It’s game time! SBS/EBS 2008 launch today!
Windows Essential Server Solutions – Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008 - officially launch today.
It’s game time!
This launch represents a significant opportunity for you to capitalize on as a SBSC in the Canadian marketplace. You need to ramp-up your business on the technical and marketing knowledge and start accelerating your sales funnel for these small and midsize business solutions.
Read these previous posts to understand what you need in order to score big:
- Link roundup for SBS/EBS 2008 launch – All the relevant webcasts, training, and reviews.
- Score big with the SBS 2008 and EBS 2008 launch – SBSC exclusive launch webcast on November 13.
- Microsoft study reveals small business IT sophistication – Perspective on today’s economic environment.
- Why you need an Action Pack this October – MAPS special edition toolkit for SBSCs.
- SBSC exams for SBS and EBS 2008 – New 70-653 and 70-654 technical exams for SBSCs.
You can watch the Dream Big worldwide launch webcast live today at 11:00AM EST.
Source- MSDN Blog
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Announcing Internet Explorer Mobile 6
Today at Tech•Ed EMEA we announced the availability of emulators and documentation for Internet Explorer Mobile 6, which is the next generation browser for Windows Mobile. Available on new Windows Mobile devices soon, this browser will provide a high-quality browsing experience on your device that more closely resembles a desktop browsing experience. For all you developers, the Internet Explorer Mobile 6 Emulator is available for download today.
Some of the cool features available with Internet Explorer Mobile 6 are:
- Improved fidelity (support for full fidelity desktop rendering)
- Layout fixes to accommodate a mobile screen (text wrap)
- Enhanced Script and AJAX support (Jscript v5.7 from Internet Explorer
- Improved multimedia experience (Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 for Adobe Flash content)
- Deeper integration with search
- Enhanced cursor navigation model
- Touch and gesture support – pan support
- Multiple zoom levels
- Easy switching between mobile / desktop versions of sites by specifying UA strings.
Source- MSDN Blog
Download DirectX Software Development Kit
This DirectX SDK release contains updates to tools, utilities, samples, documentation, and runtime debug files for x64 and x86 platforms.
For additional information please see Microsoft DirectX Developer Center along with reviewing the Readme for last-minute updates.
MIX 09 Announced
PDC’s just out of the way and it’s already time to start thinking about MIX. I saw this logo on the website and thought we were going to be expected to run a 10K in the desert. Fortunately it’s 10K of storage and a challenge to do as much as you can with only 10k. There’s also the traditional restyle challenge to redesign the MIX home page. Both challenges carry prizes including entry to MIX 09 and hotel accommodation.
Location: The Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas (no surprises these)
Dates: 18-20th March
Website: http://2009.visitmix.com/
Workshops already announced:
- Black Belt Web Standards (Nate Koechley / Molly Holzschlag)
- Harmonizing Designer / Developer Workflow (Robby Ingebretsen / Rick Barraza, Jose Fajardo and Michael Wolf)
Sessions already announced
- C# for Designers (AGI)
- Escaping Flatland in Application Design: Visualizing Data (Peter Eckert — projekt202; Eric Gould Bear — projekt202)
- From Concept to Production: Design Workflow with Microsoft Expression Studio (Christian Schormann — Microsoft Corporation)
- The Future of Microsoft Expression Blend (Doug Olson — Microsoft Corporation)
- Go Beyond Best Practices: Evolving Next Practices to Prosper in the 21st Century (Lou Carbone)
- Improving UX through Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) (Christian Thilmany — Microsoft Corporation; Chris Bernard — Microsoft Corporation)
- Interaction Techniques Using the Wii Remote (and Other HCI Projects) (Johnny Lee — Microsoft Corporation)
- Making Wireframes Work (Bill Scott)
- Microsoft Expression Web: No Platform Left Behind (Wayne Smith — Microsoft Corporation)
- Microsoft Surface: Designing for a New Interactive Era (Joseph Fletcher)
- Optimizing Your Applications with Touch
- The Way of the Whiteboard: Persuading with Pictures (Dan Roam — Digital Roam, Inc.)
- Web Form Design (Luke Wrobleski — Yahoo! Inc.)
Source- MSDN Blog
Virtual Earth Imagery Release – October, 2008
Another massive release of aerial photography for Virtual Earth – 41.07 TB worth.
