Australian University Dashboard Copetition details

Internet Explorer has an Advanced option named Do not save encrypted pages to disk. By default, this option is unchecked (except for Windows Server systems) and I recommend you leave it that way.

In IE9, this option does exactly what it says it does—resources received from HTTPS URLs are not placed in the Temporary Internet Files Cache and temporary files are not created for these resources. This option is universal for HTTPS responses; the headers (e.g. Pragma, Cache-Control) are not consulted.

While that might sound appealing to some readers, it’s important to realize that this will break any scenario where a file is needed.

There are two key scenarios when a file is required:

1. File downloads.
2. When an add-on or other code sets the flag INTERNET_FLAG_NEED_FILE on a request.

If a file download is attempted from HTTPS when this option is set, the secure download will fail:

Similarly, some plugins like Flash will set the NEED_FILE flag when issuing a HTTPS request, and those requests will fail in this configuration. For instance, when Pandora attempts to login, their XML request fails:

In IE8 and lower, the behavior of the checkbox was much more complicated, modified by a number of cumulative updates over the years. At a high-level, if a Pragma: no-cache was present on the HTTPS response, then no cache or temporary file would be created. If other no-cache headers were present, then the cache or temporary file might be created based on a very complicated set of logic, involving whether the response was compressed, and depending on the ordering of the no-cache and no-store token’s in a response’s Cache-Control header.

If you do not want HTTPS-delivered content to be stored in your cache, then you are better off setting the Empty temporary internet files folder when browser is closed option instead. Downloads and Flash applications will work properly, and IE will clear the cache completely when the browser is closed.

-Eric

Let's start calling the new low-end tablet the "FeatureTablet" because of its strong similarities to the Featurephone. And soon - since they are already here.

Couldn't attend SAP Virtualization and Cloud Week 2011 in person? Don't miss out on the session replays now available.

From MIX11 – August de los Reyes, Design Director of Artefact Group (formerly of Microsoft Surface) outlines his vision for the future of design. It’s 10 minutes that will change your life.

Oh this is going to get a lot of views.  So thank you for reading this post about software test.

Have you ever ask this question:

How do I:

• Set-up data collection in Microsoft Test Manager 2010?
• Create an empty test case to run an exploratory test?
• File an exploratory bug?
• Create a manual test case from an exploratory bug?

You can learn how to do these kinds of software test by working through the virtual hands on lab at:

• MSDN Virtual Lab: Introduction to Exploratory Testing with Microsoft Test Manager 2010

Be patient the Hyper-V can be a little slow, like 5 minutes slow with some network connections, like a school or corporate network.  Once it is running, you may want to use a second monitor to view the lab instructions or print it out.  You can extend your lab by one hour.

If you use the virtual lab, let me know about your experience.

Due to upgrades and enhancements we are making to Windows Azure AppFabric LABS environment, scheduled for 5/12/2011, users will have NO access to the AppFabric LABS portal and services during the scheduled maintenance downtime.

When:

START: May 12, 2011, 10am PST

END: May 12, 2011, 5pm PST

Service Bus will be impacted until May 16, 2011, 10am PST

Impact Alert:

AppFabric LABS Service Bus, Access Control and Caching services, and the portal, will be unavailable during this period.
Additional impacts are described below.

Action Required:

Access to portal, Access Control and Caching will be available after the maintenance window and all existing accounts/namespaces for these services will be preserved.

However, Service Bus will not be available until May 16, 2011, 10am PST.
Furthermore, Service Bus namespaces will be preserved following the maintenance, BUT existing connection points and durable queues will not be preserved.
Users should back up Service Bus configuration in order to be able to restore following the maintenance.

Thanks for working in LABS and providing us valuable feedback.
For any questions or to provide feedback please use our Windows Azure AppFabric CTP Forum.

Once the maintenance is over we will post more details on the blog.

The Windows Azure AppFabric Team.

We have a new Enterprise Information Management Use Case wiki and we need your feedback and input!

Two words I never thought I'd see in the same sentence: fusion and startup.

Whether you are advanced or a novice user or in the process of considering Microsoft Project 2010 Desktop or Project Server 2010 you might find library of Training and Learning resources very helpful to maximize your pleasure from using Project 2010.

Train & Learn Library allows you to pivot and filter through extensive collection of resources from Instructor Led and On Demand Trainings to Books from our trusted Project partners. We are also highlighting content that has been certified to meet the requirements for official Microsoft Exams – 70-177 – Configuring Project Server 2010 and 70-178 – Managing Projects with Project 2010.

Q&A

Q: I’m a training provider and I would like to submit my content into this library. What shall I do?
A: Please use this Submission form and after our review it will appear in the list! Please do pay attention to Submission Guidelines before submitting.

Q: I’m interested in a Quick Technical training for Project 2010, is there any?
A: Yes – we have a very popular Quick Start 2010 Training available for free on demand or for download.

Q: I’m looking for Technical IT-professional related information. What is the best resource?
A: The best place to start is Project Server TechCenter on TechNet  that has extensive list of articles and whitepapers but also dedicated resource centers for Business Intelligence, Demand Management, Upgrade and Migration – that were announced here. Consider subscribing to the Project Admin Blog to stay up-to date.

Q: Developers! Developers! Developers! Anything for us?
A: Certainly – Project 2010 Developer Center on MSDN hosts comprehensive Software Development Kit and other resources, like Developer Curriculum that will point you to further resources. Also by subscribing to Project Programmability Blog you will stay up-to date!

Post di Giordano Tamburrelli

Imagine Cup 2011, la competizione internazionale che Microsoft svolge ogni anno, alla quale partecipano studenti di tutto il mondo. Lo scopo di Imagine cup è quello di far si che i ragazzi possano portare nuove idee e farsi conoscere!

Il 5 Maggio 2011, si sono tenute le finali italiane di Imagine Cup 2011 per la categoria Software Design presso l’università Ca’ Foscari a Venezia, in contemporanea con uno dei più significativi eventi dell’anno la Ca’ Foscari Digital Week

La Giuria è stata un mix di successo con profili tecnici e non tecnici: media-guru, professionisti e professori universitari. I progetti presentati sono stati decisamente sopra le aspettative e la giuria è stata combattuta nel decidere i vincitori.

“And the winner is…” Team Neasoft dell’Università Federico Secondo di Napoli. Il Team ha vinto la competizione presentando il progetto OMCR (Oculorum Mutu Computer Regere), un sistema di supporto agli utenti disabili per l’utilizzo del personal computer.

Coming Soon:

Il 9 Giugno avranno luogo le finali italiane delle categorie Game Design e Windows Phone 7 a Bologna, all’interno dell’evento Research To Business.

Stay Tuned!

Business Rule Framework plus (BRFplus) will be presented at the SAP Skills Conference 2011.

