Inside Paras' Head

Microsoft announces Windows 7 beta and new version of Windows Live

paraswadehra — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:01:00 GMT

Today Microsoft announced the beta release of Windows 7 and the availability of the new version of Windows Live.

The beta of Windows is on schedule and feature complete. The information that tens of millions of customers shared with Microsoft guided this release, and now they can begin to see first-hand how Windows 7 and Windows Live will improve the way they work and play on their PC and interact on the web.

At CES, Steve Ballmer made another very significant announcement: the availability of the new version of Windows Live. The new Windows Live is designed to make it much easier to communicate and share experiences with the people you care about, and stay connected to the content and information that matters to you. In addition to market-leading and award-winning email and messenger client/services, Windows Live now infuses social networking across your online world. For instance, you can add people to your network by inviting your Facebook friends to appear on your Profile page. You can also set up a group for your family to share photos, messages, and more.

Windows 7 and Windows Live, along with Internet Explorer 8 (now in beta), were designed to work together to simplify how people use PCs, the Web, and mobile phones.

Windows 7 Beta will be widely available for download on Friday at http://microsoft.com/windows7.

Windows 7 keeps its name

paraswadehra — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:51:00 GMT

Microsoft has decided to keep the codename Windows 7 as the final name for it's latest release of Windows.

Mike Nash, made the announcement on the Windows Vista Blog saying "Now is a good time to announce that we've decided to officially call the next version of Windows, 'Windows 7'." "While I know there have been a few cases at Microsoft when the codename of a product was used for the final release, I am pretty sure that this is a first for Windows," he added.

He explained the rational behind the name by adding "Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore 'Windows 7' just makes sense."

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Overview

paraswadehra — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:41:00 GMT

Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 mark the next generation of developer tools from Microsoft. Designed to address the latest needs of developers, Visual Studio and the .NET Framework deliver key innovations in the following pillars:

Democratizing Application Lifecycle Management
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) crosses many roles within an organization and traditionally not every one of the roles has been an equal player in the process. Visual Studio Team System 2010 continues to build the platform for functional equality and shared commitment across an organization’s ALM process.
Enabling emerging trends
Every year the industry develops new technologies and new trends. With Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft delivers tooling and framework support for the latest innovations in application architecture, development and deployment.
Inspiring developer delight
Ever since the first release of Visual Studio, Microsoft has set the bar for developer productivity and flexibility. Visual Studio 2010 continues to deliver on the core developer experience by significantly improving upon it for roles involved with the software development process.
Riding the next generation platform wave
Microsoft continues to invest in the market leading operating system, productivity application and server platforms to deliver increased customer value in these offerings. With Visual Studio 2010 customers will have the tooling support needed to create amazing solutions around these technologies.
Breakthrough Departmental Applications
Customers continue to build applications that span from department to the enterprise. Visual Studio 2010 will ensure development is supported across this wide spectrum of applications.

See Visual Studio 2010 in Action on Channel 9
Channel 9 has new Visual Studio Team System 2010 videos posted including an overview of new capabilities, software quality, project management and Team Foundation Server, featuring Brian Harry. Watch the videos now.

Learn More About Visual Studio Team System 2010

To learn more about the new features and capabilities in Visual Studio Team System 2010 follow the links below.

Modeling that Works with Code
Powerful modeling tools are important for both defining new systems as well as discovering architectural information about existing systems. Our new modeling tools have tight integration into the actual code of the application enabling a developer or architect to use models to enforce constraints on code, as well as to explore existing code assets. Learn more.
Eliminating “No-Repro”
One of the most difficult problems has always been that of the bug that can’t be reproduced – the “no repro” bug. There are a lot of factors that drive these types of bugs and we have worked to create tools to isolate the issue and enable faster fixes. Learn more.
Identify the Test Impact
After making a change to the code it is critical to test the changes to prove they work as expected and to ensure no unexpected downstream effect. Test Impact Analysis helps developers quickly check-in code with confidence by running only the necessary tests. Learn more

Check out more details at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc948977.aspx

Next Generation Zune launched

paraswadehra — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 23:29:00 GMT

The next generation of Zune was launched earlier this week. This release combines two very important things:

v A free software-and-services update, which will work on any of the existing Zune family of devices, as well as the new devices we are bringing to market to round out our hardware family.

v Key new hardware device options, including new capacities, new colors, and new prices.

