Azure. A very cool case. If you are an ISV, you need think SAAS first and then Cloud.

CSC believes that moving to Windows Azure will give it a significant competitive advantage with its Legal Solutions Services product.

Local applications now behave more like job schedulers, handing off compute-intensive tasks to cloud-based worker services hosted on the virtual machines in the Windows Azure platform and brought online and offline as needed.

Tools and utilities:

Check out the AppFabric LABS
Patterns and Practices Windows Azure Guidance is available here: http://wag.codeplex.com/. It also points to the reference application below:
http://wag.codeplex.com/releases/view/42450
and it explains how to use EnterpriseLibrary 5.0 beta on Azure: here. Development is getting serious :-)
The Extreme Computing Group at Microsoft Research is sharing best practices and guidance: http://azurescope.cloudapp.net/

Sorry, but you won’t be first on Azure anymore: plenty of cases can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsAzure/evidence/

Also, don’t forget to vote on the features you would like to see in the Windows Azure Platform: http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/forums/34192-windows-azure-feature-voting

Other Cloud Related news:

Loads of books on Cloud Computing from a biz perspective already.: http://www.cloudbook.net/books

The future of Cloud Computing: Opportunities for European Cloud Computing Beyond 2010: The Future of Cloud Computing- Opportunities for European Cloud Computing Beyond 2010 Interesting for Europeans but there are better overviews elsewhere.

Security Risks of multi tenancy: http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=1007&tag=col1;post-1007 It’s a matter of doing it right…

Cheers,

Hans

My Week in the Cloud (6)

Hans VB1 — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:42:09 GMT

Sharing some bits that I found interesting during the last week while reading about cloud computing.

Windows Azure Platform

This is a nice video on the hardware used in Microsoft latest generation datacenters. It is really inspiring to see hardware and software innovations creating extremely elastics environments opening up a world of new opportunities.

http://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/US/details/84f44749-1343-4467-8012-9c70ef77981c

You want strongly types blob IO on Windows Azure Storage? Check this out: http://lokadcloud.codeplex.com/

Queue Services as a scalable equivalent of Windows Services.
Scheduled Services as a cloud equivalent of the task scheduler.
Strong-typed blob I/O, queue I/O, table I/O.
Autoscaling with VM provisioning.
Logs and monitoring.
Inversion of Control on the cloud.
Web administration console.

WOW! Do you wonder what Project Dallas is all about? It’s the Data Grail: http://blogs.msdn.com/dallas/archive/2010/03/24/the-data-grail.aspx

This took only a few minutes to create using “Dallas” and Tableau Public.

Other Cloud related news

I spoke at CloudStorm Antwerp this week. Slides and pictures will be made available here later: http://www.cloudstorm.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=19628848

I was really inspired by the Kai-Mook baby Elephant case. This is a marketing story about a campaign the zoo ran when a baby elephant was born. Cool stuff.

Of course this event lent itself extremely well to make use of the public cloud:

- It was very unpredictable when the birth would happen. Then knew they had a window of about 6 months.

- It wasn’t even sure the birth would happen. There was a chance of about 50% the baby would be born dead.

- They weren’t sure how popular/successful the campaign would be. They expected to have a need for 20 virtual machines in the Amazon cloud but the campaign ended up being so successful that at one point in time they were using 180+ machines.

- After the peak the scaled back to a much lower number

Also the questions from the audience were very interesting. Most of the debate was about cloud vendor lock in. Every vendor has to deal with that all of the time. It is not a new concern. I think about it this way:

- Standards are important and at Microsoft we are fully engaged in developing the necessary standards.

- There hasn’t been a major way of innovation that started with developing standards, though. First vendors compete to be best of breed and then standards arise based on the requirements customers communicate to the vendors.

- Interoperability and openness of a platform go a long way to dealing with these concerns. Windows Azure for instance lets you run .NET code but also Java code, native code etc… It uses rest protocols for communication and so on… This openness is as important as standards.

As always it was very inspiring to be there.

See you next week at TechDays or on my blog.

Hans

My Week in the Cloud (5)

Hans VB1 — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:48:23 GMT

Sharing some bits that I found interesting during the last week while reading about cloud computing.

Windows Azure Platform

I found this nice overview of sessions to follow here (http://blogs.msdn.com/billzack/archive/2010/03/13/windows-azure-platform-training-roadmap.aspx). I’m copying the links from that post.

Level 100 – Basic

After completing the units recommended for this level, you should be able to articulate the Microsoft strategy for the Windows Azure Platform and the value proposition it brings to you.