This blog provides information on lessons learned while using SAPehpi for support pack upgrade

With all the great SharePoint stuff in New England Education, we wanted to make sure you are aware of BASPUG.  The next meeting is next week.

http://www.bostonsharepointug.org/Pages/Default.aspx

This is a guest post by Steve Clayton, Editor of Next at Microsoft. Steve works with teams across Microsoft to provide an insider’s view of Microsoft and to show people what’s next in technology. This post originally appeared on Steve’s blog.

A fellow Softie remarked to me today that I take a lot of care of my tech - my laptop is carried in its own neoprene sleeve and even my power cables have a little tidy bag before being placed in my satchel. Some people take their relationship with technology MUCH further though. Did you know that there are people who buy or make costumes for their Roombas? Neither did I, but it’s true (check out some examples, and don’t say I didn’t warn you).

This came up at the PSFK Conference New York earlier this month in a wide-ranging panel on “What’s Next.” The key issue wasn’t the costumes, but the fact that research shows that people who put costumes on their Roombas become more emotionally attached to them than people who do not, and are more forgiving when they break down and need repair. And the real point was that people are naturally prone to become emotionally attached to the technology they use, and to form relationships with the things that are part of their lives.

Of course those relationships aren’t simple. CCTV installations in the UK, RFID tags to track hotel towels and sheets, or your phone tracking your movements are just a few of the ways technology has the potential to be invasive. Or maybe useful, if you’re trying to reduce theft from your hotel or track a crime victim’s last movements. It’s not just the technology that defines the nature of the relationship, it’s who uses it for what purpose, and how they do it, and how much information or control you have of what it’s doing for (or to) you.

During the PSFK panel, Katherine Moriwaki of Parsons said that it’s crucial to foster “device literacy,” the basic understanding of the operations of the devices in our lives. She characterized most people’s attitude toward technology as “it happens, it’s magic,” but noted that without a clearer sense of how it really works, people can’t make intelligent decisions about it. One of Moriwaki’s approaches to the problem is to offer workshops that enable people to learn to create their own electronics. Understanding can lead to empowerment and engagement.

Panelist Ayesha Khanna of the Hybrid Reality Institute argues that we’re entering the “Hybrid Age,” in which technology is not only proliferating but becoming more intelligent — meaning it can learn to understand and respond autonomously to our needs. As it does so, devices are also going to form social relationships — with people and with one another.

I’d add that another key piece of the puzzle is transparency. One of the best ways to get users of your technology to trust it is to be completely upfront about how it works and what it’s about. They’ll be much more willing to invest time and effort in that technology relationship — even if they don’t buy costumes.

The opinions and views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily state or reflect those of Microsoft.

En noviembre del 2010 Microsoft lanzó oficialmente al mercado el Kinect, un sensor que permite utilizar la consola de video juegos XBOX360 sin necesidad de controles.

El Kinect capta de forma tridimensional los movimientos y estructura del cuerpo de los jugadores y los transforma en acciones. Esto ha abierto múltiples posibilidades en diversos campos, una de las innovadoras implementaciones es utilizar el Kinect para captar la forma del cuerpo de las personas y mediante una impresora 3D imprimir esta forma y venderla.

Esto es relevante en el caso del desarrollo de software porqué ejemplifica como se pueden obtener múltiples implementaciones de algo sensillo y transformarlo para campos que ni siquiera imaginamos.

Be Your Own Souvenir!

The contributors to Math.NET have just released their final beta for Math.NET Numerics. This wonderful package includes both NuGet packages and F# integration! From the Math.NET Numerics site:

Download the MathNet.Numerics.dll assembly, add a reference to it to your project and you're done. To make this even easier we also publish binary releases to the NuGet Gallery as package MathNet.Numerics (or MathNet.Numerics.FSharp for F# integration), so you can add a managed reference directly in Visual Studio. More details on the quick start page.

They are also running a competition for a fast matrix multiply routine - you can win $1500... Here's the announcement:

Two years ago, the people who developed Math.Net Iridium and dnAnalytics, both open source numerical libraries for .NET, came together with the idea of creating one great numerical library for .NET. Based on our combined experiences, we designed a new library and called it Math.Net Numerics.

During the past two years, with financial support from Microsoft Research and together with some great new developers on the team, we are on the final leg of delivering Math.Net Numerics 1.0: the last release of Math.Net Numerics beta.

The .NET platform is a good place for scientific computing. Modulo a few essential things we'd like to see in the future, e.g. integration with SIMD instructions, the .NET runtime allows us to write fairly efficient numerical code. Nonetheless, there are places where improvements should be possible and we'd like to invite you to help us out.

Starting from today, we're running a contest on writing the most efficient matrix multiplication routine in .NET. We will incorporate the best code into Math.Net Numerics before we release v1.0 of the library. As a thank you, the winner will receive a 1500$ prize! (The runner up will win 500$.) The contest rules and benchmark harness are up at http://gemm.codeplex.com/. We hope you enter our competition and share your insights on making the best .NET numerical code out there!

@Certification5 Whereabouts at SAPPHIRENOW 2011: "Quality isn't Job One - Being totally frickin'amazing is Job One". Certification 5 are due to take part in the first Certification Influence Council (CIC). Shall you want to chime in, let's hear your voice and let's further discuss ! Furthermore, C5 have aslo have brain new patch !

Hoy no voy a hablar de Windows Phone 7, sino de Kinect, y sus nuevos usos. Normalmente me dedico exclusivamente a hablar de WP7, porque es mi “cacharro” preferido, pero la verdad es que Kinect es mi “otro cacharro”. Esta vez, el uso que se le ha dado es para las escuelas, y que mejor [...]

First a short explanaition on how the Kerberos ticket is encrypted:

• The client application (e.g. a web browser) is requesting a Kerberos ticket from the Domain Controller (KDC). As part of the communication with the DC, the client is sending the SPN for the service
• The DC find the domain account that matches the SPN, and create a ticket for the user.
• The ticket is encrypted with the password for the domain account of the receiving application. (To be more accurate: encrypted with the hash of the password for the domain account).
• The encrypted ticket is then sendt back to the client
• The client is sending the ticket to the web application in the authentication header to prove the identity of the user
• IIS is decrypting the ticket to get the identity of the user

To decrypt the ticket, the IIS must know to the password of the domain account. The password is stored (encrypted) in the applicationHost.config, e.g.

<applicationPools>
   <add name="HRWeb">
     <processModel identityType="SpecificUser" userName="mydomain\hrwebact" password="[enc:IISWASOnlyAesProvider:qu/80DmhQaUFn4DnDWsFF/uVty+WVR8WapGLJ77clKE=:enc]" />
  </add>
</applicationPools>

That should therefore not be a problem. But a change were made in IIS 7.0 (and later) that in some cases breaks the Kerberos configuration when the IIS is trying to decrypt the ticket using the password of the computer account. Read here for more info: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sudeepg/archive/2009/02/08/iis-7-kernel-mode-authentication.aspx

In our HRWeb application the application pool account is configured to use a domain account as identity with a matching SPN.

When a user is visiting the page he will be prompted for username and password, but even if he enters the corect credentials, the request will still fail with HTTP Error 401: Not Authorized.