Some of the cool features that deliver on this idea and which are AVAILABLE NOW include:

v Buy From FM: Every Zune comes with an FM radio – and now you can use FM broadcasts to discover new songs for your music collection. Using RDS and RT+ data feeds from thousands of radio stations around the country, you can see song information while you are listening and tag the song for download the next time you sync your Zune.

v Channels: Channels are an exciting new tool for music discovery – like a “radio station” that automatically syncs to your device so it’s available for listening offline. You can subscribe to channels programmed by experts from the music industry (eg., the Billboard Top 100, FADER magazine and KEXP radio playlists) or choose top “chart-channels” from all genres and sub-genres in our marketplace. Zune’s powerful software-service will even create custom channels for you, based on your favorite artists and genres.· Wireless streaming and download from the cloud. Taking our wireless functionality to the next level, you can now connect your Zune device directly to the marketplace over your home network or any one of tens-of-thousands of wifi hotspots across the country—including around 9,800 McDonalds restaurants. Access new releases, top tracks and albums, or search for an artist or track. And when you find it, you can not only download it directly but with the Zune Pass subscription stream it directly to your Zune.

v Personal Picks: When you browse to Zune Marketplace, you’ll find a new area called ‘Picks’ where Zune’s recommendation algorithm will suggest artists, albums and tracks based on the music you have been listening to, as well as offer channels created explicitly for you and a list of listeners-like-you from the Zune Social.

v PC Software that’s Powerful and Fun To Use: The Zune PC software is simply one of the best media and entertainment experiences you can have on Windows. It provides rich discovery and media management capabilities to make the most of your existing music collection, in addition to providing access to the Zune Social and Zune Marketplace.

Ø Mixview: Select an artist, album or Zune Card to activate a dynamic, visual mosaic of related music and listeners (screenshot below at left). With each click users can take the view in a new direction, creating a fun, graphical way to discover new music. Mixview works with users’ current collection of music, in addition to tracks and albums from across the Zune Marketplace.

Ø Now Playing: The improved “Now Playing” view is more interactive and cinematic. Just sit back and enjoy our combination of great artist imagery, colorful effects, bio information and data from the Zune online music community… all combined in a full screen view. At anytime you can click to dive deeper into the music behind the picture; providing another great way to interact with your collection.

Zune now also supports Games and Audiobooks on devices.

New hardware was introduced too:

v a stunning blue 8 GB device,

v a new 16 GB glossy black with a black metal back, and…

v a 120 GB black-on-black that round out the hardware selection nicely.

Visit www.zuneoriginals.net where there are even more colors available and where you can customize a Zune just for you.

Microsoft slashes Xbox prices

paraswadehra — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:49:00 GMT

Microsoft announced that it is slashing prices of its flagship gaming device, XBOX 360, in the US. This will take the price of the basic model down to $199, approximately $50 cheaper than Nintendo Wii. It said that prices for the other Xbox models will drop by $50.

The US cut follows a similar move in Japan. In late August Microsoft announced that Japanese prices of the Xbox 360 would fall in September. The cut meant an Xbox Arcade will cost 19,800 yen ($182), also cheaper than the Wii. Earlier this year, in March Microsoft cut European prices making the recommended price for the Arcade £159.99, lower than the European price for a Wii.

IE8 Beta 2 Launched

paraswadehra — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:11:00 GMT

The IE team launched IE8 Beta 2 which can be downloaded at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8.

You can watch videos of IE8 at http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us&user=-3161786097973413883 and http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/videos.aspx. IE8 is a very developer friendly browser. You can download add-ons for IE8 at http://www.ieaddons.com/. Some of my favorite add ons include Web Slices and Accelerators.

Some cool features of IE8 Beta 2 include color-coded tabbed-browsing and accelerator support. Accelerators are services that you access directly from the webpage in the context of what you’re doing, letting you bookmark, define, email, map and more with a simple selection. Even your search providers are available as Accelerators. Some Accelerators provide previews so that you can view the result without having to leave the current webpage. Clicking on an Accelerator opens a new tab with the full result. You can download accelerators from http://www.ieaddons.com/en/accelerators/

Also, there is better support for when website you are viewing in a tab crashes - now instead of closing the whole IE window along with other tabs open in the same window, only the tab with the crashing website will close!

