Latest News from Alin Irimie

Microsoft to Open Source the .NET Micro Framework

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:45:00 EST

Today, at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) here Los Angeles, Microsoft announced not only the release of version 4.0 of the.NET Micro Framework, but also that they are open sourcing the product and making it available under the Apache 2.0 license, which is already being used by the community within the embedded space. The .NET Micro Framework, [...] Related posts:

.NET Micro Framework for Embedded Developers Today at the Embedded Systems Conference Boston, Microsoft Corp. announced...
Microsoft Web Sandbox Goes Open Source We talked before about Microsoft’s web sandbox here. Web Sandbox is...
Open-Source Clouds Joyent Inc. today announced the signing of an agreement to acquire...

Windows Azure Facebook SDK

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:30:00 EST

OK, OK … maybe not (just) for Windows Azure, but Microsoft just released a Facebook client library to help make it easier for everyone to create some interesting applications. Clarity Consulting Inc. developed the original Facebook Developer Toolkit for the Microsoft Visual Studio Express Team. They worked with Microsoft on an idea to keep the code [...] Related posts:

Project Riviera - Windows Azure Code Samples Project Riviera is a comprehensive code sample to demonstrate how...
I Have A Bad Feeling About Windows Azure After more than two “azure” months, with lots of new...
What Windows Azure means for corporate developers By now, you’ve no doubt heard about the newly unveiled Azure...

Windows Azure SDK Tools November 2009 Release

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:15:00 EST

Microsoft just released several new features for Windows Azure through the Windows Azure Tools and SDK. This release adds support for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and VWD Express 2010 Beta 2. What’s New? Service Model UI: A redesigned and significantly more complete interface for manipulating Role configuration information. To access, double-click on a role node in the [...] Related posts:

July CTP of Windows Azure SDK Released The July CTP of the Windows Azure SDK and Tools...
Windows Azure Tools and SDK March 2009 CTP Released Good news! The Azure team at Microsoft Just released the...
COM and Windows Azure. Good News! Some good news here, or bad, depends how you look...

Microsoft Pinpoint And “Dallas” - Discover Windows Azure Data

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:14:41 EST

Microsoft released today at PDC Pinpoint - the fast, easy way for business customers to find experts, applications, and professional services to meet their specific business needs—and build on the software they already have. At the same time, Pinpoint helps developers and technology service providers quickly and easily get software applications and professional services to market—and [...] Related posts:

Are you an Azure startup? Microsoft will help you! Azure or not, if you just started your own company...
Microsoft Reveals Windows Azure Prices Today at World Wide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Microsoft...
Microsoft Set To Announce Commercial Availability of Windows Azure at PDC This Year Microsoft is set to deliver Windows Azure to the public...

Windows Azure Platform TCO/ROI Analysis Tool

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:15:00 EST

Microsoft just released a tool to help you figure out how much money you can save by switching to Windows Azure from your on-premises solution. The tool will provide you with a customized estimate of potential cost savings you (or your company or organization) may achieve by building on the Windows Azure Platform. Upon completion of [...] Related posts:

Windows Azure Management Tool Released Microsoft released a new Windows Azure Management tool. The Windows...
Microsoft Set To Announce Commercial Availability of Windows Azure at PDC This Year Microsoft is set to deliver Windows Azure to the public...
Microsoft Rebrands Windows Genuine Advantage Tool in Windows 7 Just a quick heads-up to the Windows 7 early adopters....

New Amazon AWS SDK for .NET Developers Released

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:22:00 EST

Under the pressure from Windows Azure release in a week, Amazon unveiled today a new AWS SDK for .NET Developers providing .NET developers the libraries, code samples, and documentation needed to build an AWS-powered application using any programming language capable of making .NET calls including C#, Visual Basic, Windows PowerShell, and other compliant languages. .NET [...] Related posts:

Amazon Announces Amazon Elastic Map Reduce Amazon announced today the public beta of Amazon Elastic MapReduce,...
Yahoo! Distribution of Hadoop Released on GitHub The Yahoo! Distribution of Hadoop is tested and deployed on...
Amazon EC2 New Features: Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, and Amazon CloudWatch It is easier and easier easier for programmers to...

