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) -

• IE6, IE7, IE8, IE9 
• Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010
• Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management
• Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Project Server 2010
• Windows Server 2008

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

Recordings from TechEd, PDC, MIX events are all now archived on Channel9. These are great learning resources to keep abreast of all that's happening in the Microsoft Development world. Here are videos I have identified from Tech-Ed North America 2011 for weekend viewing over the coming weeks:

• Team Foundation Server for Everyone
• The Accidental Team Foundation Server Admin
• Understanding Your Systems with Architectural Discovery in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
• Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5 for Developers
• Pragmatic JavaScript,jQuery and AJAX with Microsoft ASP.NET
• Application Development with HTML5
• HTML5 and CSS3 Techniques You Can Use Today
• Debugging Pesky HTML5 Websites with F12 in Windows Internet Explorer 9
• Upgrading Your C# Programming Skills to Be a More Effective Developer
• Microsoft Visual Studio Tips and Tricks
• Demystifying Debugging with Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate and IntelliTrace
• Identify and Fix Performance Problems with Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate
• Hack Proofing Your Microsoft ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC Applications
• Busy Microsoft .NET Developer’s Guide to the Microsoft Cloud

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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:

• Top 10 Developer Skills for the Future
• Building non-technical skills

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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

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

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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