Microsoft adds new features to .NET

paraswadehra — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:16:00 GMT

Microsoft has introduced new features in .NET with their Service Pack 1 (SP1) release of .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008.

Most of the stuff included in the service pack releases is new features and functionality rather than bug fixes and updates to existing feature-set. For example, .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 adds a new concept called the .NET Framework Client Profile, which enables an application to be delivered with just what is needed to install and run the app, rather than the whole framework. This can reduce the size of installation files by 86.5 percent, according a Microsoft spokesperson. Other major features in .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 include a 20 to 45 percent improvement in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications and changes to the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) to change the way data and services are accessed.

The changes in the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 are listed here.

Avenue A | Razorfish and Pluck Agree to Develop New Social Media Offering

paraswadehra — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:50:00 GMT

Avenue A | Razorfish, one of the world’s largest digital marketing companies, and Pluck Corp., a recognized leader in social media technology, today announced that the two companies have signed an agreement to develop and market the industry’s first offering to inject social media features like customer comments and user-generated content into mainstream digital advertisements.

The social advertising service, code-named AdLife, will make it possible for marketers to embed social media technology directly into Interactive Advertising Bureau-standard advertising units that are distributed wherever consumers live in the digital world. Shiv Singh, vice president and global social media lead for Avenue A | Razorfish, said, "It's clear that consumers want a stronger voice in the conversation with the marketer. When developed, AdLife will enable consumer participation and social influence inside the billions of impressions received by traditional digital ad units like banner ads." Singh explained that AdLife could apply to virtually any industry. For instance, a film studio might announce a new movie through a banner advertisement that enables consumers to review the movie by clicking on the ad, as well as reading feedback from other movie goers – without ever leaving the point of display for the advertisement.

The two companies indicated that the next steps in the development of AdLife are to conduct extensive beta testing with digital marketers prior to making the offering available.

Microsoft's Hypervisor Technology Gives Customers Combined Benefits of Windows Server 2008 and Virtualization

paraswadehra — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:44:00 GMT

Microsoft reached another milestone today with the release of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the hypervisor-based virtualization technology that is a feature of select versions of Windows Server 2008. The nearly 1.5 million copies of the Hyper-V beta version that have been distributed demonstrate how customer interest in virtualization is moving from evaluation to production environment deployments.

Virtualization can help companies maximize the value of IT investments, decreasing the server hardware footprint, energy consumption and cost and complexity of managing IT systems while increasing the flexibility of the overall environment. Microsoft’s strategy and investments in virtualization — which span from the desktop to the datacenter — help IT professionals and developers implement Microsoft’s Dynamic IT initiative, whereby they can build systems with the flexibility and intelligence to automatically adjust to changing business conditions by aligning computing resources with strategic objectives.

Hyper-V offers customers a reliable, scalable and high-performance virtualization platform that plugs into customers' existing IT infrastructures and enables them to consolidate some of the most demanding workloads. In addition, the Microsoft System Center product family gives customers a single set of integrated tools to manage physical and virtual resources, helping customers create a more agile and dynamic datacenter.

“Customers who buy Windows Server 2008 are not only getting the scalability benefits, the high performance and reliability, and all the great things that Windows Server is known for; as of today they can benefit from integrated virtualization with Hyper-V,” said Bill Hilf, general manager of Windows Server Marketing and Platform Strategy at Microsoft.

To accompany Microsoft virtualization technologies such as Hyper-V, the System Center family of solutions delivers management tools to configure, operate, deploy and backup physical and virtual servers from the datacenter to the desktop — all from a single pane of glass. With proper management tools and processes, customers can control the power of virtualization and become agile, while still maintaining control. This can help prevent such issues as “virtual server sprawl” — one of the challenges that can be introduced by the increased use of server virtualization.

Microsoft itself has been using Hyper-V in production environments, including heavy-traffic Web properties such as MSDN, TechNet and Microsoft.com. MSDN has more than 3 million average page views per day, TechNet averages more than 1 million per day, and Microsoft.com averages more than 38 million per day. By the end of June, Microsoft.com is targeted to be 50 percent virtualized with Hyper-V.

