Ryan Storgaard's Blog

Slides Posted: Canadian Leadership Summit “Exploring Software Plus Services” Breakout Session

2009-05-29T20:27:31Z

I’ve posted the slides from the “Exploring Software + Services” presentation Mark Relph and presented May 28, 2009 at the Canadian Leadership Summit.

We had a great session as there were plenty of good questions throughout which was appreciated as it always makes the presentation much more engaging so thanks to everyone who came to the session. Also, thanks to everyone who caught up with us at the lunch roundtable as well!

As a reminder, you can check out Office Live Workspace, Live Mesh, Microsoft Online, and Windows Azure here:

Mesh: www.mesh.com
Office Live Workspace: http://workspace.officelive.com
Microsoft Online: www.microsoft.com/online
Azure Services Platform: www.microsoft.com/azure
Software Plus Services: http://www.microsoft.com/softwareplusservices

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Software Plus Services,Canadian Leadership Summit,MSCLS09

Did you know Skydrive is now 25 GIGABYTES of free online storage and Hotmail is now “ever growing”

2009-02-13T02:35:35Z

Two huge announcements I’m finding not a lot of people are aware of with regards to the latest release of Windows Live.

1. Skydrive is now 25GB (used to be 5GB) of free online storage. Not to me they did a great job integrating a nicer photo experience into the new page. check it out at: http://skydrive.live.com

2. Hotmail storage is now “ever growing” so no need to even worry about ever hitting a limit

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,SkyDrive,Hotmail

Office 14 Web Applications PDC 2008 Video Demo

2008-11-03T17:43:31Z

Here’s a snippet from the Day 2 keynote at PDC showing Office 14 Web Applications:

PDC 2008 – Day 1 Wrap Up – Videos, Fact Sheets, Channel 9 Videos, and Speech Transcripts

2008-10-28T20:41:45Z

Wow. What a day! I’ve attempted to pull together a summary of materials and videos from Day 1. I’m now in the keynote for Day 2 so will have more later on that later.

Fact Sheets – Live Services, Azure Services Platform, Windows Azure, .NET 4.0 and “Dublin”, Oslo, SQL Data Services, Sql Server

Live Services Fact Sheet (.doc file, 36 KB)
Azure Services Platform Fact Sheet (.doc file, 40 KB)
Windows Azure Fact Sheet (.doc file, 33 KB)
Windows Communication Foundation 4.0, Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 and Windows Server “Dublin” - Fact Sheet (.doc file, 73 KB)
Oslo Fact Sheet (.doc file, 40 KB)
Microsoft SQL Data Services Fact Sheet (.doc file, 41 KB)
SQL Server – Developer Focus (.doc file, 33 KB)

PDC 2008 Day 1 Videos

On-Demand PDC 2008 Keynote: Ray Ozzie, Amitabh Srivastava, Bob Muglia, and David Thompson (01:38:30)
Microsoft chief technology officer Ray Ozzie introduced Windows Azure, the 'Windows in the cloud' service foundation underlying the Azure Services Platform, Microsoft's end-to-end software-plus-services approach to computing. Los Angeles, Oct. 27, 2008

Clips from the day 1 keynote

Introducing Windows Azure
Ray Ozzie introduces the new Windows Azure platform and discusses how it’s key to the future of cloud computing and software plus services.

Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)
Key Features of Windows Azure
Ray Ozzie provides an overview of Windows Azure and the key benefits it brings to cloud computing.

Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)
Key Services of Azure & cloud functionality
Ray Ozzie discusses some of the key services that make up the Azure Services Platform, including the new .NET Services and SQL Services.

Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)
Windows Azure and Developers
Bob Muglia talks about the relationship between .NET Services and Windows Azure.

Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)

Walid Abu-Hadba: The Developer Opportunity (02:05)
The Corporate Vice President of Developer and Platform Evangelism on the PDC, customer and developer choice and the Azure Services Platform.
Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)
Bob Muglia discusses Microsoft’s Services Platform (01:24)
Bob Muglia, Sr Vice President of Server and Tools Business, discusses Microsoft’s next generation Services Platform.
Show Off Contest Video 1 - ACE Lab
Developers from around the world showed off their coding, soldering, hacking and sculpting skills for the Professional Developers Conference 2008 show off contest – here are some of our favorites.
Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)
Show Off Contest Video 2 - Brian the Build Bunny
Developers from around the world showed off their coding, soldering, hacking and sculpting skills for the Professional Developers Conference 2008 show off contest – here are some of our favorites.
Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)
Show Off Contest Video 3 - Silverlight 2 Spectrum Emulator
Developers from around the world showed off their coding, soldering, hacking and sculpting skills for the Professional Developers Conference 2008 show off contest – here are some of our favorites.
Download: Zune-quality (.wmv) | Broadcast-quality (.mpeg)
Azure Customer Video (03:03)
Sentient, Full Armor, Lake Quincy Media and others discuss the opportunities possible through the Azure Services Platform.

