Out Of The Box

Done in entertaining way, see this video to get the latest on PDC. They also mention unannounced software that will be given out…

To service Windows Live and Microsoft Online Services, you have to build a global infrastructure. A part of this story is building datacenters, and the San Antonio data center is the next part of the story. Consider a few facts of this effort:

• 470K sq. ft.
• $550M effort
• will use more than 8 million gallons of recycled water per month for its cooling needs
• We built one in Quincy, Wash.
• Another site, due to open later this year in the Chicago area, will be Microsoft's first to employ containers of servers, in addition to traditional rack-based set-ups.
• Plans to build a center in West Des Moines, Iowa, Ireland, and Russia

Here is how the local press covered the San Antonio opening:

· San Antonio Business Journal: Microsoft finishes $550 million data center in San Antonio (staff, 9/18)

· San Antonio Express-News: Microsoft data center goes live today (Laura Lorek, 9/22)

· San Antonio Express-News: ‘Nerve center' gets to work (Laura Lorek, 9/23)

o Reposted on Seattle Post Intelligencer

· Cnet: Microsoft opens San Antonio data center (Ina Fried, 9/22)

· Data Center Knowledge: Microsoft Makes San Antonio “A Force” (Rich Miller, 9/22)

· InformationWeek: Microsoft Opens $550 Million Data Center In San Antonio (J. Nicholas Hoover, 9/22)

· IT Business Edge: Microsoft Opens ‘Green’ Data Center in Texas (Susan Hall, 9/23)

· Web Host Industry News: Microsoft Opens $550m Data Center (David Hamilton, 9/22)

· Data Center Knowledge: Microsoft To Use Solar Panels in New Data Center (Rich Miller, 9/24)

Blogs

San Antonio Express News: Microsoft’s Ribbon Cutting Monday

WOAI-AM: Microsoft Opens SA Tech Center Today

IT Business Edge: Microsoft Opens ‘Green’ Data Center in Texas
D' Technology Weblog: Microsoft San Antonio, Texas Data Center

WordPress.com: Microsoft Press Coverage (San Antonio)

Digital Cave Tech Hermit: Birth of the Information Utility

Terry Singh (Netherlands): Microsoft's San Antonio Data Center goes live!

Topix: Microsoft Opens Data Center in San Antonio

If you're anywhere near a TV lately, you've probably seen some new ad's from Microsoft. The first two were starring Jerry Seinfield and Bill Gates, and they were certainly curios, humorous, and show a different side of Microsoft than most people see.

For some reason, a lot of folks don't understand that Microsoft is made up of real people living everyday real lives. We've got kids, we're involved in our local community, and we are from all over the world. We also like having fun including even laughing at ourselves. (Have you ever seen the WE-SYP comedy video from years ago?)

These new advertisements show some human side of us, and also go against the fallacy that people have due to other erroneous competitor advertising.

Life Without Walls

Bill Veghte, Senior VP of Online Services and Windows Business Group, is a leading voice in this initiative and explains our Life Without Walls theme:

The “Life without Walls” tagline brings another key facet of the Windows brand to life: Windows connects people not only via the PC, but also via phones, devices, and the Web. The Windows platform of Windows Vista, Windows Mobile, and Windows Live were built to work together and to expand the Windows experience beyond the PC to the phone and the Web. The campaign will reflect this holistic, connected approach.

“On our journey to make sure that Windows enables a life without walls, we’ve taken a step back, reevaluated and tuned and tweaked our approach. So you’re seeing that in the advertising, in the products, in the experience at retail and on Windows.com,” notes Veghte...

I'm a PC!

A major theme in this phase is the I'm a PC message. The first ad features a similar person to the PC character in the MAC vs. PC commercials. His opening line is: "I'm a PC, and I've been made into a stereotype." I like the start because it's real, it's professional, and involves no spin or cheap shots.

There are multiple ads in this phase. [Taken from Microsoft Tears Down the Walls for a Better View] The ads feature a diverse group of faces representing the one billion people who use Windows PCs worldwide, all celebrating the sense of power and community Windows enables by declaring: “I’m a PC.” The ads will feature green architect Edouard Francois, astronaut Bernard Harris and celebrities such as Eva Longoria and Deepak Chopra, but the main focus is on real PC users of all ages and from all walks of life, such as teachers, cabbies, designers and fish mongers.

The commercials are interesting, showing a variety of regular people telling their story. The related web site features a few known names but even more everyday people explaining their I'm A PC story.

