MSDEV presents a video series where Bill Lodin uses a whiteboard to help illustrate why people should adopt Windows Azure. The series takes an interesting turn when the whiteboard’s personality emerges and it becomes a co-host.
The series answers the question, Why Windows Azure.
Episodes
Episode 1 - What Is Windows Azure and Why Is It In the Cloud? In this first episode, Bill and his whiteboard sidekick introduce the concept of Cloud Computing and Microsoft's implementation of Cloud Computing with Windows Azure.
Episode 2 - The Windows Azure Development Experience. In this episode, Bill and his less than enthusiastic helper, focus on the underlying technology of Windows Azure that developers need to understand as they make the move to Cloud Computing with Microsoft.
Episode 3 - Moving Existing Applications to Windows Azure. Bill and his cheeky whiteboard friend are back, illustrating some of the issues users may encounter when moving existing applications to Windows Azure, and more importantly, how to mitigate potential issues.
Episode 4 - The Windows Azure TCO and ROI Calculator. This episode shows users how to use the TCO and ROI calculator. Bill and the ever present whiteboard walk users through this online tool, and how users can use it to calculate how much it will cost them to move to windows Azure, and what kind of savings they can anticipate.
Episode 5 - Front Runner. With the help of his whiteboard, Bill will show users the benefits of the Front Runner program for the Windows Azure platform.
Episode 6 - Sign Up. This episode discusses the various offers available to users who want to get started using Windows Azure. Bill and the whiteboard will show users how they can get started with Windows Azure for free.
See the series at Why Windows Azure on MSDEV.
Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation
Interested in getting started with Windows Azure? Come join in Front Runner program for Windows Azure.
When you join the Front Runner program, you’ll get access to one-on-one technical support from our developer experts by phone or e-mail. Then, once you tell us that your application is compatible, you’ll get a range of marketing benefits to help you let your customers know that you’re a Front Runner.
Technical Benefits
Get application support from our development expert by phone and/or e-mail. Access technical Windows Azure Platform resources in one central place. Marketing Benefits
Promotional tool kit including a Front Runner stamp and press release you can include in your marketing materials to showcase and announce your early adopter status. US$500 discount on Ready-to-Go Campaign costs — such as list rentals, printing, or shipping — or a $500 rebate on Ready-to-Go Services if you finish Front Runner Azure by March 31, 2010. Assistance creating a Solution Profile that will be featured in a special Microsoft Pinpoint directory of Windows Azure Platform solutions. Learn More on Academy Live
Join in the Academy Live Webcast on Feb 9 at 9:30 AM Pacific (12:30 Eastern).
Click to sign up. For USA Developers: Microsoft Front Runner - Early Adopter Program and No-cost Technical Support For Windows Azure Platform (CSD23PAL)
Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation
MSDEV has produced a set of videos to help you light up your application with the features of Windows 7. The online videos are available today.
Get to know Windows 7, 7 minutes at a time! In this series of short, code-focused videos you’ll see how to take advantage of the great new features in Windows 7. Each video is under seven minutes long, so you can check out a new video in less time than it takes to check your mail or grab your morning cup of coffee.
Windows 7 Taskbar “Thumb Buttons”. This video shows examples of taskbar thumbnail controls, and the code that created them.
Windows 7 Taskbar Icon Overlays. This demo shows an example of coding a taskbar icon overlay.
Windows 7 Taskbar Jump Lists. This video demonstrates how to customize an application’s Windows 7 Jump List.
Windows 7 Taskbar “Hot Colors”. This video shows how a "hot color" is used in the taskbar and explains how that hot color is determined.
Windows 7 Touch. This video shows how to apply some principles of touch to improve an application's "touchability".
Windows 7 Multitouch. This video demonstrates some of the manipulations available in the multi-touch API and shows a code example.
New Dialogs in Windows 7. This video demonstrates a new dialog available in Windows 7 and shows how to code with it.
Using the Windows 7 Ribbon in WPF. This video shows how to create a simple ribbon in a Windows Presentation Foundation application.
Using the Windows 7 Ribbon in Windows Forms. This video shows how to create a simple ribbon in a WinForms application.
Windows 7 Libraries. This video shows how to code for storing in and retrieving from the new Windows 7 libraries.
Federated Search in Windows 7. This video shows how to write a search provider to include your site in a federated search.
Available February 15
Windows 7 Gestures. This video demonstrates using a standard gesture in an application.
Programming with Inertia in Windows 7. This video shows how adding inertia affects an object's behavior and shows a code example.
“Manipulation” in WPF and Windows 7. This video demonstrates some basic manipulation options and shows a code example.
Windows 7 and Ink. This video shows code for using Microsoft Ink with the Text Input Panel
Handwriting Recognition in Windows 7. This video demonstrates how to use the Text Input Panel with predictive text and correction.
