Out Of The Box

Missed the PDC event. Want to see the sessions?

jonbox — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 06:30:50 GMT

Yes, there is a way to see all of the content, and that’s by visiting http://microsoftpdc.com/Videos. This page has instructions on how to download all of the videos, so that you can watch them whenever/wherever/offline or not. You can always watch them via Silverlight while online, but a traveler can always use a high quality copy. Thanks Mike Swanson, Brian Keller, and the rest of the PDC team!

Windows Marketplace for Mobile, now supports WM 6.X

jonbox — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:53:14 GMT

Yes, with all of the big news coming from the PDC this week, this tidbit slips under the radar this week. Per the Windows Phone Blog, we updated the Windows Marketplace to support Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 (to go along with the initial audience of Windows Mobile 6.5). To start your interaction, on your phone browse to http://mp.windowsphone.com to download the app onto your phone (and have a Live ID ready). Then review applications from the over 1000 registered vendors and 800 applications.

On your PC, you can also visit http://windowsphone.com/getmarketplace. Developers can also visit this site to learn more about getting their applications into the market.

Domino’s Demonstrates Tomcat Site on Windows Azure

jonbox — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:55:00 GMT

With today’s announcements at the Microsoft PDC and our team’s efforts with several customers being announced there, I am posting a blog post for my teammate John Gilmour (Senior Platform Strategy Advisor), so that he can announce our work with Domino’s. So, here’s John:

It has been just over a year since I sat at the 2008 Professional developer’s conference where I heard the term “Window’s Azure” for the very first time. Having only been a Microsoft employee for a few weeks at that time, I certainly was a bit overwhelmed. Sure I had heard about cloud computing – in fact I was hired to help our customers understand our cloud strategy, but at only 3 weeks I certainly had a lot of learning to do.

Fast forward to today and I can honestly say I am more excited about Microsoft and the future of technology than I have even been. I am at the 2009 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in LA and Ray Ozzie is on stage talking about the public release of our cloud platform, Windows Azure, during his Day one Keynote. That alone is certainly exciting enough, but what is really cool is to have been a part of this journey since the Windows Azure Community Technology Preview (CTP) one year ago.

Over this past year I have become great friends with Jon Box and together we have talked to well over 100 customers at more than 40 companies about cloud computing, highlighting the benefits of the Windows Azure Platform over other cloud strategies. Along the way we worked with our customers and identified many opportunities, two of which are super cool – the Silverlight-based 2009 Country Music Association Music (CMA) Festival applications and the work we are doing with Domino’s Pizza around their online pizza ordering system. We’ll post info on the CMA apps in a future post but today is all about the announcements at PDC.

Now for Domino’s… As part of Ray Ozzie’s Keynote, Jim Vitek, Domino’s Director of eCommerce stated:

‘We have daily peaks for dinner rush, with Friday night being the biggest. Super Bowl, however, has a peak 50 percent larger than our busiest Friday night…Windows Azure allows me to focus on customer facing functionality, and not have to worry about whether or not I have enough hosting capacity to support it.’

This is a great problem to have for a business volume perspective, but creates a lot of challenges from a technology perspective. Let’s dive into this a little more and explore why this is such a great story from several different angels:

- eCommerce in the cloud

- Scalability

- Interoperability

eCommerce in the cloud

I still remember being at a customer about 6 months ago when they looked across the table and said “cloud technology, and Windows Azure, are really interesting and seem to offer a lot of promise, but I won’t believe it is real until we see a major company running their ecommerce business in the cloud”. This was a very interesting comment, and I can certainly appreciate that perspective - a company that does a significant amount of eCommerce is not going to commit to a cloud platform unless they are confident in the availability, reliability and security of the offering.

Domino’s is on track to process more than 20M online transaction this year making them one of the busiest ecommerce sites in the world. Like all eCommerce companies, Domino’s anticipates this volume to continue to grow and are beginning to leveraging Windows Azure for these transactions - we can now definitively say that the cloud is real!

