Dan Rigsby – Coding Up Style

I have a new 6 min 31 sec training webcast up over developing windows services.  This video looks at how to build widows services as well as an approach for easily developing them with “console application” support to help ease development.  It can be a pain to develop a windows service, if you have to constantly keep deploying it just to test it out.

The video is available through JupiterMedia and can be viewed at http://www.internet.com/video/. Just look for the "Developer Video" titled "Developing Windows Services".

Direct links are:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1431564240/bclid1433966034/bctid10347017001

Are you in the Indianapolis area?  Can spare a day or can you talk your boss into giving you an “education” day? If so, then you should check out the series of events that Microsoft is bringing to town!  Every three months ArcReady and MSDN Unleashed make an appearance in our area, and they’re now joined by TechNet Unleashed. For those who aren’t familiar with these events they are targeted towards specific audiences, but have a high level of value to anyone in the Information Technology Field.

ArcReady – Architecting for the cloud

For our next ArcReady, we will explore a topic on everyone’s mind: Cloud computing. Several industry companies have announced cloud computing services . In October 2008 at the Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft announced the next phase of our Software + Services vision: the Azure Services Platform. The Azure Services Platforms provides a wide range of internet services that can be consumed from both on premises environments or the internet.

Session 1: Cloud Services

In our first session we will explore the current state of cloud services.  We will then look at how applications should be architected for the cloud and explore a reference application deployed on Windows Azure.  We will also look at the services that can be built for on premise application, using .NET Services.  We will also address some of the concerns that enterprises have about cloud services, such as regulatory and compliance issues.

Session 2: Mesh and Live Services

In our second session we will take a slightly different look at cloud based services by exploring Live Mesh and Live Services.  Live Mesh is a data synchronization client that has a rich API to build applications on.  Live services are a collection of APIs that can be used to create rich applications for your customers.  Live Services are based on internet standard protocols and data formats.

Date: March 12,2009
Time: 9:00 – 12:00
Location: Microsoft in Indianapolis, IN
Register: http://tinyurl.com/cup63m

Community Lunch

Whether you are attending ArcReady or the Unleashed Events, we invite you to join us for lunch between 12:00 – 1:00, we will have pizza and soda (food is on a first come / first served basis).

MSDN Unleashed! – Debugging and mobile devices

Enhance your coding capabilities with new tools, tips, and inside secrets from MSDN Events. We’ll start by showing you how to take full advantage of the Visual Studio debugger. We’ll offer some great tips and tricks to help you debug faster and more efficiently, while applying fresh techniques to ramp up your problem solving abilities. Additionally, you’ll see how developing for a Windows Mobile phone leverages your current coding skills and can make it simple to build, deploy and debug cool new devices.

Session 1: Tips & Tricks for the Visual Studio 2008 Debugger

The Visual Studio debugger is a highly underutilized tool for many developers. In this session, you’ll learn how to use it like a pro, while picking up new techniques to fast-forward your problem solving and debugging abilities. We’ll show you how to use advanced breakpoints, advanced watch window / Expression evaluator tricks, modifiers, assertions on the fly, remote debugging, and more. Whether you’re writing C#, VB, WPF, ASP.NET, Windows Forms, or services, we’ll provide tips and tricks that will have you debugging faster and much more efficiently. The debugger is your primary tool for finding bugs, so join us and learn how to make the most of it.

Session 2: Developing for Windows Mobile Devices

Mobile development is growing fast, and Windows Mobile is at the forefront with over 18 million phones shipped last year and many more cutting-edge devices on the way. Visual Studio developers have tremendous opportunities in this space. Why? Developing for a Windows Mobile phone leverages your existing coding experience and takes it to new heights. In this session, we’ll look at some of the coolest new devices, you’ll learn how to set up Visual Studio with the latest SDK and device emulators, and you’ll see how to build, deploy and debug Windows Mobile applications. We’ll also explore how Internet Explorer Mobile 6 provides new AJAX capabilities that offer the richness of the desktop with pan and zoom features tuned for mobile devices.