Channel 9 Interviews

Speech Transcripts

Professional Developers Conference 2008 Day 1 Keynote: Ray Ozzie, Amitabh Srivastava, Bob Muglia, Dave Thompson
Remarks by Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, Corporate Vice President, Cloud Infrastructure Services, Amitabh Srivastava; Senior Vice President, Server and Tools Business, Bob Muglia; Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Online, Dave Thompson. Oct. 27, 2008, Los Angeles

Windows Azure website is now live – microsoft.com/azure

2008-10-27T19:33:35Z

http://www.microsoft.com/azure

You are also able to register to try the Community Technology Preview.

Here’s a copy paste from the “What is Windows Azure?” section on the www.microsoft.com/azure

What is the Azure Services Platform?

The Azure™ Services Platform (Azure) is an internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Azure’s flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities. Its open architecture gives developers the choice to build web applications, applications running on connected devices, PCs, servers, or hybrid solutions offering the best of online and on-premises.

Azure reduces the need for up-front technology purchases, and it enables developers to quickly and easily create applications running in the cloud by using their existing skills with the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment and the Microsoft .NET Framework. In addition to managed code languages supported by .NET, Azure will support more programming languages and development environments in the near future. Azure simplifies maintaining and operating applications by providing on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web and connected applications. Infrastructure management is automated with a platform that is designed for high availability and dynamic scaling to match usage needs with the option of a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Azure provides an open, standards-based and interoperable environment with support for multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and XML.

Microsoft also offers cloud applications ready for consumption by customers such as Windows Live™, Microsoft Dynamics™, and other Microsoft Online Services for business such as Microsoft Exchange Online and SharePoint® Online. The Azure Services Platform lets developers provide their own unique customer offerings by offering the foundational components of compute, storage, and building block services to author and compose applications in the cloud.

The Azure Services

Windows Azure

Windows® Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage internet or cloud applications. Windows Azure supports a consistent development experience through its integration with Visual Studio. In the early stages of CTP, .NET managed applications built using Visual Studio will be supported. Windows Azure is an open platform that will support both Microsoft and non-Microsoft languages and environments. Windows Azure welcomes third party tools and languages such as Eclipse, Ruby, PHP, and Python.

Learn more about Windows Azure.
Live Services

Live Services is a set of building blocks within the Azure Services Platform for handling user data and application resources. Live Services provides developers with an easy on-ramp to build rich social applications and experiences, across a range of digital devices that can connect with one of the largest audiences on the Web.

Learn more about Live Services
Microsoft SQL Services

Microsoft SQL Services extends the capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server into the cloud as a Web-based, distributed relational database. It provides Web services that enable relational queries, search, and data synchronization with mobile users, remote offices and business partners. It can store and retrieve structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data.

Learn more about SQL Services
Microsoft .NET Services

Microsoft .NET Services make developing loosely coupled cloud-based applications easier. .NET Services includes access control to help secure your applications, a service bus for communicating across applications and services, and hosted workflow execution. These hosted services allow you to easily create federated applications that span from on-premises environments to the cloud.

Learn more about .NET Services
Microsoft® SharePoint® Services & Dynamics® CRM Services

In the future, developers will have access to SharePoint & CRM functionality for collaboration and building stronger customer relationships. With the flexibility to use familiar developer tools like Visual Studio, developers will be able to rapidly build applications that utilize SharePoint and CRM capabilities as developer services for their own applications. Developers can expect a breadth of SharePoint & CRM capabilities across the spectrum of on-premises, online & the Azure Services Platform.

Who Benefits From the Azure Services Platform?

The Azure Services Platform is designed to help developers easily create applications for the web and connected devices. The services platform offers the greatest flexibility, choice, and control in reaching users and customers while using existing skills.