Handwritten Math Recognition in Windows 7. This video demonstrates how Math Recognition provides a natural way to enter mathematical expressions in applications.
Windows 7 Sidebar Gadgets. This video shows how to write a simple sidebar gadget for the Win 7 desktop.
High DPI Awareness in Windows 7. This video shows how to make an application display correctly on newer monitors with high resolution.
DirectX 11 in Windows 7. This video shows a code example of using a DirectX 11 API for animation.
Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation
Scott Guthrie has announced the availability of ASP.NET MVC (Release Candidate 2) for VS 2008/.NET 3.5. You can download it here.
The RC2 release of ASP.NET MVC 2 is a follow-up to the first ASP.NET MVC 2 RC build that we shipped in December. It includes a bunch of bug fixes, performance work, and some final API and behavior additions/changes.
For a list of changes, see ASP.NET MVC 2 (Release Candidate 2) Now Available.
ASP.NET MVC is a free, fully supported, Microsoft product that enables developers to easily build great web applications. It provides total control over your HTML and URLs, enables rich AJAX integration, and facilitates test driven development.
ASP.NET MVC provides the following benefits:
- Provides complete control over your HTML markup
- Enables rich AJAX integration
- Intuitive website URLs
- Clear separation of concerns which results in web applications that are easier to maintain and extend over time.
- Testability – including support for test-driven development.
To get started, see Learn ASP.NET MVC. Watch the following video to learn how to build an entire database-driven website with ASP.NET MVC in less than 15 minutes.
Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation
Yochay Kiriaty has pulled together a blog post describing how you can use the Windows 7 Sensor API to build compelling applications. His post is I Can Feel You – Using the Windows 7 Sensor Platform on the Windows Team Blog.
Windows 7 includes native support for sensors, which are devices that can measure physical phenomena such as temperature or location.
For example, automobile engines typically use a variety of sensors. These sensors are monitored by an onboard computer that continuously adjusts settings, such as engine timing, to maximize power and efficiency. A television may use an ambient light sensor to adjust the brightness of the picture to match changing room conditions. Even something as simple as a doorbell button acts as a rudimentary sensor to detect a human presence at the door.
While the purely mechanical doorbell fulfills its purpose, the information provided by complex sensors becomes far more powerful when it is combined with software. Modern sensors can provide a lot of data very quickly, and in a variety of formats, so software provides a natural mechanism for making sense of sensor data.
He writes, “In the past, using sensors tended to be a very vertical solution. There was no specific definition of what a sensor was, what its data fields were, or how to access those fields.
“In Windows 7, we set out to solve this problem from the ground up (as we usually do). We addressed these problems by providing out-of-the-box support for sensors. The Windows 7 Sensor and Location platform provides a set of standard interfaces that free developers from the need to become familiar with specific vendor devices and, instead, focus on their application logic, treating sensors as just another ‘standard’ input device.”
Windows 7 includes native support for sensors, expanded by a new development platform for working with sensors, including location sensors, such as GPS devices. The Windows Sensor and Location platform provides a standard way for device manufacturers to expose sensor devices to software developers and consumers, while providing developers with a standardized application programming interface (API) for working with sensors and sensor data.
For more information about using sensors in your Windows 7 application, see Sensor API on MSDN.
See Windows Team Blog posts:
I Can Feel You – Using the Windows 7 Sensor Platform Using Sensors in Your Application – Native Implementation, Part 1 Using Sensors in You Application – Managed Part 1 Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation
Bjørn Olstad, CTO of FAST and Microsoft Distinguished Engineer, has penned a blog post on the Microsoft Enterprise Search Blog that details the future plans for FAST. Here is just a snippet, be sure to check out the full post for all the details:
- We will always interoperate with non-Windows systems on both the front- and back-end. Our search solutions will crawl and index content stored on Windows, Linux, and UNIX systems, and our UI controls will work with UI frameworks running on any operating system.
- We will support ESP 5.3—the cross-platform search core in the 2010 products—for 10 years as per our standard support policy (5 years mainstream support and 5 years extended support). Non-Windows customers on ESP 5.3 can continue running their core on Linux and UNIX and add Windows-only innovations or cloud-based services by using a mixed-platform architecture.
- We’re introducing a Customer Upgrade Program that will help customers evaluate our hosted solutions and/or a Windows-based deployment. The program will help customers assess level of effort, plan for the project, and implement the upgrade. (Customers should contact their account representative for more details.)
A new Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) template supports rapid applications development. It works with Visual Studio Team System 2008/Team Foundation Server and integrates SDL with the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) and Agile development practices. You download the template from MSF-Agile plus Security Development Lifecycle Process Template for VSTS 2008.