Windows Azure
Windows Azure Fundamentals (.75h)

Windows Azure AppFabric
Windows Azure Platform: Azure AppFabric Fundamentals (.75h)

SQL Azure
Microsoft SQL Azure Overview (.75h)

Level 200 – Intermediate

After completing the units recommended for this level, you should be able to describe the architecture of the Windows Azure Platform, have an understanding of its capabilities and limitations, and understand its deployment scenarios and requirements.

Windows Azure
Developing a Windows Azure Application (1h)

Service Bus
Windows Azure Platform: Introducing the Service Bus (.5h)

SQL Azure
Microsoft SQL Azure Overview for Developers (.75h)

In addition:

Download the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit (Hands on Labs)

Download the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio

View PDC 2009 Azure videos

Level 300 – Advanced

After completing the units recommended for this level, you should be able to build, deploy and troubleshoot solutions based on the Windows Azure platform.

Windows Azure
Windows Azure Blob & Table Storage (1h)

Windows Azure – Worker Roles and Queue Storage (1h)

Windows Azure AppFabric
Windows Azure Platform: the Access Control Service (.5h)

SQL Azure
Microsoft SQL Azure RDBMS Support (.5h)

SQL Azure Programmability (.5h)

Microsoft SQL Azure tooling (.5h)

SQL Azure Security Model (.5h)

Other

Yes, Microsoft and Open Source meet also in the cloud! http://geekcast.fm/archives/cloud-computing-with-windows-azure-cory-fowler-interview/?utm_source=AzureMagic&utm_medium=twitter

Check out AppFabrik LABS: https://portal.appfabriclabs.com
AppFabric Labs is a place for us to preview cool new AppFabric technologies for interested customers. We're very excited about the features we put up on Labs, so we want to get your feedback on them as soon as possible. Labs is a developer preview, not a full commercial release, so there is no formal support or SLA in place.

Other Cloud related news

Power of the great cloud providers is that they can go where taxes are low :-) http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/03/18/washington-data-center-tax-break-passes/?utm-source=AzureMagic&utm-medium=twitter

Every Cloud Computer has a Silver Lining
http://blog.kitetail.com/2010/03/14/every-cloud-computer-has-a-silver-lining/?utm_source=AzureMagic&utm_medium=twitter

IHI Shines Silverlight on Healthcare Improvement

Hans VB1 — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:37:21 GMT

I’m repeating this post for some our Belgian ISV’s in the Healthcare vertical.

Hear about the requirements and the architecture of this app in the video. Or check out the case study you can read. All is referenced in this blog post:

http://blogs.msdn.com/innov8showcase/archive/2010/03/14/arcast-tv-ihi-shines-silverlight-on-healthcare-improvement.aspx

My Week in the Cloud (4)

Hans VB1 — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:47:49 GMT

Sharing some bits that I found interesting during the last week while reading about cloud computing.

Windows Azure Platform

I really enjoyed reading the Socratic Dialectic in the RDBMS vs NoSQL post on ‘the codeface’ blog. SUPER stuff!!!http://blog.markrendle.net/2010/03/do-you-need-relational-database.html Yes, you have NoSQL from Microsoft. Just look at Windows Azure Storage. But sometimes it makes more sense to go to SQL Server for functional or business reasons. But remember, it all depends and even the cost comparison should be made with care:

I would have a hard time justifying the time and money required for our developers to learn the new skills.

Then again, in the cloud the NoSQL storage can be much, much cheaper than the RDBMS. For example, Windows Azure storage costs $0.15 per gigabyte per month, whereas a 1GB SQL Azure instance is $9.99 per month; 10GB is $99.99 per month.

So Windows Azure storage is cheaper than SQL Azure storage?

Not necessarily. With Windows Azure Storage you also pay for transactions, at the rate of $0.01 for every ten thousand. SQL Azure doesn't charge for transactions. So if you're storing less than a gigabyte but running more than ten million transactions per month, SQL Azure would be cheaper. Or if you're storing less than ten gigabytes but running more than a hundred million transactions-

Do you prefer to read a book, check out Cloud Computing with the Windows Azure Platform. Some sample chapters are available here:

Chapter 12: “Managing SQL Azure Accounts and Databases”

Chapter 13: “Exploiting SQL Azure Database's Relational Features”

A non-exhaustive list of things to consider:

If constant consistency is a key requirement then you should probably use an RDBMS.

If horizontal scalability is important and eventual consistency is good enough, then a NoSQL solution might be better.

If you're deploying an application to Windows Azure or Amazon Web Services, then you should probably compare the costs of Windows Azure Storage Services or SimpleDB to SQL Azure or Elastic RDBMS for your particular application.

