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Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts
Try these VHDs instead of using any pirated Microsoft software

Try these VHDs instead of using any pirated Microsoft software

Programming with new Microsoft products & technologies does not have to cost anything. Besides offering time-limited (trial editions) or feature-limited (Express editions) versions of its products, MS also makes available VHDs of some of its popular products. Here is a list of such VHDs that I've come across (work in progress) -


The downside is that most of these VHDs are time-bombed and are VERY bulky.

If after evaluating a product, you wish to seed these trial editions of the OS, SQL, VS, etc. with MSDN keys so the VPC doesn't expire, you can (as acknowledged by an MS evangelist in the comments section of this link).

Also see: HOW TO try Windows Azure for free (without any credit card)
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Free videos from major Microsoft Developer events are archived on Channel9
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Free videos from major Microsoft Developer events are archived on Channel9

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MVP Open Day 2011 was an insightful experience #opendayin

Like last year, MVPs from all over India & a few from Sri Lanka & Australia converged in Hyderabad for the MVP Open Day event. I had a great time meeting & talking with some extremely smart & passionate MVPs & listening to presentations from visionaries & Product Team leaders at MS IDC.
(click to view enlarged image)





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Search for keywords in videos with Microsoft Research Audio Video Indexing System (MAVIS)

If you were searching for videos that reference the Razor (view engine) from among Microsoft videos from events like PDC, MIX 2010, Channel 9, MAVIS can get you results with direct links to the precise moment that word was uttered in a video.


This feature has also been implemented on  the U.S. Department of Energy's videos at ScienceCinema.

MAVIS uses the Windows Azure cloud which affords massive scale & on demand computing capability to crunch through the videos.

The Microsoft Research Audio Video Indexing System (MAVIS) is a set of software components that use speech recognition technology to enable searching of digitized spoken content, whether they are from meetings, conference calls, voice mails, presentations, online lectures, or even Internet video.

Did you know, speech-recognition technology is already integrated in a number of Microsoft products, such as Windows 7, TellMe.com, Exchange 2010, and Office OneNote?

Using integrated speech-recognition technology in the Windows 7 operating system, users can dictate into applications like Microsoft Word, or use speech to interact with their Windows system. The TellMe.com service allows mobile users to get directory services using speech while on the go. Exchange 2010 now provides a rough transcript of incoming voicemails and in Office OneNote, users can search their speech recordings using keywords.

Also see:
Sound Search Results
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Soft skills & career advice on MS "My Career Roadmap" site

My Career Roadmap is a Microsoft India site that has resources on career advancement.
 
One of the learning resource there is a 32-part screencast series called “Driving Your Career” by Brian Prince. Each screencast is typically less than 10 minutes in duration and available for download as a WMV & MP3 file. There is no way to directly view it on the site.

 
I found some of the tips like "Use metaphors to communicate with humans" to be interesting. However, there were some that had profound titles but not equivalent content. Your mileage may vary.
 
Also see:
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Microsoft PDC 2010 highlights

There were a lot of announcements at the MS Professional Developer’s Conference yesterday. Some interesting facts from PDC from Twitter & a live blog -
  • 10 million downloads for IE9 beta - Ballmer .. Biggest beta ever.
  • 500,000 downloads of the #WP7 dev tools already - @scottgu 
  • #azure has more than 200,000 subscriptions to date 
  • Over 1000 apps and games already uploaded to the marketplace.
  • DataMart is Windows Azure MarketPlace
  • The WP7 profiling tools run in the Express edition too
  • HTML5 will be 'lingua franca' for Web apps, Ballmer says
  • IE9 Platform Preview 6 is now available for download.
  • Muglia: "We'll make Java a first-class citizen in the cloud. We will make PHP run great on Azure - or Ruby."
  • Pixar is using Windows Azure.
  • Channel 9 runs on Azure
  • Why did Pixar choose Azure? Scalability: render farm for rent is not a new idea, but in the cloud, you can now scale these up as you need them. Sustainability: We need to ensure that a solution we put in place will be there for a long time. It just works.
  • Small instance of #Azure role should help with the lightweight apps like hosting blogs
  • Recorded sessions from PDC 2009 videos. The latest ones may also come up. The recorded sessions from PDC 2010 are also available. (10/Nov)
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Windows 7 is 1 year old, Windows platform soon to be 25
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Windows 7 is 1 year old, Windows platform soon to be 25

