Category: Microsoft

Imagine Cup 2010 World Finals have begun

clip_image002Last night marked the opening of the 2010 Imagine Cup World Finals at the Palace of Culture in downtown Warsaw.

400 students, plus mentors, judges, press, and Microsoft employees gathered at the Palace of Culture to celebrate the beginning on the world finals. Attendees were greeted by Jacek Murawski, General Manager for Microsoft Poland, who talked about the change of the world that students competing are contributing to. Murawski told the story of his family and talked about his two young children, saying that he was counting on the students here today to change the world for the better for his children.

Murawski then introduced Waldemar Pawlak, Deputy Prime Minister of Poland who thanked the students for coming to Warsaw, discussed the fact that Poland is the only nation in the European Union with a growing economy, and encouraged the students to talk to one another, to learn from one another, and to explore the culture here in Poland. Pawlak then ended his speech by congratulating the students and thanking Microsoft for its support of students.

Jon Perera, General Manager for Microsoft’s worldwide education efforts then addressed the students. He talked to them about their efforts so far, he congratulated them on coming this far, and he talked about the Imagine Cup as whole. Perera announced that 325,000 students from more than 100 countries competed in this year’s Imagine Cup. Perera said today’s students have access to technologies that didn’t exist just a few years ago. He talked about technologies like Windows Azure, Windows Phone 7, and Silverlight. As the competition begins, Perera encouraged students to take 20 minutes and either by themselves or with their teams, go off somewhere away from the noise and reflect on their journey, to take it all in, and to have a moment to themselves.

Perera was then joined on stage by Murawski and Deputy Prime Minister Pawlak for the ribbon cutting with marked the official opening of the 2010 Imagine Cup World Finals. After the ribbon cutting, students were then treated to a concert by local band Zakopower.

Today students will begin competing and tonight an announcement will be made for the teams that are advancing to the second round.

I’m leavin’ on a Jet Plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again…

I’m at the airport here in Phoenix waiting for my first flight into Chicago, then it will be on into Warsaw from there.

The 2010 International Microsoft Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals start tomorrow evening at 6pm, Warsaw time. I’ll be joining the delegation from the United States, and will focus primarily on competitions that teams from the US are in.

I’m really excited as one of the teams competing this year is a team from Arizona State University (Go Devils!), so expect a little bit of bias. Winking smile (Just kidding!)

I plan on taking tons of photos, and hopefully uploading them daily. They’ll be uploaded to my Picasa Web Album, which is accessible at the following link, http://picasaweb.google.com/taziegma.

Teams competing in the Imagine Cup finals from the United States are:

Software Design – Team Mobilife
     -Wilson To – University of California – Davis
     -Jason Wakizaka – University of California – Davis
     -Helena Xu – University of California – Los Angeles
     -Kayvon Ghaffari – University of California – San Diego

Embedded Design – Team Vaccine
     -Shawn McGhee  – University of Arkansas – Little Rock
     -Trish Day  – University of Arkansas – Little Rock

Touch & Tablet Accessibility – OneView
     -Kristen Shinohara  – University of Washington
     -Shaun Kane  – University of Washington

Touch and Tablet Accessibility – Team Note-Taker
     –Andrew Kelley – Arizona State University
     -David Hayden – Arizona State University

Windows Mobile 7 Rockstar – Beastware
     -Christian Hood – Advanced Technology Academy
     -Eric Lo – Advanced Technology Academy

I’ll be updating next from Warsaw!

Getting Ready for Warsaw

Next week in Warsaw, Poland, Microsoft is holding the 2010 international Imagine Cup World Finals. I’ve been invited to attend and write about the competition as a member of the Microsoft Student Insiders program. (Full disclosure: Microsoft’s PR firm, Waggener-Edstrom, is covering the expenses associated with this trip.)

The Imagine Cup is a competition in which students create software that can be used to potentially change the world for the better. Each year the competition is held there is a theme, and this year’s theme is “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems.”

Based on this theme, Microsoft has chosen the United Nations Eight Millennium Development Goals as the set of tough problems that students have the opportunity to help solve. For a list of the goals, visit the Imagine Cup website.

Students compete in one of five categories. Software Design, Embedded Development, Game Design, Digital Media, and the IT Challenge. The top finalists in these categories will be in Poland next week competing for the top prizes in each of their competitions.

I’ll be there along with the finalists reporting on the competitions and taking in the sights and sounds of Poland. Follow along here on the blog, on Twitter by searching for the hashtag #ImagineCup or myself @tziegmann.