Date: March 12, 2009
Time: 1:00 – 3:00
Location: Microsoft in Indianapolis, IN
Register: http://tinyurl.com/csvx5m

Technet Unleashed – Windows Server 2008

In this session we will look at Windows Server 2008 and the improvements that have been made to Microsoft’s premier server operating system.  Microsoft Windows Server 2008 is the most advanced Windows Server operating system yet, designed to power the next generation of networks, applications, and Web services. With Windows Server 2008 you can develop, deliver, and manage rich user experiences and applications, provide a highly secure network infrastructure, and increase technological efficiency and value within your organization.

Windows Server 2008 introduces several new capabilities including 64bit virtualization, a robust web and development platform, improvements in networking, security, high availability and disaster recovery.  In addition, there is a new “Core” installation option that reduces the operating system overhead by removing the graphical user interface thus freeing resources and lowering the potential security attack surface.  Come see demonstrations on many of the features in a technical deep dive you won’t want to miss!

Date: March 12,2009
Time: 3:00 – 5:00
Location: Microsoft in Indianapolis, IN
Register:  http://tinyurl.com/aazpcn

IndyNDA – Making your Website “Pop”

Are you tasked with keeping a plain vanilla website up to date?  Larry Clarkin is and he was looking for an excuse to update it with some “jazz”.  We will explore some things to add a little punch to your website (or at least reduce the complications in keeping it up to date).  We will explore Microformats, Webslices, jquery, Virtual Earth and ADO .NET Data Services to update a real website (not some Contoso demo).  If all goes well at the end of the night we will click the publish button.  We will also talk about the importance of knowing some web standards before you start coding!

Date: March 12,2009
Time: 6:00 – 8:00
Location: Junior Achievement Center in Indianapolis, IN
Register: No registration required

My friend Jeff Blankenburg asked the question, “What’s In your quick launch bar?”.  I have been planning on making a post similar to this for a while.  Recently, I have reinstalled windows on all 4 of my primary machines (work PC, laptop, and 2 home PCs), and I have been trying to keep the settings the same across each of them so that I feel “at home”.  Part of this is using Live Mesh to synchronize my folders, but it also includes keeping the desktop and installed programs very similar. I thought I would share with everyone how I configure my desktop.

Desktop

My desktop background is always solid black.  I don’t like having a picture in the background distracting me, I like the simplicity, and black is very Remote Desktop friendly.

I tend to place items that I am currently working on on the desktop, but I remove them when I am done.  For instance, if I download software or grab an image, I place it on the desktop first. However,there are 4 icons that always remain. These are:

• User Files: I store everything in here and keep most of it in sync with Live Mesh
• Computer
• Recycle Bin
• Visual Studio 2008

I could easily add more icons, however I prefer to just hit the “Windows Key” and type in the name of the program I want to open.  I guess I just prefer simplicity and neatness above all.

Sidebar

As with my desktop, I don’t like a lot of clutter in my sidebar.  I want to keep it down to useful and non-redundant gadgets.  So, I am not going to have a calendar or clock in the sidebar, since those show up in my taskbar.  And I am not going to have something like a calculator in there which I rarely use. The gadgets I currently have are:

• Multi Meter
• Weather Bug: Everyone loves to talk about the weather.
• Stock Ticker: I don’t know why I bother to constantly keep myself depressed, but I do follow the stock market.
• Remote Desktop: I need to remote desktop into machine frequently.  With this gadget I just type in the machines name.  I don’t have to open a program first.

On my laptop I also have the Wireless Network Meter gadget installed, but I rarely have it displayed.

Quick Launch

I keep a maximum of 10 items in my quick launch bar. This isn’t so much to save space, but because of the “Windows Key” + [Number] shortcuts.  Having these remain the same from machine to machine means that I always know what my shortcut keys are to some of my most used programs.  For instance, I know that “Windows Key” + 2 is always my Visual Studio Command Prompt, etc  The 10 items I use are:

1. Show desktop
2. Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt: I need a command prompt all the time, and the Visual Studio one automatically sets up all of the shortcuts needed for development.
3. Internet Explorer 8: This is my primary browser.
4. EditPlus: My alternative to notepad.
5. Visual Studio: My favorite piece of software.
6. Live Writer: I use this to author all of my blog posts.
7. Zune: My primary media player.
8. Paint.Net: I still edit a lot of images.  While I use Live Photo Gallery for viewing image and SnagIt for capturing images, I prefer Paint.Net for raw image editing.
9. VPN Client: I need this to connect to my work network.
10. SQL Server Management Studio: I deal a lot with databases.  I like to have a separate version of Management Studio open for each database I connect to.  This helps prevent me accidently making changes to the wrong database.