A Failed Request Tracing log will show the following error:

ModuleName IIS Web Core
Notification 2
HttpStatus 401
HttpReason Unauthorized
HttpSubStatus 2
ErrorCode 2147942405
ConfigExceptionInfo 
Notification AUTHENTICATE_REQUEST
ErrorCode Access is denied. (0x80070005)

To make this work in IIS 7.5 you have two choices:

1. Disable Kernel-mode authentication for this application, or
2. Configure IIS to use the application pool account when the the ticket is decrypted in Kernel mode

You can easily disable Kernel-mode autentication in the GUI. Select the application in the IIS Manger, open the authentication feature, select Windows authentication, select Advanced Settings in the right panel, and uncheck Kernel-mode authentication:

While this configuration will fix the issue, it may not be the best option. A better approach would be to keep Kernel-mode autentication but tell IIS to use the password of the application pool account to decrypt the ticket.

I wish that there were a GUI for changing that parameter but it does not exist.

Instead you have to tweak the applicationHost.config file that usually is located in c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\config, and you need to add the attribute: useAppPoolCredentials="true" to the windowsAuthentication node of the configuration for the application.

See sample:

 You can also use the Appcmd.exe command tool to set this parameter instead of tweaking the xml by hand. I have used the following command line a couple of time where the customer wanted this parameter to be default for all applications on the server::

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe set config -section:windowsAuthentication /useAppPoolCredentials:"True" /commit:apphost

It should also be possible to do the a change for a single application, but I don't have a working sample to show you.

Es ist wieder soweit! Wir haben für Sie noch einmal neue Trainingstermine zum Thema SharePoint 2010 geplant. Dieses Mal in umgekehrter Folge, das Briefing in Köln und das Camp in Unterschleißheim und hoffen, dass Sie es dadurch in Ihrem vollen Kalender unterbringen können.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 ist die Business Plattform für Zusammenarbeit im Unternehmen und im Web. SharePoint 2010 ermöglicht es Ihnen einfach in Teams zusammen zu arbeiten. Kollegen, Partner und Kunden können auf neue und effektive Weise Informationen einfach austauschen. Zudem können sie durch die einheitliche Infrastruktur von SharePoint 2010 erheblich Kosten senken und schnell auf Business Anforderungen reagieren. Bei der Verwendung von SharePoint 2010 helfen Ihnen viele neue Funktionen und die verstärkte Integration in die neuen Office 2010-Anwendungen. Neu in SharePoint 2010 integrierte Suchtechnologien machen das Auffinden von Informationen und Personen leichter und das steigert die Produktivität der Anwender.

Briefing zu neuen Geschäftspotentialen für Entscheider am 20.06.2011 in Köln

• Potenziale für Partner durch SharePoint 2010 und Office 365
• Integration von SharePoint in Partnerlösungen
  • Grundlagen, Vertrieb und Integration mit Visio
• Integrationsszenarien SharePoint inhouse und Office 365 – Vorteile für Kunden
• Technische Abgrenzung: wo macht SharePoint in Partnerlösungen Sinn?
• SharePoint 2010 – eine durchgehende Entwicklerstory für Partner
  • Welches Know-How Ihre Entwickler aufbauen sollten
  • VS 2010, Sandboxed Solutions, Developer Dashboard, Office Integration/Entwicklung

Zum Briefing anmelden...

Entwickler-Camp für technischen Einstieg am 16.06.2011 in Unterschleißheim

• Ein technischer Überblick über SharePoint 2010
• Die Neuerungen in SharePoint 2010 für Entwickler
  • Ribbons, Client Object Model, Silverlight, Workflows
• SharePoint 2010 in der Cloud mit Office 365
  • Die neue Plattform für SharePoint-Lösungen
• SharePoint 2010 – eine durchgehende Entwicklerstory für Partner
  • VS 2010, Sandboxed Solutions, Developer Dashboard, Office Integration/Entwicklung, Visio
• 1-2-3: SharePoint beim Partner
  • Ein Fahrplan für den Wissensaufbau: was sollte man wissen und wo informieren?

Zum Camp anmelden...

 

GunnarD

For software developers, being stainable and contributing to Green IT means designing software programs that make efficient use of computing resources. For SAP programmers, this becomes even more imperative if we take the huge number of all business transactions worldwide into consideration that is handled by an SAP system in one way or another. The goals for a high performance are to ensure that software is scalable, and that it achieves stable end user response times and the expected throughput. Adhering to these goals helps when programming for a Green IT. But the equation &#147;performance-optimized coding = power-optimized coding&#148; is not always true -- sometimes there is a tradeoff between power and performance. Looking more closely at specific performance requirements we can see different degrees of interdependence between high-performance program code and power consumption.

How to best embrace the emerging power-saving technology trends is a challenge primarily for the technology developers at SAP. Software must support the available power saving techniques at both the hardware and the software level. On the hardware level CPUs, the main power consumers, are getting more and more power-aware. On the software level, SAP software must support and actively integrate the new power management functionalities of the CPUs and the operating systems.

The new SharePoint 2010 prerequisites installer installs all the software required to install SharePoint 2010. The default behaviour of this prerequisites installer is to download the files from Internet. However, you can install the prerequisites from a network share.

Today I was looking to install the prerequisites offline from local path. Installing from a local path, like C:\, is required when you are in a VM.

I copied all the software to a local path in my VM which is C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles. Followed the TechNet article and created the PrerequisiteInstaller.Arguments.txt, used the same format for the arguments as specified in the article:

/SQLNCli: "C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\sqlncli.msi"/ChartControl: "C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\MSChart.exe"/W2K8SP2: "C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\Windows6.0-KB948465-X64.exe"/NETFX35SP1: "C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\dotnetfx35setup.exe"/PowerShell: "C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\Windows6.0-KB968930-x64.msu"/KB976394: "C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\Windows6.0-KB976394-x64.msu"/KB976462: "C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\Windows6.1-KB976462-v2-x64.msu"/IDFX: "C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\Windows6.0-KB974405-x64.msu"/Sync: "C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\Synchronization.msi"/FilterPack: "C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\FilterPackx64.exe"/ADOMD: "C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\SQLSERVER2008_ASADOMD10.msi"/ReportingServices: "C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\rsSharePoint.msi"/Speech: "C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\SpeechPlatformRuntime.msi"/SpeechLPK: "C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\MSSpeech_SR_en-US_TELE.msi"

As you can see, I have replaced the network share with my local path C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles

Unfortunately, this didn't work for me. After several attempts of reviewing the log file, the following worked:

/SQLNCli:"c:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\sqlncli.msi" /ChartControl:"c:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\MSChart.exe" /NETFX35SP1:"c:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\dotnetfx35setup.exe" /KB976462:"c:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\Windows6.1-KB976462-v2-x64.msu" /IDFXR2:"c:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\Windows6.1-KB974405-x64.msu" /Sync:"C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\Synchronization.msi" /FilterPack:"C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\FilterPack64bit.exe" /ADOMD:"C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\SQLSERVER2008_ASADOMD10.msi" /ReportingServices:"C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\rsSharePoint.msi" /Speech:"C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\SpeechPlatformRuntime.msi" /SpeechLPK:"C:\SERVER14\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\MSSpeech_SR_en-US_TELE.msi"

So, what are the differences? - There is no space where highlighted Yellow and a space where highlighted Orange. 