Having sold 240 million copies so far, Windows 7 is Microsoft's fastest selling OS. The Windows platform will be completing 25 years next month. To look back at Windows history, check the Windows 1.0 artifacts that Ray Ozzie has shared at docs.com, which now provides “browser-based PDF reading” through a Silverlight-based PDF viewer.

In other OS news, Google is readying its Chrome OS for the fourth quarter of 2010. Some points from the Chromium OS FAQ -
Google Chrome OS is to Chromium OS what Google Chrome browser is to Chromium. Chromium OS is the open source project, used primarily by developers, with code that is available for anyone to checkout, modify and build their own version with.

Google Chrome OS is not a conventional operating system that you can download or buy on a disc and install. As a consumer, the way you will get Google Chrome OS is by buying a netbook that has Google Chrome OS installed by the OEM.

...we are asking our hardware partners for Google Chrome OS to use solid state drives (SSDs) rather than hard disk drives (HDDs), for performance and reliability reasons.

Google Chrome OS is a web-centric system, so all applications are web applications

..Chromium OS is open source, and it's Linux.

The Chrome OS UI is under development but some preliminary designs are available

Also see:
The History of Microsoft
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SharePoint in Pictures
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SharePoint in Pictures

The SharePoint Developer Documentation Team has launched a new blog called SharePoint in Pictures with the intention of  providing visual SharePoint developer content on a weekly basis. Illustrations & diagrams make information sticky. This is a great idea that should be extended to other MS products as well.

This diagram from that blog neatly summarizes features present in the different editions of Sharepoint 2010

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Comparison of Microsoft Data Access Technologies
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Comparison of Microsoft Data Access Technologies

Deciding which data access strategy to choose is not always an easy job. Here's a compilation of articles that discuss this topic -
  • This Infosys whitepaper presents a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of ADO.NET, LINQ, Entity Framework & WCF Data Services. There is also a comparison of Entity Framework & NHibernate. Excerpt - ADO.NET offers best performance amongst its peers (LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework, WCF Data Services) 
  • C# guru, John Skeet's post in StackOverlow on the pros and cons of LINQ 
(work in progress..)
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How they develop software at Microsoft

How they develop software at Microsoft

Some Microsoft bloggers ocassionally share their group's software development practices & they make for interesting reading -
I'll keep updating this list as I find more such articles. Dear reader, you can post links that you may come across in the comments section.

Related:
Some Software Engineering Myths Busted
Book Review - I. M. Wright's Hard Code
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MVP Open Day

I was at the MVP Open Day 2010 hosted by Microsoft in Hyderabad last month.



It was a great opportunity to meet over a 100 MVPs from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand & Vietnam & hear about some of the new things Microsoft is coming up with.

More of my photos coming up soon...

Also see:
MS MVP Authors from India
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Visual tags: Microsoft Tag vs QR Code

As the Web got more popular in the last decade, it has been common to see advertisements carrying not much of details but just a terse URL prompting those interested to visit a website to get more info. As Mobile Internet gets more affordable & handsets with cameras get cheaper, a number of applications that leverage both those features have started to emerge.

Microsoft Tag & QR Code are visual tags that use proprietary technology to encode data in a 2D "barcode". They pack a lot of information in a small space. These visual tags can be used in traditional marketing media like print advertising, billboards, packaging and merchandising. A user capturing a visual tag through her mobile phone camera can be directed to a website for detailed information (that can include online photos & video) by a barcode reader application (that needs to be installed before hand on the mobile).