Startup Programs

• Sync Center
• Oovoo: I love this program for performing high quality video with my friends and family.
• Power Options: On a laptop, I find myself changing options a lot.  Power Options also offers a context menu shortcut to “Windows Mobility Center” which has the ever important “Presentation Mode” that I use at every speaking engagement.
• Live Messenger: This is my primary IM client.  I also like how it alerts me when I get a new hotmail message since that is my primary email account.
• Live Mesh: This is how I keep files on all of my machines in sync!
• Networking
• Windows Sidebar Control
• SnagIt: I need to capture screenshots all the time: sometimes for blogging, sometimes for work.
• Volume Control

These programs very just a bit depending on if it is on my laptop or not.  I don’t keep up Power Options or Sync Center on a desktop machine.

I also routinely start up Windows Live Mail as it has quickly become my default email/contacts/calendar program.  I have fallen in love with Live Photo Gallery too for working with my family pictures.

So what does your desktop or quick launch bar look like?  Anything worth sharing?

I have a new 8 min 57 sec training webcast up over ADO.Net Entity Framework.  This is a primer video to help get you started using the technology.  It covers what Entity Framework is, how to get started using it, how to query the database, how to add items to a database, and highlights of couple of “features”.

The video is available through JupiterMedia and can be viewed at http://www.internet.com/video/. Just look for the “Developer Video” titled “ADO.Net Entity Framework”.

Direct links are:
http://www.internet.com/player/index.php?bcpid=1534611832&bclid=1433966034&bctid=4551661001
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1431564240/bclid1433966034/bctid4551661001

For some reason, the folks at INETA thought I was worthy of an INETA Community Champion Award this quarter.  I am not sure what I did to deserve this, but I appreciate the honor and love to assist the community. I am humbled that I was considered for this quarter considering all of the other people out there contributing to the community.  Congrats to all of the other awardees out there!

The INETA Community Champion Award is given out every quarter to 10 individuals who go above and beyond in the community.  This award lasts for a period of one year and can be renewed thereafter.  The Award package includes a letter of commendation, a certificate of achievement, much deserved online recognition, and your choice of a MSDN Subscription, Xbox or $300 gift check.  It’s not a bad little package.  The money can be used to help cover the gas to speak at even more events!  You can read more about the award program on the INETA site here: http://www.ineta.org/Champions/CommunityChampionInfo.aspx.

As always, I encourage every developer to get involved in your local community.  You could start by attending your local user groups, volunteering time, speaking, blogging, working the forums, etc.  It is a rewarding experience that can help you network, assist others, give back to the community, stay on top of your career, and open doors for future employment opportunities.  I am thankful that I have a wonderful wife and family who allow me to invest some of my time back into the community.

I have a new 6 min 23 sec training webcast up over Syndication in WCF.  This video shows you how to use the System.ServiceModel.Syndication namespace to create and consume RSS or Atom feeds. It builds on top of the Understanding REST video, but understanding of REST is not necessary. This video also complements a recent presentation I have been giving called “RESTing on the Web with WCF” which includes a segment on working with syndications.

So what are you waiting for?  Head on over and check out the webcast!

The video available through JupiterMedia and can be viewed at http://www.internet.com/video/. Just look for the "Developer Video" titled "Syndication in .Net".

Direct links are:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1431564240/bclid1433966034/bctid1900229538

I made it back from Microsoft PDC 2008 just in time for my daughter’s 2nd Halloween.  She was only one year old last Halloween, so I was excited about being able to take her out trick-or-treating now that she can actually walk and enjoy the evening.  We didn’t have a costume, but our neighbor’s gratefully let us borrow a tutu, princess crown, and princess wand.  I happened to pick her up a pink “Microsoft Kid” t-shirt while out in LA.  The end result was a costume we like to call “Microsoft Princess”.  The bag she used for collecting candy happened to be a Together @ PDC2008 which helped complete the Microsoft theme.