Easy developer on-ramp to the cloud - Millions of developers worldwide already use the .NET Framework and the Visual Studio development environment. Utilize those same skills to create cloud-enabled applications that can be written, tested, and deployed all from Visual Studio. In the near future developers will be able to deploy applications written on Rubyon Rails and Python as well.

Enables Agile & Rapid Results - Applications can be deployed to the Azure Services Platform with the click of a button. Changes can be made quickly and without downtime, making it an ideal platform for affordably experimenting and trying new ideas.

Imagine and Create New User Experiences - The Azure Services Platform enables you to create web, mobile, or hybrid-applications that use the cloud with on-premises applications. Combined with Live Services ability to reach over 400 million Live users, new opportunities exist to interact and reach users in new ways.

Standards-Based Compatibility - The services platform supports industry-standard protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, RSS, and AtomPub, for consuming, exposing, and integrating with third-party services. You can easily integrate applications built on a variety of different technologies and operating systems.

How Can I Use Azure?

Explore the benefits of the Azure Services Platform for your role:

Benefits for Business

The Azure Services Platform offers a range of businesses flexibility, control, and an affordable solution for running Web-scale applications. The services reduce tedious and expensive infrastructure management and planning and are built with security and reliability in mind, along with the option of a pay-as-you-go model.

Whether you’re a software vendor, corporate IT group, or a start-up, by using the services platform you can focus on your business and the needs of your customers.

Simplify Capacity Planning – Additional computing and services capacity can be available for your needs, eliminating the need for planning, purchasing, and provisioning expensive hardware to meet unpredictable spikes in usage.

Simple Infrastructure Management – The services platform manages critical operating system updates and management tasks, giving you control of the environment while letting you focus on the needs of your users.

Give New Life To Existing Investments - The services platform can be used to provide new capabilities to existing on-premises and Web applications. The Azure Services Platform can be integrated into existing applications or used to expose on-premises application services to consumers, business partners, or other organizations.

Windows Azure – Ray Ozzie just announced Windows Azure and Windows Azure Services Platform

2008-10-27T19:18:18Z

Key takeaways so far on what Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform are:

Windows Azure:

- A set of cloud-based technologies such as storage, identity, and multi-device sync that extend software development for both enterprise server and PC/browser/phone applications with services on the Web.

Azure Services Platform:

- A component of the Azure Services Platform that extends the Windows environment to the cloud for developers who want service hosting, scalable storage, and automated service management of their software applications.

PDC 2008 is underway, watch the keynote live!

2008-10-27T18:52:10Z

Ray Ozzie has kicked off PDC 2008 and is delivering his keynote right now. You can follow along at home/work by watching the keynote live.

Live Mesh Tech Preview

2008-04-25T01:20:21Z

For those of you that attended the Canadian Strategic Architect forum a couple of weeks ago, Live Mesh is what I would have loved to be able to speak with you about during my talk on Windows Live Platform. Unfortunately the timing was two weeks off for me to be able to share this info with you.

On Tuesday evening we released Live Mesh Tech Preview (important to note that this isn’t the product launch. just a tech preview) and there’s quite a bit of good coverage to help you dive into understanding what Live Mesh is all about. The key thing I’ll say is that it is critically important to understand the “big picture” here. That being the fact that this is a platform. Some people get focused in specifically on the folder sharing and syncing capability of Live Mesh. This is an awesome part of the tech preview experience, but misses the platform element which is HUGE news. Folder sharing and synchronization across devices is an example of a great experience built on top of the Live Mesh platform.

So what is Live Mesh? (remember the platform piece I mentioned earlier though! :-) )

Well, here’s a description from the website:

Imagine all your devices—PCs, and soon Macs and mobile phones—working together to give you anywhere access to the information you care about.
With Live Mesh, you can spend less time managing devices and data and more time connecting with family and friends or collaborating with colleagues.

What I’d get you to focus in on first is understanding the importance of “your devices” in Live Mesh. When you sign up for Live Mesh you are able to go and add your “devices” to your Mesh. This is important because what we all deal with day to day right now is all sorts of devices that aren’t aware of each other or connected in a way that makes it easy for me to access my information across all of these devices. For example, your work laptop, home PC(s), and eventually your Mac(s) and Mobile phone. By adding these devices into your Mesh, Live Mesh enables all sorts of interesting scenarios across your devices like synchronizing content, being able to access your various devices remotely, and another key point, having one of your “devices” be a Live Desktop in “the cloud”. So you are accessing what looks like a desktop through your browser, but all the files on it are stored in the cloud. Also pay attention to the “stay informed” aspect of this. It’s not just syncing and accessing the information, but Live Mesh also surfaces “news” related to the activies (someone added a file, posted a comment etc) across your mesh. Again, don’t think just in terms of file/folder sync and news.

Here’s a great (and quick) video tour if you want to quickly grasp this:

http://www.mesh.com/Welcome/Tour.aspx

Here’s some more info (again from the www.mesh.com website)

All your devices working together

No more e-mailing attachments to yourself. Instead, synchronize the information you need across all your devices. The most up-to-date versions will be at hand when you need them—at home, at the office, and on the go.
Just install the Live Mesh software on each device. Then add folders to your mesh. Folders are automatically synchronized, always available.

Access from anywhere

Anything you add to Live Mesh is available from anywhere, including the web from your Live Desktop. Your Live Desktop comes with 5 GB of free storage, and can be used from most web browsers.
Need a program that's only on your home PC? With Live Mesh, access to all your devices—and any programs on those devices—is at your fingertips, no matter where you are.

Simple to share

Easily share files and photos with friends, family, and colleagues—invite them to a folder. Everyone is kept up to date because files can be synchronized automatically with all your devices and all their devices.
Update documents, post comments, or send instant messages, all right from the folder. The Live Mesh bar helps you connect instantly with other folder members.

Stay informed

Keep track of all the activities in your mesh. See the online status of friends and colleagues, find out who has updated which files or folders, post and read comments, and check the status of your devices.
News about your mesh is easy to access. You can view news items in the notifier, from the mesh bar, and on the Live Mesh website—available whenever, wherever you are.

Protection you know

Your mesh is password-protected with your Windows Live ID, so only you have access to it. When you share a folder with family and friends, they sign in with their own Windows Live ID to access it.
All file transfers are protected using Secure Socket Layers (SSL), the same technology your online bank uses.

If you want to dig deeper, here’s some more great coverage

Read the Live Mesh team blog
Watch the interview with Ray Ozzie introducing Live Mesh on Channel 9
Watch an interview with Abolade Gbadegesin on Live Mesh Architecture on Channel 9
Watch the demo of the Live Mesh application on Channel 10

Technorati Tags: Live Mesh,Microsoft

CSAF – Windows Live Platform Slide Deck

2008-04-10T19:41:36Z

Here’s the latest Windows Live Platform slide deck from my presentation today at the Canadian Strategic Architect Forum.

How to use the Windows Vista Snipping Tool to capture a menu

2008-03-27T19:35:20Z

I use the snipping tool in Windows Vista all the time. If you’ve ever wondered how to capture a menu using this tool, here’s how you do it (straight from the help file for the snipping tool btw)

Can I capture a snip of a menu, such as a shortcut menu or the Start menu?

Yes. Here's how to do it:

Open the snipping tool

Press ESC, and then open the menu that you want to capture.

Press CTRL+PRINT SCREEN.

Select the type of snip you want, and then capture the menu.

As an example, here is a screenshotI wanted from the IE menu so I could show how to check to ensure the IE Safety Filter is on.

Technorati Tags: Windows Vista,Snipping Tool

Social Network Data Portability through Windows Live Contacts API and www.invite2messenger.net

2008-03-25T20:54:15Z

Huge announcement from John Richards, Director of Windows Live Platform. Read the full post here, but I’ve pulled a few key elements from John’s blog post on dev.live.com

Contact Data portability, partnership with Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged and Linked, and www.invite2messenger.net

Today I’m pleased to announce that Microsoft has partnered with some of the world’s top social networks on contact data portability. Starting today, we will be working with Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged and LinkedIn to exchange functionally-similar Contacts APIs, allowing us to create a safe, secure two-way street for users to move their relationships between our respective services. Along with these collaborations, Microsoft is introducing a new website at www.invite2messenger.net that people can visit to invite their friends from our partner social networks to join their Windows Live Messenger contact list.

Security, data portability and “screen-scraping”.

