Microsoft
Developers making plans for Windows Azure, Windows 7
Like most of the developers and other technology professionals who attended the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2008, held at the Los Angeles Staples Center Oct. 27-30, Dan Rigby attended to see the latest from Microsoft and rub elbows with Microsoft’s technology leaders.
But equally important was the chance to catch up with peers, and meet some new ones. “It’s a great place to build up relationships with people I may only have met online,” says Rigby, Lead Software Engineer at Interactive Intelligence, an Indianapolis-based firm that develops call center software. “I got to meet a lot of people that I knew online through Facebook and other sites, and I saw a lot of Microsoft people I may have met in forums or online.”
For the 6,500 developers who attended PDC2008, the event is one of the tech highlights whenever it’s offered. But along with the usual networking, this year’s PDC also was the site of some major announcements from Microsoft. These include the Azure Services Platform, which extends Windows and an array of services such as Microsoft SQL Services and Microsoft .NET Services in the “cloud,” and also a first look at the new features of Windows 7 as well as Office 14, (code name of the next version of Office) and the new Office Web applications.
For most PDC attendees, the broad outlines of a Microsoft cloud initiative, plus a look at Windows 7, and Office had already been the subject of speculation and techosphere discussion, online and elsewhere.
Source- Microsoft Press Release
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Microsoft Expands Virtualization Initiatives With HP
In support of HP’s Virtual Connect announcement, this morning Microsoft announced product, sales and services initiatives with HP designed to help businesses more easily adopt and deploy virtualization to help lower IT costs and make IT more efficient. Microsoft and HP have expanded their work together to sell and market storage, server and networking consolidation solutions, and desktop virtualization solutions, to small, medium and large business customers worldwide. Companies such as MLS Property Information Network are already using Microsoft and HP virtualization technology to more easily meet their business needs.
Today’s announcements include the following:
- In the U.S., Microsoft is working with HP to offer products, training and deployment services for storage, networking and server consolidation that are designed to help customers decrease costs, increase business agility, improve data access and protection, and increase employee productivity.
- Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 and Microsoft System Center are supported on the new industry-standard HP Virtual Connect 10Gb Flex-10 module, which works with the Flex-10 NIC on the recently introduced HP ProLiant BL495c virtualization blade server. Together these technologies enable customers to significantly lower costs with their server and network consolidation, business continuity and dynamic datacenter projects.
- The HP and Microsoft Frontline Partner Program in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) has registered 60 percent of eligible partners across 36 countries to receive access to virtualization training, sales tools, marketing materials, workshops, and incentives targeting small and medium-size businesses.
- Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) features will be delivered in the HP ProLiant PRO Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manage, running on HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers, in December 2008. PRO is a feature of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 that enables dynamic management of virtual machines and the associated host platforms.
- HP Business Service Automation will enable automation of change and configuration management processes across virtual and physical environments for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V environments, and will integratewith System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 for managing advanced platform capabilities, while decreasing downtime associated with uncontrolled change. HP is scheduled to release a beta in Q1 2009.
For more information please visit Microsoft PressPass.
Windows Server 2008 IIS7 Media Packs
IIS Media Pack 1.0 provides media-specific extensions that make delivering media from IIS simple, and cost-effective. Building on the security, reliability and manageability of IIS 7.0, IIS Media Pack protects media assets as it increases scalability by supporting more concurrent users per server. IIS supports all media file types, including WMV, FLV, and MP4, and provides a great way to use your existing Web infrastructure to deliver compelling rich media content to clients such as Microsoft Silverlight.
With IIS 7.0 and IIS Media Pack 1.0, you can:
- Save bandwidth costs by throttling the speed at which content is downloaded
- Decrease network traffic by metering your media deliveries
- Monetize media assets with Web playlists that personalize content and prevent ad skipping
- Intelligently deliver multiple media formats from a single server, including .wmv, .flv, and .mp4 files
Get the 64bit pack @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=93d59f79-9555-473d-a07a-e21020d1fc25&DisplayLang=en.