Scalability

Like most restaurant type businesses, Domino’s experiences regular spikes on a daily basis during the dinner rush. On a typical day, this peek “rolls” as the dinner period flows across time zones and this type of variability is an excellent opportunity for Domino’s to leverage the scale-up and scale-down capability of the Windows Azure platform. What is even more interesting is the spike they see on one day each year… Domino’s sees a 50% volume spike each year on Super Bowl Sunday and this spike is the only rush throughout the year where all time zones are in sync. Historically, Domino’s has been forced to procure hardware to support the Super Bowl Sunday phenomenon and keep it up and running the remaining 364 days of the year. With Windows Azure, Domino’s will no longer need to keep physical capacity on hand to support the Super Bowl, they will simply “dial up” the required compute capacity for this spike and release it back to Microsoft when it is no longer needed. Capacity on demand – only use and pay for what you need!

Interoperabitiy

While there are many benefits to the .NET platform, the reality is that not all companies are Microsoft dev shop or they have a mixed dev environment. Domino’s is no exception – they currently leverage the Microsoft stack for their store systems but their Web environment has historically been Java / Tomcat. The scalability section above established the business proposition for leveraging a cloud, but Domino’s did not want to change development technologies to realize this benefit. Guess what – they didn’t have to! Domino’s has been able to take their Java / Tomcat code and deploy it to Windows Azure. That’s right – Tomcat runs in Windows Azure! The business value of this is huge for Domino’s – they are able to continue to develop in the environment of their choice and create code that can run inside their data center or in Windows Azure.

What does this mean? Windows Azure is for real business applications and Domino’s Online Pizza ordering systems demonstrate the power of Windows Azure to both scale to support a major eCommerce application and interoperate with non-Microsoft development technologies.

If you’re interested in more info and happen to be at either PDC in LA or at the Web 2.0 Expo / Interop conference in NY this week, stop by and talk to us:

· Windows Azure Expo Booth

· Lunch Session: Lessons Learned: Migrating Applications to the Windows Azure Platform (Wade Wegner, George Huey)

· PDC Virtual Press Room

· Microsoft Expo Booth

· Microsoft Theater (Wed. 11/18 4:45 – 5:00, Thur. 11/18 11:15 – 11:30)

· Conference Session: Cloud Computing with Windows Azure Using Your Preferred Technology (Sumit Chawla, Microsoft Interoperability Team)

Lastly, a huge thank you to Jon Box for everything you have taught me over the last year – it truly is an honor to have you as a colleague, but more importantly, as a friend.

Chicago: Empowering Women’s Brilliance

jonbox — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:21:18 GMT

Directions Training recognized the need for technology and training resources in the small business community and in response has launched Empowering Women’s Brilliance, a local initiative aimed to accelerate the growth of local women owned technology startups. The city of Chicago’s commitment for driving awareness around the importance of technology offers a fitting backdrop for Directions Training’s Empowering Brilliance initiative. The initiative was developed to drive community awareness around the importance of technology and to give women owned technology startup businesses the resources and support they require to build a successful business.

The program targets early stage software startups, with resources including access to Microsoft software and development tools with no upfront costs. The program will also provide access to technical support, mentor programs, marketing visibility and technology training through network partners chartered with advancing entrepreneurialism.

Empowering Women's Brilliance

Join Directions Training, Macy's and the Microsoft DPE team as we launch Empowering Women’s Brilliance. This local initiative was designed to help promote and celebrate women in technology by helping them accelerate the success of their early stage startups, providing:

Software - Development tools and production licenses with NO upfront costs
Support - Resources and Community support from over 300 network and hosting partners and Professional technical support from Microsoft
Visibility - Profile and Promotion on the BizSpark Database

Registration

To register for the Macy’s Launch event on 11-17 or for additional program details please contact Jessica Burnett at jburnett@directionstraining.com or 630.590.6573 or on-line at https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=142198

Where

Macy's NARCISSUS 7th Floor
111 North State Street
Chicago, IL 60602
When: November 17, 2009; 4pm - 8pm (CST)
Cost: FREE!

Agenda

Registration & Reception: 4:00pm – 4:45pm
Event Kick-Off: Norma Reyes, City of Chicago Commissioner of Business Affairs, 4:30 – 4:45pm
Welcome: Alita Larkin, Microsoft Midwest Depth Territory Manager, 5pm – 5:15pm
The Program , Introduction to BizSpark Program: DPE Team, 5:15 – 5:45
Next Steps (Enrollment , The Load Fest, The Training & The Board): Directions Training, 5:45 – 6:15pm
Reception & Activities: BizSpark Program Registration, 1 Minute Make Over, Head Shots, How to Dress for Success Fashion Show, Video Testimonials...and more!, 6:15 – 8:00pm

Windows 7 Features That Your Mother Should Know About

jonbox — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:19:36 GMT

After working several event booths doing demo’s and hosting a launch party at my house, it’s always interesting to me to see the different reactions to Windows 7. There’s the user who still is a Windows XP user, and there’s the user who’s running Windows Vista. And there are a lot of people running Windows XP, so there’s a lot of features that they just don’t know about that I take for granted. There are a few here too, that the Vista user might not be aware of.

