Girish's Blog - Are you Live yet?

Views that are possible in Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Edition

Following are a few of the cool views that you can get in VS 2010. There are a lot more capabilities, which you can explore.

Bing It. Bing It. Bring it on

Hi - Bing is the name of the new search tool from Microsoft. It is pretty amazing in its capability to provide fine tuned searches, as well as showing you your search history.

If you already using Live search you will transparently taken to Bing. Now I know Microsoft has been criticized for not providing as good and as sticky a search experience as the competition. But you just need to try out Bing yourself to see how good it is.

Here are a few links to the cool capabilities about bing. I like the inline preview it has, which allows you to peek into the links it displays without actually leaving the page. That in itself will save me a lot of time.

http://www.millionclues.com/internet/5-things-to-do-with-bing 

http://ijaar.com/search-for-flights-on-bing-travel/ 

Why Bing trumps Google?

Make Web Not War – from Microsoft

This is a slightly fun video for you tech junkies out there.

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us&vid=9e1142a3-c13e-4156-9bc4-1096f6145434

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCApcSq1ke0 

I will update as the other episodes in this series become available

What is this?

A teaser video for a larger series around the Microsoft Web Platform, the Web Platform Installer, and the Windows Web Application Gallery.

CannonPI – who is that?

CannonPI is a play on MagnumPI (and goes along quite well with WebPI). Who is Cannon? Well, he’s a problem solver, intent on making the world an easier place for software development, in his own special way. More in episode #1, coming out soon.

Who stars in this?

Scott Guthrie and Soma! 

Follow up:

We have 2 more videos to follow – this one is just a teaser intro – so stay tuned! (and have a good laugh). ;)

(and yes, these do have a purpose.. just wait until Episode 1 – and yes, these will be put into Silverlight as well)

DeepZoomPix – Stunning VISUAL Demos – Integrated use of Silverlight, DeepZoom and the Azure Services Platform

IE8 Officially released – Top features and highlights

We released Internet Explorer 8 to the web for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows Server. Not only is this the best version of Internet Explorer that Microsoft has ever built, it’s the best browser available for consumers, businesses, and developers, period.

Download it today at Microsoft.com/ie8*.

Internet Explorer is a critical platform and key to the web.  Customers spend a huge amount of time on the web and Internet Explorer is the way that most people view the web. Like any great engineering team, the IE8 Team started with the customer, listening, learning and anticipating. The result is a browser designed for the way real people want to use the real web – delivering a faster, easier, safer, and more secure browser than any other on the market.

Here are top eight reasons why Internet Explorer 8 is my favorite browser and deserves to be yours too:

1. You want a web that moves as fast as you do: Highlight an address, click the blue "Accelerator" button (), and see all the things you can do instantly – like mapping, searching, and translating. Check out Accelerators from Digg, Facebook, eBay, and others. For example see the accelerators you get below when you selected a piece of text. Here I choose to “Map with Live Search”, So in effect without leaving my browser I was able to see where the US Department of Energy is located. Pretty neat.

1. You want to know if it's raining outside: Visit live.com, search for “Seattle Weather” (or any major city), hover over the search result, and click the green "Web Slice" button () to add a weather Web Slice to your Favorites Bar. As of this morning there are over 1,200 Web Slices, Accelerators, and add-ons available worldwide in the IE8 add-on gallery.
2. You like everyone to get along:  And that includes wanting the web sites you visit to work well with your browser. IE8 is the only browser to include multiple rendering engines to address backwards compatibility— hit a site that doesn't seem right, hit the Compatibility View button, and you're on your way.
3. You're a visual learner: See pictures of what you’re looking for as you type in the Instant Search box – rich search results in action!
4. You want to find it again, fast: To quickly find sites you’ve visited before, simply use the new Smart Address Bar which searches your history, favorites, and feeds.
5. You like your privacy: Enjoy more control over your personal information and privacy on the Web with InPrivate. When you open a new TAB you get the option of rendering the contents “InPrivate”. This is useful if you are browsing through confidential data such as your financial information or other personal stuff.

        Once you hit the “Open an InPrivate Browsing Window” a separate browser window will be launched that clearly shows it is in “InPrivate” mode.