Windows Home Server “Vail” Public Preview – In-Depth – Part 2

Welcome to part two of my in-depth review of the Windows Home Server Code Name “Vail” Public Preview.  Today I’ll be diving in to the new Launchpad and the redesigned Dashboard (was Windows Home Server Console).

Launchpad

Windows Home Server “Vail” introduces the Launchpad. This launchpad provides a central location for launching key tasks on a computer connected to Vail. Out of the box the Launchpad provides access to starting and monitoring backups, accessing the Remote Access website, accessing Shared Folders, and the Server Dashboard. I personally don’t see the point in having the Launchpad. With the Launchpad it requires more clicks to monitor backup status, there is already an icon created on the desktop for both the shared folders and the dashboard, and I can create a shortcut to my Remote Access website in Internet Explorer. While the centralization might be nice for some, I think that for people who are using the current version of WHS they will find it to be more annoying than useful.

Dashboard

In keeping in line with Windows Home Server being a consumer friendly product, Microsoft has updated the dashboard for Vail. My first impression of the Dashboard was that this feels a lot like Dashboard for Small Business Server. In some ways it is. The Home and Small Business Server teams are now one team and development is done by the same group that built SBS. However, the UI is far from complete, and I think it will be safe to expect some major changes to the UI between now and the final product. Vail, being that it’s built on Server 2008 R2, leverages Terminal Services RemoteApp to provide access to the Dashboard from a client computer. A new feature of the dashboard that I think will be useful is the Alert Viewer, which provides detailed information about any issues on the network and provides solutions to the issues. What is interesting to note is that there is now a dedicated Add-ins tab. However, it looks like that this tab is currently functioning as a placeholder as there is nothing on the Add-ins tab currently. Being that this is pre-beta code it’s unclear at this time how add-ins will work in Vail and whether or not add-ins written for v1 will be able to easily be ported over to Vail. From a storage standpoint, Microsoft has added some new buttons that provide easy access to checking the health and integrity of the storage pool and shared data. Another new Vail feature, which I will discuss separately, is the ability to create a HomeGroup on Vail. Using Vail as the HomeGroup hub has the ability to provide further integration with Windows 7. There are some welcome changes to the Vail Dashboard, and I can’t wait to see what it looks like with some more polish.

Coming up in Part 3, Remote Access, Media Sharing and Media Center, HomeGroup support, and final conclusions.

Windows Home Server “Vail” Public Preview – In-Depth – Part 1

After playing with the Public Preview of Vail for a few days now (Full Disclosure: Microsoft released it to myself and select others last week) I’m ready to provide an in-depth review of the Public Preview.

To provide some background for those that may be new to Windows Home Server, it is a product that Microsoft released in the Fall of 2007 as a way for consumers to have a central location to protect their data, connect family and friends, organize their precious memories and important data, and would grow with them. This first version of Windows Home Server has proved wildly successful and almost three years later it’s due for a new version. (For more information about the current version of Windows Home Server visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver)

Enter Vail. Vail is the next major release of Windows Home Server. Vail will be a 64-bit only release based on Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft has not said anything about the feature set for Vail yet, so I’m only able to go off of what is in the Public Preview build.

Let’s dive in to Vail.

Server Setup

As the current version of Windows Home Server is designed to be a headless (no keyboard, mouse, or monitor) system, we can also expect that Vail will be the same. Judging by the way that Server Setup is done, it looks like Vail is designed to continue being a headless system. One major change though between WHSv1 and Vail is that instead of installing the Connector software first and then walking through OOBE (Out-Of-Box Experience), setup is performed via a web browser first, and then you will be directed to the Connector software installer. In this build, setup is fairly straight forward. Setup asks for the usual items, server name, password, Windows Update settings, etc. However, one thing that it does not ask which surprises me somewhat is for date and time settings. Mismatched date and time settings between server and client can cause many problems.  According to the release notes provided by Microsoft, this is a known issue and we can expect to see it resolved in a later release. After the server is configured, it reboots and then prompts you to browse to another built-in webpage to download the Connector software.

Connector Installation

Not much as changed between WHSv1 and Vail when it comes to installing the Client Connector. Currently, you navigate to http://servername/connect which then redirects you to the same http://servername:55000/ website that exists in v1. The look of the installer has changed, and I expect it to change up through the Beta release. As a part of the installer it will install .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 if you don’t already have that installed, and it will verify that your system meets the requirements for installation. According to the release notes, Vail supports Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

In Part 2, I’ll discuss the new Launchpad and Dashboard features.

