Author: rich_gibbons

Microsoft Licensing, products, Cloud, and more!
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Microsoft Visual Studio 2010


Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 has got a great page over at the MSDN site. VS 2010 is being worked on in conjunction with the .NET Framework 4 and these together “mark the next generation of developer tools from Microsoft” by delivering key innovations in:

·         Democratizing Application Lifecycle Management

·         Enabling emerging trends

·         Inspiring developer delight

·         Riding the next generation platform wave

·         Breakthrough Departmental Applications

These are the pillars of Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010.

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2010–Democratizing Application Lifecycle Management

Among the great new functionality in VSTS 2010:

 

·         Discover and identify existing code assets and architecture with the new Architecture Explorer.

·         Design and share multiple diagram types, including use case, activity and sequence diagrams.

·         Improve testing efforts with tooling for better documentation of test scenarios and more thorough collection of test data.

·         Identify and run only the tests impacted by a code change easily with the new Test Impact View.

·         Enhanced version control capabilities including gated check-in, branch visualization and build workflow.

Visual Studio Team System 2010 includes a new Architecture Explorer for the discovery and exploration of existing code assets and application architectures.

Microsoft are also aiming to make it easier for devlopers to catch and fix bugs, including the great “No repro” bug by “dramatically simplifying the tools required to integrate testing across the lifecycle”.

Licensing change:

In an effort to bring the various aspects of the lifecycle closer together, VS 2010 will feature a unified Development & Database product. From 1st of October 2008 (01/10/08) current Developer or Database edition MSDN subscribers can access both products via MSDN.

I want to say thanks to Brian Randell over at Plural Sight for this find

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Microsoft Visual Studio 2010-Codename Hawaii


Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (Codename Hawaii)-here either 2009 or 2010 is having it’s feature list updated regularly by Microsoft.

Visual Studio 2009 is set to focus especially on the needs of the small to medium business (SMB’s) and to help them “ride the latest (2009) platform technologies”.

New features are set to include:

A new Windows Presentation Foundation-based (WPF) text editor

More “modern,” with more of a WPF look and feel throughout the suite

Smaller in size (in code and data) than Visual Studio 2008

More reliable and modular

Microsoft will also be adding support for jQuery Javascript library to VS 2010.

Thanks to Mary Jo Foley for the news..

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Microsoft Silverlight on Mobile Devices


Microsoft Silverlight will soon be on Mobile Devices..which can only be a good thing for enhancing the mobile experience of both consumers and business users.

More information will be revealed at the PDC 2008 (I seem to be saying that a lot!) as we can see from the session description:

In this demo-filled session learn how to extend your existing Silverlight 2 applications to work on Windows Mobile and how to build rich mobile Silverlight apps that access device peripherals such as camera; GPS or WiFi or the radio stack for location; as well as mobile web services. We also talk about tooling enhancements in Microsoft Visual Studio that support Silverlight app development on Windows Mobile, what to consider when delivering eye-popping UI on mobile, and help you understand the key differences from developing Silverlight apps for the desktop.

I’m excited to see what Microsoft can do with this..particularly as Adobe don’t seem to be taking Flash for Mobile Devices quite seriously..come on MS, make it easier to enjoy rich content on the move!!

As always, I want to give a shout out to Mary Jo Foley @ ZDNet for this.

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Microsoft Silverlight 2


Microsoft Silverlight 2 is ready and will be available for download from tomorrow (14/10/08) here. (If you’re currently using Silverlight 1 or Silverlight 2 beta, you will be automatically upgraded through Microsoft’s patching mechanisms over the next few months..)

It works on a variety  of platforms such as Windows, Mac OS X, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. No iPhone compatibilty (thanks to Apple) but it does play nice with Google Chrome.

Microsoft have done some great inter-operability work here as the .Net Framework and Common Language Runtime are now officially cross-platform, with Windows and Mac support today and Linux (via Novell’s Moonlight work) coming some time in the future.

Mary Jo Foley over @ ZDNet also tells us that more mobile/SIlverlight related news will be revealed at PDC 2008..

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Windows Mobile gets iPhone Features?!


iPhone features on Windows Mobile? A great idea and one that is pretty much upon us!

The guys over at PocketPC Thoughts have got a great post covering iWindowsMobile. a suite of Apps that give WinMo most of the best iPhone features! They tend to focus around interacting with just a finger so sans stylus.

My favourite addition is:

Winterface
Winterface is the next generation mobile shell that completely changes the standard Windows Mobile UI. Winterface allows users to place icons to applications, settings, files, and contacts on several screens that can be rotated with sliding finger gestures.