Picture courtesy: Wikipedia

Google utilizes QR Code to promote the most sought out local businesses (in the US) for it's Favorite Places website. Microsoft Tag is being increasingly used by publishers & advertisers, among others, to act as a gateway from traditional media to an internet site or online media. The movie Avatar used Microsoft Tag for their ad campaign to lead users to richer info online.


Picture courtesy: Microsoft

Microsoft Tag has some distinct advantages over QR Code (content paraphrased from multiple sources) -
  • MS Tag can handle long URLs and allow for content to be dynamically changed. The creator of the Tag can control to which web page a Tag can be directed to.
  • Tags can be one quarter the size of other two dimensional barcodes thus preserving precious real-estate on printed materials
  • Seamlessly works in Color or Black & White. Businesses can use their color logo.
  • Designed to work with the limited capabilities of a typical camera phone.
  • Enhanced Reed-Solomon error correction means Tags can still be read even if partially damaged.
  • Optimized for both print and video display.
  • On many phones can decode using a direct real-time camera video stream, you don’t even have to “click” to read the code.
  • Tags are saved for later viewing and can be forwarded to someone else (no need to scan it again).
  • MS Tag provides Analytics to publishers. The reporting data can help publishers tweak their campaign if required.
The Microsoft Tag API allows developers to programmatically access many of the same operations used on the Tag website.
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BigTech offers NGOs software titles at huge discounts

Heard this interesting news from Vinod Unny -

Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in India can get loads of software (& hardware) from Microsoft and other vendors at very low prices. All they need to do is sign up with BiG Tech, the philanthropy program of NASCOMM Foundation and provide details of their NGO status.

Once they are approved, they can choose from a huge list of software and obtain them by simply paying an admin fee. For instance, Windows 7 Professional Upgrade is available under this scheme for Rs.325 while Windows Server 2008 Standard costs Rs.1024.

There are only a few restrictions on the number of times that an order can be placed and number of titles.

Facts about BiG Tech -
* Over 300 registered NGO's
* Number of products donated – 3188
* Value of software donated - over 4.2 crores
* Big Tech covers 138 districts in over 26 states across India

Also see:
Pay It Forward with Wikipedia
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Free Anti-Virus Software from Microsoft
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Free Anti-Virus Software from Microsoft

There are at least 36 AV software tools for the Windows Platform out of which about a dozen are free. Now, Microsoft Security Essentials joins that list. It is a free download that requires the OS where it is installed to be genuine Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7

It is lightweight & provides real-time protection against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software without hogging system resources as most AV software do.

MSE replaces Windows Live OneCare and Windows Defender.
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Project Tuva makes Science fun
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Project Tuva makes Science fun

"...many of the sciences are so abstract, and the amount of things you have to learn before you start connecting to those practical issues can be very daunting." - Bill Gates

Microsoft Research has been releasing a lot of interesting projects this year - Songsmith, an improved Translator, WorldWide Telescope (WWT) and now Project Tuva. Some of them are offbeat and path-breaking.

Project Tuva is an interactive educational video application built with Silverlight.

Project Tuva is an interactive video experience that makes learning about science relevant and exciting through annotations authored by researchers and subject-matter experts. Project Tuva is launching with Richard Feynman's Messenger Series lectures, a cornerstone set of seven talks at Cornell University in 1964. These videos are enhanced with a number of different layers of contextual information: full transcripts and captions, fully searchable transcripts, time-synchronized contextual "extras" that link to web resources to learn more about a spoken topic, the ability to take notes while watching, integration with Microsoft Research's own amazing World Wide Telescope project, and more.


Written in Silverlight, it uses Smooth Streaming to dynamically switch between different bit rates of video without interrupting playback. This allows the video to play in a way that's more immediate than the usual buffer-then-watch online video experience. It uses a sophisticated and fully liquid layout system to adapt to different screen sizes and viewing aspect ratios. All modifications the user makes to the interface's layout are remembered between sessions.
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What do CTP, RC, RTM, RTW mean?

What do CTP, RC, RTM, RTW mean?