See All the Ad's

• Live Without Walls Ads (still images)
• Video Gallery (see all the ads)
• Image Gallery (in case you want to blog about this)

Years ago, I loved SPOT watches. While the watches did not survive, the underlying technology evolved into the .NET Micro Framework, and the application went away - at least that is what I thought. Now, I see that they are involved in several app scenarios (navigational devices and appliances) including a Windows Mobile 6 technology preview, still named MSN Direct for Windows Mobile. While the app does not run on all phones, it runs on the popular WM6 smartphones and provides Top News Stories, Weather, Stocks, World News, Sports, and Entertainment.

I've always appreciated that this application gives the latest news in a quick way, but this new version goes further by relying on the WM6 device's ability to browse into a more detailed version. To top all of this, this application is FREE! I also like that it will consider if I'm roaming in order to respect my data plan (optional setting), plus they have provide other customization options.

The application also installs a MSN Direct theme, which makes it a part of the home screen. It has the appearance of the WM 6.1 panel UI. Although a nice features, my only gripe with this is that it removes the rest of the WM 6.1 panels with their home screen. This is my only gripe about the application, and I hope that they address this in the future.

Check it out if you're a news junky who doesn't have time to watch TV all day long.

Now, here's an interesting site. I can go to AskTheBrain.com to ask questions about PDC 2008. It's pretty smart too.

I thought this was interesting:

From VSLive! Keynote: NYC Sees More .NET and Open Source Development, Moving Toward SOA:

...Paul Cosgrave, commissioner of New York's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT), talked up his agency's efforts to deliver both a centralized shared infrastructure, while providing flexibility to the 100-plus agencies it supports. His statements were part of the opening keynote of the VSLive! New York conference.

The City's central services infrastructure has long been based on mainframe and Java-based development, Cosgrave said in an interview. He does not see that changing. However a growing number of agencies, such as the Department of Environmental Protection, are heavily engaged with .NET development projects.

"We are finding it easier to in many ways to build in the .NET world than the Java world, so we are expanding our use of Microsoft," Cosgrave said. The large number of .NET developers and improvements to the .NET Framework, are among the factors driving the shift.

"I think there was a tendency to believe that we needed to be in the Unix-Java world to build robust things and we're now realizing we can do that in the .NET world as well. And it's easier to build in the .NET world," Cosgrave said...

Two weeks ago, I was in Chicago with the rest of the Central Region DPE team. It's always great to catch up with folks that you work with virtually and rarely see. We have a little fun but we work too. During the day, we're taking care of business - reviewing team plans (audience, customer, partner, and tools), reviewing geo-team plans (go HLD!), and we get a little education too.

On our last day, the folks from our newly constructed Chicago datacenter had their own breakout session for us and it was fantastic. The things they talked about blew me away. Can't wait until PDC for you to hear more about our efforts. (See yesterday's announcement about newly advertised sessions if you haven't gotten excited about PDC yet).

We also had a S+S panel with AvenueA|RazorFish, Sogeti, Karri Dunn (talking corp OSS Labs), and Chicago datacenter representatives. That was enjoyable too.

For examples of fun at our offsite meeting, consider this picture, where we were eating dinner atop the John Hancock building at The Signature Room. The food was excellent, and the view was unbelievable. Thanks to Sogeti for hosting our dinner. The above picture was taken with my Blackjack II from my dining seat.

On Tuesday night, our customer evangelism team went to the Lucky Strike for some neon bowling. More fun, but none of us are changing professions. Thanks Jacquelyn for taking us out, and thanks to George Huey for organizing.

The Thirsty Developer 34 - Windows Mobile with Jon Box

Another highlight of the trip was being interviewed by Larry Clarkin, Brian Gorbett, and Dave Bost. These guys are the brains behind the Thirsty Developer, a series of development conversations with a variety of people (they had an IPhone guy on there a few episodes back). After our DPE offsite meetings, we recorded a friendly conversation in a swank room in the Hotel Sax lounge (I wished I had taken a picture of this room, because it was cool). Our interview was all about mobility, specifically developing for Windows Mobile.

Here's the show link: The Thirsty Developer 34- Windows Mobile with Jon Box

Links on topics that came up in the show:

• My GPS post on talking to the GPS from a .NET Compact Framework application
• Live Search for Windows Mobile (free app for Windows Mobile and even Blackberry)
• My Reasons for liking Windows Mobile 6.1
• Jon posts on Windows Mobile
• Windows Mobile site
• Guitar Hero for Windows Mobile (Windows Mobile free games including Guitar Hero 3)

Thanks guys for including me in the show.

The ArcReady series is back with "Architecting Modern Distributed Applications".

Nearly every application we build today has dependencies to other systems. How do we design them to work together to meet our goals? How do we decide what to build and what to buy? Do we host it ourselves or in the cloud? With a bewildering array of choices, the biggest challenge we face today is how to architect robust applications with the right technologies to meet our user’s needs and integrate nicely into our existing IT ecosystems.

Join our Central Region Architect Evangelists for a great discussion on architecting distributed applications using all the latest technologies and best practices.