Get the 32bit pack @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2cf81f25-1692-41f7-b916-db5c7e44e6ea&DisplayLang=en.
Source- Technet Blog
A note about Hotmail, SkyDrive and Photos storage space
In the latest Windows Live documentations, it mentioned several details about the storage spaces that are available throughout Windows Live services:
- Hotmail’s minimum storage space will be 25GB and this will be ever-increasing as required at the end of each month, making it basically unlimited storage (subject to abuse control)
- The ability to download e-mail attachments from Hotmail into SkyDrive - allowing these attachments to be shared with others or just kept private in your online folders
- SkyDrive’s storage space will also be 25GB, as reported previously, in addition to Hotmail’s storage space
- SkyDrive will allow uploading of up to 1000 new files stored per month - note that this only applies to newly uploaded files during that particular month, so total storage can well exceed 1000 files (it is unsure whether this also applies to Photos and those Hotmail e-mail attachments downloaded into SkyDrive)
- Photos, although its storage space is supposed to be shared with SkyDrive, will only offer 5GB for storage of photos. (However this may be subject to change - at least we certainly hope so. Perhaps someone forgot to update it in the documentations?)
Source- Liveside
Upcoming Windows 7 Media Center Feature: Broadband TV Services
By now you have most likely seen what some of the new features of Media Center in Windows 7 are, but don’t think it stops there. In this series I will go over some of the upcoming features of Media Center in Windows 7. These features should start appearing in later builds, although some of them will be limited to specific testers.
I’ve been saying for some time now that Media Center needs to get serious about Internet and Web TV. Microsoft will be taking another step toward this in Windows 7 by integrating online services in the standard EPG (Guide). Below is a screenshot of the type of integration you can expect. Wouldn’t it be sweet to get Hulu in here?
Source- Chris Lanier’s Blog
Microsoft to Launch Online SharePoint, Exchange on Monday
Microsoft on Monday will release the first of several of its hosted business-productivity services.
The company will launch Exchange Online and SharePoint Online at an event in San Francisco, according to an e-mail from its public relations firm. A spokeswoman from the agency confirmed that the services will be available Monday.
Exchange Online, a hosted version of Microsoft’s messaging software, and SharePoint Online, a hosted collaboration application, are part of the Microsoft Online Services suite but also are available as individual services.
In addition to Exchange Online and SharePoint Online, the full suite includes Office Communications Online, a hosted unified-communications offering, and Office Live Meeting, a hosted Web-conferencing application. The subscription price for the suite, which Microsoft unveiled in July, is US$15 per user, per month.
Individually, Microsoft will be selling hosted Exchange Online for $10 per user, per month; SharePoint Online for $7.25 per user, per month; Office Communications Online for $2.50 per user, per month; and Office Live Meeting Online for $4.50 per user, per month, the company said.
Microsoft has said it will release Office Communications Online and Office Live Meeting Online as individual services early next year.
Source- PC World
Windows 7’s new “play all” decoders, encoders and transcoding capabilities
When Microsoft finally releases its follow-up to Windows Vista and it’s time for the business and technology journalists (yes, bloggers are included in that grouping) across the world to decide if Windows 7 is the kind of operating system most people should want to use, Microsoft will be facing a deluge of biased individuals that, aware of that bias or not, won’t give Windows 7 a fair shake.
Maybe it’s wrong for a journalist to call out colleagues and fill you in on a dirty little secret that occurs across all sectors of this business, but, to be quite honest, I don’t think I’m saying anything that should come as a surprise to anyone who follows the news. Regardless of whether you believe in the greatness of Steve Jobs or you choose to use only Velocity Micro machines out of your hatred for Apple, one thing remains: the vast majority of journalists use Macs to write their stories and have a deep-seated love for Apple products.
Source- istartedsomething
Windows Live profile Wave 3 images
I have been able to get some of the images of Windows Live Profile which is going to be released by the Windows Live team in the coming months.
The images is of one of the test account. Just check this images-
The details page in Windows Live Profile shows the activities related to the Windows Live products,you can even add friends in it,making it somewhat similar to a social networking site.