/SQLNCli: "\o14-sf-admin\SP_prereqs\sqlncli.msi"/ChartControl: "\o14-sf-admin\SP_prereqs\MSChart.exe"/W2K8SP2: "\o14-sf-admin\SP_prereqs\Windows6.0-KB948465-X64.exe"/NETFX35SP1: "\o14-sf-admin\SP_prereqs\dotnetfx35setup.exe"/PowerShell: "\o14-sf-admin\SP_prereqs\Windows6.0-KB968930-x64.msu"/KB976394: "\o14-sf-admin\SP_prereqs\Windows6.0-KB976394-x64.msu"/KB976462: "\o14-sf-admin\SP_prereqs\Windows6.1-KB976462-v2-x64.msu"/IDFX: "\o14-sf-admin\SP_prereqs\Windows6.0-KB974405-x64.msu"/Sync: "\o14-sf-admin\SP_prereqs\Synchronization.msi"/FilterPack: "\o14-sf-admin\SP_prereqs\FilterPackx64.exe"/ADOMD: "\o14-sf-admin\SP_prereqs\SQLSERVER2008_ASADOMD10.msi"/ReportingServices: "\o14-sf-admin\SP_prereqs\rsSharePoint.msi"/Speech: "\o14-sf-admin\SP_prereqs\SpeechPlatformRuntime.msi"/SpeechLPK: \o14-sf-admin\SP_prereqs\MSSpeech_SR_en-US_TELE.msi

One other thing to note is the IDFX parameter, for installing Windows Identity Foundation, should be IDFXR2 if you are installing the prerequisites in Windows Sever 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 - So make sure your arguments file is relevant to the OS you have.

Come si apprende dal blog Claims-Based Identity il team di prodotto di ADFS 2.0 ha ceato una wiki page per raccogliere tutte le informazioni più importanti su ADFS 2.0 sia per il mondo on-premises sia per il Cloud...

Una pagina da mettere nei preferiti se vi occupate di Claims-Based Security

--Mario

Windows Azure Guest OS の定期アップデートで、バージョン 1.12 と 2.4 がリリースされました。

MSDN Library : Windows Azure Guest OS 2.4 (Release 201103-01)
MSDN Library : Windows Azure Guest OS 1.12 (Release 201103-01)

Guest OS と対応 SDK の一覧はこちら。

MSDN Library : Windows Azure Guest OS Releases and SDK Compatibility Matrix

SDK 1.4 は、MIX11 新機能追加の後、さらに修正版が出ています。4/26 AM 8:00(日本時間) 以前にインストールされた方は、再インストールをお忘れなく。

Windows Azure Team Blog : Windows Azure SDK 1.4 Refresh Issue Resolved
Microsoft Download Center : Windows Azure SDK and Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio (March 2011)

各位网友好！我是微软服务器与开发工具事业部中国研发团队（STB China）的王枫，这是我2009年从总部回到中国担任商务运营总监以来的第一篇博文。与之前大多数同事发表的技术文章不同，我的博文会浅显直白一些，希望能为大家从一个全新的角度呈现STB China团队，同时也想向大家分享个人的一些职业经历与感悟。

最初构思这篇文章时，我本想按部就班地介绍STB China在不同舞台上，近年来所扮演的角色与所取得的成绩：比如我们与本地IT伙伴们的最新合作，在绿色科技运营方面的经验，以及与本地开发人员、IT专业人员和高校之间互动。但转念一想，在讲述“我们做了些什么？”之前，更应该谈的或许是“我们为什么要做这些？“

 

如果要回答“STB China为什么要做这些”，我想最合适的答案，或许要从比尔·盖茨的最初梦想当中去寻找—— “让每个人的桌面上都有一台电脑“。在我看来，这一梦想只是他新梦想的技术基础 —— 因为拥有了信息平等权，才有可能在未来社会中”让每个人的生命都得到平等对待“。实际上，STB China也好，STB全球也好，乃至整个微软，这些年来所做的，也正是为了追逐并实现这个越来越逼真的梦想。

作为”曾经专业”的数据库开发人员，我一直认为比起制造性能更强、更便宜的设备来说，如何让设备变得更好用、更好地让客户实现梦想或许更重要。比如现在Windows Phone 7的硬件性能，远远超过了当年“阿波罗“登月计划中大型主机的性能，但这并不意味着，普通人能使用Windows Phone 7完成复杂的任务 —— 因为对于普通用户而言，很难自己去编写充分发挥设备潜力的应用。

对我个人而言，在很大程度上也是因为想要实现这样的个人梦想，从而选择加入到微软。当年，我加入SQL Server美国团队的时候，作为项目经理，我的工作重点之一就是与客户交流，设计能满足用户需求的产品功能，也正是这段工作经历让我迅速的从一个单纯的技术人员，成长为一个技术型管理者，继而过渡到现在的商务运营管理。

其实，现在我的职责就是担任这个近400人团队的项目经理，其中五分之一的时间负责系统地组织、协调各产品团队与政府、合作伙伴、客户、高校之间的有效互动，促成各个层面的合作与沟通。当然，我不再有时间直接从事一线的技术工作了，这很是遗憾 —— 但更大的成就感来自于，能让更多的同事、伙伴和客户，去更好地追逐梦想，成就梦想。

当然，只有梦想是不够的。“黄粱美梦”许多人都会做，但如果不付诸行动，往往就会沦为笑谈。微软最神奇的地方，除了能把许多拥有“I want to change the world“志趣的人才聚集到一起之外，更重要的是拥有把这些梦想变成现实的执行力。

作为研发机构，STB China这方面的例子实在太多，但最令我印象深刻的，莫过于在去年的中国高性能计算学术年会上，我们发布了Windows HPC Server R2。在这个版本上，我的同事们不仅独立完成了面向服务架构编程模型和运行时系统模块，还引领了这个产品与Windows Azure的结合。更重要的是，我们同时和中科院计算所合作完成了“基于微软高性能计算平台和中国龙芯PC-Mate的Excel计算加速应用“，携手推动高性能计算在中国的商业应用发展，向帮助中国产业提升技术创新能力、速度和成本又迈进了一部—— 作为一个中国的微软人，我感到双重自豪。

作为一个研发团队，STB China的首要职责是参与服务器产品和开发工具的全球研发，但正如团队组建时设想的，这个研发团队承担着理解本地合作伙伴和客户需求的重任，因此我们每位同事都必须留出5%的工作时间通过某种方式与本地同行做交流，。在微软每年的技术大会、MVP开放日、MSDN和TechNet论坛和博客上向IT专业人士和开发者介绍我们最新的产品或技术；为周边高校提供技术讲座、联合开发课程、辅导做应用开发；拜访客户收集产品反馈，以战略外包的形式帮助本地软件企业提高软件开发能力和市场竞争力，研究中国IT用户体验等等。