1. You want an edge against the bad guys (aka security): Internet Explorer 8 offers unparalleled protection against malware – it's 10 times safer than Internet Explorer 7, 4 times safer than Chrome, 2.8 times safer than Safari, and 2.3 times safer than Firefox.
2. You hate interruptions: If one tab crashes, you can re-launch it without affecting your browsing experience – your other tabs keep right on working.

To see these features in action, check out a couple of quick videos that preview the IE8 experience here. 

While Internet Explorer 8 will be great for consumers, the benefits don’t end there. Internet Explorer 8 is also the best browser for businesses. With over 1,200 group policy settings, IE8 is the most manageable and secure browser available. With the ability to default to compatibility view, businesses have the flexibility to handle legacy LOB applications.

In addition, Internet Explorer 8 is the best browser for developers. Standards compliant, IE8 shows our dedication to building a browser for developers to invest in.  Accelerators and Web Slices can be created with just a few lines of code, making it easy to build on.  Plus, Internet Explorer 8 comes with a rich set of built-in developer tools that make it efficient and easy to develop and debug your site.  See the tools in action by hitting F12 in your IE8 browser.

MIX 09 announcements – IIS at MIX 2009: Extensions, Web Application Gallery, Web Platform Installer

The IIS team announced the release of 10 new extensions and launched a new end-to-end experience for discovering and installing community applications on IIS.

This wave of IIS extensions span new functionality in request processing, server management, site/app management and discovery of community applications. Here’s the list, feel free to check out each extension or get the Web Platform Installer to install all of them.

The PHP support is what I like the most. This has been a long time coming and due.

(1) Application Request Router (ARR) 2.0 beta, with disk cache and cache proxy support for edge configurations the IIS HTTP load balancer. ARR can be used as a complement to existing hardware load balancers, or as a standalone proxy.

(2) FTP 7.5 RTW, with extensibility  support for developers who want to customize this IIS7 FTP publishing service.

(3)  WebDav 7.5 RTW, with support for both shared and exclusive locks to prevent lost updates due to overwrites.

(4) Advanced Logging beta for monitoring and measuring media and Web browsing experiences, rich and flexible data collection, client-side logging and real-time logging capabilities.

(5) Administration Pack for IIS7 RTW, with IIS Manager support for management of FastCGI, Request Filtering, ASP.NET authorization and custom error settings, and HTTP request filtering, and Configuration Editor for easier config management.

(6) IIS Snap-in for Windows PowerShell RTW, for management of the IIS configuration system through Windows PowerShell, along with 60 cmdlets for common management tasks in Powershell.

(7) Web Deployment Tool RC, which is a platform for Web deployment of IIS servers and applications that run on servers. This extension provides a foundation for administrators who want to synchronize and migrate Web servers in a web farm. Developers use Web Deployment Tool to deploy applications to a server or integrate with the new Windows Web Application Gallery.

(8) Database Manager RC, providing Web database management support for local and remote databases from within IIS Manager.

(9) Media Services 3.0 beta, which introduces the world to live streaming on IIS with multiple extensions, including Smooth Streaming and Advanced Logging. Our media extensions bring high quality media delivery to IIS customers as well as CDNs like Akamai.

(10) Web Platform Installer 2.0 beta, which installs community applications and its dependencies on Windows computers. See Introducing the Web Platform Installer for more details.

In addition, we have launched the Windows Web Application Gallery, a destination for users to discover and install community applications that deploy and run well on IIS. See Introducing the Windows Web Application Gallery for more information.

We launched with Web Deployment Tool integration with a great set of partners including

1. WordPress,
2. Acquai Drupal,
3. Gallery 2,
4. SilverStripe,
5. DotNetNuke,
6. SubText,
7. DasBlog,
8. Umbarco,
9. ScrewTurn and
10. BlogEngine.NET.

We also have updated our server Web sites with new www.iis.net content for PHP support on IIS and media, as well as a new section in Learn that talks about the Web Application Gallery and Web Platform Installer.

You should check out the brand new www.microsoft.com/web site, which has been totally overhauled, and has a new IIS server Web page.

All in all this was big set of announcements from the IIS team!