Here is the complete outfit:

Quite a few people commented about the Microsoft shirt, and it brought in quite a few laughs from the neighbors who knew me.  She did manage to bring in quite a haul, and enjoyed playing with the goods:

i

My wife, Danielle, wanted to try on the outfit:

And she thought I should try it on as well:

Happy Halloween!

Rick Rashid, Senior Vice President of Microsoft Research, took the stage at 8:39 AM PST and introduced both himself and the purpose of Microsoft Research (MSR).  Rick has been with Microsoft since 1991 where he setup MSR and remains to this day.  This was during a time when other organizations were cutting back on R&D.  Rick has been in

MSR Mission Statement:

• Expand the “state of the art” in each of the areas in which we do research
• Rapidly transfer innovative technologies into Microsoft products
• Ensure that Microsoft products have a future

This mission statement has remained unchanged since its inception in 1991.  The division is run much like a computer science department at a university.  It has an open research environment, ties to other universities, keeps rotating interns, welcomes visitors, etc. MSR has an army of 850 PhD researchers spread out across the globe.  Many of these researchers have amazing resumes including three of which who have Turing awards. Over 4000 peer-reviewed publications have gone out this year alone.  Many of the innovations from MSR have made it into products such as TabletPC, Robotics Studio, Surface, Office, Vista, etc. And almost every Microsoft product has some tie back to MSR in some level.

Research departments are really about “Agility”.  They give an organization the ability to rapidly change to the environment and continue to push the barrier and adjust to a changing environment. MSR adds value to Microsoft in many ways:

• Source of IP and new product technologies: MSR generates roughly 25% of the company’s patents and generally MSR patents are more fundamental
• Problem solving: ability to bring smart people to bear rapidly on hard problems confronting products
• Early warning system: ears to the ground in new areas across technologies

Rick discussed a few things that have been going on over the years and new things coming down the pipe. On area that is gaining momentum is cluster computing. One of the key items here is the Dryad stack. DryadLINQ  is used to automatically generate query plans at run time, and Dryad itself is the distributed execution of the code. This can execute on 1000s of notes and terabytes of data.

Sensor Research: Energy Efficiency

Computers can be made more efficient, and computers can be used to make other things more efficient. A tiny sensor device was introduced that can collect humidity and temperature and transmit the data via radio waves back to a central hub.  These can be thought of as “mini weather stations”.  Dozens of these have strung around the Los Angeles convention center to monitor the environmental conditions at PDC 2008 throughout the week.  This is a great experiment to run at an event like this. Throughout the day, some areas are more populated that others. The demo showed in accelerated time a map of the convention center and how the temperature and humidity changed throughout the week.  There is about 100 meg of data pulled per day from the convention center.

SensorMap
SensorMap is a Live Maps application that pulls data from sensors that have been placed in various areas around the world.  This data is stored in the cloud on the SensorWeb.  This data is humidity, wind speed, snow height, air temperature, surface temperature, radiation, etc.  This data can be used to map correlations over time and in various areas.

HealthCare

Computer Science isn’t usually thought of as a cutting edge research area for fighting disease.  However, the underling structure of life is information technology. For $100 today, we can measure 1 million points of variation in a person’s DNA.  There is currently an X-Prize to try to get the entire genome of an individual done for only $1000.  This is really only 2-3 years away.  This data opens huge doors for data mining of both diseases and gain a better understanding of the mysteries of life. 

Fighting HIV/AIDs with machine learning
As we know, the HIV virus mutates at a staggering rate which makes it hard to fight.  However, these mutations are not random and respond to the human immune system.  There is reason to believe that based on this, we could mind the data to find trends and help better treatments or a long term cure.

Worldwide Telescope

Worldwide Telescope (WWT) is a virtual observatory which has  over 1.5 million active users from hobbyist to professional astronomers. Releasing today is the next version of WWT called the Equinox Beta.  This release over doubles the amount of data and will allow you to zoom out to the entire known universe.  This software has amazing potential for both learning and discovery.

Education

General programming only really requires basic arithmetic and could be picked up by very young children.