Taskbar

Preview (Aero Peek)
Pinning
Jump Lists

Window Actions

Snap
Shake
Desktop / Minimize

Other features

Start / Search
Ribbon
Win+P
Speech
Gadgets
Windows Media Center (also look at adding Hauppauge TV Tuner)

IE8 (don’t have to wait for Windows 7 for this one)

Web Slice
Accelerator
Visual Search Provider

Live Essentials (don’t have to wait for Windows 7 for this one either)

Photo Gallery
Panorama
Make a movie
Photosynth
Movie Maker
Messenger / Web Cam
Writer
Family Safety

Dolly Parton talks IE8, Web Slices, and Microsoft

jonbox — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:31:30 GMT

The Story

One of the most-honored female country performers of all time, the ageless Dolly Parton is an international music icon. In conjunction with this week’s international release of Dolly’s new CD/DVD set, Live From London, Dolly has added a Silverlight-based IE8 web slice to her web site, www.dollypartonmusic.net.

Be sure to check out the web slice and let us know what you think! This is a 3 tab web slice with the options of:

· Video Diary – see Dolly’s latest thoughts on video, with the beauty of Silverlight

· News – see the latest news, fan club announcements, and Dollyisms (like "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap”)

· Buy Now – view the latest deal from Dolly’s online store, Trinkets & Treasures

Also, Dolly has created a YouTube video about IE8 web slices. This is a must see!! Her southern charm comes through with warm and light hearted comments about Microsoft, IE8, and web slices. There will be several new Dollyism’s that come from this video. We’d love to quote some of this, but we don’t want to spoil your upcoming laugh.

The Ask’s

· Install the web slice, either from the Dolly page in the IE8 gallery or www.dollypartonmusic.net.

· Watch the Dolly video on YouTube

· Visit the gallery and submit a rating on Dolly’s web slice.

· Point your friends to follow @IE, where there are related trivia contests

Other Dolly facts (from Dolly’s Wikipedia page):

· The Record Industry Association of America has certified 25 of her single or album releases as either Gold Record, Platinum Record or Multi-Platinum Record.

· She has had 26 songs reach number one on the Billboard country charts, a record for a female artist.

· She has 42 career-top-10 country albums, a record for any artist, and 110 career-charted singles over the past 40 years.

· All inclusive sales of singles, albums, hits collections, paid digital downloads and compilation usage during Parton's career have reportedly topped 100 million records around the world.^[50]

· She has received seven Grammy Awards and a total of 42 Grammy Award nominations.

· At the American Music Awards she has won three awards, but has received 18 nominations.

· At the Country Music Association, she has received 10 awards and 42 nominations.

· At the Academy of Country Music, she has won seven awards and 39 nominations.

· She is one of only five female artists (including Reba McEntire, Barbara Mandrell, Shania Twain and Loretta Lynn), to win the Country Music Association's highest honor, Entertainer of the Year (1978).

· She has also been nominated for two Academy Awards and a Tony Award.

Other references promoting the Dolly / IE8 video and web slice:

· www.dollypartonmusic.net

· http://ieaddons.com/en/details/music/Dolly_Parton_News_and_Video_Diary/

· http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iH4fl0iZQo

· www.facebook.com/dollyparton

· www.myspace.com/dollyparton

· www.youtube.com/dollypartonmusic

· www.bebo.com/dollyparton

· www.ilike.com/artist/Dolly+Parton/

buzztap, sporting news aggregator, leverages IE8

jonbox — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:16:00 GMT

I recently mentioned buzztap (note the lowercase spelling) in my post on web slice discoverability, and said that I would talk in more detail. It’s time.

I describe buzztap as a sporting news aggregator. During these days, I don’t have time to watch a lot of TV or spend hours reading web sites about my favorite sports teams. Buzztap allows me to get different news sources focused on my favorite team, in a quick viewing experience. And with IE8, they make it extremely easy to track my teams. I can quickly glance at my team’s news, and if needed, go directly to the content.

buzztap tracks sporting news for MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, and D1 college teams.

Let’s take a look at the cool things that buzztap does with IE8.

Visual Search

I love to show this to customers. buzztap has a unique spin on how they leverage IE8 Visual Search.

First, using the search text box, you can quickly find your sports team including college teams. Typing in “chi” gets (see Figure 1 below), you get a list of Buzztap team sites for Chicago teams, Kansas City Chiefs, and even the Central Michigan Cougars. Clicking on one of these takes me to that team site, which is filtered news for that team.

Second, when highlighting text on a HTML-based page, most folks know that IE8 will provide an accelerator icon, and then a list of accelerators to pass the highlighted text to. In this case of having Buzztap’s search provider installed, you get the enhanced search experience – in other words, you get a list of articles that include the highlighted text, in a preview window, all without leaving/disrupting the browsing experience.

This combination of search experiences is unique, based on the search providers that I’ve seen.

From the Buzztap site:

buzztap search - This add-on allows you to search the latest on buzztap using the search provider bar in your IE8 browser [figure 1], or by highlighting text on a web page and clicking the accelerator icon [figure 2]. When using the accelerator option, you can preview the buzztap search results without leaving the current page by simply hovering your mouse over the buzztap search option.

Web Slices

In my opinion, the real value from consuming the news on buzztap is by utilizing IE8 web slices. I have web slices for the University of Memphis, St. Louis Cardinals, and Dallas Cowboys (these are links to the buzztap team site). When you go to your favorite team’s page, you’ll get the option to install that team’s web slice. (Refer to my other post on additional ideas on this topic.) When you install the web slice, you get a view similar to this picture of today’s Dallas Cowboys web slice.

buzztap also includes the “Featured Buzz” web slice on the home page. This is a list of the hot topics for the day.

From buzztap’s site: The buzztap team-based web slice add-ons allow you to keep up to date on the latest buzz for a given team without leaving your current browser page…

The Inventory of buzztap Add-On’s

To see the entire list of buzztap add-on’s (including 200+ web slices), check out the buzztap IE8 page at http://buzztap.com/ie8. It’s an impressive list of web slices, as well as a link to the search provider.

If you like sports and visit this site with IE8, you’ll be hooked too!

And if you’re a Twitter fan, you’ll like buzztap’s Twitter efforts.

Using WPF in a Truck

jonbox — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:09:38 GMT

U.S. Xpress is a Tennessee-based truckload carrier with a reputation for delivering excellent customer service and using innovative technology to do so. In the mid-2000s, the company deployed an in-cab solution that automates engine diagnostics and provides communication, navigation, and training-video presentation capabilities. The solution was so successful that U.S. Xpress decided to expand its effectiveness by redesigning the user interface using Windows® Presentation Foundation (WPF) and other rich-client technologies from Microsoft. Having deployed the new version of its solution to roughly half of its 4,600-truck fleet, the company anticipates that the enhancements will help it boost the productivity of key employees, retain skilled drivers in this high-turnover industry, enhance safety management, and significantly reduce IT costs.

Benefits

Boosts employee productivity
Enhances customer service
Helps retain skilled drivers
Reduces IT maintenance costs by 35 percent
Simplifies application targeting

Hardware

DriverTech DT4000 TruckPC devices

Software and Services

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Compact
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server
Windows XP Embedded
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

Interesting quotes

“In this business, time is especially precious; so, for the company to work most effectively, [employees] need to be accessing the same information at the same time. Thanks to this solution, they are.” - Ken Crane, Systems Manager, Mobile Technology, U.S. Xpress

According to Davison, developers were unsure whether WPF would run successfully on the DriverTech DT4000 TruckPC hardware. “The device relied on an embedded video card with limited memory that wasn’t designed to support desktop-level graphics performance,” he reports. “So we decided to develop and deploy a quick WPF-based prototype—and it ran beautifully. This made the decision to use WPF an easy one.”…

Like Taliaferro, other solo drivers feel much the same way. As Crane explains, in up to a dozen different cases, a driver was so impressed after using the newer version of XPE Truck that he or she was unwilling to move to a new truck that did not have that version installed. “In every case, the driver liked the new vehicle, but didn’t like that the vehicle was installed with a hardware device running the older version of XPE Truck,” Crane reports. “So before agreeing to the move, the driver asked that the shop manager replace the older device with a newer one that was running the enhanced version of XPE Truck.”…

“With LINQ, we were able to build route-tracking capabilities into XPE Truck in two weeks, from conception to pilot,” Davison says. “Without LINQ, we would have spent four times that long just dealing with edge cases and state-machine management.”…

To manage data persistence in the original version of XPE Truck, for example, the company relied on XML files—historically, a “nightmare” to maintain, according to Davison. By using SQL Server Compact for data management in the enhanced XPE Truck, the company can manage data persistence with the help of a full relational data store. “As a result, we are anticipating IT maintenance savings of 35 percent,” he says…

Case Study

IE8 Web Slices and Discoverability

jonbox — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 06:34:00 GMT

As my teammates know, I’m a fan of web slices, a capability of Internet Explorer 8. For anyone with a web site, it’s hard to imagine how these don’t have value. But that story is well documented, so I’m not going to jump into the business value conversation. What I do want to mention is something that I learned this week from Giorgio Sardo on the topic of web slice “discoverability”.

What is Discoverability?

This is the notion of how a end-user will find a web slice. IE provides several ways which are discussed next.

Consider the example below, which is screenshot from www.sugarlandmusic.com. This shows the typical example, with two indicators of a web slice.

The Feed Discovery Button

First notice should be the Feed Discovery button at the top of IE, since this is the easiest to recognize. Also note that this button will show a list of the web slices on the page. In my opinion, users typically don’t recognize this at first, since the average user is not accustomed to checking this real estate. As more folks become aware of this button, the recognition will improve.

From MSDN’s Subscribing to Content with Web Slices: Each Web Slice that Internet Explorer detects is added as an entry to the Feed Discovery button , located on the Command bar. Although a Web page can include up to 100 Web Slices, only 20 entries can appear at one time on the Feed Discovery button. You can customize which Web Slice appears at the top of the list by setting the Default Web Slice.

In-document Discovery

The most typical discovery method is called in-document discovery. As illustrated above, when the web slice region has the mouse pointer over it, the recognized web slice shortcut button appears, in conjunction with a green frame around the web slice content area.

The coding for this is well documented, so I won’t go into the details of the HTML efforts for implementing. Just search for hslice, as a starting point.

Important note: this method also is the data input for the Feed Discovery button (discussed earlier); therefore, these two indicators usually go hand-in-hand.

In-document discovery can be disabled via a meta element, but I can’t think of a good reason to do this. In most cases, you want the web slice to be discoverable.

Atypical Scenario - AddToFavoritesBar

In some cases, a web page developer may not want to utilize in-document discovery and would prefer to show the web slice icon. There are various reasons to do this, usually to do with screen real estate issues. When using this method, the web slice icon shows all the time, is a clickable image, and has an action of calling window.external.AddToFavoritesBar which launches the web slice subscription interaction. (AddToFavoritesBar info on MSDN).

One of the best known examples of this for me is ESPN’s home page (screen shot below). Note the web slice icon next to Headlines. Click on the web slice icon, and you get a handy web slice for the sports aficionado.

Here’s the source from the ESPN site for how they implemented this pattern.

<a href="#" onclick="javascript:window.external.AddToFavoritesBar('http://espn.go.com/frontpage/webslices/headlines#headlinesslice', 'ESPN\: Headlines', 'slice'); anTrackLink (this,'espn','webslice_headlinesslice_add','ESPN\: Headlines');">       <img src="http://a.espncdn.com/webslices/icons/12x12.png" width="12" height="12" alt="IE8 Web Slice" border="0" class="sliceicon-img headlines-img" /></a>

Note: here’s the one little nugget that prompted me to write this post – it just took me some time to set up the point. When implementing this pattern (utilizing AddToFavoritesBar), the Feed Discovery button is not enabled. This is problematic, because my opinion is that you want your reader/customer to find these web slices. When talking to Giorgio about this issue, I received the following recommendation: create a hidden web slice on the screen, which will trigger my preferred extra visual assistance of the Feed Discovery button. And in investigating this, I found that ESPN is doing this exactly.

Here’s ESPN’s way of doing enabling the Feed Discovery button. Note the use of style="display: none;" in the fundamental web slice markup – thus the hidden web slice. This code exists just before the anchor element for the AddToFavoritesBar, in ESPN’s case.

<span id="headlinesslice" class="hslice" style="display: none;">       <span style="display: none;" class="entry-title">ESPN: Headlines</span>       <a rel="feedurl" href="http://espn.go.com/frontpage/webslices/headlines" style="display: none;"></a>       <span style="display: none;">             Updates every <span class="ttl">60</span> minute(s)       </span></span>

Hybrid Scenario

So, one of the sites that I show a lot now is Buzztap, a sporting news aggregator. Note my own personal usage of their web slices, specifically the St. Louis Cardinals Buzz and Dallas Cowboys Buzz. You can see their impressive list of slices here (over a 100), which cover NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, and college sports. I’ll talk more about Buzztap in the future, but I wanted to point out their unique pattern of discoverability. They use in-document discovery which enables the Feed Discovery button, as well as the AddToFavoritesBar method. Now that is the ultimate in discovery!

Another Way of Discovery – the IE8 Gallery

This probably goes without saying, but just to make sure: registering your web slice in the gallery is another must-do activity for raising the discoverability score. Wanna get extra eye balls to your site for FREE? Register in the gallery. It’s that simple.

Related Topics

Web Slice Icon Guidelines

Web Slice Format Specification

Setting the Default Web Slice (when you want to dictate the first web slice in the Feed Discovery button)

<link     rel="default-slice"    type="application/x-hatom"     href="#webSliceIdOnYourPage" /> 

Disabling In-Document Discovery

<meta name="slice" scheme="IE" content="off"/> 

Windows 7 Launches Today

jonbox — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:14:36 GMT

Windows 7 Virtual Presskit
Remarks by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, at the launch of Windows 7, New York, Oct. 22, 2009
Remarks by Steven Sinofsky, president, Windows and Windows Live Division, at the launch of Windows 7, Tokyo, Oct. 22 2009
Video Gallery
Image Gallery – pictures from launch events around the world
Review Roundup
Brandon’s Guide to Awesome New Windows 7 PCs

Windows 7 Launch Video, featuring Steve Ballmer

TAMI RELLER: (2:31) And this is a big day for our customers who now number one billion across the globe. Eight million of those customers helped us along the journey, helped us test Windows 7. Thank you to all of those customers and enthusiasts and volunteers who helped us with the product.

Well, now that the product is ready, over the next several weeks, over 800,000 customers will gather to see Windows 7 and show off Windows 7 to family and friends. And so we thought it was very fitting for us to have a launch party of our own here in New York.

Kylie (the girl in the Windows 7 commercial) starts the event and introduces Steve Ballmer. Steve gives her a new Windows 7 pink ultrathin computer.

(7:57) STEVE BALLMER: 3,000 world-class engineers at Microsoft, 50,000 partners with umpity-ump engineers there, and then the 8 million customers. And the 8 million customers were people from all around the world, 200 countries. You had teachers, small business owners, soccer moms. You had people stretching, if you will, from grandparents to gamers, people stretching from Australia to Iceland. Across the planet, feedback coming in from people in all walks of life really helping us think about and improve and make Windows 7 and Windows 7 PCs what our customers, I think, will really, really want.

(10:49) STEVE BALLMER: I want to give you a little bit broader characterization of Windows 7 overall. I think of Windows 7 in three major buckets: No. 1, it works the way you want to work. You want that computer to fire up quickly, boom. You want it to feel responsive, boom. You want longer battery life, boom. We needed to make those things work -- simpler, faster, more responsive, leaner, less busy. And I think we've accomplished that with Windows 7.

No. 2, the things that you do all the time need to be simpler. You want to manage the windows on your desktop, you want to find the documents you most frequently use. Let's make that stuff super, super simple.

And then No. 3, let's enable a world of new things, new possibilities for software developers and hardware developers and for end users. So you get a technology like multi-touch, which enables people to build new computers and new software. You get literally, I would say, from an end user perspective, dozens or hundreds of new features. And our experience throughout the beta test program is that everybody finds their own unique set of features to fall in love with.

(13:08) STEVE BALLMER: Windows 7 takes us a step closer to the vision that we articulate that focuses in around three different screen sizes – PC, phone, and TV – all connected and communicating across the cloud, the Internet backbone…

Demo’s – 14:50, Brad Brooks, VP, Windows Marketing Group

Camera Detection of Nikon
Picture Import into Windows Live Photo Gallery
Makes a movie with Windows Live Movie Maker
Multi-touch
Windows Media Center

Channel guide and touch
CBS Prime Time content – like NCIS and my favorite show currently, The Mentalist
Netflix, and streamed movies

Kendle Reader (more info here)
Homegroup

printer sharing, picture sharing
Remote Media Stream - streaming video from home

“Play To”

Devices consuming media from Windows 7
16 devices consuming media from PC

Windows 7 machine categories

Netbook
Ultrathin
Notebook
Desktop
All-In-One
Gaming

39:00, Walk through the home setup with Mike Angiulo

MIKE ANGIULO: (40:35) This is a less than $800 PC, complete with the monitor and the mouse. This one is an Acer Aspire. It's got a new solid state drive, a kind of a small case, two gigs of ram, but the thing that I want to show you here is that just booted up completely, 15 seconds. And this is a real image…

MIKE ANGIULO: (42:00) When this PC is plugged in there's a high-performance ATI graphics chip that's alive, that makes really great high-resolution graphics, and when you unplug it, it has embedded graphics which conserve battery. So, this PC, even though it's only 4 pounds, still gets seven hours of battery life. It's less than one inch thick. It's got a laser-etched aluminum case. It's really a cool machine. And it goes to sleep just even faster. If you push that button, boom, it's asleep. So that's performance of the new Win 7 machines…

MIKE ANGIULO: (44:00) And it's launching on this computer. That's because this computer doesn't dock with wires. It's using 60-gigahertz wireless docking technology. So, these machines are connecting totally cordless. And more than connecting, that's how it charges, too, with no wires, using purely induction. I set this on the stand, that machine is charging and docking without a single cord. Isn't that cool?

MIKE ANGIULO: (46:00) So, here I'm in Windows 7, and I'm going to come over to a video library, and I'm going to play a full-screen movie. You'll see the movie will start up quickly. It's going to be full screen. It's going to be high fidelity, and this TV is being powered by this Acer Aspire Revo, and this is an entire PC in this little container. This PC fits in your entertainment cabinets. You can hang this PC on the back of the TV.

STEVE BALLMER: You're saying the whole TV, PC is in this little box?

MIKE ANGIULO: That's right. It's running that same system, and these start for under $200. It's less than a TiVo, it's a whole computer.

MIKE ANGIULO: (Around the 49 minute mark) And, the unbelievable, we're not even there yet, is the new PCs that are coming are breaking records, like this new Dell Adamo XTS. This is going to be the thinnest computer in the world when it's shipping, 9.99 millimeters thin. It's got a capacitive latch that opens. It's got an aluminum keyboard. You see it responds in one or two seconds. It comes up from sleep. It's a high-performance, really cool engineering machine that's coming out and that's some of the innovation that's available in the Windows 7 PCs.

Video Review of Windows 7 PC’s (51 minute mark until end, 54:02)

The Ultimate Offer

jonbox — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:16:17 GMT

Here’s the deal

The Visual Studio product line-up is evolving in 2010. During this transition time, you have an opportunity to activate a MSDN Premium subscription, which will convert to a more advanced edition of Visual Studio 2010 with MSDN.

In other words, buy Visual Studio 2008 Team System with MSDN Premium now, and step-up to Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN when it ships for no extra cost. It’s a huge costs saving over time plus you get Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN as soon as Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN ships.

Video Explanation

Sweeping Changes in Visual Studio 2010 and MSDN?

jonbox — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:42:55 GMT

Sweeping Changes in Visual Studio 2010 and MSDN?

60 Minute Webcast Series

Visual Studio 2010 and MSDN are BIG – and they are getting bigger! In this session, we’ll explore all the changes to the Visual Studio family of products, including Team Foundation Server as well as recent upgrades and changes to our MSDN line-up. Please join us for a 60 minute “CAN’T MISS” – high level overview, where we will discuss the many changes to our offerings which will likely impact current customers and future customers. We promise you won’t be disappointed!

Speaker: Tim Adams, Tony Jimenez and Randy Pagels, Microsoft Corporation

Date	Time	Join the Meeting	Audio Call Only	Conference Call ID
Tuesday, 10/27	9:00 AM- 10:30 AM (CST)	Join the meeting	1-888-320-3585 [English]	438667128
Thursday, 10/29	2:00 PM- 3:30 PM (CST)	Join the meeting	1-888-320-3585 [English]	438667128
Tuesday, 11/3	9:00 AM- 10:30 AM (CST)	Join the meeting	1-888-320-3585 [English]	438667128
Thursday, 11/5	2:00 PM- 3:30 PM (CST)	Join the meeting	1-888-320-3585 [English]	438667128

Additional Offerings & Solutions

Improve ALM solutions and strategies
How can you make your development process more efficient, consistent, and with improved quality—for FREE? Take advantage of free advice.

FREE Expert ALM Consulting
Get expert advice on your current Application Life-Cycle Management and development processes. Built on a survey of your team leaders, the ALM Catalyst Insight program is phone-based consulting that highlights your organization’s best practices and uncovers areas of risk that will improve with better ALM solutions and strategies.

> Visit the ALM Catalyst portal to learn more and register.

FREE Live Workshops
Learn how to use Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server to its full potential. Four ongoing ALM Catalyst Live Workshops cover different aspects of the development process:

· Preparation and use of reports

· Benefits of automated builds

· Integration of quality assurance

· Implementation of consistent process

> Check out the schedule and register for a FREE Live Workshop now.

What a week!

jonbox — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:11:48 GMT

Lots of stuff happening this week…

Visual Studio 2010

Beta 2 was announced. There are multiple announcements inside this effort:
New lineup of SKU’s
Go Live license
New logo / new look
Beta 2 of .NET 4

Windows 7

Windows 7 launches this week.

PowerPivot for Excel 2010 (formerly known as "Gemini")

is a data analysis tool that delivers unmatched computational power directly within the application users already know and love—Microsoft Excel. It provides users with the ability to analyze mass quantities of data and IT departments with the capability to monitor and manage how users collaborate by integrating seamlessly with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2.
You can give your users the power to gain deeper insight into any business aspect and compress decision cycles. You can enable your users to share their findings with others effortlessly and securely. You can increase the efficiency of your IT department through the PowerPivot Management Dashboard.

Better keep your eyes on PDC. Better yet, just better attend.

Interknowlogy’s Multi-Touch Remote Object Manipulation

jonbox — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:58:11 GMT

Tim (IK’s CEO) shows a .NET 4 WPF app running on Windows 7 and Microsoft Surface, and shows a Healthcare / Life Sciences Version. The machines are using WCF for intercommunication.

New Photosynth based on Morgan Cox and a Visit to Neyland Stadium

jonbox — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:41:13 GMT

This past weekend, my wife and I took our son Taylor on a visit to the University of Tennessee and Mississippi State University. On Saturday, we were blessed to attend a UT game with some friends of ours, whose son is the long snapper in Knoxville. Morgan Cox is the kind of college story that you love to hear about (classy young man, a product of a quality family), but that’s another post. Nevertheless, my family was given the opportunity to see parts of the UT game day that the college fan would drool over thanks to Morgan and his parents, as UT defeated Georgia. My friends on Facebook can get a better glimpse of the day. Now, to the purpose of this blog post.

The visit to UT and their football mega-facility (Neyland Stadium) gave me plenty of photographic opportunities. Once we got to our seats and I started looking around at a place that seats 100K+ folks, I thought it would be good to upload to the Photosynth site and see how synthy that my pictures would be. Turns out that my 65 photo’s got a 97% synthy rating.

Since I last created a photosynth, several features have been added: an overhead view, geotagging, an improved viewer, and search enhancements. Let’s use the picture below for visual assistance.

The site search function has been improved. I would have thought that I was the only guy to do this with Neyland Stadium; however, there are 4 synth’s of Neyland Stadium.
The new improved viewer is based on Silverlight 3, as well as some coding enhancements for smarter interaction and smoother viewing. (Yes, Wright, this will run on your Mac.)
In the bottom right of the picture, you’ll see where the photosynth is integrated with Bing Maps. This also includes the ability to overlay some of the highlight pictures – called “geoalignment”.
The overhead view is COOL. You not only can quickly get a idea of how the various pictures are connected together, this viewing style also serves as a navigational aid. (see picture below). Press the T to toggle between overhead view and normal view.
More details about these and other enhancements are here on the Photosynth blog.

Now back to supporting my son and his college selection process…