Techno Babble

There are lots of reports on the web related to the recent Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC). This conference atracts leading-edge developers who want to learn about the future direction of Microsoft products. Here’s my take on a couple of the topics and the location of some useful links for further information.

Microsoft Azure is an operating system for the “cloud”.

The closest comparison appears to be with the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) - a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the “cloud” which is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers. (ref. http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ )

Microsoft Azure is a web-tier offering, for Windows in the Cloud and provides

• virtualized computation
• a shared storage system
• an automated service managment system

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Tagged: Azure, PDC, Windows 7

Windows SideShow is a technology in Windows Vista that supports a secondary screen on your mobile PC. With this additional display you can view important information whether your laptop is on, off, or in sleep mode. Windows SideShow is available in Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, and Windows Vista Ultimate.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/sideshow.mspx

Wouldn’t it be great if you could read an e-mail message, confirm a meeting location, or check a flight reservation without turning on your computer? What if you could check the program guide in Windows Media Center by using a display that’s built into your remote control? Windows SideShow puts this information literally at your fingertips on a wide variety of devices that can retrieve information from your mobile PC or desktop computer.

Windows SideShow uses gadgets to extend information from your computer to other devices. Gadgets can run on a Windows SideShow–compatible device and update that device with information from your computer.

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Tagged: SideShow, Windows

MIX is an annual conference for developers, designers and business professionals to learn all about the current and forthcoming technologies from Microsoft, particularly targeted at the Web and Web applications.

This years conference was held from March 5-7, 2008 in Las Vegas.

Sessions presented at MIX 08 can now be found at

http://sessions.visitmix.com/

together with those from previous years.

For Mix 08 there are a total of 89 presentations which are summarised in the following list:

Page 1

• Accessing Windows Live Services via ATOM Publishing Protocol (APP)
• Anatomy of a Dynamic SharePoint Website
• Adding Instant Messaging To Any Site
• Applications = Designers + Developers
• Advanced Cross-Browser Layout with IE 8
• Beneath the Surface: The Natural Experience Vision
• Advanced Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): Generating More Site Traffic from Search.
• Bring Your Data to Life with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

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Microsoft have provided the first Beta version of their toolkit for developing Silverlight applications with Visual Studio 2008.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E0BAE58E-9C0B-4090-A1DB-F134D9F095FD&displaylang=en

This package is an add-on to the RTM release of Visual Studio 2008 to provide tooling for Microsoft Silverlight 2 Beta 1. It provides a Silverlight project system for developing Silverlight applications using C# or Visual Basic.

This download will install the following:

• Silverlight 2 Beta 1
• Silverlight 2 SDK Beta 1
• KB949325 for Visual Studio 2008
• Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008

Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 includes:

• Visual Basic and C# Project templates
• Intellisense and code generators for XAML
• Debugging of Silverlight applications
• Web reference support
• Integration with Expression Blend

Microsoft Live Labs Volta helps developers who build distributed applications on the .NET platform, using the Microsoft development stack (programming languages, libraries, and Visual Studio).

The Volta technology preview is a developer toolset that enables you to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar techniques and patterns. First, design and build your application as a .NET client application, then assign the portions of the application to run on the server and the client tiers late in the development process. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together.

The current version of Volta supports applications that run on the Microsoft CLR, a JavaScript-enabled browser, or a combination of the two.

In essence Volta is a re-compiler. Volta works on MSIL rather than on a textual source language and rewrites MSIL into any number of target languages, including (today) JavaScript and MSIL itself.

Full details and download are available from:

http://labs.live.com/volta/

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Recently I noted an interesting video at Channel 9: Inside MultiTouch: Team Demo, Lab Tour which shows an interview with members of the MultiTouch Research team at Microsoft Research in Cambridge UK.

Microsoft is exploring the use of IR technology over the traditional approach of using capacitive touch panels. The iPhone, for example, uses a capacitive touch panel built into the display.

Find out more about the technology used in the iPhone at

http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/index.html#technology

and

http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/index.html#touch

The Microsoft Surface Computing technology uses a rear projection / sensing system that enables a high sensing resolution but is bulky and expensive. The Microsoft MultiTouch approach, however, uses a number of small infrared transceivers mounted on the rear of LCD panels to enable a more compact solution but at a lower resolution (but still sufficient for detecting multi finger touch).

A prototype, developed at MSR Cambridge consists of an array of IR emitters and IR detectors arranged on a tile which is pressed against the back of the LCD display. IR light passes thru the LCD panel and is reflected back to the IR receivers after bouncing off objects such as fingers. The tile consists of an array of 5×7 emitters and receivers to provide effectively a 35 pixel camera element over an area covered by the size of the tile.

Multiple tiles can be combined to cover the whole screen.

The video shows how off-the-shelf LCD displays can be modified to provide the necessary proof of concept of this approach.

Watch the video (approximate 30 minutes) at

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=350838

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Tagged: , Channel 9, iPhone, Microsoft Research, Multi-Touch

Dassault Systèmes and Microsoft have recently announced the release of a Technology Preview of Microsoft Virtual Earth - 3DVIA, a web-application which allows you to create 3D models, such as buildings and other structures and share them through Microsoft Virtual Earth.

Details about the technology preview and download link is available at

http://maps.live.com/Help/en-us/VE3DVIADownload.htm

Details and a download link for Virtual Earth is available at

http://maps.live.com/Help/en-us/View3DInstall.htm

A comprehensive set of tutorials are provided to help you get the most out of Virtual Earth - 3DVIA. To create a model you simply start with 2D shapes such as lines, rectangles and cirlces and pull these shapes into 3D boxes and cylinders, combining them to make the 3D models of houses or other buildings. Colours and textures can be applied to the models to achieve a more realistic finish.

When you’ve finished creating your model you can publish it to one of you Live Search Maps collections by simply using the publish button and signing in with your Windows Live ID.

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At the recent Autodesk University, Autodesk, have announced a collaboration with Microsoft to integrate DWF technology with Windows Vista using the XML Paper Specification (XPS).

This will provide users with the ability to view and manage DWF documents without requiring additional downloads of plug-ins or the need of special viewing software, directly within the Operating System.

In addition to automatic DWF file viewing, the Windows Vista desktop search function will make it easier and faster for customers to find relevant design files with Live Icons and Preview Pane features. For example, a product designer can search for files based on specifications, designs, or any piece of related data such as an address or supplier’s name. Regardless of where the information is stored, Windows Vista returns Live Icons — thumbnail images of files retrieved — that let the designer see files’ general content at a glance.

You can read an article published in AECNews.com at http://www.aecnews.com/…

More details of the Microsoft XPS format can be found on the XPS home page at http://www.microsoft.com/…