SQL Server Management Studio Support for SQL Azure

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:00:00 EST

The long awaited build of SQL Server Management Studio with support for SQL Azure is available today for MSDN and TechNet subscribers and will be generally available for the rest of the world as of tomorrow. The download page can be found here. This support is included as part of the November CTP release of SQL Server 2008 R2. This release not only includes SQL Azure support from within SSMS but a wealth of other SQL Server 2008 specific features. Check out this blog entry for more.

Windows Identity Foundation Release Candidate

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:15:00 EST

Windows Identity Foundation (formerly called code name Geneva framework) is a new Microsoft .NET Framework technology that gives developers a programming model and SDK to create new advanced identity capabilities in .NET applications. It provides developers pre-built .NET security logic for building claims-aware applications, enhancing either ASP.NET or WCF applications. Windows Identity Foundation makes it easier to [...] Related posts:

Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate Now Available For Download Buried under the buzz around Windows 7 RC release, here’s an important...
Windows 7 Release Candidate Is Available From Microsoft Today Microsoft Corp. announced the Release Candidate (RC) of Windows...
Windows 7 Beta UAC Security Flaw Expert blogger Long Zheng blows the whistle on a security flaw in...

Windows Azure Content Delivery Network

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:21:06 EST

Microsoft just announced the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) to deliver Windows Azure Blob content. Windows Azure CDN offers developers a global solution for delivering high-bandwidth content. Windows Azure CDN has 18 locations globally (United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America) and continues to expand. Windows Azure CDN caches your Windows Azure blobs at [...] Related posts:

Windows Azure - Data Storage The goal of Azure storage services is to allow applications...
Use Windows Azure Right Now. No Invitation Code Needed. Until this week, using the Windows Azure CTP meant signing...
Azure Blob and Queue Library for .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5 - No Azure SDK Needed This is something I really like. It is a library...

Windows Azure Platform Launch Update

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:43:00 EST

PDC 2009 is an exciting event the Windows Azure community. Concurrent with the conference Microsoft will begin the Windows Azure platform transition from a CTP to business. For your planning purposes, this post maps out the key stages of that transition that you should be aware of. At PDC 2009, on November 17th, 2009, a number of [...] Related posts:

Windows Azure Updated SDK and Tools for Visual Studio Available Now Today, in less than three months since its announcement, Microsoft’s Windows...
Azure Services Training Kit Feb 2009 Update The Azure Services Training Kit was released the other day....
Windows Sensor and Location Platform Windows Sensor and Location Platform is a new development platform from...

Amazon’s Answer to SQL Azure - Amazon Relational Database Service

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:30:00 EDT

Today Amazon released its answer to SQL Azure, the hosted cloud database offered by Microsoft. The newest service form Amazon, the Amazon Relational Database Service, or Amazon RDS for short, now in beta, makes it easier for you to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. You get direct database access without [...] Related posts:

Amazon EC2 New Features: Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, and Amazon CloudWatch It is easier and easier easier for programmers to...
Microsoft the First to Deliver Full Relational Database in the Cloud SQL Data Services team at Microsoft, proudly announced that SDS will...
Amazon Announces Amazon Elastic Map Reduce Amazon announced today the public beta of Amazon Elastic MapReduce,...

Embed iPhone and iPod Touch Applications In Your WordPress Blog

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:00:00 EDT

As PcMagazine put it, “uQuery is to the App Store what Google is to the Web”. After allowing people to create an account and mark the applications they like or they own, today, even more good news: uQuery, just released a WordPress plugin allowing you to easily display an iPhone/iPod Touch application details in your blog. [...] Related posts:

A Search Engine for the iPhone AppStore With over 70 thousand new applications for the iPhone &...
iPhone Console for EC2 DirectThought, a New York Based company, is working on a...
Weekly Cloud Application: PageGlimpse PageGlimpse is a service providing developers with programatic access to...