Announcing Windows Server Code Name “Vail”

VailLogo

Today Microsoft has announced the release of a public preview of Windows Server Code Name “Vail.” What is Vail, you may be asking right now. Vail is the successor to Windows Home Server which was released almost three years ago.

Expected in this new release of Vail is DLNA compliance, media streaming over the internet, improved backup and restore functionality, improved storage technologies, and other new features.

Today’s release is of a pre-beta public preview. This build is not intended for use by everyone. I strongly suggest that you ensure that you have a backup of all data that you plan on storing on Vail as there may be unknown issues with Drive Extender in this release.

As expected, Vail is a 64-bit only release, requires 1GB of RAM or more, and minimum 160GB hard drive for installation. If you are interested in trying out today’s release, visit the Microsoft Connect website for details on how to download the build. If you are having issues with the build or want to discuss this release, head on over to the Vail Beta forums. (I’ll be there to help answer questions as best I can.)

Microsoft has also published a Getting Started guide for Vail, which I have mirrored and you can download by clicking here (Right-click to download as some browsers interpret the .DOCX file as a ZIP file).

For those that may be wondering, the build number of today’s release is 7495 and I’ve posted both the CRC and SHA hashes below for the ISO.

To check the CRC of the downloaded ISO, follow these instructions.

To run MSCDCRC against an ISO file that you have downloaded follow these steps.

  1. Download MSCDCRC to the same folder that you downloaded the Vail ISO to (Click here to download MSCDCRC)
  2. Open a Command Prompt window and navigate to the folder from Step 1
  3. Type "MSCDCRC InstallDVD.iso" (without quotes)
  4. The integrity check will take a few moments to complete. After the check is complete compare the CRC and SHA hashes to the hashes posted below
  5. If the hashes match then you have successfully downloaded the ISO

Volume label : GB1SHSxFRE_EN_DVD
CRC             : 0xA7798933
SHA1            : 0xB10EBB38B9A758D67DC70CC3F815A2F65390A570

Students, start your development tools!

logo For those of you who are interested in developing for the new Windows Phone 7 Series, but aren’t quite sure how to do it, well have I got a resource for you.

Today Microsoft has announced a free, yes FREE, training kit for developing on Windows Phone 7 Series. This training kit will walk you through getting started with developing for Windows Phone 7, developing using Silverlight, and developing using XNA. By getting started today with learning how to develop for Windows Phone 7 series, you can get a jumpstart on your competition.

From what I can tell, it looks like this training kit will be updated over time as more is made known about Windows Phone development.

You can download the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools by clicking here.

You can access the Windows Phone 7 Series Training kit by clicking here.

Codename “Dallas” – What is it and why should you care?

dallas At PDC09, Microsoft introduced “Dallas,” and today Microsoft made some announcements as to the progress of Dallas. Dallas is a service for developers and information workers who are looking for access to premium datasets to use in a variety of ways.

Today at MIX10, Microsoft announced that Dallas has reached the CTP2 stage. As a part of their announcement, Microsoft has introduced new partnerships with Navteq (mapping data), Pitney Bowes, Weather Central, and Zillow.com. Dallas as other partners as well such as the US Government, the United Nations, Associated Press, and others. I had the opportunity today to sit down with Moe Khosravy, Group Manager for Dallas, and he told me that by the time Dallas officially launches, there will be 1400 available datasets from the United Nations alone.

Developers, why should you care about Dallas? Dallas offers you the opportunity to access premium data in its raw form, and use that data to create new, interactive, and exciting experiences around the data. Say for example you are building a news app for Windows Phone and you want to use AP stories as your source material. You can through Dallas access AP content, and use that content in your application. Or say that you are developing a website for a nonprofit organization that is focusing on combating crime, and you want to be able to provide the organization with intelligence about crime data and connect it with a map or some other visualization, Dallas will let you do this. You can access the data via OData or Atom, and can create applications for phones, web, and the desktop.

Information Workers, why should you care about Dallas? Dallas provides you with instant access to data that can be used in a variety of ways. Microsoft has said that they will be providing a connector for Office products that will allow you to through an application like Excel, manage this data from initial subscription, to acquisition of data, to helping to create your final product. The example that Khosravy used during our meeting today was that say you were working on a briefing document about crime and you wanted to provide information about crime in your area. All you need to do is through Excel click a button and select the set of crime related data available in Dallas that want to use, and it will down the raw data for you, and you can then manipulate the data to suit your needs.

