Microsoft Windows Azure Cloud Talk!

The 2009 Imagine Cup World Finals kick off next week, when Ray Ozzie officially opens the event on July 3^rd at the Citadel in Cairo, Egypt.

The Imagine Cup challenges students to use technology to solve the world’s toughest problems – as defined by the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

This is the seventh Imagine Cup and the largest yet.  Over 300,000 students from every corner of the globe registered for this year’s competition (up from 200,000 last year) and through local, regional and online finals, the top 400 students will compete from July 3^rd to July 7^th with the winners being announced at the foot of the Pyramids.

The students are using technology to create projects that address major problems from HIV/AIDS to education, reducing child mortality and environmental sustainability - using Microsoft technologies. We think there’s a great opportunity to mobilize everyone at Microsoft around this incredible competition.

Here’s some ideas and resources:

Vote for your favorite:

To celebrate the finals we are today launching the People’s Choice awards where you can view videos from all the software design finalists and vote for your favorite. Visit: http://peopleschoice.imaginecup.com/

Follow the action online:

For those who can’t make it to Cairo we have a whole set of online resources to follow the latest news from the finals:

· Follow the competition as it happens on the Imagine Cup Blog: http://www.imaginecupfinals.com

· Follow the latest news and resources on Twitter: imagine_cup (#imaginecup)

· Join the Imagine Cup fan page on Facebook

· We also will be publishing content on the Imagine Cup PressPass site.

I will be onsite to give live blogging updates. Do check out my blog regularly during those period and I will try to make as much post as I can.

I stumbled upon this site recently: http://www.istartedsomething.com/bingimages/?m=5&y=2009 which showcases all the past and present Bing homepage background images. Being a Bing fan, this ought to be a nice site to view some of the images that you’ve missed.

Now you can get your photo onto Bing homepage through a contest run by the Bing team at Facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/bing_photo_contest/

Internally, we have been discussing the various way we can get user to contribute to the front page of Bing (and earning you the bragging right of probably having the most number of people looking at your photo!). Check out the site now. The current theme is Summer Travel Photo. If you have some vacation photo that you’ve taken, please submit them and if it’s selected, you can see it on Bing’s daily homepage image.

News is out that Channel 8 (Student), Channel 10 (Tech Geeks) will be rolled into Channel 9 as it rebrands itself into the one-stop shop for video and forums of Microsoft.

This is pretty interesting considering that all the 3 channels are targeting a distinct group of people and now that it’ll be rolled into one, we can expect Channel 9 to be revamped into something totally different. I’ve been a huge fan of all 3 sites for the past years and I welcome the news to consolidate everything into a site is a good idea.

Changes will be rolled out in coming weeks and months. You can check out the announcement at: This Week in Channel 9

Using the limited-time deal offer which allow users to get discount up to 58% on Windows 7 pre-orders. The discounted prices are good from today through July 11 in the U.S. and Canada, or "until supplies last," Microsoft noted in fine print. Pre-order prices will cease after July 5 in Japan. Customers in the U.K., France and Germany will be offered similar pre-order discounts starting July 15.

Quoted from Computer World:

“The upgrade for Windows 7 Home Premium, priced at $49.99, immediately stormed to the top of Amazon.com's bestseller list. The $99.99 Windows 7 Professional Upgrade held the No. 2 spot in software, while Windows 7 Ultimate Upgrade, a $219.99 package that has not been discounted, claimed No. 4 as of 1:30 p.m. ET Friday.”

It’s amazing how fast Windows 7 is selling and being a beta user for the past few months, I must say this ought to be one of the most exciting Windows release ever. The CTP is still running for you to try out if you haven’t yet tested the new OS. Check out the CTP: http://cloudfex.com/cs/blogs/cloud/archive/2009/06/25/microsoft-to-end-windows-7-rc-downloads-aug-15.aspx

Looks like the pricing for 7 has been announced in the Windows Team blog:

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/06/25/announcing-the-windows-7-upgrade-option-program-amp-windows-7-pricing-bring-on-ga.aspx

Getting down to the heart of the matter,

So here’s the low-down on pricing for Windows 7. The estimated retail prices for upgrade packaged retail product of Windows 7 in the U.S. are:

· Windows 7 Home Premium (Upgrade): $119.99

· Windows 7 Professional (Upgrade): $199.99

· Windows 7 Ultimate (Upgrade): $219.99

And the estimated retail prices for full packaged retail product of Windows 7 in the U.S. are:

· Windows 7 Home Premium (Full): $199.99

· Windows 7 Professional (Full): $299.99

· Windows 7 Ultimate (Full): $319.99

This means that Windows 7 Home Premium full retail product is $40.00 less than Windows Vista Home Premium today.