[Ryan Rant] Your email, and your email contacts are YOURS, and YOU need to be in full control with regards to sharing any of this information with other sites/Social Networks. In addition, having to provide your actual Hotmail/Yahoo/Gmail credentials directly to all sorts of web sites/Networks is a terrible scenario. The only site you should be giving those credentials to is the provider you got them from (in the case of LiveID, this would be login.live.com). Once you’ve securely authenticated you can then decide which of your contacts you’d like to share. This is what John’s speaking to in the comment below with regards to the historic use of “screen-scraping” which is to take a users credentials and use them them to login as the user and then “scrape” the contacts. Dare had a good post back in January that speaks to this. Back to John’s announcement:

To tackle the issue of contact data portability it is important to reconcile the larger issue of data ownership. Who owns the data, like email addresses in a Windows Live Hotmail address book? We firmly believe that we are simply stewards of customers’ data and that customers should be able to choose how they control and share their data. We think customers should be able to share their data in the most safe and secure way possible, but historically this openness has been achieved largely through a mechanism called “screen-scraping,” which unduly puts customers at risk for phishing attacks, identity fraud, and spam. Now with the Windows Live Contacts API, we have provided an alternative to “screen-scraping” that is equally open but unequivocally safer and more secure for customers.

Relationship Context and Privacy Management

In completing this two-way street, both Windows Live and our partners have paid special attention to relationship context and privacy management in order to create the best possible user experience. We understand that just because people have a friend relationship with a contact on one social network, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they want that same relationship on another network. To preserve the context of the relationship, we are requiring that relationships be re-established in each experience with permission from the friend or contact, rather than automatically storing the data.

Again, see the full post from John here.

Here’s how the experience looks from the perspective of adding one of my Windows live Contacts to Facebook

In Facebook, I selected “Friends”

Then choose “Invite your friends to join Facebook”

I selected the MSN/Hotmail option

Select your Hotmail or Live.com address

Here’s the key part of this scenario. Notice I’m providing my LiveID credentials directly to login.live.com (instead of handing them over directly to Facebook)

I was then able to select one, multiple, or all of my Windows Live contacts and invite them to Facebook. For more examples, see the post Angus just put up that has quite a few screenshots demonstrating inviting Facebook Friends to Windows Live, and Windows Live Friends to Facebook and Bebo.

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Platform,Data Portability,Windows Live Contacts API,Facebook,Bebo

Rick Segal on Albert Lai, Canadian VC Money, "The Venture Gap", and "The Idiot Gap"

2008-03-14T19:44:28Z

Wow... Rick's got an incredibly interesting post regarding Albert Lai's comments in a recent Canadian Business magazine article "The Venture Gap".

So what is it in the article that turns Rick into "Cranky Rick"? Albert's comment:

"As a purely business decision, you'd be an idiot to start a company in Canada, he says, unless you can get some capital from the U.S."

Rick's response:

"As a purely business decision, you'd be an idiot to listen to Albert Lai when it comes to where to start up a company."

It just gets better and better from that point on...

Here's the dirty little secret: Albert turned the Canadian VC money down.

Again, check out Rick's full post here as it's worth reading in full...

He's also got some really good Pro-Canada facts and commentary I think are worth calling out:

Let us not spend our time pounding on Albert's embellishments and complaints, rather let me give you some actual Pro-Canada facts that I hope give you pause with respect to as our whiz kid puts it "being an idiot."

Fact: The SRED claims and other federal and various provincial benefits are superior to those of the United States. The programs of pay subsidies regarding the hiring of tech grads from University's can get you a development team for less than half of what it would cost you in the cheapest corner of the U S of A. And that's just one of many programs that make Canada an amazing place to start a company.

Fact: In terms of government support of business, no country does more then Canada when it comes to export help, worldwide promotion, use of little things like Embassies for hosting business meetings, etc. The country is off the charts amazing when it comes to support her business community from the smallest one person start up to the multi-million dollar enterprises.

Fact: Canada has a superior work force. Memo to the whiz kid: The U. S. companies line up around the block when it comes to university recruitment. Waterloo grads, to name one, is responsible hundreds of technical innovation inside companies large and small. My start up company in Seattle (HealthUnity) grabbed some great people from Canada. And superior people are everywhere in this country. From Labrador all the way over to Victoria, British Columbia. Solid people, super brains, hard working, non-idiots, Albert.