作为产业生态圈的积极构建者，微软在全球各地都以合作为导向。作为公司的一小部分，STB China也是积极的实践者。对细节有兴趣的朋友，可以去读一读我的同事梁戈碧女士所写的这篇博文。

作为绿色科技的信徒，STB China不仅身体力行还是积极的推广者。每次我们邀请客户来上海园区开会，或是接待政府、学校的访问，我们都会留出至少15分钟带大家近距离“围观”各项绿色科技举措，从建筑设计构思、装修材料、设备运作，暂时无法参观园区的朋友们可以去读读这篇文章。此外，我们团队的工程实验室可以称得上是“中国最大的基于Windows Server 2008 R2的私有云“，也因此在过去的一年中成为了来访企业的“必游景点”之一。

两周前，我和梁戈碧女士代表STB China参加了第四届微软（中国）外包事业高峰论坛，并一同做了“在云里我们共赢”的演讲，与大家探讨如何通过微软战略外包，合作伙伴们可以更早、更深入地了解我们的产品和技术，搭建自己的私有云以降低开发成本，或在云平台上开发新应用服务，开启新的契机。

最后我想说，云计算作为一种技术，本身并不是目的，而是为了更好地帮助合作伙伴、客户和微软，为社会提供一种新的商业模式——或者可以称之为云经济模式。毋庸置疑的是，在接下来的五年、十年，我们会迎来属于云经济的大潮。—— 这是STB China正在追逐的新梦想。

朋友们，你们准备好了吗？

 

王枫

商务运营总监

As has been published on numerous blogs now, Windows Azure AppFabric Cache is now in production and free to use until August 1, 2011. See here for the official announcement: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/05/02/just-released-windows-azure-appfabric-caching-service.aspx

Now, there is a wonderful sample and video on codeplex (http://appfabricdemos.codeplex.com/releases/view/65427) that simulates how the Session State Management works. However, I don’t like simulations so I took my existing code from this blog post http://blogs.msdn.com/b/danbuche/archive/2011/03/29/migrating-asp-net-session-state-to-the-sample-tablestoragesessionstateprovider.aspx, complete with the “Process ID” indicator that will help me understand which instance is now really serving up my data, and implemented AppFabric Cache using the code snippets provided in the Windows Azure portal.

And it really is that simple – again, all that you need to copy into your web.config is precreated for you in the Windows Azure Management portal, you won’t need to type a single line or even touch any of your code outside of web.config:

BIG Caveat – don’t try this at home!

Now what do I mean with that? What surprised me at first was that the session state caching didn’t seem to be working in my local Compute Emulator. When running this against multiple instances, I got separate session states when hitting other instances. No problem whatsoever running it live in the cloud.

Why is that?

I had already hit this with the SQL Session State provider, so this was quite easy to understand – the Session State providers tend to use the IIS Site Name to identify individual web applications to avoid sharing session state between different apps (which is a very sane thing to do, from a security perspective). And this is where you have a distinct difference between your local compute emulator and a live deployment.

In the production environment, all of your web roles will host your application under the same Site Name on the different instances. In your emulator, on the other hand, all needs to be handled by one IIS Server, so you end up with different Site Names for each instance.

So, in essence, you won’t be able to test session state management with multiple web role instances on your compute emulator.

I am happy to let you know that today we have made available an update to the FileAPI prototype we released on HTML5 Labs last month.

The Interoperability team at Microsoft developed the File API prototype, which is based on the evolving  W3C specification that provides an API for representing file objects in web applications.

This update implements  the changed behavior in File.slice explained by a note in the latest version of the w3c spec:

The slice method previously had different semantics, which differed from both Array.prototype.slice and String.prototype.slice [ECMA-262]. This difference was an oversight which has been corrected in this edition of the specification. Some user agents implemented the previous semantics, notably Firefox 4, Chrome 10, and Opera 11. These user agents have agreed to vendor-prefix their slice implementations in subsequent releases.

We also included a minor update to the existing features by adding support for selecting and reading multiple files sequentially via the FileList Interface.

The prototype includes a simple demo that shows how FileAPIs can be used to select images on the local machines, preview them on the browsers, and it can easily extended to add the ability to upload the images on the server.

As you may know, HTML5 Labs is the place where Microsoft prototypes early and unstable specifications from web standards bodies such as W3C. Sharing these prototypes helps us have informed discussions with developer communities, and enables us to provide better feedback on draft specifications based on this implementation experience.

So far, we have released three updates to our WebSockets prototype since it was released on the HTML5 Labs site in December, the IndexedDB prototype has been updated to bring it in line with the latest version of the specification, and we recently added a new WebSockets demo.

Coming next is the Media Capture API prototype, a draft specification that defines HTML form enhancements to provide access to the audio, image and video capture capabilities of a device. The first release of the prototype includes Audio capabilities only, but we plan to add video support shortly after the release of the first version. So, stay tuned for the Media Capture  prototype and other new ones that we are working on right now.

Thanks,

Claudio Caldato,

Principal Program Manager, Interoperability Strategy Team

[Do you tweet? Follow us on Twitter @matthawley and @codeplex]

We deployed a new version of the CodePlex website yesterday.

 

Pull Request Listing

We now provide the ability to view a history of all of the pull requests that have been sent by project members. You can filter those requests by status and/or reviewer.

 

As you can see, each submitted pull request is listed, along with some metadata, including who submitted it, when it was submitted, its state, and the number of comments made.

Recent Releases in Followed Projects

If you’re following any projects, and you’re signed into the site, you’ll notice a list of recent releases in all of the projects that you’re following on the left most side of the CodePlex site home page.

Each item on the list consists of the project name, the most recent release, and the release description.

Projects You May Like

The Projects Users Are Following section has been replaced with a generated list of projects that we think you may like based on the projects you’re currently following.

Each item on the list consists of the project name and description. We also made it easy for you to follow the project should you wish to do so.

 

The CodePlex team values your feedback. We are frequently monitoring Twitter, our Discussions, and Issue Tracker. If you have not visited the Issue Tracker recently, please take a few minutes to suggest or vote on a feature you would like to see implemented.

A new Time and Task Management resource center has been added on TechNet! This resource center provides links to articles, training, videos, and downloads that focus on time and task management using Project Server 2010. If you're looking for information on setting up or using timesheets and task progress tracking in Project Web App, the Time and Task Management resource center is a great starting point.

The following resource centers are also available on TechNet:

• Business Intelligence
• Demand Management
• Updates
• Upgrade and Migration

A customer asks the following question:

“We are building factory machine. New machines are usually delivered with the current stable software version. We don't do regular updates because our customers prefer stability over new features. After reading the Rangers Branching Guide I have some questions. I understand the need for the main and the development branch, we had a similar thing using feature branches for feature development merging the finished feature into trunk/main.