Boku
Boku is a lightweight programming environment for children. It is a game development platform that is programmed through the XBox controller.  The game itself is a virtual world where you control the main avatar and the objects and actors around it. It uses an iconic based language that is expressed with visual representations of concepts that can be combined together to create meaning. The general format is “When” –> “Do”. Such as, “If you [see fruit], then [eat]”.  Using these activities you are programming how characters in the game interact with through environment.  Concepts such as variable and functions are in the game, but are shown in a intuitive way. You can also program the controls on the gamepad.

SecondLight: Interaction Beyond the Surface

The last topic of the keynote was a technology called SecondLight.  This is a new multi-touch technology that allows you to project through the display and onto other surfaces.  This display is independent and invisible to the primary surface. This can lead to “hidden” information and opens up new doors in interaction with the device. The technology offers pre-distortion so that it will still work with unlevel objects or those that may move. Since the infrared camera is in the device itself it could potentially be used to touch enable the displays above it.

Microsoft PDC 2008 Day 2 kicked off with a Keynote from Ray Ozzie after a montage video of various applications running on Microsoft .Net.  Yesterday’s keynote was about the cloud and services.  Today is all about the client and “hands on” side.  In today’s world it’s hard to image life without PCs.  Image no PCs at our work desk: “What would we do all day?”

The PC is adapting to the changing world around us.  Ubiquitous connectivity and the web have changed our own lives as well.  We have “barley scratched the surface” of what we can do on the web.  We all have a PC phone and web access.  These are separate devices, but they can they be more than just  disconnected devices?

Users find immense value in the storage on their PCs.  A Windows PC most important value is it’s rich interactivity.   to manage our data.  The web on the other hand is our portal to the world.  The internet has become our “common meeting place”, our “common library”, and the “front door to our organizations”.  A phone is always with us, always knows where we are, and as the PC has a natural UI and high performance access to displays.  A application that can span all three of these is brings them together and harnesses the power of each to create something greater than the sum of its’ parts.”.

All of the announcements today are about how to span these three major platforms and how to harness this “synergy

Windows 7

Steven Sinofsky introduced Windows 7 to the world.  The keynote broke down into 7 areas:

1. Introduction to Windows 7 client

We have a new taskbar item in Windows 7 called “Jump Lists”.  This will group related applications in a new way.  For example, the Internet Explorer icon will show each tab in a separate preview window. There is a Word icon that will show open and most recent documents. 

As another bonus, we have “snap to docking” to allow us to dock applications to the sides of the screen and easily create split screens.

Windows Explorer has gotten a few upgrades as well. “Libraries” allow us to group items across the different directories into related libraries.  It also appears that the desktop search has become faster and easier to use.

Home networking has been with us for awhile, but has been hard to use.  “Homegroup” is a simple directory interface to all devices in your home such as PCs, phones, photo screens, etc.  There is a simple settings dialog to allow you to add some security as to what is shared.

MediaPlayer upgrades allow us to “play to” other devices from any device on your “Homegroup”.  This works for any media such as audio, pictures, or videos.  So you can pull or push media to devices around your home.

Desktop Gadgets can now be placed anywhere, not just on the sidebar.  This level of customization brings more personalization to the field.  You can also package up your themes and desktop configuration easily to allow you share or backup your desktop appearance or quickly switch between a personalization setting that is “just what you need” for your task.

The task tray is now customizable.  There is a new interface to manage what the task items do, when they pop alerts, etc.  Hopefully this will help bring some order to the shear number of taskbar applications that are out in the wild today.

Touch support is one of the most highly anticipated features of Windows 7.  Mobile devices and Surface have really brought touch support into the limelight.  We have scrolling, zoom, a full ribbon control in windows, an onscreen keyboard, etc.  There is also about 25% more space between items in the context menus to allow easier control.  Touch support also extends other new features such as the “snap to docking”, etc.  Now dev each application will need to be modified to take full advantage of touch support.  We have yet to see what these environment will look like, but it is probably close to what we see in the Surface SDK today.