This would be really quite useful and save me a whole heap of time finding apps and just generally getting to my stuff 🙂

FunContact is their contact application which makes it easier to navigate with fingers. While I’m not particularly into this as an addition, I do like this sentence..”a swift touch will stop scrolling, not open an accidental contact“…that happens to me quite a lot!

Head over to PocketPC Thoughts to read more here.

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Microsoft System Center Ops Manager 2007-Gartner Report


Microsoft System Center Ops Manager 2007 is the subject of a Garnter report which can be found here.

It contains some good bits and some bad bits, but over all SCOM 2007 gets a good review, particularly for Windows environments. Gartner point out that it’s heterogeneous capabilities aren’t yet as strong as it’s competitiors which is true, but we’re not far from a new version!

On the subject of Microsoft System Center Ops Manager 2009. the Gartner reports includes information that Microsoft have partnered with EMC which will enable the new version “to have the potential to significantly increase its network management capabilities, including EMC’s network topology discovery and health monitoring capabilities.”

Gartner sign off with “in Microsoft Windows-centric environments, its presence will continue to grow, resulting in an overall gain in ECA market share” which is certainly promising. I’d be interested to see a similar report once SCOM 2009 is out in the wild..

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Microsoft MSDN Kid’s Corner


Microsoft MSDN Kid’s Corner is a great starting place for kids that are interested in coding, programming etc..I’d liked this when I was younger that’s for sure!

My little one isn’t quite 2 yet but I’m excited about this site already 🙂

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Windows 7-UAC fine tuned


Windows 7 will still contain UAC (User Access Control) but an easier to use, more friendly than the UAC currently in Vista. Over on her “All About Microsoft” blog, Mary Jo Foley has a statement from Ben Fathi, President for Core OS Development in which he states:

“We’ve heard loud and clear that you are frustrated. You find the prompts too frequent, annoying, and confusing. We still want to provide you control over what changes can happen to your system, but we want to provide you a better overall experience. We believe this can be achieved by focusing on two key principles. 1) Broaden the control you have over the UAC notifications. We will continue to give you control over the changes made to your system, but in Windows 7, we will also provide options such that when you use the system as an administrator you can determine the range of notifications that you receive. 2) Provide additional and more relevant information in the user interface. We will improve the dialog UI so that you can better understand and make more informed choices.”

This can only be a good thing 🙂 I do think that the UAC, in principle, is very good idea.

There are a lot of users who aren’t always able to tell that something is potentially dangerous and when the UAC pops up, they tend to cancel the action “just in case”-preventing accidental deletions, virus infections etc.

However, I do agree that the prompts are too frequent and not always clear. As an experienced Windows user, I do get annoyed with the prompts for things such as changing various settings, installing things etc as I know what I’m doing and the UAC just slows me down.

So the ability to alter the scope of the prompts will be good…as long as the settings can be different for each account on the machine…I don’t want the missus to have the same permissions as me..it’d all be on fire within 10 minutes 😉

For an in depth look, head over to the Windows 7 Engineering blog here.

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Microsoft Business Intelligence (Project Gemini)


From Microsoft, Project Gemini could be the Business Intelligence turning point it needs. Despite SQL & Excel’s popularity, Microsoft were ranked just 5th in the BI arena by IDC.

Microsoft are getting serious about BI now, with SQL 2008, Performance Point Server 2007,Excel 2007 and now Project Gemini. Forrester say Gemini will

“bring an Excel-based user analytics mashup tool into the core of Microsoft’s BI and data warehousing product portfolio”. Tools currently only available to OLAP modelers will be accessible to all as an “in-memory, drag-and-drop, pivot-table-enabled” dashboard.

Tom Casey, Microsoft’s general manager for SQL Server business intelligence had this to say:

“is a game-changer for the BI and OLAP space, and will usher in the post-OLAP age of supremely versatile, deeply dimensional, user-developed analytics.”

The full article can be seen over at ComputerWorld here.

Nigel PEndse has got a great article over at olapreport, where he makes some great insights into what Gemini means for Microsoft, their users and their competitors..it’s well worth checking out.

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Microsoft Web Platform Installer Beta


Deploying Microsoft IIS wesbites isn’t always the easiest thing in the world, due to all the various pre requisites you need such as .Net Framework, certain drivers etc..it’s certainly caught me out a few times over the years! If this happens to you, don’t worry because now help is at hand with:

Microsoft Web Platform Installer Beta (download here) or more info here

What does it do?

It’s a single tool that helps you get started installing the Microsoft Web Platform including:

· ASP.NET components

· SQL Server 2008 Express Edition (and all required pre-requisite software)

· IIS Extensions such as Secure FTP, Web Playlists, URL Rewriter, and much more!

· Visual Web Developer

· .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

· SQL Server Driver for PHP

and Supported Operating Systems are: Windows Vista RTM, Windows Vista SP1, Windows Server 2008

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