I always wanted to find the precise meaning of the acronyms Microsoft uses to refer to the stage of a product in the software release life cycle. I found the most comprehensive explanation on Phil Haack's blog and copied it verbatim here for future reference.

Community Technology Preview/CTP
CTP stands for Community Technology Preview. It's generally an incomplete preview of a new technology in progress. These usually come out before beta and are a way to gather feedback from the community during the development of a product. This is similar to an Alpha release per Jeff’s hierarchy, except that at Microsoft, we generally do put CTPs in a public location.

Release Candidate/RC
RC's are pretty much like less buggy BETA releases. These are candidates to become the actual release and there is a very small chance of adding new features between the RC and the RTM. Any changes from an RC to an RTM are usually just bug fixes.


Released to Manufacturing/RTM
RTM stands for "Released to Manufacturing" and is a throwback to the days when software was mostly released as CDs. When a project went "Gold", it was released to manufacturing who then burned a bunch of CDs and packaged them up to be put on store shelves. True, this still goes on today believe it or not, but this mode of delivery is on the decline for certain types of software.


Released to Web/RTW
RTW is a related term that stands for "Released to Web" which is more descriptive of how software is actually shipped these days. For example, while we like to use the term RTM internally out of habit, ASP.NET MVC will actually be RTW.

Fully Supported Out-of-Band release
A Fully Supported Out-of-Band release is a release that is not part of the Framework (i.e. it's not included in an installation of the .NET Framework), but is fully supported as if it were. For example, you can call up PSS (Microsoft's Tech Support) for support on a fully supported OOB release.

One example of this was “Atlas” which later became Microsoft Ajax and was rolled into ASP.NET 3.5. ASP.NET MVC 1.0 will be an example of an OOB release.

Service Pack/SP
A Service Pack (or SP) is simply an RTM (or RTW) release of fixes and/or improvements to some software.

"Futures"
Based on this description of Microsoft ASP.NET Futures, I take it that Futures means a Release containing an early developer preview of features.
The functionality in the Futures release includes early experimental versions of features currently being considered for future versions ...


Escrow
An escrow build means code development has ceased as developers and beta testers hunt for "recall class" (showstopper) bugs; essentially, it is candidate RTM code.

(Update [08-May-09]: More acronyms & jargon)

Hotfixes
Hotfixes are one-off solutions to a specific problem: they are tested briefly, then given directly to customers. A knowledge base article is written to document their existence, but the hotfix itself is not posted publicly; customers must call support to receive them. They are not normally cumulative.


Service packs or SPs
Service packs contain a large number of fixes. They are tested very thoroughly by the entire QA organization across our entire matrix of configurations; they receive a full security review; they are localized into every language we support; and so on. SPs are posted on the main MS download page where anyone can get them instantly. They are always cumulative.


General Distribution Release or GDR
A GDR is somewhere in between (Hotfixes & Service packs). They typically contain one large fix, or several related fixes, and receive a moderate amount of testing. As it turns out, our GDR will contain a lot of fixes -- more than some SPs.

Also see:
Scott Guthrie on development methodology at Microsoft
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Be a Microsoft MVP

Microsoft MVP Award is a program that recognizes exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who voluntarily share their high quality, real world expertise in any Microsoft technology with others. There are no exams to write. MVP nominations are reviewed by a panel of Microsoft personnel and successful nominations are contacted by the Microsoft MVP Award Program team.

If you have been actively contributing to online or offline technical communities over the past year, nominate yourself for this Award (in India) before April 18, 2009 to be eligible during this quarterly cycle. The best part of being an MVP is that you get to meet and network with passionate experts.

There are currently over 130 MVPs in India with different specialties and diverse backgrounds. This includes around a dozen accomplished authors.

Related: Number of Microsoft Certified Professionals Worldwide
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The History of Microsoft

Bill Gates reminisces about the early years in 'The History of Microsoft'Channel 9 is running a series called "The History of Microsoft" that chronicles the struggles and successes of Microsoft covering a year per episode starting with it's inception in 1975 (the same year I was born). There is a new episode every Thursday with rare footage.
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