Some additional previews include:

2. Software + Services (Windows 7 & Windows Live)

Windows is our Core PC Platform, but Live Service and Live Essentials allow us to extend the power of the web down to the OS.  We will continue to see more integrated support for the Live Platform baked into the OS>

3. Transition from Vista

Transitioning from Vista should stay easily.  Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1 a step closer to Windows 7.  However this is a lot of new support for standards and compatibility.  For instance, Wordpad has been upgraded to support open xml.

UAC was a good idea, but has had its issues.  And to developers, this has been a major pain to say the least.  Windows 7 has lighted things up a bit to help keep a high level of security, but make it easier to work with.

As stated earlier, the ribbon interface is getting more support throughout the OS.  Both Paint and Wordpad will have a ribbon interface out of the box.

4. APIs

Not much has been mentioned about the APIs outside of the touch support.  However there are new DirectX APIs that have been extended down to 2D support in the operating system itself. As well as support for some of the OS features such as “Jump Lists”.

5. Fundamentals

Windows 7 strives to reduce 3 things:

1. Memory on things used like Graphics and the Reference set
2. Disk I/O such as registry reads and Indexer
3. Power usage needs to be reduced for DVD Playback, panels and timers

At the same time Windows 7 increases:

1. Speed of boot time and interactions
2. Responsiveness
3. Scale of processors and memory.  Windows 7 now supports up to 256 processors out of the box.

6. Path to RTM

The path to release for Windows 7 is made up of 7 components:

1. Pre-Beta – available to all PDC attendees
2. “E7” Blog (Engineering Windows 7) will continue to show new features and additions
3. Beta – Will be released early next year
4. www.microsoft.com/windows
5. Feedback tool
6. Customer Experience Improvement data – again this is optional, but as beta users, this information is important to development
7. Release Candidate to RTM Phase – there will be release candidates after the beta

7. Call to Action

• Install and use Windows 7 Pre-Beta
• Develop for 64-bit
• Focus on Fundamentals in your code
• Integrate with Windows 7 Desktop
• Evaluate the new APIs
• Code to Web Standards with Internet Explorer 8
• Download Windows Live Beta @ download.live.com

Developer Support

Scott Guthrie took the stage to introduce more of the development side of Windows 7.  .Net 3.5 sp1 will be built into Windows 7 and support has been added for the new APIs in the OS.  Scott showed how WPF has been extended to have support for touch, “Jump Lists”, the new Windows 7 Ribbon, etc.  All of these run on top of the GPU in WPF to allow for speed and aesthetics.  These allow us to build Surface-like applications for any computer that can run Windows 7 and has touch support.

We do have a new .Net 3.5 sp1 add-on coming soon that will give us new WPF controls: DataGrid, DatePicker, Calendar, and the Ribbon.

We also got a small update on the next versions of the .Net Framework and Visual Studio.

.Net Framework 4

• We will be able to load both the CLR 2 and CLR 4 in the exact same application space.
• The DLR will finally be released
• Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) will be baked into the framework
• We will finally have support for multiple versions of Configuration files in .net .  So you can have separate config files for debugging, staging, and production.

Visual Studio 10

Visual Studio 10 has been rewritten and on WPF and gives us not only a better looking UI but also multi-monitor support.  Other features include:

• Better testing support
• A new editor that is using MEF
• Visualization extensions that can be used in the editor such as viewing “triple slash” comments in a new way and adding links to items in the comments for screen pops.

Web Development Improvements

• Dynamic Data
• More integrated REST Support
• jQuery support including integrated intellisense.  The jQuery.com website now has the intellisense file available for download
• ASP.Net MVC
• Velocity for distributed caching.  A new CTP has been released this week.

Silverlight

According to Guthrie, 1 of 4 machines in the world are now running Silverlight. 100 million of those have upgraded to Silverlight 2.  Third parties are really starting to embrace Silverlight such as AOL’s new email interface and Netflix which will all you to watch movies online through a Silverlight player.  Other Silverlight announcements were:

• Silverlight will be able to run both inside and outside of the browser.
• Visual Studio 2010 has a dedicated Silverlight 2 designer

Live Services

David Treadwell rounded out the first keynote of Day 2 with a series of Live Services announcements. Live Services today consist of: Identity, Communication/Presence, Directory, and Search/Geospatial.  live Services account for  11% of internet minutes and are used by over 460 Million.  There are Hundreds of Thousands of Live services servers located around the world.