Throughout my talk with Khosravy and in reading the information on the Dallas website, there is one keyword that stands out and that is the word “marketplace.” I asked about how the marketplace will work, and what content providers can expect from Microsoft in terms of revenue sharing. The question wasn’t answered directly however what was said is that content providers will set their price and then Microsoft will markup the price from there. At least right now from what I’ve been told, Microsoft isn’t using Dallas to generate tons of revenue for themselves. Depending on the popularity of Dallas this could change in the future. At launch, Microsoft will provide three different methods for purchasing data. There will be free trial access, per transaction pricing, and subscription pricing. Free trial access with allow you to preview the data, and perform some basic manipulation of the data, all through the browser, to see if the data is right for you. Per-transaction pricing is simply that. You pay per transaction. This is good for cases where you are developing an application but you’re not sure of the popularity, so instead of paying big subscription fees, you pay per transaction and determine which pricing model works better for you. The subscription based model is setup such that you pay one fee and you get unlimited calls to that data. With subscription pricing, you can also cache the data on your own server to reduce the number of calls made to Dallas for the data.

From what I was told today, the marketplace should go live in the second half of this year. CTP2 is live now, and you can visit http://www.microsoft.com/dallas and access data from the AP, the United Nations, Data.gov, and more.

Today at MIX2010: Internet Explorer 9 Preview

image

I’m sitting here in the Day Two keynote at MIX2010, and Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager for Internet Explorer,  announced the release of the Internet Explorer Platform Preview. This preview is simply the Trident rendering engine with a frame around it. The goal of the IEPP is to enable developers to begin to test websites with the IE9 rendering engine and to provide early feedback on the future of Internet Explorer.

Microsoft is incredibly excited about the future of IE, and it’s evident by  their promise to developers to provide frequent updates to the Internet Explorer Platform Preview. According to Hachomovitch, Microsoft will be updaing the IEPP approximately every eight weeks.

With Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft is commited to web standards support. They are working closely with the W3C on web standards and working to ensure that web pages will look the same across any browser.

Internet Explorer 9 will be providing rich support for HTML5, GPU-accelerated graphics and text, and a much improved JavaScript engine. To see these new features in action, download the Internet Explorer Platform Preview from http://www.IETestDrive.com (Note:this is not a full browser. It lacks security and simple navigation functionality. For testing only.)

Check out the demos, check out the performance of your own website, browse to other websites that you use, and check out the coolness of the new Internet Explorer Platform.

“Phone Developers, Phone Developers, Phone Developers”

Wow, what a day. It’s the end of day one, and I’m sitting here in my room along with Joe, Jeremy, and Hilary, our Microsoft sponsor and we’re all furiously typing away on our respective blogs.

Today at MIX 2010 it was all about Windows Phone 7 Series. There were some pretty exciting annoucements made today. First off, Microsoft announced the release of a CTP of the Development Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 series, a new version of Expression Blend is coming with support for Windows Phone 7 design, and Microsoft talked up Silverlight (60% of all PCs have Silverlight installed).

With Windows Phone 7 Series on the way later this year, Joe Belfiore, Corporate Vice President, gave the first “deep dive” around development for Windows Phone 7. Microsoft is taking more ownership and control over Windows Phone 7 than they have in the past with previous versions of their mobile OS. It was mentioned that Microsoft will be allowing OEMs to create Windows Phone devices that are only made in two different screen resolutions. The first being WVGA (800×480) and the second being HVGA (480×320). All Windows Phone 7 Series devices will be required to contain the following features.

    • GPS, Accelerometer, Compass, Light and Proximity sensors
    • 5 megapixel or more camera, flash required, and a hardware button to access the camera will be required
    • 256MB or more of RAM, and 8+ GB of storage
    • DirectX 9 acceleration
    • Mandatory hardware buttons for Start, Search and Back

Microsoft is also “owning” push notifications and location awareness. Microsoft will be providing location and notification services that developers can take advantage of to enable these services within their applications.

The most exciting part of today’s keynote is the release of development tools for Windows Phone 7. The best part is that these tools are and will remain free. In today’s release they provided the following tools.

    • Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone (Note: if you have already have another version of VS installed it will install the Windows Phone portion as an add-in your existing install)
    • XNA Game Studio 4.0
    • Silverlight 4 Release Candidate
    • Expression Blend 4 Beta (Note: This is a separate download (which you can find here). According to Microsoft, the bits didn’t make it in time for inclusion into the broader tool package)

If you are interested in developing for Windows Phone 7 Series, which after seeing all the demos so far I encourage developers to do, head on over to the Windows Phone 7 Series Developer Center and download the bits.