Spain
- Barcelona
- Malaga
- Manresa
- Mijas
- Oviedo
- Sagunto
- Vigo
- Vilanova
- Vitoria
- Zaragoza
Japan
- Sapporo
- Nagano
- Mt Fuji
- Nagoya
- Osaka-Kyoto
- Matsuyama
- Kobe
- Hiroshima
- Fukuoka-KitaKyushu
Obliques (Bird’s Eye)
United States
- Montgomery, AL
- Elmore, AL
- Baldwin, AL
- Pima County, AZ
- Mohave, AZ
- Coconino, AZ
- Orange County, CA
- Los Angeles County, CA
- Napa County, CA
- City of Merced, CA
- Arapahoe, CO
- Mesa, CO
- Polk County, FL
- Hillsborough, FL
- Volusia, FL
- Orange County, FL
- Broward, FL
- Miami-Dade County, FL
- Manatee, FL
- Jacksonville, FL
- Clark, GA
- Honolulu, HI
- Grundy, IL
- Sangamon, IL
- Marion County, IN
- Wyandotte, KS
- Warren, KY
- Caddo, LA
- Baltimore, MD
- Montgomery (including. DC surrounding metro), MD
- Kent, MI
- Burlington, NJ
- Bernalilo, NM
- Saratoga, NY
- Cumberland, NC
- Cass, ND
- Cincinnati Metro, OH
- Clermont, OH
- Franklin, OH
- Jackson, OR (partial)
- Deschutes, OR
- Monroe, PA
- Philadelphia, PA
- State of Rhode Island
- Houston/Galveston, TX
- Kaufman, TX
- Rusk, TX
- Salt Lake, UT (fill)
- Norfolk, VA
- Chesapeake, VA
- Stafford, VA
- King Co, WA (part 3)
- Washington, DC (metro)
- Milwaukee, WI
- Sheboygan, WI
Japan
- Tokyo, Japan
Australia
- Geelong, Australia
- Melbourne, Australia
Canada
- o Ottawa, Ontario
- o Red Deer, Alberta
- o Lethbridge, Alberta
- o Medicine Hat, Alberta
- o Regina, Saskatchewan
- o Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
- o Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan
- o Swift Current, Saskatchewan
- o Yorkton, Saskatchewan
- o Estevan, Saskatchewan
- o Weyburn, Saskatchewan
United Kingdom
- Guildford, UK
- Grays Tilbury, UK
- Manchester, UK
Germany
- Ruhrgebeit Region, DE
- Koln/Cologne, DE
- Bonn, DE
- Hamm, DE
Austria
- Vienna, AT
Luxembourg
- Luxembourg, LX
You’ve got lots of new imagery to look at. Better get cracking.
Source- Virtual Earth Blog
Announcing the Microsoft patterns and practices: SharePoint Guidance
This is a great assets for all SharePoint and Project Server developers: http://microsoft.com/spg
Overview
This guidance helps architects and developers build SharePoint intranet applications. A reference implementation (RI) demonstrates solutions to common architectural, development and lifecycle management challenges.
This guidance discusses the following:
- Architectural decisions about patterns, feature factoring and packaging.
- Design tradeoffs for common decisions many developers encounter.
- Implementation examples demonstrated in the RI and in the QuickStarts.
- How to design for testability, create unit tests, and run continuous integration.
- Set up of development, build, test, staging, and production environments.
- Managing the application life cycle including upgrade.
- Team-based intranet application development.
Source- MSDN Blog
Announcing PDC 2009! - Nov. 17th-20th.
In case you weren’t able to attend this year’s fabulous PDC. Yesterday, they announced next year’s dates. You may now mark your calendars for this exciting event well in advance and plan to attend next year. It will surely be filled with fabulous presentations, announcements, opportunities to learn, to grow your business, to make great connections with Microsoft and your colleagues in other ISVs.
Craving information now? You can also View Published Session Videos from this year’s PDC by clicking on the desired session title in the session browser and selecting "play" icon located in the session details. Please note that the session recordings open up in a Channel 9 window. Scroll down to resources to download the session PPT deck. Here’s an idea I’m including that I found on another fabulous Microsoft blog:
Make your own mini-PDC!
Lets face it, while many people probably watched the flashy keynotes, its hard for many people to watch the actual technical sessions where the real value is hidden.
How can you solve this? Make your own mini-PDC happen at your company! By next week all of the sessions should be posted online, therefore you can setup 1-day next week, buy some Pizza, invite your colleagues and watch those sessions most relevant to your company’s development future.
Why do this? The answer is a simple list of benefits:
- The team will have a great chance to bond
- The team will learn about technologies that can benefit the business
- Developers given a chance to think about technology and get away from the “Day-to-day” will get inspired about the future. This inspiration will lead to more creative problem solving and who knows, potential costing savings or potential revenue generation for the company!
The list can continue, but these points alone will hopefully be enough for you to take advantage of the fabulous content at PDC. Pick a day an give a mini-PDC a shot! The future really is delicious (and hopefully so will be the Pizza)!
Source- MSDN Blog
.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and 4.0 Poster Available
We have released a nice summary of what we added/changed in 3.5 SP1 and what 4.0 will bring. This is available as a download and as a deepzoom.
Source- MSDN Blog