Example of Integrating Live ID Web Authentication to your Web Sites

The following is a short video which shows how a Web Site has integrated Live ID and used it as one of the authentication mechanisms for their Web site.

Engineering Enhancements to Windows7 based on feedback

The Win 7 team has been hard at work taking user feedback and incorporating them into Win7. Some of the most notable are like being able to press <WindowsLogo> + number key to launch applications.

For example if you find that you are launching Internet Explorer (or say any other browser frequently) you can make that <WindowsLogo>+1 key. So merely by pressing <WindowsLogo>+1 you will be able to launch your browser. This is for keyboard enthusiasts who want high efficiency.

You can read about this and about 3 dozen enhancements that have been done to Win7 (based on User feedback from the initial beta release)

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/26/some-changes-since-beta.aspx 

Some more love for Windows Live

Continuing the sequence of more love for Windows Live, I am posting a couple of  more videos which shows the kinds of consumer scenarios that are possible with Windows Live.

Girl From Mars – Just click on the link to left  or the Picture below for video - best enjoyed in full screen mode.

The above  is a cool video showing a smooth flow of consumer scenario in which a slew of Microsoft technologies are used.

Here is another video (Just click on the image below) which shows you the use of Live Mesh in action, again best viewed in full screen mode.

Now that you have seen Live Mesh in action, you can download and install the client run times even on your Apple Mac and as well as Windows Mobile devices.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am providing a few screen shots below to help in getting started with Live Mesh. 

Once you are signed in and see the device ring, you can download the relevant bits for your device.

All of these videos demonstrate current Microsoft technologies in usage.

A Little love for Windows Live – How easily Kylie uploads and shares photos

I am planning to post a series of blog-posts on the ease of use and friendliness of using Windows Live. Well what the heck is Windows Live anyway.

Windows Live is a comprehensively and well thought out set of integrated services (there is a key difference when we say SERVICES as opposed to Products ) which provide an easy and fun way to share your stuff (be it photos or documents), communicate and collaborate within your social network.

Lets first see how easy it is to share your pictures with family and friends. In this video you will see Kylie who is a 4 and half year old, capturing photos and sharing it. Just click on play and enjoy the video.

Now having seen a snapshot what are the some of the other services that Windows Live offers for free.

1. Free hotmail account with 5GB storage and which grows with your usage
2. Free skydrive with 25 GB storage space
3. Free Live Messenger with a lot of customization and new features. You have to experience to see for yourself.
4. Photo Gallery
5. Spaces
6. Blogging
7. <<<<You get the picture.>>>>>

Just go to http://download.live.com to get it.

Windows Azure bringing Cloud computing to the mainstream

Windows Azure is Microsoft’s Cloud Computing platform and it brings several ideas and concepts in one neat coherent whole.  

The first is developers should be able to write applications that run on the cloud and test it. This is given below. There are toolkits available to write Cloud Apps using Visual Studio and .NET. But since it is all built on Open protocols, these are equally programmable using Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, Java. As you can see in the picture below there are plug-ins for Eclipse and Perl, Python, PHP etc in the works.

1. Write Applications to Run On Windows Azure

Developers can start by writing applications to Windows Azure™ by using the Microsoft® .NET Framework and Microsoft Visual Studio®. Write web or mobile applications or author web services. In the future there will be support for both Microsoft and non-Microsoft programming languages and development environments.

Once you’re done coding the application, deploy it to the cloud and run it in Windows Azure and make it available via the internet to your end users. Scale compute capacity up or down based on traffic.

The next step is to take your Cloud application that you wrote and put it online for millions of users to access and use.

2. Use Azure Services In Online and On-Premises Applications

Take your cloud application to the next level by adding new functionality using additional Azure services. Use Live Services to reach over 460 million Live users, Microsoft .NET Services for workflow, access control, or service bus functionality, or use the Microsoft SQL Services cloud database. Developers can also write applications and web services that can be consumed by business partners or consumers.

Additionally, Azure services can also be used to augment an existing application that runs on a PC or a server to give on-premises software cloud capabilities. The services use industry standard SOAP, REST and XML protocols so using them won’t be a problem regardless of the operating system or programming language you’re using.

