Microsoft Windows Azure Cloud Talk!

This is a very cool application in today’s time when you want to track your love ones during disasters.

What is Microsoft Vine?

The Microsoft Vine beta connects you to the people and places you care about most, when it matters. Stay in touch with family and friends, be informed when someone you care about needs help. Get involved to create great neighborhoods, communities or causes. You select the people and places you care about most. Use alerts, reports and your personal dashboard to stay in touch, informed and involved.

I am trying to get a copy internally and will post feedback on how it works.

Microsoft created a site to explained it:

http://talkingaboutwindows.com/

Check it out, it’s quite cool.

As most of you would have know, I am still in school full time trying to complete my Computing degree which took longer than usual due to my break in 2008 to work.

Return back to school has been a refreshing experience as I now view it more of a learning experience than chasing the grades (which 99.9999% of students do in NUS). For the past 2 weeks, it’s been exam reading week and I’ve been camping in my dorm revising all the work (which I’ve missed) for past 12-14 weeks; I realize the absence of lecture webcast function for all my modules. This is strange, 2 years back when I’m in school, we have at least 1-2 modules out of the 5 I took per semester offering recorded webcast lectures that I can run through prior to examination.

Having realized the lack of such content, which I verified with the rest of my buddies; we come to the conclusion that our faculty is slowly ignoring the use of this great tool which is ironic since we are from the school of computing.

So, instead of sitting at my desk crying over why is this happening, I’ve decided to drop 2 emails to a senior faculty member of our school along with the IT department. I received 1 reply from the IT department in the next 2 days and still awaits the reply from the faculty member for the past 1 week.

The reason states that the usage has been growing over the year and it depends on how comfortable is a lecturer to do a recorded version of his lecture.The IT department is only there to support the filming.

Not trying to speculate the reasoning behind not offering webcast features… which many of you have already told me the ‘most likely’ reasons.. I’ve decided to come up with a mini-project that will aid me for the next semester and I hope to create it in upcoming 4-months break.

Project Specs:

- Get a cheap webcam that has a wide angle

- Get a good microphone

- Get it mounted my laptop

- Create an app that will record the video taken from the application – convert to streaming format – upload to my server after completion – associate with lecture deck stored in the school’s CMS

- While recording, allow me to take notes using OneNote and record the time stamp so I know exactly which part of the lecture did I write it.

- Based on how I switch my lecture slides in Powerpoint during the lecture, record the page – time so that the viewer will autoflip during the playback mode.

- Allow my buddy to subscribe to my feed and watch those lecture

- Create a “pick the longest straw” app that will choose a person in a group to do the filming

- Allow users to create groups where webcast can be shared

Basically I will record the entire experience in lecture and allow me to play back when the exam date draws near and I want to revise that particular lecture.

Today I received an email about a secret Windows 7 feature that has kept everyone talking for a while.

Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott reveal a new Windows 7 application compatibility feature called Windows XP Mode. Yes, it's that "secret new feature" you've been hearing about ...

Over a month ago, we were briefed about a secret Microsoft technology that we were told would be announced alongside the Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) and would ship in final form simultaneously with the final version of Windows 7. This technology, dubbed Windows XP Mode (XPM, formerly Virtual Windows XP or Virtual XP, VXP), dramatically changes the compatibility story for Windows 7 and, we believe, has serious implications for Windows development going forward. Here's what's happening.

XPM is built on the next generation Microsoft Virtual PC 7 product line, which requires processor-based virtualization support (Intel and AMD) to be present and enabled on the underlying PC, much like Hyper-V, Microsoft's server-side virtualization platform. However, XPM is not Hyper-V for the client. It is instead a host-based virtualization solution like Virtual PC; the hardware assistance requirement suggests this will be the logical conclusion of this product line from a technological standpoint. That is, we fully expect future client versions of Windows to include a Hyper-V-based hypervisor.