But we must be able to create an independent bug fix for every version of our product we ever delivered. Customers are using our machines in a specific version perfectly optimized for their production process. If they find a bug or need a change they don't want to get any other bug fix or feature we added in the meantime.

Should we create a label for every released/delivered version of the software. Whenever a customer requests a fix for instance for version v6.5, I create a "Release v6.5.1" branch from main, fix the bug, create a release/label for v6.5.1.0 and reverse integrate the fix into main. If this customer needs another fix I can do the next fix on the same branch (v6.5.1.1). If a different user with the same base version needs a different fix I can create a "Release v6.5.2" branch.

Can I achieve this with one of your strategies. I didn't find a way, but maybe I'm missing something.”

What do you do when you no longer have version 6.5 in Main? Suppose you have released a new major version, Release 7.0?

One characteristic of labels in TFS to be aware of - they are not immutable. You can probably achieve your goals by labeling your code with each release (6.5, 6.5.1, etc.). But TFS will not prevent you from modifying the *contents* of a label after it is applied to a branch. This may cause problems with auditors who want the contents of release *locked down*. This is one reason we recommend creating a release branch for each release, and locking it down. Since you need to be able to apply bug fixes to any prior release, you would need perhaps two branches for each release. Branch Main -> Servicing and then branch Servicing -> Release each time you do a release.

Lets say you have just released version 6.5.0. You could branch Main to create a Servicing 6.5. Label the code Release 6.5.0, but also branch Servicing 6.5 to create Release 6.5.0 and lock it down.

Now you need to create a bug fix against Release 6.5.0 - apply this bug fix in the Servicing 6.5 branch and release it to your customer. Label the code in Servicing 6.5 as Release 6.5.1 but also Branch Servicing 6.5.0 (with the hot fix) to Release 6.5.1 and lock it down.

Now if you need to apply a second bug fix to Release 6.5.1 make this fix in Servicing 6.5 (which now has the code for 6.5.1 as latest version). Make the fix in Servicing 6.5. Label the code in Servicing 6.5 as Release 6.5.2 but also branch Servicing 6.5 to create Release 6.5.2 and lock it down.

Each time you get a new bug fix for Release 6.5.x the fix would be made in Servicing 6.5 branch, but you need to decide which sub-version of the code to apply the fix to. It could be either 6.5.0, 6.5.1, 6.5.2. You should have a label you can roll back to if you do not want the bug fix against the latest version.

Later when you release version 7.0.0, you would branch Main to Servicing 7.0 and then branch Servicing 7.0 to Release 7.0.0 and lock it down.

If you are concerned about the overhead of creating a new lock-down branch for major Release and each minor hot-fix you could probably get by with only creating Release branches for the major releases and not each hot fix. Nevertheless, read my latest blog to gain a better understanding of the actual overhead involved in creating a new branch: http://www.tinyurl.com/tfsversioning.

Normally when you have a one-to-many relationship in a hierarchy (such as a branch hierarchy), you would make the *one* the parent and the *many* children of the parent. You might think you want to invert the relationship between the Release branch and the Servicing branch, since you have many possible bug fixes for a given release. But if you invert the relationship in this way: Branch Main to Release 6.5.0 and then branch Release 6.5.0 to Servicing 6.5.1 and later branch Release 6.5.0 to Servicing 6.5.2. But when you put the servicing branch(es) as a child of the Release branch, you cannot merge the bug fix back to Main without merging it into the Release branch first. You would no longer have a copy of Release 6.5.0 (as released) since you would have merged post-release bug fixes into it in order to get them all the way up to Main.

На конференции DevCon’11  во время доклада "Access Control Service как мощное средство идентификации личности" Илья Воробьев познакомит вас с тем, как использовать службы контроля доступа Windows Azure AppFabric в качестве стандартного механизма идентификации личности в своих приложениях. Вы узнаете насколько просто ваши приложения могут работать с LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook и корпоративной системой федерации. Вы увидите как исчезают барьеры доступа и появляется простой способ обеспечения безопасности в ваших приложениях.

  

Воробьев Илья

Технический директор, Cloudage Consulting

 С 2008 по 2009 год занимался исследованиями и разработками в области систем расширенной реальности (Augmented Reality) в IT Arts. Обладатель грантов фонда Бортника в области ИТ-инноваций. Развивал и совершенствовал онлайн программы и проекты в Microsoft Россия (2009-2011 год). Лидер крупнейшего в СНГ сообщества .Net разработчиков (MDNA UG). В данный момент является соучредителем и техническим директором консалтинговой ИТ-компании Cloudage. Основными фокусами деятельности являются облачные вычисления, продуктивность бизнеса и корпоративная безопасность. Делает из ИТ-инноваций реальную возможность и инструмент для бизнеса.    

 Twitter:@ivorobiev

 

Ключевые темы и другая информация о предстоящей конференции доступна на официальном сайте Microsoft DevCon ‘11

 

 

Дополнительные информационные ресурсы конференции:

• Следите за нами в Твиттер @msdevcon
• Участвуйте в Твиттер обсуждении используя хеш тэг #msdevcon
• Официальный сайт Microsoft DevCon ‘11
•  Официальный блог Microsoft DevCon’11

This article is about some of the new DMV’s that are newly added to next version of SQL Server. These are also available SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1. They are very helpful to get information about the host operating system that the SQL Server runs on, status of the server and even the memory dumps that are created by the server and registry keys that the server uses.

To read all mentioned DMV’s the user must have VIEW SERVER STATE permission.

sys.dm_os_windows_info:  This DMV returns the OS related information to the user. It is good to know the properties of hosting server.

Columns:

• windows_release:
• windows_service_pack
• windows_sku
• os_language_version

sys.dm_server_registry:  This DMV returns some of the registry keys that the server uses.

Columns:

• registry key
• value_name
• value_data        

sys.dm_server_services: This DMV provides useful information about the SQL Server, SQL Agent and SQL FullText service related with the running server. This DMV is very helpful to track the servers status and startup configuration.

Columns:

• service_name
• startup type
• startup_type_desc
• status
• status_type_desc
• process_id
• last_startup_time
• service_account
• filename
• is_clustered
• cluster_nodename

 sys.dm_server_memory_dumps: This DMV returns the dumps that are generated by the server.

Columns:

• filename:
• size_in_bytes
• creation_time

 If you need more detailed information on any of those, please reply to this post or send email

A demand for new pricing models and rapid consolidation has brought big changes to the SAP service providers market, according to a new Forrester Research report.

Despite the fact that there is are a variety of SAP&#146;s OnDemand offerings, often these products are viewed as a monolithic whole. Nowhere is this simplistic reduction more evident than in the current debate concerning People and Process-centric design philosophies. This blog takes a look at this debate from various angles (Marketing, technology, etc) and makes suggestions how SAP and the ecosystem in general can benefit in performing a realistic differentiation based on the use cases covered by these different OnDemand products.