If you're writing an application for a mobile platform, you're back to limited storage space so you might get back to RDBMS and normalising for efficient use of that space.

If you're writing a small application you want to knock out quickly using Entity Framework or NHibernate or ActiveRecord then use SQL Server Compact or SQLite, or skip that stuff altogether and serialise object graphs to files on the hard-disk

Here’s a webcast with Ben Riga about the lessons learned from the Windows Azure implementation at RiskMetrics: http://www.ditii.com/2010/03/10/windows-azure-lessons-learned-riskmetrics-with-ben-riga-webcast/

Azure also seems to be taking of in India: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Software/Microsoft-unveils-cloud-based-operating-system-in-India/articleshow/5660938.cms?utm_source=AzureMagic&utm_medium=twitter

The company claims to have over 3,000 applications developed from India that are currently hosted on the cloud platform. It already claims to have about 250 small and medium-sized customers in India. There are about 22,000 developers from India who are making applications on the Azure platform. Companies like Infosys, HCL Technologies, Persistent Software, Wings Info, Cerebrate and CDC Software are developing commercial applications and solutions on Windows Azure platform.

Other Cloud related news

Here’s a great article by David Linthicum: http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/3-cloud-computing-mistakes-you-can-avoid-today-895

1. Not considering a public cloud

2. Security and governance as afterthoughts

3. No continuation of business strategy

http://www.zhen.org/zen20/category/cloud-computing/

On this blog Jian Zhen discussed the thousand faces of Cloud Computing in 4 parts (1, 2, 3 and 4.) Although from mid last year, still worth reading. For instance this piece:

One large enterprise has outsourced their test and development environments to an outsourcer, and paying approximately $10,000 per environment per year, regardless of whether the resources are virtual or physical. They have 3000 such environments, so they are essentially paying $30 million per year on just test and development environments. They did a user survey to find out the utilization of these environments, and all the developers responded saying that these environments are heavily utilized and there’s tight handoff from one team to another. An audit, however, revealed that overall, the environments are utilized < 10%, and that 70% of the environments are logged into once per year by developers.

Develop For Windows

Hans VB1 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:57:53 GMT

http://www.developforwindows.com/

Some cool sample applications can be found on this site that will most certainly help a lot with getting started. Also tookits are downloadable from this page!

Do you want to access, manage and interact with your Facebook account quickly and directly from your desktop? Fishbowl is a cool Windows Client WPF app that does exactly that by providing a richer and more powerful experience.

Have you ever needed to memorize words in a new language, or names of certain people or objects? If so, now you can use FlashCards.Show to easily produce decks of flashcards — making learning easier and fun!

Enjoy!

Hans

My week in the cloud (3)

Hans VB1 — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:36:00 GMT

Sharing some bits that I found interesting during the last week while reading about cloud computing.

Windows Azure Platform

This week was a pretty exciting week for those following the ventures of Microsoft into cloud computing. If you didn’t see the talk online, I recommend watching it on demand: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/cloud/videogallery.aspx

Our new site covering all things cloud is http://www.microsoft.com/cloud

And I do love the new theme: We’re all in. Windows is in, Office is in, SQL Server is in, SharePoint is in, and so on…

On the more technical side of things, it was great to see the Beta 2 of AppFabric being released. Here’s the announcement on the Windows Server blog: http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/

Tools continue to be built. Here’s another Windows Azure Storage Browser: http://clumsyleaf.com/products/cloudxplorer?utm_source=AzureMagic&utm_medium=twitter

This certainly sounds like a webcast signing up for:

March 26, 2010 at 1:00pm – 2:00pm EST
Title: Windows Azure Design Patterns
Link to Register: https://swrt.worktankseattle.com/webcast/4241/preview.aspx

Do you want your solution to shine at the Microsoft World Wide Partner Conference? Read this: http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2010/03/03/submit-your-solution-for-the-windows-azure-platform-partner-of-the-year-award.aspx

Other Cloud related news

For other Microsoft independent news, I would just like to focus on this definition from cloud computing from NIST (http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/):

Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.

o 5 essential characteristics (on-demand self-service, resource pooling, elasticity, measured service, broad network access)

o 3 service models (IAAS, PAAS and SAAS)

o 4 deployment models (public cloud, private, community and hybrid cloud)

I do believe this is one of the best definitions I have seen so far. Especially the 5-3-4 part is very strong.

See you next week!

Hans

A taskbar is a man’s best friend (feb 2010)

Hans VB1 — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:00:46 GMT

Like a monthly mugshot of my PC.