XP Mode consists of the Virtual PC-based virtual environment and a fully licensed copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3). It will be made available, for free, to users of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions via a download from the Microsoft web site. (That is, it will not be included in the box with Windows 7, but is considered an out-of-band update, like Windows Live Essentials.) XPM works much like today's Virtual PC products, but with one important exception: As with the enterprise-based MED-V (Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization) product, XPM does not require you to run the virtual environment as a separate Windows desktop. Instead, as you install applications inside the virtual XP environment, they are published to the host (Windows 7) OS as well. (With shortcuts placed in the Start Menu.) That way, users can run Windows XP-based applications (like IE 6) alongside Windows 7 applications under a single desktop.

While trying to get Frontpage Extension installed on Windows 2008 today, I realize that it is not part of any role or features that are pre-built in Windows 2008. After doing some search, I found out a solution to this:

1. The IIS team released FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions for IIS 7.0 which is a separate download. Download this onto your web server and install it. This plug in is developed by a company and is released for free so that we can install FSE onto Windows 2008 and Vista machines.

It is normal that it takes a while for the installation to complete. It took me about 5-10 minutes on a relatively fast server before it finishes the installation of all the supporting services.

Once it’s done, you will get this:

Let’s try to get it working on one of our test site..

You can access the administrator panel via your browser.. in our case, it’s on this URL. There should be a link on Start->Administrative tools->Microsoft SharePoint Administrator

Once you login to the administrative panel (you can use your administrator credentials for the initial visit. You will be able to extend a site with Frontpage Extension.

If you click on administration, you will be able to perform task on your site:

However, when you try to visit the Site Administrator, you might encounter an error. This is normal as you have yet to enable basic authentication for the site…

Once you enable basic authentication, you will be able to access your site administrator panel.

Alright, everything is setup now.. you should be able to access FPE via Visual Studio from now on.

Today, Microsoft announced the go live of DeepZoomPix, a technology demonstration of Microsoft® Silverlight™, Deep Zoom and the Azure™ Services Platform.

Using Silverlight’s exclusive Deep Zoom technology, DeepZoomPix enables you to interactively explore and share photos like never before:

• Enable a seamless experience for navigating large numbers of images regardless of Internet connection quality.
• Make possible a “tactile” way of exploring and interacting with photographic images on the web.
• Empower users to dynamically zoom in on photos without having to navigate to higher resolution versions.

Directly access photos from Facebook, Flickr or any photo RSS feed and share your DeepZoomPix creation with the world through your blog or website.

DeepZoomPix is a technology showcase that enables end-users to see something familiar yet exciting. It shows designers the capabilities of Silverlight for creating rich user experiences. Finally, it shows developers how they can use various Microsoft technologies to create compelling and scalable systems.

DeepZoomPix is a technology demonstration that will run until December 31^st.

For more information, please read our FAQ and the DeepZoomPix developer story

• Try it! Go to www.deepzoompix.com, sign in with your Live ID and create an account. Then upload some pictures and tell people about it by blogging, tweeting, plain old email or word of mouth.
• Tell the DeepZoomPix developer story.
• Join our Facebook group.

With the economy downturn hitting the big companies, IBM is scrapping office amenities such as tea, coffee and internet access at home. Full article: http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,25329614-15306,00.html

Seems like a lot of IBM’ers are going to feel weird when they see a coin operated machine in the months to come at their office’s pantry.

Free E-Book released by Microsoft Press as part of their Free E-Book Of the Month campaign. Check it out :

http://csna01.libredigital.com/?urws8un4p7

If you encounter this error when trying to access your MDF file, it is possible that your existing version of SQL on the server is of a later version than your development machine thus the SQL server on the server is trying to convert the .MDF file to a later format.

This happened to me as my dev machine is using 2005 while the server is using 2008. However, if SQL on the server don’t have access to the folder, then you will encounter this error. A simple way to fix it is to give your folder the permission associated with the server SQL instance so that SQL can access it. If you run out of ideas on which account it is, simply *thou not advisable* give it’s a everyone permission then run the application (which will trigger the upgrade) then remove the everyone permission. Your MDF will be upgraded and usable now.

There’s an update for April.

The Azure Services Management Tools include an MMC SnapIn and Windows PowerShell cmdlets that enable a user to configure and manage several Azure Services including .NET Access Control Services, and the .NET Workflow Service. These tools can be helpful when developing and testing applications that use Azure Services. For instance, using these tools you can view and change .NET Access Control Rules, and deploy and view workflows.