Session 1: Blueprints for Success. In this session, we will survey the modern architecture landscape from the ground up, including infrastructure, application, and client solution choices. We’ll discuss how current industry trends are shaping our architectures and present an innovative architecture mapping technique for analyzing our customer’s needs and aligning them to today’s technologies and solution patterns.

Session 2: Making It Real. In this session, we’ll take a look at several case studies to learn how to apply the mapping technique from Session 1 to architect real world solutions that add true business value. We’ll examine applications we use every day and take a walk through a Microsoft reference architecture that explores many of the decisions we face when building modern distributed applications.

Register here.

Session 1: Demystifying WPF

Today’s applications need to do more than simply work. They need to draw in the user, and provide a differentiated experience. This means moving beyond battleship gray forms, boxy UIs, and providing a positive user experience. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides powerful capabilities to develop a compelling user interface, the kind that makes an application stand out. In this session, we’ll examine the core concepts of WPF such as layout panels, data binding, styles and control templates, and we’ll use them to develop an application UI from the ground up.

Session 2: Developing Applications with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

Service Pack 1 and Visual Studio 2008 introduce a wide variety of new features for targeting Windows, Office and the Web. This includes more controls, a streamlined setup, improved startup performance, fresh graphics features, improved AJAX support, and much more. We’re also introducing the ADO.NET Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services, which are designed to simplify application data access by providing an extensible, conceptual model for data from any source, while enabling this model to closely reflect business requirements. Don’t miss this lively session and learn how to use these powerful new features in your applications.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Anyone who designs, develops, or debugs code. If you are an architect, developer or just enjoy curly braces, join us.

WHERE ARE THE EVENTS?

Events are held in 12 cities across Central Region.  To register for this event, please select a link below.

9/10/08 Nashville TN

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9/16/08 Downers Grove IL

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9/17/08 Indianapolis IN

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9/23/08 Irving TX

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9/23/08 Waukesha WI

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9/24/08 Houston TX

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9/25/08 Austin TX

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9/30/08 Southfield MI

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10/2/08 Columbus OH

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10/7/08 Chicago IL

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10/7/08 Mason OH

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10/9/08 Cleveland OH

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WHAT TIME ARE THESE EVENTS?

1:00pm – 4:00pm 

New Windows Blog

Just found a new blog that looks interesting since it's about Windows "7". It's called Engineering Windows 7.

Office Labs At It Again

I've mentioned before that Office Labs has some cool projects in the Search Commands and Community Clips. Now there are new prototype projects. Check out:

• pptPlex - a new way to view PowerPoints
• Email Prioritizer - manage email overload with a "do not disturb" feature and email ranking...
• Chart Advisor - in Excel, generate graphs appropriate for your data...
• and more....

Good Eatin

Recently, I've re-visited Tom's Bar-B-Q & Deli, a spot that's been around for a long time but not in an area that I travel to much. I've taken some friends there and no one leaves unimpressed. Yes, it's a hole-in-the-wall place to eat, but the quality and value more than makes up for the trip. Ask for Brad, and tell him that I sent you. Diners, Drive-ins and Dives (from Foot Network) made a visit to Tom's, if you need a national reference.

Yes, friends, the time has arrived. I've been using WM6.1 for months on my Blackjack. I've been loving the experience (as I've noted before ) and now you can too.

So, check this out from Samsung. Be careful as the directions were written by a techie evidently.

Internet Explorer Beta 2 released last week (downloads).

Here is the current list of companies providing new accelerators, web slices, and search providers. It's an impressive list, and we expect other big names forthcoming.

There is also a Videos site (overview, accelerators, web slices, and security and reliability enhancements).

To give one a sense of the enhancements, consider these blog posts. I've added the features that the posts describe. Just looking across this list, you'll see that IE8 intends to be the leader, not just a contender:

• IE team Beta 2 announcement
• Background on the enhancements
• CSS 2.1 test cases
• XSS Filter
• Compatibility View
• Part I: Better Everyday Browsing
• Smart Address Bar
• Favorites Bar
• New Tab Page
• Tab Grouping
• Find On Page
• Part II: Better Everyday Browsing
• Search Box suggestions
• Accelerators
• Web Slices
• Feeds
• Suggested Sites
• Trustworthy Browsing with IE8: Summary
• Security
• Reliability
• Privacy
• Business Practices
• IE8 Tour
• Smart Address Bar
• Domain Highlighting
• SmartScreen
• Crash Recovery
• Improved Zoom
• InPrivate Browsing
• SmartScreen details

Other interesting facts:

• The Phishing Filter was introduced in IE7, and blocks 1 million+ phishing attacks per week. (Source: IE8 Security Part III: SmartScreen Filter)
• Extended Validation support is still there in IE8

Photosynth is just cool! Now you can make your own photosynth and show it to your friends. It's certainly enjoyable to explore these synth's that they have online. You'll have to download a browser plug-in for the viewing experience (just takes a minute), and then it's time for the 3D viewing extravaganza.

If you want to build a synth, all that you need is an average digital camera - and a bunch of pictures of something. Be sure to get a bunch, i.e. more is better (for the viewing experience). Upload to the site, and bam!

Check out these resources.

• Photosynth How-To Video
• Photosynth Blog
• Photosynth site

Currently, the Photosynth site is going gang-busters and they are only showing photosynth's (and not uploading). But, that should change soon. In the mean time, just hit refresh to see different photosynths. There are many cool ones, but had to check out Fenway Park.

Also look for the virtual ring. If you see it, grab it and experience 3D viewing in a way that you might never have with individual pictures.

I'm running this on my Vista x64 (Lenovo T61p) and this runs great. Very cool experience. I can't wait to build a synth of my own.

If you want more information from a outsider's perspective, see this CNET article. The article also includes a CNET video demonstration with Dr. Gary Flake, Technical Fellow with Microsoft, one of the smart people involved in this effort, where they take pictures of this studio and upload to Photosynth.

Gary and Photosynth come from Microsoft Live Labs, home of many other cool things like Seadragon, Deepfish, Volta, Listas, etc.

I was just reading an article in Application Development Trends, titled Microsoft Ships Visual Studio 2008 and .NET SP1. It has a nice walk-through of some of the new capabilities in .NET 3.5 SP1, and they are grouped into logical categories.

They start out with WCF, and mention that that "SP1 adds scalability increases of five to 10 times in Internet Information Services (IIS) 7". And how about partial trust and event-log access?  Nice.

Then they go into WPF enhancements, and how WPF is gaining mind share with developers. Then there is a section on the Entity Framework, next on ADO.NET Data Services, and then to one of the most notable under-promoted items, Client Profile. Here the author, John K. Waters says:

One of those barriers in the .NET world, as Ellison-Taylor points out, has been client deployment. "In some ways we're victims of our own success with the .NET Framework," he said. "Since the first release in 2001 we've added more features and more value, and I think it's come a long way, but it's gotten a little heavy as well."

The .NET Framework 3.5 weighs in at around 197 MB. Microsoft trims that mass with a new Client Profile, which hits the scale at a lean 26 MB to 27 MB, he said. The profile contains a subset of features found in the full installation of the .NET Framework, including the CLR, ClickOnce -- a deployment technology for creating self-updating Windows-based applications, Windows Forms, WPF and WCF.

"We think it gives us 80 percent to 90 percent of the features that client developers would want, but in a much smaller package," Ellison-Taylor said. "That makes it much easier to deploy."

What is Client Profile

One definition is on the BCL Team Blog in the post, .NET Framework Client Profile. Justin Van Patten says that the Client Profile is  "a smaller .NET Framework redist optimized for .NET client applications.  The new redist weighs in at around 26.5 MB, enabling a smaller, faster, more reliable installation experience for .NET client applications on machines that do not already have the .NET Framework installed."

Justin then goes onto list the assemblies included in the Client Profile redist. The list will handle most situations, but there are some scenarios that might be affected (see the comments on this post for a few of those). The next section shows how to turn on this features, and it's quite simple. In Visual Studio 2008 on the Application properties, click the "Client-only Framework subset" checkbox. Afterwards, VS will provide compiler warnings if you reference assemblies not in the Client Profile redist.

Additional Features of the Client Profile

For a deeper look and additional considerations, take a look at Troy Martez's post on Introducing the .NET Framework Client Profile. In this piece, Troy talks about how deployment works, how it can be customized, how to add other products (like SQL CE, a  great choice for Smart Clients now), and customizing the UI of the install. Good background in this post.

More Information

MSDN has a section of pages on the topic, .NET Framework Client Profile. This includes an overview, how to configure, and two walkthrough's of how to build Client Profile application installs on ClickOnce and Windows Installer.

Summary

So, you can see why I think this is an important feature. It not only addresses an issue that infrastructure folks like to take on about the size of the .NET, we also help in deployment styles and customization. Yes, there are many good features in .NET 3.5 SP1, but I recommend not ignoring this one.

I'm hearing lots of buzz about people watching the Olympics via Silverlight on the NBC Olympics site. I've run across some of the technical background of this effort.

Chris Carper, on his Business of Silverlight blog talks about some of activity behind the scenes at NBC.

eWeek did an article titled NBC Olympic Coverage Shines as Silverlight Proving Ground which has some very interesting metrics on the traffic, Silverlight downloads, and potential value of this platform.

Obviously, we Microsoft employees are very excited how this is going.