Live Mesh

Live Mesh’s purpose is to bridge all of our devices with a single user experience.  We have always known that there was and will be more behind what we have see with Mesh.  Mesh is now a key and underlying part of the Live Services platform.  This will allow user to integrate their clients and the cloud.

The Live Framework was announced as the programming framework to work with Live Services.  It provides a “Live Operating Environment” (which is like the CLR for Live Services) and a new Programming Model.  As a .net developer, you will be able to harness the mesh and access its services in any number of applications.

The key example of how to use the Live Framework was a photo application written in WPF.  This application used the Mesh APIs to share pictures.  With two PCs running this application, if photos were added on one machine, it would sync to the next.  This brought over metadata and everything associated with that object.

Another demo of the Live Framework was given for the web-based BBC iPlayer which uses Mesh services.  This is a social network to allow you to see what  you friends are watching.  It also allows seemly transition from the PC to the mobile device.  If you pause a video online, you can pick up right where you left off on your mobile device.

• The Live Framework CTP will be on teh PDC hard drive today.
• Mesh will have Mobile and Mac support within a week!

Office 14

Most of the new features of Office 14 wasn’t revealed today, but there was demonstration of Office Web Applications.

Office Web Applications

Office Web Applications will be part of Office 14.  These are online versions of the most popular Office applications:  Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote.  The entire application including the ribbon interface are replicated on the online versions.  These applications integrate with their desktop counterparts.  Documents that are shared on Office Live can be accessed by the Web, Desktop, and mobile versions of the applications and since they are stored online can be accessed instantly by other users on various devices.

A Lap Around Windows Azure

This session was previously called “A Lap around Could Services”, but the title was updated after the Windows Azure announcement.  This session is setup to answer two questions:

1. What is Windows Azure?
2. What are the key features?

The “cloud” is defined as:

• Set of connected servers
• On which developers can:
• Install and run services
• Store and retrieve data

As we all know, an Operating System is an open platform that provides: an application execution environment, a shared file system, threading support etc.  Up until now the “Cloud” has bee missing an OS which treats applications as services to provide functionality to users and developers. Windows Azure is an Operating System for the cloud and as such it provides:

1. Abstract execution environment
2. shared files system
3. resource allocation
4. programming environments
5. 24/7 operation
6. pay for what you use
7. simpler, transparent administration

Components of the Platform

1. Automated Service Management
• The platform follows the rules
2. A powerful service hosting environment
• All of the hardware: servicers load balancers
• Virtualized and direct execution
3. Scalable, available storage in the cloud
• Blobs tables and queues
4. A rich, familiar developer experience

Automated Service Management

What’s in a model?

• Service topology and size
• health constraints
• Configuration settings

Develop and model your service, then just deploy and run it!

Maintaining the service health has been made easy.  The goal is to keep a service responsive and healthier even during failures and upgrades.  This is done by providing a level of abstraction where a service declares logical resources in the model.  APls allow you to map logical resources to physical entities.  The service code in turn calls these APIs.

The bottom line is that there is a balance between the poser and ease of use.  You can write well behaved services to reduce your total cost of ownership.  There is a way out.  You can program in “raw” mode by which you can build your own VM and manage the service yourself!

Scalable, Available Storage in the Cloud

Azure provides simple and essential storage abstractions to use:

• Large: blobs, file streams, etc
• Service state: simple tables, etc
• Service communication: queues, locks, etc

There is an emphasis on:

• Massive scale, available, and durability
• Geo Distribution

Rich, familiar Developer Experience

There is a simulated could service environment on the desktop that supports asp.net, .net languages, native code, PHP, etc.  There will be a number of tools and support such as: Visual Studio, Eclipse.  Logging Alerts and Tracing will be also be available to make debugging and maintaining your application easier.

Putting it all Together

Windows Azure is a simple architecture for scalability.  It is designed to encourage best practices:

• Stateless compute + durable storage
• Co-location of computation and data
• Queues for asynchronous processing

Windows Azure is an open platform to connect outbound to any server and a set of open protocols and APIs on all components.