You can download the latest management tools from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/AzureManagementTools.

Today we released an updated version of the Azure Services Training Kit.   The first Azure Services Training Kit was released during the week of PDC and it contained all of the PDC hands-on labs.   Since then, the Azure Services Evangelism team has been creating new content covering new features in the platform.

The Azure Services Training Kit April update now includes the following content covering Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services:

· 11 hands-on labs – including new hands-on labs for PHP and Native Code on Windows Azure.

· 18 demo scripts – These demo scripts are designed to provide detailed walkthroughs of key features so that someone can easily give a demo of a service

9 presentations – the presentations used for our 3 day training workshops including speaker notes.

kit is available as an installable package on the Microsoft Download Center. You can download it from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=130354

Finally got Windows 7 installed on my Lenovo T400. Everything went smooth until it reboots and tried to complete the setup. Some T400 users might experience a black screen instead of the usual desktop.

After troubleshooting the problem, I realize this is due to a graphic card issue as Lenovo laptops have 2 card built in (1 x onboard, the other is a 3D graphic card) and this is causing some confusion.

To solve the issue, simply boot into safe mode or in bios, disable one of the graphic card and you should be booting normally from then on.

What Is Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP1?

Service Pack 1 (SP1) for SQL Server 2008 is available today for customers. The Service pack is available via download here and is primarily a roll-up of previous cumulative updates, quick fix engineering updates and minor fixes made in response to requests reported through the SQL Server community.  While there are no new features in this service pack, customers running SQL Server 2008 should download and install SP1 to take advantage of the fixes which increase supportability and stability of SQL Server 2008.

Customers have no reason to wait to upgrade to SQL Server 2008 and many are already taking advantage of SQL Server 2008 as a smart IT investment. In fact, there have been over 3 million downloads of SQL Server 2008 since the RTM in August. With this Service pack, Microsoft is introducing 80% fewer changes to customer configurations compared to previous SQL Server Service Pack releases. This remarkable decrease is a testament to a revised product development process and updated servicing strategy that is focused on ease of deployment while keeping customer environments stable.

What Are The Key Improvements in SQL Server 2008 SP1?

With this service pack, Microsoft has made investments to ease deployment and make management of service packs more efficient. Key improvements in SP1 include Slipstream, Service Pack Uninstall and Report Builder 2.0 click-once deployment.

· Slipstream allows administrators to install SQL Server 2008 and Service Pack 1 in a single instance. This decreases the total time for an installation, including a fewer number of reboots thereby increasing productivity and deployment availability.

· Service Pack Uninstall allows administrators to uninstall the service pack separately from the database release.  This feature also improves DBA productivity, reduces the cost of deployment and improves overall supportability

· Report Builder 2.0 Click Once improves the existing SQL Server end-user report authoring application by easing deployment to business users

Call to Action

· To download the SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1, please click here.

· For more information on SQL Server 2008, please click here.

Thou this is not related to technology, it’s something interesting to share.

It’s amazing how prices of airfare has fallen over the years when I am looking to book my May trip (to be performed on budget airline for the first time).

$$293.10 TOTAL (Inclusive of Tax) which works out to about US$193.00.

KUL to PER is on Airasia X Premium Seats. S$815.97 is about US$537.00.

If you thinking of coming to Asia and is interested to do some hopping around South East Asia, you can check out these rate.

Information Architects released the final beta for Web Trends 4. This is an awesome map for technologist who are interested to know what’s the big trends for the past year and who are the people that are making the difference.

 

“ The Web Trend Map is a yearly publication by iA Inc. It maps the 333 most influential Web domains and the 111 most influential internet people onto the Tokyo Metro map. Domains are carefully selected by the iA research team through dialogue with map enthusiasts. Each domain is evaluated based on traffic, revenue, age and the company that owns it. The iA design team assigns these selected domains to individual stations on the Tokyo Metro map in ways that complement the characters of each. ”

You can get a better view of this map at Flickr

Do support iA if you are interested to buy the A0 poster of this cool map.