The Future Energy Center, located in Karlsruhe, Germany, and managed by SAP Research, is a collaborative platform demonstrating how the future of sustainable energy generation, distribution, storage, and utilization can be supported by innovative IT.

Please blog/twitter/facebook about this and forward a link for this to anyone who might be interested in the latest news and useful information about emerging Microsoft technologies. Note that they can subscribe to the full Ignition Showcase blog posts or just to the weekly summary newsletter.

Important News for All Partners: Get $250 When you Complete your FIRST Windows Azure Application!

Events

Still Time to Play Rock, Paper Azure

Windows Azure Platform

Windows Azure in Use at Microsoft

Windows Azure Platform Training Kit - April Update

Publishing a LightSwitch Application to Windows Azure

Get $250 When you Complete your FIRST Windows Azure Application!

Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service Released as a Production Service

NoSQL and Windows Azure–Choices, Options and Strategies

Windows High Performance Computing - Bursting into Windows Azure

SQL Server & SQL Azure-Migration Assistant

Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft Office 365 for IT Professionals Jump Start

Windows Server Platform

Private Cloud Security Video

Startups

Soundtrckr on the Microsoft News Center

SQL Server

SQL Server & SQL Azure-Migration Assistant

Visual Studio

Publishing a LightSwitch Application to Windows Azure

You can subscribe to receive individual posts, or subscribe to just our weekly summary newsletter that has links to appropriate article posts. You can also connect with us in the other areas where we share information online, such as our Facebook Wall and follow us on Twitter.

Les tenemos una excelente noticia, desde ayer Silverlight 5 Beta está disponible para ser descargado y probado.

Descargalo aquí.

Microsoft se ha caracterizado por tener programas intensivos de prueba en todos sus productos, poniendo a disposición tecnologías y productos en etapas tempranas, Silverlight no es la excepción.

Con Silverlight 5 se continúa un proceso rápido de innovación, construido sobre las capacidades de aplicaciones enriquecidas y experiencias multimedia de alta calidad para la web de Silverlight 4, lo cual brinda a Silverlight 5 una excelente base.

Silverlight 5 tiene más de 40 nuevas características, entre las principales se encuentra un incremento excepcional en el rendimiento de aplicaciones que utilizan audio, video y SmootStreaming. Además se han agregado mejoras para incrementar la productividad de los desarrolladores de software.

En este video podrás ver algunas características nuevas en Silverlight 5:

A continuación comentamos algunas de las nuevas características:

• Mejoras en la decodificación del formato de video H.264 para reproducir video HD utilizando aceleración mediante el GPU.
• TrickPlay permite reproducir videos en diferentes velocidades, soportando adelantar y devolverse en el video sin necesidad de esperar grandes cantidades de tiempo para que el video se reproduzca.
• Mejoras en el control de energía de la PC, un escenario común es en el cual se está reproduciendo un video y el protector de pantalla se muestra, con esta nueva característica la aplicación prevendrá a la PC para que esto no suceda.
• Mejoras en el control de derechos DRM.
• Texto multicolumna y contenedores de texto enlazados, permiten navegar de forma fácil entre grandes cantidades de texto.
• Pixel Snapping mejora la claridad del texto.
• Mejoras en el rendimiento del Layout en las aplicaciones.
• Soporte mejorado para tipos de letras OpenType.
• DataTemplates implícitos permiten definir por defecto cómo se comportará cierto control en toda la aplicación sin necesidad de especificarlo mediante estilos en cada uno de los controles individuales.
• Mejoras para hacer debug en aplicaciones que utilizan el modelo MVVM.
• Latencia reducida en la comunicación gracias a nuevos controles utilizando hilos en “background”.
• Soporte para sistemas operativos de 64-bit.
• Nuevo API permite rendering directo desde el GPU en toda la aplicación.
• Aceleración de hardware en aplicaciones sin ventanas (windowless) permitida en Internet Explorer 9.
• Nueva herramienta en Visual Studio para evaluar el rendimiento de la aplicación, así como el CPU, memoria y los hilos ejecutados (Proffiling Tool).
• Soporte para Visual Studio Team Test.
• Soporte para modelos 3D.

Pronto más información sobre más tecnologías para la web.

Just a reminder that the submission deadline for the Microsoft Kodu Cup is next week on May 10th, 2011.

There is still time to create a new game with Kodu and you could win $5,000
for yourself and your school and lots of great technology! But get cracking!

The Kodu Cup is a game design competition for students 9 – 17 years old.

Kodu Cup Competition Details

Here are some details about this year’s Kodu Cup competition:

• Submissions will be accepted through May 10, with winners announced in late May.
• The competition will be broken into two age groups — 9 to 12 years old and 13 to 17 years old — with a grand prize winner and first and second runners-up from each group.
• The grand prize winners receive $5,000 for themselves and their respective schools, as well as a trip to the Imagine Cup 2011 Worldwide Finals in New York.
• Kids are encouraged to participate, register and learn more about the competition at http://koducup.us.
• All entrants under the age of 13 must have a parent or guardian’s consent to participate in the competition.
• Quick tips on gaming are available at http://GetGameSmart.com.

I need to ask a favor of all my regular readers out there (*crickets*). I often hear stories along the lines of “I use the DomainService Wizard to generate my DomainService. Then I make tiny changes to the generated code or metadata and may move it or split it into separate files. Later, when I update my database, I re-run the DomainService Wizard to re-generate my DomainService and manually merge the newly generated service with the old one.”

So my question is this: “What problem are you solving?”

I think we can all admit any solution where one of the steps is “manually merge” is sub-optimal. This is something I want to fix. If you’ll oblige me, I’d love to hear what you’re doing and why you’re doing it (as a bonus, responding to this post makes it much more likely I’ll address your scenario).

Feel free to add a short comment with your thoughts or email me directly. Thanks.

Spring is here and what a better way to kick off this season of renewal by getting up-to-speed on some of the latest tools and technologies! Last month in Las Vegas, we hosted the MIX11 conference; a 72-hour conversation, featuring developers, designers, UX experts and business professionals creating the most innovative and profitable consumer sites on the web. At this event, we made a number of key announcements and I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight them.

By the way, if you weren’t able to attend MIX11, DO NOT WORRY. All of the sessions were recorded and are now available for you to watch online. Simply visit http://live.visitmix.com/, grab a coffee and enjoy the awesomeness from MIX11 in beautiful HD via Silverlight Streaming!

Alternatively, if you are the type of person who likes to have media assets closer to home, you can follow the steps outlined by Scott Hanselman to download all of the videos from MIX11 via RSS. Go check out his blog post entitled, Mix 11 Videos - Download them all with RSS to find out how to do this.