Fact: There are dedicated programs in Canada specifically designed for start ups. Get to know Maxx Hollott at Growthworks. He works on the Growthworks commercialization fund which is targeted at, surprise, whiz kid like start up projects. Maxx is a great guy and the program works. Paymentus, a JLA portfolio company, started life in that fund and is now rocking along. Canadian program, Albert, run by non-idiots trying to help the Canadian non-idiot entrepreneurial scene.

Fact: There are Venture Capital firms in Canada that would love to hear from you. RHO-Canada, Garage Canada, Growthworks, Celtic House, Ventures West, and yours truly are all talking to entrepreneurs about start ups, medium, and large companies. Non-idiots, Albert, as are the entrepreneurs.

Fact: There are amazing companies run by amazing people all over Canada. They are not idiots. Leila Boujnane, CEO of IDEE, is one such a non-idiot and a women I adore. She, along with her co-founder Paul Bloore, have done a fantastic job of building IDEE into one of best visual search and advanced image recognition companies on the planet. As they will attest to, I've been after them for years to make an investment. They are not idiots. They are making it without VC money and will probably get an amazing offer one of these days and be yet another non-idiot Canadian success story. Too bad for me, great for them as they work hard, have great products, and deserve all the success that comes their way. Oh, did I mention they aren't idiots, Albert? Then there are the brothers running Net Shelter, Jeremy Wright running B5, Alec Saunders running Iotum, the super brains at Truition, PlanetEye, Shoplogix, Overlay.TV, Maximum Throughput, VoIPshield, AudienceView, Dabble DB, etc, etc. Hmm, this paragraph is just bursting with non-idiots, Albert. I'd keep going but the Starbucks triple whatever is starting to wear off.

Technorati Tags: Albert Lai,Canadian Software Economy

Good post from George Moore, GM, Live Platform Services

2008-03-13T06:49:41Z

Via Angus (who's blog is definitely one you want to check out for all the latest on Live Platform. He also gave a killer presentation on Live Platform at Mix08)

George Moore has a detailed post on the (new and improved!) dev.live.com blog "A Unified Standards-Based Protocols and Tooling Platform for Storage from Microsoft".

Here's a snippet:

A Unified Standards-Based Protocols and Tooling Platform for Storage from Microsoft

Posted by George Moore, General Manager, Live Platform Services

In the AtomPub protocol alignment section of last week’s blog posting by Dave Treadwell, he foreshadowed a “few more surprises in this area to be announced at MIX”. I wanted to take this time to more fully paint the picture of our work behind the scenes over the last few months in the context of the announcements at MIX08.

For the first time ever we have a unified protocol and developer tooling story across most of our major storage products from Microsoft:

On premise structured storage: SQL Server

Cloud-based structured services: SQL Server Data Services

Cloud-based Live storage services: Spaces Photos and Application Data storage

The unified on-the-wire format is Atom, with the unified protocol being AtomPub across all of the above storage products and services. For on-premises access to SQL Server, placing an AtomPub interface on top of your data + business logic is ideal so that you can easily expose that end point to everybody that wants to consume it, whether they are inside or outside your corporate network.

Read it in full here

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Platform,AtomPub,Atom,Microsoft

Big List O' Mix08 Software Downloads

2008-03-12T02:05:24Z

Joshua pulled together a nice list of all the Mix08 software. He's actually got another good Mix08 roundup post as well.

Here's the list:

Expression Studio Beta (download)
The second release of Expression Studio adds a wealth of new features including support for Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology across all the tools. Enhanced designer developer workflow makes the process of building great user experience even better! If you’d only like to install individual components of Expression Studio (Web, Blend, Design, Media, Encoder), go here.
NOTE: ASP.NET 3.5 is required as a pre-requisite to install Expression.

Expression Media 2 for MAC (download)
Expression Media 2 now allows catalogues to be shared amongst team members with file locking and improved network performance. Improved keywording of assets, new file formats and the ability to share photos as Silverlight galleries once you have sorted them on the new multi-monitor light table!

IE 8 Beta (download)
Over the last ten years the intensity of web usage and reliance on the web have increased dramatically. The evolution of the web has introduced a new set of opportunities, immersive experiences, online services and standards. Daily life without the web is simply hard to imagine. •       Interoperability and Compatibility
•       Browser capabilities that enable new, innovative experiences
•       Built in tools that help both first time and experienced developers and designers get pages built
Internet Explorer 8 will take the web experience beyond the page and introduce a new way to seamlessly experience the best of the web whether you are a web developer writing to standards or an end-user discovering a new online service.