The template automatically creates workflow items to meet SDL security requirements each time code is checked in to the server. There is also an analyzer feature to ensure code meets SDL guidelines.
MSF-A+SDL is a TFS process template that incorporates the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) for Agile process guidance into the MSF Agile development framework. With the MSF-A+SDL template, any code checked into the Visual Studio Team System source repository by the developer is analyzed to ensure that it complies with SDL secure development practices. The template also automatically creates security workflow tracking items for manual SDL processes such as threat modeling to ensure that these important security activities are not accidentally skipped or forgotten.
For more information, see Security Development Lifecycle (SDL).
Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation
Check out the new “Quick Hit” videos about ASP.NET 4. They’ll give you a great way to quickly learn about many of the cool new things coming with the release.
Most videos are shorter than 5 minutes.
You can learn more about some of the new ASP.NET 4 features by watching these 22 ASP.NET Quick Hit Videos.
See 22 ASP.NET Quick Hit Videos.
Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation
A beta release of Windows Azure Drive is now available. It was announced as XDrive at PDC 2009.
Customers have told us that they want to take their already running Windows applications and run them in the cloud using the standard Windows NTFS APIs, and make sure that the data is durable. With Windows Azure Drive, your Windows Azure applications running in the cloud can use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive.
This can significantly ease the migration of existing Windows applications to the cloud, enabling customers a more seamless migration experience while simultaneously reducing the amount of time it takes to move their applications from your own Windows environment to a Windows Azure environment. The Windows Azure application can read from or write to a drive letter (e.g., X:\) that represents a durable NTFS volume for storing and accessing data.
The durable drive is implemented as a Windows Azure Page Blob containing an NTFS-formatted Virtual Hard Drive (VHD).
For more information, see Beta Release of Windows Azure Drive on the Windows Azure Team Blog.
More detailed information can be found in the technical white paper here: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9710117
As well as in MSDN documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee924681.aspx
Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation
Check out www.jumpman23mosaic.com. It’s a five gigapixel “social mosaic” of photos of Air Jordan shoes submitted by fans.
Windows Azure currently supports the following two types of roles:
- Web role: A web role is a role that is customized for web application programming as supported by IIS 7 and ASP.NET.
- Worker role: A worker role is a role that is useful for generalized development, and may perform background processing for a web role.
Fans submit photos of their shoes online. Then every ten minutes Azure worker roles create a profile of new photos. The code inside the worker role looks at the colors in the user-submitted picture to decide where is the “right place” in the mosaic for the photo.
Azure Web roles work on the front end in collaboration with Silverlight Deep Zoom.
Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation
If you have a billing location in one of our initial launch countries, beginning February 1, 2010 any Windows Azure CTP account(s) not already converted to a commercial subscription will be deactivated. To avoid interruption of service you must upgrade your CTP account to a commercial subscription by visiting our offers page to get an account.
For more information, see Commercial Rollout plan.
The Windows Azure platform offers a flexible, familiar environment for developers to create cloud applications and services. With Windows Azure, you can shorten your time to market and adapt as demand for your service grows.
Windows Azure offers a platform that is easily implemented alongside your current environment.
- Windows Azure: operating system as a service
- Microsoft SQL Azure: fully relational database in the cloud
- Windows Azure platform AppFabric: makes it simpler to connect cloud and on-premises applications
To get started writing your application on Windows Azure, see
As an early adopter, you can join the Windows Azure Front Runner program and get free support for getting your application into the cloud for a limited time.
Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation
Windows 7 RC (release candidate) users will start seeing notifications on their PCs on February 15 to indicate that the system will expire and their data needs to be backed up.
Important Dates
February 15 – Notifications begin and the frequency increases as it gets closer to the March 1st.
March 1 – Time bomb. The system reboots every two hours (or blue-screens depending on the system failure settings in Startup and recovery options).
June 1 – License expires. The system goes into Notification State.
For more information, see Windows Blog for the first blog post that outlines all the milestones, experience, and benefits of moving to RTM.
Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation
Zend Technologies Inc. has announced the availability of Zend Framework 1.10, which among other new features includes support for Microsoft Windows Azure cloud services.
With this announcement, PHP Developers now have great choice when it comes to writing web applications targeting Windows Azure.
Besides the Windows Azure SDK included in Zend Framework, there is Windows Azure SDK for PHP which is already prepackaged in Windows Azure tools for Eclipse and the more simpler Simple Cloud API.
For more information, see New version of Zend Framework adds support for Microsoft Windows Azure.
Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft Previews Tool to Ease Migration from MySQL to SQL Server
Microsoft has released a new preview version of a tool that enables users of the MySQL database to migrate to Microsoft's SQL Server.
On Jan. 11, Microsoft released a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for MySQL toolkit. This tool dramatically cuts the effort, cost and risk of migrating to SQL Server.