To help both customers and partners assess whether their existing servers are good candidates for virtualization using Hyper-V, Microsoft has released the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 3.1 Beta to help accelerate virtualization planning and deployment. The final release of MAP 3.1 is expected in July and will be available for free at http://www.microsoft.com/MAP. MAP belongs to a family of Microsoft Virtualization Solution Accelerators including Infrastructure Planning and Design guides and the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool.

Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) vendors such as Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens Corp., Fujitsu Ltd., HP, IBM, NEC, Sun Microsystems and Unisys are already qualified to ship and create systems with Hyper-V. In all, 250 systems from server and white-box vendors are already logo-qualified for Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V. More information can be found at http://www.windowsservercatalog.com.

New customers and partners can download Hyper-V at http://www.microsoft.com/Hyper-V. Customers who have deployed Windows Server 2008 can receive Hyper-V from Windows Update beginning July 8.

Announcing Dream-Build-Play 2008

paraswadehra — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 03:04:00 GMT

The XNA team has announced Dream-Build-Play 2008, a global competition to see who can create the best game for the Xbox 360 using XNA Game Studio 2.0. This year’s participants will be competing for $75,000 in prizes and the bragging rights to say their game was the best. In addition, one of the top ten finalists will have a chance at an Xbox LIVE publishing contract.

Prizes:

1^st $40,000
2^nd $20,000
3^rd $10,000
4^th $5,000

Last year’s Dream-Build-Play was an outstanding success as the four top entries were extended opportunities to sign Xbox LIVE Arcade publishing agreements. We will begin to see those winning games released later this year on Xbox LIVE Arcade. This year’s contest will feature Xbox360 development only and to ensure that everyone has access, everyone that registers will get one free 12-Month XNA Creators Club Trial membership. For more information and your chance to create the next great hit log on to www.dreambuildplay.com.

Parallel Extensions to .NET June 2008 CTP

paraswadehra — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 02:59:00 GMT

The 2nd CTP for Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework 3.5 was released recently.

Download the Parallel Extensions June 2008 CTP

Parallel Extensions simplifies development by providing library-based support for introducing concurrency into applications written with any .NET language, including C# and Visual Basic. It includes the Task Parallel Library (TPL), which provides imperative data and task parallelism; Parallel LINQ (PLINQ), which provides declarative data parallelism; and all new Coordination Data Structures (CDS), which provide support for work coordination and managing shared state.

In addition to CDS, this upgrade provides several improvements, including a new scheduler that is more robust, efficient, and scalable. TPL also exposes new functionality, including methods for continuations. PLINQ now runs on top of TPL, clarifies order-preservation, and provides several new operators.

This download works with the .NET Framework 3.5 as a simple, small-footprint installation that drops a single DLL, documentation, samples, and registers the DLL with Visual Studio 2008.

Microsoft Health Common User Interface (v1.3) has shipped

paraswadehra — Wed, 14 May 2008 04:44:00 GMT

Microsoft Health Common User Interface (MSCUI) v1.3 has been released to the web on www.mscui.net and http://www.codeplex.com/mscui.

MSCUI provides User Interface Design Guidance and Toolkit controls that address a wide range of patient safety concerns for healthcare organizations worldwide, allowing a new generation of safer, more usable and compelling health applications to be quickly and easily created.

This offering is aimed at user interface designers, application developers and patient safety experts who want to find out more about the benefits of a standardized approach to user interface design. This is the third release of MSCUI since it was launched in July 2007.

There are 5 key elements to this new release:

Announcing a new Technology Strategy moving to Silverlight 2 and Windows Presentation Foundation for all future controls, samples and demonstrators.
Publication of an interactive Delivery Roadmap outlining what guidance and controls we will be developing, when and how the community can engage.
Publication of new and updated Design Guidelines.
Publication of a new Medications Listview control for Silverlight 2 and WPF.
Launch of a new Patient Journey Demonstrator which showcases CUI design guidelines, controls and future UI concepts in a Silverlight 2 application

The Microsoft Health Common User Interface: Patient Journey Demonstrator is a rich internet application demonstrating a health care scenario across primary and secondary care settings. We have used Silverlight to create an application that shows our vision of how we see clinical systems working in the near future, providing scalable, transformable, rich views on patient data. The demonstrator also implements design guidance and controls from www.mscui.net, ensuring that patient safety and clinical effectiveness is at the heart of the design.