IE 8 Virtual Machines (download)
The IE VPC’s allow designers and developers to test their sites on multiple versions of the browser, without having IE installed side by side. There are workarounds to get IE installed side by side, but they are unsupported and don’t necessarily work the same way as IE6, IE7 or IE8 would work when installed properly. The best way to use multiple versions of IE on one machine is via virtualization. Microsoft has recently made Virtual PC 2007 a free download; we’ve taken advantage of that by releasing a VPC virtual machine image containing a pre-activated Windows XP SP2, with either IE6, IE7 or IE8 to help facilitate your testing and development.

Expression Blend 2.5 Preview (download)
Use Expression Blend 2.5 to create and modify managed Silverlight 2-based applications. Expression Blend 2.5 for Silverlight 2 includes all of the features in Expression Blend 2 but has not reached the quality level of Expression Blend 2 for WPF or Silverlight 1 development.

Deep Zoom Composer (download)
We are pleased to present a technology preview of Deep Zoom Composer, a tool to allow the preparation of images for use with the Deep Zoom feature currently being previewed in Silverlight 2 Beta 1. The new Deep Zoom technology in Silverlight allows users to see images on the Web like they never have before. The smooth in-place zooming and panning that Deep Zoom allows is a true advancement and raises the bar on what image viewing should be. High resolution images need to be prepared for use with Deep Zoom and this tool allows the user to create Deep Zoom composition files that control the zooming experience and then export all the necessary files for deployment with Silverlight 2.

Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 (download)
This package is an add-on to the RTM release of Visual Studio 2008 to provide tooling for Microsoft Silverlight 2 Beta 1. It provides a Silverlight project system for developing Silverlight applications using C# or Visual Basic. The components included are:

Visual Basic and C# Project templates
Intellisense and code generators for XAML
Debugging of Silverlight applications
Web reference support
Integration with Expression Blend

Note: this will also install Silverlight 2 Beta 1, Silverlight 2 SDK Beta 1, KB949325 for Visual Studio 2008.

Silverlight 2 SDK Beta 1 (download)
If you are not installing the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 which includes the Silverlight 2 Beta 1 SDK, you can download this SDK to create Silverlight Web experiences that target Silverlight 2 Beta 1. The SDK contains documentation, samples and other tools for building Silverlight applications.

ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 (download)
ASP.NET MVC provides a framework that enables you to easily implement the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern for Web applications. This pattern lets you separate applications into loosely coupled, pluggable components for application design, processing logic, and display. ASP.NET MVC also greatly facilitates test -driven development (TDD).

ASP.NET server controls for Silverlight (included as part of Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 download)
You can integrate the rich behavior of Microsoft Silverlight into your Web application by using the familiar model of ASP.NET server controls. The MediaPlayer server control lets you integrate media sources such as audio (WMA) and video (WMV) and take advantage of rich built-in media player skins. The Silverlight server control lets you add your own Silverlight XAML content to ASP.NET pages, using a custom JavaScript type or a Silverlight 2 managed-code XAP package.

ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview (December 2007) (download)
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Technorati Tags: Mix08,Canadian MIXers,Silverlight 2,Expression,IE8

"The Gambler"(s), PhotoZoom collection of Vegas pics, and Joe using the Deep Zoom Composer on a Silverlight 2.0 Poster

2008-03-11T22:34:28Z

Aside from all the exciting stuff at the Mix08 conference, it was entertaining for me to watch everyone (try to) tear up the casinos :-)

But.... like Kenny says:

"You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done."

But it's hard when you keep pulling 12's

Photozoom of some of my Vegas pics

As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the coolest things at Mix08 was Deep Zoom in Silverlight 2.0.

Here's a bunch of photos from Vegas that I uploaded to the photozoom.mslivelabs.com. If you install SilverLight you'll be able to zoom waaaaaay in and move around all the photos.

By the way, while I was grabbing the URL for Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1, I noticed Joe posted a Deep Zoom pic of the Silverlight Developer Reference poster (using the Deep Zoom Composer):

Technorati Tags: Mix08,canadian MIXers,Silverlight 2,PhotoZoom,Deep Zoom