When you publish a web/worker role to Azure and request that Remote Desktop is activated, you can visit your VM afterwards via RD.

Your can browse through your drives …..

I still wonder how I could use the floppy-drive though. Also notice the remark in the right bottom corner : “This copy of Windows is not genuine”.

Best regards,

Windows:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/iso

The serial key that is required to complete the installation can also be found here

Visual Studio:

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/downloads#groups

This includes visual studio(express) and TFS, in all their flavors…

For now I will play around a bit and let you know what I think of it, but I can already say that it looks promising!

Ever wondered how an “Azure” datacenter looks like on the inside. On the following link you can see a video of a Microsoft datacenter that might host Azure platform services and your applications (many other services run on these datacenters as well like Bing or Hotmail).

Check out the most recent generation datacenters (Chicago) where servers are stocked in sea-containers.

best regards,

Our audience consisted of Capgemini colleagues from many different service lines, which shows how mobile is considered “hot” and interesting across all branches, as well as some external visitors, since our session was open to the public.

The session also gave some insight into questions such as how HTML5 can help our clients’ business by improving usability via responsive design, reducing time-to-market and cost through increased interoperability, and adding offline capabilities and location-aware features. This is especially important for mobile devices because of their high requirements regarding these points. Their lower power capacities are another pro HTML5 argument, and moreover one where Flash doesn’t score well, so we added a short review on the future of Flash, as well as some tips on how animated content can be converted from Flash to HTML5.

Another question that was treated is whether or not HTML5 can already be used in production, because it is an unfinished specification. The conclusion, which was also emphasised by some statements from Gartner, was that it is definitely part of the future for enterprise applications, and when looking at the 100 most visited websites, as well as at social sites and search engines, you will find that a big percentage of them are already using HTML5 today. Only in some cases, based on criteria like the need for native GUI, real-time performance, native device features or availability in an app market/store, there will still remain a necessity for native or at least hybrid applications.

Since many HTML5 features are not supported by all browsers, especially older ones, it is also important to think in advance about which browsers will need to be supported, as well as which features will be needed. In case one of the necessary features is not supported by one of the target browsers, there are always alternatives. These are scripts or plugins that mimic the desired feature by using other technologies like Flash, VML or JavaScript. These so-called polyfills or shims make it possible to develop in a future-proof way, allowing a seamless transition to the better, native experience when users upgrade their browser.

It is possible to find out whether the user’s current browser supports a certain feature by using Modernizr, a small JavaScript library that detects the availability of native implementations for next-generation web technologies, as well as enables the conditional loading of polyfills otherwise.

We concluded our session with an outlook to our next session, which will be about our internal ORF application that’s deployed in the Google Cloud (Google App Engine). Hope to see you there!

Even though rumors are still rumors, it seems like we can expect 2 releases for Windows Phone in 2012. First of all there’s “Tango”, expected around mid-2012. This release is aimed at broadening the user base, by lowering the memory requirements to support lower-end (and thus cheaper) devices. These lower requirements will most likely also have effect on the apps we can create, limiting the memory use and resource-intensive tasks (and give more importance to cloud computing). A new SDK should be available around April to develop and test against this release. Other rumors are that Tango will support up to 120 languages (up from 35). With some luck we’ll get some things confirmed later this month at the Mobile World Congress.

And then there is the video of Joe Belfiore to Nokia on Windows Phone 8, code-named Apollo that has been leaked. Windows Phone 8 is seen as part of the Windows 8 family of products and will share core technologies with its desktop- and tablet-based counterparts, including the kernel, multicore processor support, security and of course the Metro-style UI. Some of the experiences will be custom tailored for the smaller screen, including IE 10 Mobile version. It’s expected to hit the market together with Windows 8 by the end of the year.

Other interesting features for Windows Phone 8 for the end customers include a NFC Chip enabling an integrated wallet experience, full micro SD support, camera improvements and custom “lens” apps and a Skype app. To get the most out of our limited data plans, we’ll get “Data Smart” in which the system will use Wi-Fi over cellular where possible, use less bandwidth and provide an app to manage data usage. Business users get complete BitLocker encryption out of the box, private app stores for businesses, a new version of Office mobile going together with the Office 15 wave, System Center integration and much more.

For us developers, there are also a few interesting features like app-to-app communication based on Windows 8 Contracts and native C++ apps built on the Windows 8 kernel (out goes Windows CE), enabling to easily port Windows 8 or even Android/iOS apps to Windows Phone 8. This will certainly fuel the discussion “Is Silverlight dead?” again, but for now Windows Phone 8 should be backward compatible and support all current Mango apps, which could be around 100.000 of them by then.

It’s still early and everything is based on rumors and a leaked video, but Microsoft seems to continue the effort on increasing its market share for Windows Phone, both for individuals and businesses. Which in turn, might also bring new opportunities for us as Microsoft Practice.

Microsoft has an interesting document on the upcoming version of Visual Studio. There is a very strong focus on Application Lifecycle Management.

You can download the document over here  (http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9772730)

Best regards,

Alexander

I found a free a-book that was released a little over 2 weeks ago that covers all that you need to know to get started with windows phone development.

http://www.windowsphonegeek.com/WPToolkitBook2nd

It covers a wide variety of controls, that are available in the windows phone toolkit, this combined with decent examples. To get you up and running even faster, the source code is also available as a download from the same website.

Have Fun!

It is not science, it simply checks if your website is compliant with the rules that were agreed upon somewhere in the past.

Some weeks ago, I hinted a colleague to use it for something. Last week I found out that he took it a step further and that he was using it as a free load generation tool. (I do not know the inner workings of the tool, but apparently it works like a charm.)

If you want it too, here this how to find/get it:

• Go to http://www.microsoft.com/web/platform/ and click the free/download button. (alternatively, you can download it here http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx )
• This will install the web platform installer. Once it is there, it will start up (you can still find it in your start menu at a later moment) The idea behind the installer is that you can install a selection of platforms on your system with one click, and thus not having to worry about all the fuss that normally comes with it)
• It will update the content list and it will take a second
• Then search for “search engine optimization toolkit”
• Click add, a few times on “ok”, install, ( not specifically in that order)
  • (You probably have to install additional components, but the installer will take care of that for you)
• Let the installer do its thing.

When ready, the search engine optimization toolkit should be somewhere in the start menu:

Its usage is rather self-explanatory, so I won’t bother you all with that…

Have fun