A new addition to the SSMA family is the CTP version 1.0 for MySQL that provides an assessment of migration efforts as well as automates schema and data migration from MySQL to SQL Server. Freely download and preview this tool now.
The tool comes in two versions: One for migrating from MySQL to SQL Server 2005 and another for migrating to SQL Server 2008 and SQL Azure -- Microsoft's cloud-based relational database service built on SQL Server technologies.
The tool is supported on Windows 7; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Server 2008 R2; Windows.
You can check out the original post I’m referring to on TechNet at http://blogs.technet.com/dataplatforminsider/archive/2010/01/11/free-download-microsoft-sql-server-migration-assistant.aspx
Thanks for checking out this post!
Web slices and Accelerators are important new features in Internet Explorer 8. What you may not know is how easy they are to implement and how much value they bring to your Web sites.
Hear what country music star Dolly Parton has to say about Internet Explorer 8.
Business Value of Web Slices, Accelerators
Many companies and ISVs and those hosting applications online are finding Web Slices and Accelerators help increase customer awareness and responsiveness to their Web applications.
For example:
Yahoo | By helping give Internet users faster, easier access to a broad array of Yahoo services such as mail, search and online mapping, Internet Explorer 8 is helping Yahoo maintain its status as one of the world’s largest Internet content providers. “When we saw this new version of Internet Explorer come through, with its enhanced security and a whole lot of engaging new features, we realized that this was a great opportunity for us to promote this browser in a Yahoo! flavor.”
— Rajiv Thondanoor, North American business lead for Web search, Yahoo For more information, see |
OneRiot | OneRiot, a real-time search provider that scans social networks such as Twitter and Digg to find the most popular news stories, blogs, and videos, developed one of the first Web Slices. Over a one year period, users who added OneRiot’s Web Slice visited their site 18 percent more than users without the Web Slice. “The combination of the popularity of Internet Explorer and the very compelling user experience we could offer just made the decision to invest in Internet Explorer a no-brainer for us.”
—Tobias Peggs, general manager, OneRiot |
ESPN | Hundreds of web slices on their site, banner promotion on http://espn.go.com/sports |
EBay | When Microsoft launched Windows Internet Explorer 8 in the spring of 2009, eBay, the world’s largest online marketplace, was one of the first major companies to have already developed tools to tap the browser’s powerful new capabilities.
“Internet Explorer 8 allows our customers to have jumping points to search directly from the browser without having to navigate anywhere else…It allows us to inspire our customers with some great merchandising and great items on the site.”
—Jonathan Gabbai, global innovations manager, Internet marketing, eBay |
Stimulant | Stimulant, an innovative Web development company, is working with its customers to help identify opportunities to extend the value of existing content by using Web Slices and other Internet Explorer 8 add-ons. “The beauty of working in Internet Explorer 8 is that we’re able to leverage our existing talent and, with a few additional lines of code, suddenly we’ve got a Web Slice….If you can dream it, you can put it in a Web Slice.”
— Darren David, president and technical director, Stimulant |
Common ISV Scenarios
Note: Slices, Accelerators, and Search Providers can be embedded in your Web pages for all browsers. If the functionality is not available, no additional code is needed. You don’t need to branch your code, no need for if/then logic. In IE8, the functionality will be there. For IE 6, no changes needed.
In addition, an add-in for Firefox will allow the functionality to work without changes in your code.
Downgrades as expected, but without the functionality. No code changes are needed.
Sticky information
Web slices can drive deeper and more sticky connections to Web applications. Use Web slices Anytime you have information on your site that users will want to see and discover when not in your Web application. For example, you can provide a set of alerts for a particular user as information changed.
Action on information
Accelerators can help your users take action on information that they highlight. For example, a user can highlight a product. An accelerator can be used to add that product to the shopping cart.
Users simply highlight some text from any web page and then click on the blue ... faster, safer and easier browsing experience.
Search
Many line of business applications include ways to look up information. Search providers give you a way to integrate your application with searches in the same way users already look for information.
How to Get Started
MSDN Technical Documentation: Web Slices, Accelerators, Visual Search Providers
Videos for developers on Channel 9: IE 8 on Channel 9
Web Application Toolkit for Internet Explorer 8 Extensibility
The goal of this Web Application Toolkit is to leverage the new features in Internet Explorer 8 (Web Slices, Accelerators and Visual Search Providers) to extend the reach of your web site and services also to those users that are not on your site. The Web Application Toolkit includes a set of ASP.NET Web Controls that you can use to take advantage of these IE new features in your own Web application.
Download this toolkit here. For screencasts about other Web Application Toolkits, click here. To download other Web Application Toolkits, click here. How to Promote
Publish in the IE Add-ons Gallery.
Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation
