Posted by Marcio Castilho
on September 02, 2009
With over 70 thousand new applications for the iPhone & iPod Touch on the iTunes AppStore, it is no doubt that Apple hit the mark there. With the tremendous success of this new emerging developers platform it is becoming really hard for end users to find the application that they want to install in their devices. We need a solution to enable a more smooth App discovery process, because finding for application inside iTunes is really terrible and slow.
This is what uquery.com is doing to help all the iPhone fanatics to easily find new applications. Continue reading…
Posted by Alin Irimie
on May 21, 2009
Microsoft is set to deliver Windows Azure to the public by the end of this year, with an imminent announcement at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles on November 17, 2009.
When Steve Ballmer mentioned this February that Windows Azure “will reach fruition with the PDC this year” I didn’t really believed it, considering where the product was and how much we knew about the progress Microsoft was making on delivering Windows Azure and related services. Even TechEd this year was surprisingly quiet about Windows Azure, but this is just the silence before the storm. Microsoft is revving up the software development and marketing machine so at this year’s PDC cloud computing and Windows Azure will take again center stage.
Starting this summer with the 2009 Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), New Orleans, July 13-16, we will see more and more announcements about Windows Azure. So what to expect in the next months? Continue reading…
Posted by Alin Irimie
on December 11, 2008
You might not know, but Sun is one of the pioneers of the “cloud”, they were offering back in 2005 “grid computing as a service” for “$1 an hour per processor used and $1 each month per gigabyte of storage the company requires“. Of course, back then Amazon was just selling stuff.
So, yesterday was supposed to be the day when Sun Microsystems will have a major announcement about the company’s plans for the next generation cloud computing. Well, it didn’t happen. The only thing we’ve got was from Dave Douglas, director of Sun’s cloud computing business unit: ”Sun is a part of many cloud efforts already in various forms, and so we’ve got a lot of pieces that were there.”
Network.com however, Sun’s front-end for its Grid Compute Utility has a “cloud teaser” on the front page:
Network.com is in transition as we add some exciting new options. We’re not ready to show off what we’re working on just yet, but we’d like to hear from you, and we’d like to keep in touch
Continue reading…
Posted by Alin Irimie
on December 10, 2008
Amazon’s DevPay service graduated from beta to general availability, which means that it is now easier for companies in the United States to build a business based on Amazon Web Services.
DevPay allows you to sell your own applications based on Amazon’s storage (S3) and computing (EC2) services. You set the price that customers will pay and the service then takes care of the billing and account management tasks, leaving you free to concentrate on your application.
Unfortunately you still need to have a U.S. bank account to register for a DevPay account. From the FAQ:
Sellers of Amazon DevPay applications must be able to do business in the United States. Funds earned through the sale of Amazon DevPay applications can only be withdrawn to U.S. bank accounts.
So it looks like those of us outside the U.S. will have to remain patient.
Who’s using DevPay? Continue reading…
Posted by Marcio Castilho
on October 28, 2008
As Ray Ozzie was announcing yesterday during the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2008 in Los Angeles, Windows Azure and all its related technologies will evolve in the coming months, but you can start previewing all these technologies creating applications directly from Visual Studio 2008.
With Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft is making easier for developers to build, debug, test and deploy application for the Azure cloud platform. These tools include a local cloud environment that runs inside the developer machine.
You can download it here
Posted by Marcio Castilho
on October 28, 2008
Today at the Embedded Systems Conference Boston, Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework version 3.0. With the version 3.0 release, the .NET Micro Framework enables developers to create powerful embedded systems that are more securely connected through a variety of wired and wireless protocols.
“The .NET Micro Framework continues to marry modern computing models with rich embedded capabilities, offering developers a highly productive approach to making smart devices, such as a home energy management system that manages your appliances based on the current energy rates and your needs, or a glucose meter that uploads your readings to a common place that is accessible to your caregivers,” said Colin Miller, product unit manager at Microsoft. “With the version 3.0 release, the .NET Micro Framework adds a number of major enhancements, enabling developers to be more versatile and flexible in creating powerful embedded systems.”
New Features of .NET Micro Framework Version 3.0
Version 3.0 brings several new features and enhancements to an already robust and productive development platform:
- Enhanced secure connectivity. .NET Micro Framework version 3.0 features new connectivity support, including Wi-Fi integration, Universal Serial Bus support, Web Services for Devices, secure sockets layer and support for a file system compatible with FAT32.
- Extended hardware choices. Enhancements include interoperability with native code allowing direct access to hardware, reduction in the minimum footprint to 64K RAM, a more accessible and easier-to-use porting kit, support for the Analog Devices Blackfin processor family, and ARM Thumb and Thumb-2 instruction sets.
- Increased productivity. A fully integrated development experience with both Visual Studio 2008 and Visual C# 2008 Express Edition — along with interoperability — provides developers with powerful debugging and emulation capabilities and a more flexible migration path for .NET developers and those with existing native code modules.
- Additional user interface options. Touch and gesture support enable development of more interactive and capable device applications.
“In today’s world, we are surrounded by small, embedded devices. This reality will undoubtedly grow at a substantial rate in the future, as device-makers are finding it easier than ever to bring new, compact devices to market quickly and efficiently with the .NET Micro Framework,” said Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group. “As a truly embedded platform, the .NET Micro Framework provides a huge opportunity to make these devices even more powerful and intelligent. The new features of version 3.0 will help accelerate connectivity and increase the potential applications for smaller devices.”
The.NET Micro Framework is a platform that enables developers to more quickly develop embedded systems that are smart, securely connected and easier to manage. More information is available on the .NET Micro Framework Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/netmf/default.mspx.
Posted by Alin Irimie
on October 28, 2008
Microsoft is working with Dell’s Data Center Solutions (DCS) division to build-out and power Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud services operating system hosted in Microsoft data centers. Dell developed highly-customized server platforms for Microsoft tailored to their physical facility, operating processes and application workload:
Dell’s supply-chain expertise and manufacturing infrastructure enables the fast delivery of custom-built, fully-configured rack solutions to support the rapid growth of Windows Azure. Global scale, data center planning and deployment expertise and customized services enable Microsoft to speed deployment, maximize energy efficiency and minimize total cost of ownership.
As Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie said yesterday at PDC in Los Angeles, Azure will “set the stage for the next 50 years of computing”.
Posted by Marcio Castilho
on October 28, 2008
Development Manager from Microsoft, Seshu Adunuthula, announced today the availability of the Community Technology Preview 2 of the project code-named “Velocity”. The goal of Velocity is to provide a robust and scalable distributed caching mechanism for .NET applications. ASP.NET applications is among the many uses of Velocity to provide a simple effective way to distribute caching over a huge number of clustered servers, integrating easily with declarative web.config entries.
CTP2 includes several new enhancements including High Availability, Performance improvements, PowerShell integration, Additional Configuration Store options and native 64 bit support.
You can download it here
Posted by Marcio Castilho
on October 28, 2008
Barry Collins, from PDC 2008 in Los Angeles, writes
“At PDC 2008, Microsoft has just released a pre-beta copy of Windows 7, and PC Pro has a series of in-depth guides to User Interface, Multitouch Controls, Networking, Device Management, and other IT tools. The revamped Windows desktop has clearly gleaned more than a little inspiration from the Mac OS X Dock, but it goes further than the Apple concept.”
It appears that these announcements of Windows 7 mimics many nice features Mac users have been experiencing for quite some time with Mac OS X. The system Taskbar now only shows the icons of the open application, which is very similar with the Dock in OS X. The widgets “or gadgets” can roam free now through the entire desktop, which resembles even more the Dashboard introduced several years ago.
Some other features announced includes:
- Remote desktop support for multiple monitors
- Notification bubbles similar to Growl in OS X.
- Integrates SysInternals ZoomIt with quick Win + shortcut
- VHD Integration, so you can boot and attach virtual images disk natively
- Same kernel as Windows Server 2008 and Vista
- New Calculator
- Paint has a Ribbon bar similar to Office applications
Microsoft needs to get the hint that the beauty of Mac OS X Leopard is not just on its appearance and cool animations but lies a lot on the stability, user interface consistency, organization of the file system, security and robustness. So far, I have only seen a little bit more on the “eye candy” aspects of it with a few interesting new features, but nothing too compelling to believe that this will change or improve my experience with Windows Vista.
Posted by Marcio Castilho
on October 28, 2008
Microsoft has announced today what is called WorldWide Telescope, a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope— bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.
WorldWide Telescope is an observatory on your desktop, allowing you to see the sky in a way you have never seen it before through individual exploration, multiwavelength views, stars and planets within context to each other, the ability to zoom in and out, and the capability to create and share a tour of the universe. The Visual Experience Engine delivers seamless panning zooming around the night sky. WorldWide Telescope delivers seamless integration of science-relevant information including multiwavelength, multiple telescope distributed image and data sets, and one-click contextual access to distributed Web information and data sources.
Microsoft Research is dedicating WorldWide Telescope to the memory of Jim Gray and is releasing WorldWide Telescope as a free resource to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe as never before.
It sounds very interesting except for the fact that the Tour page is not working right now.