Bring It All Together

The Azure Services Platform is a cloud operating system and collection of services that can deliver web, mobile, or hybrid software-plus-services applications to users. Existing software can utilize the services to add cloud capabilities, and developers can easily write applications for the cloud to be used by end users, or write services that can be consumed within other applications.

Windows Live Essentials – free download

I was chatting with some of my friends and I learnt that they did not know of the free goodies from Microsoft called Windows Essentials. So I decided to write a simple post on that including from where to get it.

<Aside> And while you are at it you can also go and sign up for Live Mesh at www.mesh.com which is available for Apple Macintosh (YES you heard that correctly – Apple ), Windows Mobile devices and of course for PCs running Windows. This essentially allows you to seamlessly and transparently keep your Documents, Folders, files and Photos in sync across the various devices once you downloaded and installed the bits on all the devices you want to be part of your device mesh. </Aside>

Now – coming back to Windows Essentials. You also literally get a hard drive in the sky called “skydrive” which gives 25GB of free space.

“Windows Essentials”  a free download, essentially gives the following free services. One of the most striking features you will see is the better integration between between the various components such as Hotmail, Instant Messenger, Photos, skydrive, Contacts, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, etc.,.

So what do you get when you download and install the Windows Live Essentials.

1. Well known hotmail, with a much improved User Interface and lots of nifty new features.
2. Instant Messenger
3. Photo Upload
4. Photo Gallery
5. Movie Maker
6. Free Blogging tools (Live Writer – which is what I used to write thie blog which you are reading)
7. Video uploads and free streaming through Silverlight.

You get a tightly integrated experience of all of the above in one simple page where you have to sign in only once.  See below for some of the things you can see including “What's new in your network of friends/.contacts”

To get your free download go to http://download.live.com.

Cool new nifty feature in Live Search

There is a cool and nifty feature in Live Search. For those who want to know quickly the stock price and or stock chart of a certain stock just type it in the Search box on the right of the browser.  You will immediately see a drop down with the stock symbol that you typed and a chart. So you can take a quick glance and then close it without actually opening a special browser session.

See below for an example what appeared when I typed MSFT.

There are other things like if you type “Weather New York”

or want to do quick calculation like “255.45*72.2”

OR just type in anything and see the browser respond back intelligently.

Live Services – Training material videos now available

Finally we are publicly releasing the internal Live Services Training power point decks and videos which we did worldwide at 11 locations.

You can find the link to it in: http://dev.live.com/training/ 

The following are the various sessions that are available in the above link.

Live Services – go production with these sessions (1-5)

1. Live Services – An All-Up Technical Overview

2. Microsoft Online Identity – Part I

3. Microsoft Online Identity – Part II

4. Communications – Messenger

5. Infrastructure Services
   
   Live Fx - Developing Mesh Applications (6-10)

6. Future Direction of Live Services

7. Resource Model Session

8. Cloud APIs

9. .NET Libraries

10. Mesh Applications

The session videos are the actual recording at the San Francisco venue and you can see the training with all its questions and answers that are being asked. Watch as your time permits and enjoy. Feel proud to have been one of the team that created this and as well as having delivered it.

Microsoft – Live Maps now available for Major Indian Cities

Check this out. The Live Search maps feature which was available for NA, Europe and a few other countries has now been expanded to be available in select major Indian cities. This is pretty cool for say to get driving directions in cities like Hyderabad or Chennai etc.,. I believe as of this blog posting’s date, this feature is not available from other providers. Enjoy!

With this expanded version of Live Search Maps, users can now also search for directions based on common points of interest and landmarks and access detailed street maps for top 17 cities and highway road network covering 48,000 cities and towns, Microsoft said in a statement.
The cities added are Nasik, Indore, Sholapur, Surat, Nagpur, Pimpri/Chinchwad, Chandigarh/Mohall/Panchkula, Panaji/Marmagao….

The link is http://mapindia.live.com/.

For example I did a Directions from Besant Nagar, Chennai to Nanganallur, Chennai and it came out pretty good. See below.

As always driving directions have their own points and better to plan well in advance and check your routes before actually making the journey.