Where Are The Developers In Singapore???

Visio - The ideal tool for front end solutions for developers

2009-11-23T12:26:00Z

In this video, James Price shows how Visio 2007 Pro can be used as the programmer’s friend in delivering a visually rich and interactive interface for their solutions. The first part of the video describes how external data can be displayed in almost real time. The second part shows an example of a simulation where Visio captures data and then publishes it automatically to IE or SharePoint. The result is to show why Visio is a great tool at providing interfaces, dashboards and POCs.

Silverlight 4 Beta and ASP.NET MVC Beta 2

2009-11-20T11:17:00Z

Silverlight 4 Beta was recently unveiled at the PDC in Los Angeles (http://microsoftpdc.com), continuing the rapid pace of innovation for the Silverlight platform. In addition, ASP.NET MVC Beta 2 was released, which introduces improved Visual Studio tooling support, extensible client validation and lots of other features that help developers build Web sites and applications faster.

Silverlight

Silverlight helps companies design, develop and deliver engaging, interactive user experiences for Web, desktop and mobile applications when online of offline. Silverlight is a free plug-in, powered by the .NET Framework compatible with multiple broswers, devices and platforms. With printing support, rich reporting and charting, and integration with back-end systems and server products including Microsoft Sharepoint Server 2010, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), the Silverlight 4 Beta delivers a full suite of powerful features to application developers, bringing innovative platform capabilities to browser-based experiences.

For more information, see http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/

ASP.NET MVC

ASP.NET MVC is a free, fully supported framework that enables developers to quickly build standards-based, SEO-riendly Web sites by offering complete control over the HTML and URLs.

For more information, see http://www.asp.net/mvc

Office and Sharepoint 2010 Developer content now live!

2009-11-19T15:47:00Z

Shortly after the Office and Sharepoint 2010 public beta were announced, the Office developer center in MSDN was updated and included new developer content on Office 2010 and Open XML.

Here are some links to get you started:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/default.aspx -- Office Developer Center
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ee513173.aspx -- Office 2010 Beta Developer Center
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ee722025.aspx -- Developing with Office 2010 how-to videos & conten

If you weren't able to get to the PDC, here's a recap of the IW keynote.

BizSpark One and free Windows Azure for Startups

2009-11-18T07:52:00Z

I'll just post here my email to BizSpark startups this morning

Dear BizSpark Startups and Network Partners,

We have kicked off PDC last night, in case you haven’t catched it, you can keep up by going to http://microsoftpdc.com/ . There were a bunch of exciting announcements. And one that I would like to share with you is this the announcement of our BizSpark One program and free Windows Azure for BizSpark start-ups. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/nov09/11-17PDCBizSpark.mspx

I’ll paste the relevant parts for you –

Casting a Finer Net: Introducing BizSpark One

Building on the momentum gained by BizSpark over the past year, Microsoft is now turning its focus to expanding the reach and fine-tuning the offerings of the program. At PDC 2009, Microsoft will announce multiple extensions to its existing lineup of startup-centric offerings.

The biggest announcement concerns BizSpark One, the newest extension to the BizSpark program. BizSpark One has been designed to catalyze the growth of selected high-potential startups through a one-on-one relationship with Microsoft and a global community of advisors, investors and peers. At the time of launch, BizSpark One will be available in 10 countries: Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S.

“The idea behind BizSpark One is to cast a finer net using Silicon Valley best practices, and then lift the net up to find the startups that are most likely to succeed in the market and shape the industry’s future,” says Lewin. “Following the filtering process, our local subsidiaries in 10 countries will partner with the corporate team to help these startups to become the ‘ones to watch’ within the BizSpark program.”

Windows Azure, at No Cost

Another announcement at PDC 2009 is the offering of free Windows Azure platform cloud computing use. Today at PDC, a number of new features in Windows Azure will be made available for the first time. To kick-start development on this platform, BizSpark partners will receive 750 free compute hours per month for eight months.

Lewin anticipates this offer will serve as a powerful incentive for startups to innovate with the Windows Azure platform. “Windows Azure is a new architecture and we’re bound to see some visionary entrepreneurs building trailblazing solutions and illustrating new capabilities with that in mind.”

France-based Lokad, a software development company that delivers forecasting technologies, has enjoyed a fruitful association with BizSpark since the day the program was launched in Paris in November 2008. Joannes Vermorel, founder of Lokad, says that BizSpark helped the startup catch the attention of some large companies, and Lokad’s scalability-driven migration to Windows Azure this year has been instrumental in delivering a more compelling software-plus-services application to customers.

“While our highlight in 2009 was the successful porting of our technology to Windows Azure, next year we are poised to extend our solutions to a level that would not be conceivable without cloud computing,” says Vermorel. “No doubt, our ongoing relationship with BizSpark will propel us forward and guide us on how to better market our technology.”

And here are a bunch of other announcements which you’ll probably be seeing on the web – (you may also want to check my Twitter account and Jonathan’s for a blow by blow account of the announcements last night - @chrispogeek and @armchairdude)

- Microsoft setting up a data centre in Singapore (and Hongkong) to serve Asia

- Announcing Windows Azure Virtual Machine (finally!)

- There was a FOSS demo on Azure – Wordpress, MySQL, Apache

- Microsoft Pinpoint – directory of qualified IT companies/software solutions built on Microsoft technologies

- Code “Dallas” – Repository of datasets from businesses, easily accessible by applications (wow)

- Ah heck there’s lots of announcements - check the site or our tweets here - @armchairdude @chrispogeek (http://twitter.com)

By the way the streaming early this morning was flawless! Silverlight / IIS 7 smooth-streaming baby.

It’s not over yet! You can catch the 2^nd day keynotes tonight! More announcements – http://microsoftpdc.com

Catch you all again soon. I’ll be busy preparing for my presentation tomorrow at the New Efficiency Launch. I’ll update you guys once more info comes in.

P.S. One of our BizSpark start-ups is now in PDC, flown there by the Code7Contest team because they submitted an entry (remember that Windows 7 contest I was telling you about that would get you a chance to win $US 17,777 ?). We think they might be one of the finalists so keep your fingers crossed!

Thanks,

Chris

Watch the PDC09 Keynotes @ http://microsoftpdc.com

2009-11-17T15:40:00Z

There's gonna be a lot of good announcements there ;)

New CTP Releases and Training Kits

2009-11-13T11:36:00Z

November 5, 2009 - Microsoft.NET Services: November CTP SDK

The November CTP represents the complete feature set that will be available at the PDC conference from both the Service Bus and Access Control Service when the Windows Azure platform becomes commercially available.

The Service Bus and Access Control service make it easier to connect applications and services in the cloud and on-premises. The Service Bus helps applications and services communicate across network and organizational boundaries, and the Access Control Service helps create secure authorization for your apps, services and users.

Resources for learning more about .NET Services and the Windows Azure platform are available here:

· Microsoft .NET Services SDK: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/developers/dotnetservices/

· Microsoft .NET Services general information: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/dotnetservices/

· Microsoft .NET Services Developer Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/netservices.aspx

· Microsoft .NET Services on Twitter: @dotnetservices

· Windows Azure platform web site: http://www.windowsazure.com

November 11, 2009 - SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP

SQL Server 2008 R2 delivers several breakthrough capabilities that will enable your organization to scale database operations with confidence, improve IT and developer efficiency, and enable highly scalable and well managed Business Inteligence on a self-service basis for your users. Download the SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP here.

November 10, 2009 - Sharepoint 2010 Training Courses on Channel 9

Check out new SharePoint 2010 Developer Training Course on Channel 9. This training course contains 14 training units covering all aspects of developing solutions on the SharePoint 2010 platform using Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010. SharePoint 2010 provides the business collaboration platform for developers to rapidly build solutions using familiar tools while leveraging a rich set of out of the box features. Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010 make developers more productive and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server delivers support for application lifecycle management. Developers can integrate Line of Business data in SharePoint 2010 with read/write capability delivered by Business Connectivity Services. Sandboxed Solutions can be deployed to a shared hosting environment to limit the impact of unpredictable code to the other applications in use.

November 11, 2009 - Windows Server 2008 R2 Trainings

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 the Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) 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

November 11, 2009 - Office 2010 Workshop on Channel 9

All New Office 2010 Developer Training Course

The Office 2010 Workshop is one of the new developer training courses to debut on Channel 9 today. The release of this course consists of 29 videos with presentations and demos on Office 2010 development. That’s around 4.5 hours of content! The training course includes these units:

· Office 2010 Developer Roadmap

· Office UI Customization

· Office Client Workflow

· Security and Deployment

· Business Connectivity Services

· Developing BI Applications

· Open XML

· Office 2010 Services

· InfoPath 2010 and Forms Services

PHP + Windows News

2009-11-13T10:48:00Z

Figured I'd post something on PHP (I used to be a PHP/Perl developer after all!)

Windows Cache Extension for PHP – Release Candidate

The Windows Cache Extension for PHP (WinCache extension) is a PHP accelerator built by IIS team. The release candidate was shipped on October 19^th and is available for download through Web PI. In addition, the extension is now offered when any PHP application from Windows Web Gallery is installed through Web PI.

SQL Driver for PHP 1.1

The SQL Driver for PHP 1.1 has been released. The release announcement is available here. The v1.1 has the following improvements and additions over v1.0:

· Support for SQL Azure

· Support for PHP version 5.3

· Support for UTF-8

· Support for Scrollable results, row countMigration to SQL Server 2008 Native Client framework that provides for performance enhancements.

PHP Documentation Updates

The first update patch for the Windows and IIS-specific documentation on php.net has been checked in. The new documentation is available at the following URLs:

· http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.windows.manual.php

· http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.windows.iis6.php

· http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.windows.iis7.php

Enabling PHP Applications on Windows

SugarCRM in Windows Web Application Gallery

The community edition of the popular PHP application SugarCRM has been added to the Web Application Gallery and now can be installed via Web Platform Installer.

Oh and you should have heard of FastCGI by now. If not, you can find more about it on this site, along with other PHP goodies J

Your .NET Story can win you prizes worth over $16,000 US

2009-11-09T12:02:00Z

Well I'll be... A cool way to promote your .NET application, and a chance to win over $16,000. Nice. Check out the site. Here's the more important info :P

The New Efficiency Launch - November 19, 2009 @ Suntec (Singapore)

2009-11-06T11:29:00Z

Hi guys,

We have an upcoming event on November 19th showcasing Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. There's a Developer Track in the afternoon (see below). Register now!

Breakout Track 5: Developers
1330-1415	Designing For Cloud Computing There is a good chance that you as a customer are already asking questions about cloud computing. "How do you define cloud computing?" "Do I have to move everything to the cloud?" "Which of my applications will be able to take advantage of the cloud?" With so much going on in this space, especially with new announcements on an almost daily basis, it can be difficult to keep up. To help answer these questions and more, the objective of this session is threefold: 1. Help demystify the definition of cloud computing for your customers. 2. Explore applications that make sense in the cloud (and also those that do not). 3. Introduce a set of five design patterns, based on real customers, and show how these can be implemented using our Windows Azure platform. Speaker: Jonathan Wong, Technology Evangelist, Microsoft Singapore
1430-1515	Developing Windows 7 Applications With .NET Windows 7 brings a wealth of new developer technologies to the market that a native C/C++ application can easily leverage. Learn what Microsoft provides for .NET developers to create great applications for Windows 7. Speaker: Jocelyn Villaraza, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft Singapore
1530-1615	Making Applications Compatible with Windows 7 for Developers Learn what makes an application Windows 7-compatible, what steps developers should follow to test and develop compatible applications, and the programs Microsoft has in place to help developers promote their compatible solutions to customers. Speaker: Chris Ismael, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft Singapore
1630-1715	Developing Location Aware Applications With Windows 7 Windows 7 introduces a platform for using sensor devices to create environmental or location awareness in programs. In this session, you will learn how to use sensors to make your programs more functional, easier to use and more aware of the surrounding environment. Speaker: Chun Siong Tan, MIC Intern, Microsoft Singapore

Bill Gates Pizza

2009-11-03T04:30:00Z

Check out what's cookin' here at Microsoft Singapore during our BizSpark Startup Night...

Check out the MSDN Singapore page for more pictures and to get updates on future events! (in the Latest Updates and News Section)

Singapore based startup Hibernater lets you resume your work from one desktop to another

2009-10-28T12:58:00Z

Here's a video interview with Hibernater who recently received an award from SiTF. Their app lets you save your Word, Excel, Internet Explorer sessions, etc and resume it at some other time, or on another PC or laptop. I find it particularly useful if I need to restart my laptop and would like to save my "work session" so that I can bring them up again after restart. You can also use it to save your work and continue with the same apps to be opened at your home machine (if you're a workaholic). What's interesting is that these guys managed to implement a Windows 7 Jump List in their app in a short time. You can check it out at http://hibernater.com and give it a spin.

VS 2010 and .NET Framework Training Kit - October Preview now available!

2009-10-21T07:18:00Z

Awesome!

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=752CB725-969B-4732-A383-ED5740F02E93&displaylang=en

And here it is after install, slick!

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 now available!

2009-10-20T12:01:00Z

Check out how you can download and install the beta!

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd582936.aspx

Update! Reading installation instructions are a bore. Watch it instead!

How to make sure your apps on XP will run on Windows 7

2009-09-23T11:57:00Z

My job here at Microsoft entails a lot of field work. It provides me with an opportunity to escape the four walls of the office, put my ear on the ground and hear what people really think about our technologies. Interestingly enough, the stuff I love to hear most about are sentiments that border between "doubtful" and "convinced". Given that Windows 7 has gotten a lot of positive buzz, it is still no exception. The most common question I get from developers is - "Are my apps in XP going to run on Windows 7?" Don't get me wrong, they have valid reasons to be on XP. Most of them have business justifications on staying with XP. But you have to admit, it's a better question to ask than "Why would I bother running my apps on Windows 7" ;)

With Windows 7, the buzz has caught on. And rethinking their platform investments seems a much more logical direction. Windows after all is run by more than 90 something percent of people in the planet :P It's a sound investment. So are your XP apps going to run?

I dug through my Inbox and found an excellent video tutorial on how you can make sure your apps will run on XP. It's not complicated as many would think. It's excellent for those who are troubleshooting their apps and find themselves greeted with a random Warning or Error pop up box. Most of us would probaby just throw our hands up in the air and give up in that situation. You can count me out, because watching this video gave me tons of simple tweaks, code changes, and options that I can recommend to people when they're stuck. Made me look like I actually know what I'm talking about. That's cool.

http://www.msdev.com/Directory/Description.aspx?eventId=1196

Something Random

2009-08-19T11:19:00Z

That's me (plus some MACH colleagues) posing with our energetic leader Steve Ballmer in TechReady 9 (Seattle).