Just a Few Canadian Highlights at MIX11

As you know, there was a large group of Canadians who went down to Las Vegas for MIX11. Here’s are a few of the highlighted captured by that group:

• Miguel Carrasco on MIX11, Imaginet and Imaginet Interactive
• Scott Hanselman Takes “Jellybean”, the Kinect-Controlled Lounge Chair, for a Spin
• MIX11 – Day One Recap
• MIX11 Day 2: Phone Innovation, Standards and Kinect for Everyone
• Trouble, Inc.!
• John Bristowe Brings the Awesomesauce
• A Quick Wrap-Up of Today’s Windows Phone Announcements at MIX
• Adding the Awesomesauce Flavor with IE9 Pinned Sites
• HTML5 Pirates Love EaselJS
• Burgers, Browsers and Bango
• What’s Coming for WP7 developers in Mango

Now, onto what we announced!

As you know, Internet Explorer 9 shipped in March, which – if you haven’t already done so – you can download from beautyoftheweb.ca. Building on that momentum at MIX11, we announced the public availability of IE10 Platform Preview 1. The purpose of this release is to give developers a head’s up on the next wave of progress we’re making in HTML5. IE10 PP1 provides some awesome new capabilities like CSS3 Flexbox layout, grid alignment, multi-column layout and gradients. (Don’t forget to check out the recent blog post I’ve written about CSS3 gradients in IE10.) Also, IE10 PP1 adds support for ECMAScript strict mode! w00t! You can download IE10 PP1 and check out our latest demos featuring these capabilities by visiting ietestdrive.com.

If you’re in Ottawa or Edmonton this month, don’t forget to register and attend the IE9 / WP7 Boot Camp! This is a great way to get up-to-date on these two great products!

Another big highlight at MIX11 was the ASP.NET MVC 3 Tools Update, which you can install via Web PI or download by going to the download details page. The Tools Update adds a lot of awesomeness to Visual Studio and NuGet, in order to help web developers targeting ASP.NET MVC and NuGet for package management. Note: You can check out the release notes as well for more details. For a higher-level description of what this release might mean to web developers, I encourage you read Phil Haack’s blog post entitled, Introducing ASP.NET MVC 3 Tools Update. Also check out the latest statistics on NuGet by visiting http://stats.nuget.org/. Lots of open source goodness going on!

Of course, this cannot be understated:

Of course, we kid because we love Phil Haack.

Of course, it wouldn’t be MIX without Silverlight. At MIX11, we announced the public availability of Silverlight 5 Beta, which includes some of the following new features:

• XAML Debugging with breakpoints for binding debugging
• Implicit data templates for easy UI reuse
• Double (and multi) click support
• GPU-accelerated XNA-compatible 3D and immediate-mode 2D API
• Low-latency sound effects and WAV support
• Real operating system windows and multi-display support
• Significant performance improvements, fixes and much more

There’s a ton of goodness in Silverlight 5 Beta and rather than trying to articulate everything that’s in the Beta release, I’ll simply encourage you to go check out Pete Brown’s blog post entitled, Announcing the Silverlight 5 Beta Release and the Silverlight.net Redesign. Tim Heuer also has an excellent blog post on the Silverlight 5 Beta feature-set entitled, Silverlight 5 Beta–A guide to the new features. Both posts provide a great overview of the Silverlight 5 Beta and I’d recommend you take a moment to check them out!

Finally, we announced some great new tools and enhancements for Windows Phone. However, just like the Silverlight 5 Beta, I don’t have enough room here to share with you all of the “what’s new”. The good news is that fellow Canadian and Windows Phone expert, Mark Artegea and gone ahead and summarized everything you need to know in a guest blog post he’s written for the Canadian Developer Connection. Check out his post entitled, MIX11 and Windows Phone Re-Cap for all the news and highlights we announced at MIX11 around Windows Phone.

Whew! That’s a lot of great stuff! I would recommend that you take a few minutes away from watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs (Go Canucks!) and check out these great tools and technologies!

Starting week of 9th May, Microsoft are beginning some intro webcasts to Live@edu. If you would like to learn more, have the opportunity to ask questions, and receive a follow up call/email from our telesales lead, Anthony Nneke, please register for one of the webcast via the below links.

10/05/2011 from 12:00-13:00pm.

Please register  here

or alternatively

24/05/2011 from 12:00-13:00pm.

Please register  here

Facebook ‘likes’ are becoming more and more important as a ranking factor for search engines.  Just saw this clever method from Lufthansa for getting more people to ‘like’ their brand/site…

Clever idea!

I wonder if it would be considered as ‘buying links’ by Google.

DreamSpark is Microsoft’s way of giving free software to students. Students can simply log on and enjoy the free Microsoft products available to download.

Products available on DreamSpark include Expression Studio 4, Virtual PC, Visual Studio 2010, Windows Server 2008 R2 and more.

Why DreamSpark?

Simply visit www.dreamspark.com , follow the 3 simple steps and download the free products of your choice today!

Winning! Yes that right, you can be a winner!  Simply follow the instructions at Alfred Thompson’s awesome blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alfredth/archive/2011/05/05/kodu-cup-submission-deadline-is-may-10th-2011.aspx

Of course, if you only read one blog on the web, then it should be this one, but if you read two, then read one of my other ones and then read Alfred Thompson’s blog.

Ok, Alfred Thompson’s blog is well thought out and organized, his is an example of excellent writing and thought.

On the other hand my blogs are simply a stream of consciousness that is only slightly more readable than James Joyce.

My blogs are found at the following URLs:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/devschool
  • Devschool usually is about random stuff, but it is suppose to be about learning software, and most of the time it is.
• http://blogs.msdn.com/socal-sam
  • Socal-Sam usually is software engineering, but not always.
• http://blogs.msdn.com/research
  • Research blog talks about what Microsoft Research is doing, most of the time.
• http://blogs.msdn.com/silverlightgames
  • Silverlightgames usually is about writing or Silverlight based games.

Sometimes I cross post, but usually each has a unique flavor.

Well, the software development tool that was released is F#, and it was released a few years ago, so I guess it isn’t a news item.  But there is the resources if you are one of those developers who only develop cross platform.  Hey it’s a business model.

To get the source code:

https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp

To get more information about the Open source F# see this page:

http://www.tryfsharp.org/Resources/OpenSource.aspx

If you like this type of thing, make to drop a note in my comments below.  I usually answer blog comments.  If you send me an email, by the way, I can’t tell which blog you are referring to.

My blogs are found at the following URLs:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/devschool
  • Devschool usually is about random stuff, but it is suppose to be about learning software, and most of the time it is.
• http://blogs.msdn.com/socal-sam
  • Socal-Sam usually is software engineering, but not always.
• http://blogs.msdn.com/research
  • Research blog talks about what Microsoft Research is doing, most of the time.
• http://blogs.msdn.com/silverlightgames
  • Silverlightgames usually is about writing or Silverlight based games.

Sometimes I cross post, but usually each has a unique flavor.

SAP AG, which last July introduced its first Web-accessed software after more than two years of delays, says a recent outage in Amazon.com Inc.'s cloud computing services makes it harder for the industry to convince potential clients.