Some of the things used from Silverlight include...

· Deep zoom to view complex ECG (electrocardiogram) data

· Intelligent, scaling layout

· Data-binding everywhere

· Animation and media

· Vector graphics enabling real time manipulation of chart data

XNA Game Studio 3.0 Community Technical Preview (CTP) now available!

paraswadehra — Fri, 09 May 2008 02:43:00 GMT

The XNA Community Games Platform team has delivered on their promise to enable game development for Zune devices with the release of the XNA Game Studio 3.0 Community Technical Preview (CTP). Some key features that are available in this release:

· Create and deploy 2D games for all Zune v1 and v2 devices

· Ability to support local ad-hoc wireless play with multiple Zunes.

· Discoverability/access to user’s music – allowing the user to customize background soundtracks or create real-time visualizations

· Improved sound effect API (drop sound files directly into the content pipeline).

· Either Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition and higher (C# language support must be installed), or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition are required to install and run the XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP

Limitations:

· Please note this current CTP does not enable Xbox 360 game development. Only Windows and Zune are supported in this CTP. If you want to build and deploy games for the Xbox 360, you must continue using XNA Game Studio 2.0 for now.

· Visual Studio 2005 SKUs are not supported with XNA Game Studio 3.0 and beyond. However, you do not need to uninstall Visual Studio 2005 or XNA Game Studio 2.0, as those products will work side-by-side with Visual Studio 2008 and XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP.

Microsoft Launches WorldWide Simulated Robotics Competition

paraswadehra — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:35:00 GMT

Today Microsoft unveils RoboChamps (www.robochamps.com), a simulated robotics league that is open to academics, hobbyists and developers from around the world, that demonstrates the power of the Microsoft platform to enable a broad range of developers to explore new ways to use .NET for robotics programming.

RoboChamps is built on top of the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio(MSRDS) 2008 CTP, and uses that product’s robust, physics enabled simulation environment to remove the barriers of entry that exist for many today. This simulated league provides individuals with immersive 3-d environments, simulated versions of robots, and compelling scenario-specific challenges where they can win real robots. Environments range from a maze to the surface of the planet Mars to downtown driving to robot rescue to soccer. The top four finalists will be flown to PDC, where the competition moves to the real world and participants apply their code to real robots.

The audience for this is broad, including professional, hobbyist, and academic developers – and all are eligible to compete and win real robots. MSRDS 2008 is .NET based, so between people having pre-existing .NET skills and simulation reducing the costs of entry, this is available to most people. MSRDS is also being picked up and used in compelling scenarios by the likes of MySpace.

More information:
Website – www.RoboChamps.com
Channel 9 video – http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=399952
.NET Rocks Podcast – http://perseus.franklins.net/dotnetrocks_0336_marc_mercuri.wma
On10.net video – http://www.on10.net/blogs/tina/Robo-Champs-My-robot-is-bigger-then-your-robot/

Microsoft adding routes to its Connector bus system

paraswadehra — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 04:56:00 GMT

The capacity of Microsoft Corp.'s free Connector regional bus system for employees will more than double under an expansion announced Wednesday. The service, which began in September, will add new routes and expand to a capacity of 4,600 seats a day from the existing 1,800, a company spokesman said in an e-mail.

Microsoft says it's adding seven routes; three Eastside routes begin April 21 and four Seattle routes May 5.

The bus system is one of the amenities the company is using to help recruiting and retention in the face of stiff competition for engineering talent from Google and others. As of November, average ridership was about 55 percent, and about 15 percent of employees who made reservations didn't show.

To date, the Connector system has provided more than 130,000 rides, and it has been used by 4,300 employees, according to the e-mail from Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos. The company says more than 2,500 of Connector riders had been driving to work alone. It says the system has saved more than 1.3 million pounds of carbon emissions, which Gellos described as the equivalent of turning off electrical power to Microsoft's Building 17, which holds 650 employees, for six months.