Microsoft Hohm is a free online beta application that helps you save energy and money. With Microsoft Hohm you can better understand your home energy usage, get recommendations to conserve energy and start saving. As with any recommendation engine, Hohm will provide increasingly more accurate and relevant suggestions for energy conservation as its users contribute home energy input and feedback. One of the objectives during our beta period is to refine our tool and further increase the value our product can offer to you.

Microsoft Hohm uses advanced analytics licensed from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Energy to give you personalized energy saving recommendations. These recommendations are tailored based on your specific household circumstances including home attributes and use of appliances and systems. You will also be able to compare your energy usage that of with others in your area. In this beta version, the Microsoft Hohm team will learn from its users and communities and will make improvements to the site and analytics.

Microsoft Hohm helps utilities to better serve their customers by providing clear insight into their energy consumption, allowing them to make more informed decisions to save energy and money.

Hohm is fully powered by Windows Azure!

Sign up and start saving now. It’s free:  www.microsoft-hohm.com

One of my buddy Eugene recently wrote an article on Windows 7 boot from VHD. This is a pretty cool concept as you can now make use of VHD not just for virtual environment but you can also boot it up like a partition on your physical hard disk. What’s more? If you are testing a new imagine using VHD, you can easily deploy them on actual machine without having to do much conversion.

There are 2 main steps to get your VHD booting:

1. Prep your image via ImageX
2. BCDedit to make it show up upon boot.

Eugene highlighted the steps here:

“This is not really a daunting task, the only problem is it would take quite some time. Installing Win 7 via copying the .wim file, Disk Management, getting it prepped via Image X. These steps are quite time consuming but! after you have set it up, you basically have a VHD that you can boot on and install all the stuff you want in it. This is really helpful for me as rather than having to install the common dev tools (Visual Studio, SQL) you would just have to copy your VHD to the host OS and bcdedit (just four lines) your VHD. The amount of time you’ll save is just amazing.”

Two blogs that gets it done

http://blogs.technet.com/aviraj/archive/2009/01/17/windows-7-boot-from-vhd-first-impression-part-1.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/aviraj/archive/2009/01/18/windows-7-boot-from-vhd-first-impression-part-2.aspx

http://thelazyadmin.com/blogs/thelazyadmin/archive/2009/01/12/windows-7-boot-from-vhd.aspx

For his blog, check out http://www.eugenefabian.com/index.php/2009/06/22/windows-7-boot-from-vhd/

During the podcast done by XBOX Spokesperson Major Nelson revealed that an improved dashboard update will be coming later this year with more new features and faster response time. This is in response to feedback that the dashboard system is having some performance issue and getting slower these days.

Microsoft to end Windows 7 RC downloads Aug. 15

Microsoft will turn off the Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) tap on Aug. 15, the company said today. The Release Candidate download program closes August 15. After that, you won't be able to get the download, but you can still install the RC and get a key if you need one, Microsoft employee Stephen Rose said on a company blog today.

Reported by Computer World.

Microsoft release the Microsoft Security Essentials Beta, a free to download no cost, no hassle security software for home PC. This is similar to OneCare which was discontinued a couple of months back. Check out the site to download: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/resources.aspx

Ever had this problem, the reason is very simple.. your Table Service is not running:

If you try to start it and it’s still in STOPPED status. The most probable reason is because you are running a new project and need to setup the database on your local storage first. To do that, simple go to Visual Studio

If you are developing Windows Azure Table on your own local storage, and you hit this error “No account key specified!”, the fix to this is extremely simple..

Simply run your project on the Cloud Project (default project) instead of setting the default project as the web role and it should work. Super simple solution but can take you a lot of hours and pain to find out.

PCWorld and Wall Street Journal reported late Friday that Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently receive a live transplant to treat an undisclosed medical condition. He is recoveirng well and is expect to return to work in Apple later this month on a part time basis.

More information: http://www.pcworld.com/article/167075/apple_ceo_jobs_had_liver_transplant_report_says.html

USAToday reported today about the new line of Microsoft mouse which target people using netbook. The new Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000 cost about $40 USD and it comes with a shrunken USB transceiver that stores inside the mouse and in a variety of colors.

This is how the transceiver fits into the mouse itself.