Visual Studio 2010 Is Cloud Friendly

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:15:00 EDT

New testing options in Visual Studio 2010 will help ensure quality code. Enhancements to the integrated development environment mean that whether modeling, coding, testing or debugging, developers can use existing skills to deploy a growing number of application types. Built-in tools for Windows 7 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010, new drag and drop bindings for Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation, and interoperability with innovative technologies (such as those for the database, ASP.NET model view controller, unified modeling language, Expression, and multicore) allow developers to bring their visions to life.

New CTP for SQL Azure

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:04:00 EDT

The SQL Azure October CTP 2 was released. This CTP represents the complete feature set that will be available in the SQL Azure at PDC. The October CTP has been deployed to one of Microsoft’s go-live production clusters. This production cluster is significantly larger and more powerful than the machine cluster that is supporting the August CTP but is a completely separate machine cluster serviced by a dedicated developer portal (https://sql.azure.com). Accounts for all existing users of the current CTP (August CTP) have been automatically provisioned for access to the new October CTP and environment. Simply go to the developer portal (https://sql.azure.com) to activate your account and create servers on the new environment. Servers you create on this new environment will be reachable through a new address(.database.windows.net).

The New Windows Azure Logging

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:14:46 EDT

At commercial launch, Windows Azure will feature an improved logging system. The new system will give users greater flexibility over what information is logged and how it is collected. The initial Community Technology Preview provided a logging API that allowed developers to write custom messages to an append-only log. The API was built on top of the efficient [...] Related posts:

Using Logging in a Windows Azure Application Sceencast Using Logging in a Windows Azure Application: Windows Azure provides...
Accessing Windows Azure Logs Logs are important. No question about it. On Windows Azure, you can...
Windows Azure Service Management API Microsoft released a preview of the Windows Azure Service Management...

Shared Snapshots for EC2 Elastic Block Store Volumes

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 12:45:00 EDT

Amazon is adding a new feature which significantly improves the flexibility of EC2’s Elastic Block Store (EBS) snapshot facility. You now have the ability to share your snapshots with other EC2 customers using a new set of fine-grained access controls. You can keep the snapshot to yourself (the default), share it with a list of [...] Related posts:

Amazon Announces Amazon Elastic Map Reduce Amazon announced today the public beta of Amazon Elastic MapReduce,...
Finally here - AWS Management Console Feeling the pressure from Microsoft’s Windows Azure, Amazon works hard...
Amazon EC2 New Features: Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, and Amazon CloudWatch It is easier and easier easier for programmers to...

Windows Azure Service Management API

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:00:00 EDT

Microsoft released a preview of the Windows Azure Service Management API to help you manage your deployments, hosted services and storage accounts. This is a REST-based API which users can code against in their toolset of choice to manage their services. You can find the documentation (along with the rest of the Windows Azure documentation) here. This is [...] Related posts:

Windows Azure Management Tool Released Microsoft released a new Windows Azure Management tool. The Windows...
Windows Azure Geo-Location As it was announced at MIX this year, Windows Azure Geo...
Windows Azure Cloud Outages The cloud is crashing too often. However, if you want...

Microsoft Global Security Warns Against New Local Threat

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:51:53 EDT

Really, you can’t make these things up! Update: check out local station report on the incident for up-to-date details … Related posts:Mashup Security - Web Sandbox Web Sandbox is a project from Microsoft Live Labs, a...Microsoft Reveals Windows Azure Prices Today at World Wide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Microsoft...Microsoft hires Yahoo!’s Qi Lu to Run Online [...] Related posts:

Mashup Security - Web Sandbox Web Sandbox is a project from Microsoft Live Labs, a...
Microsoft Reveals Windows Azure Prices Today at World Wide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Microsoft...
Microsoft hires Yahoo!’s Qi Lu to Run Online Services Group Microsoft Corp. today announced that Dr. Qi Lu will join...

SQL Azure Migration Wizard

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:45:00 EDT

SQL Azure Migration Wizard helps you migrate your local SQL Server 2005 / 2008 databases into SQL Azure. The wizard walks you through the selection of your SQL objects, creates SQL scripts suitable for SQL Azure, and allows you to edit / deploy to SQL Azure. The SQL Azure Migration Wizard (SQLAzureMW) will let you identify [...]

Microsoft's George Moore Talks About Windows Azure

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:00:00 EDT

Check out Charles Torre talking with George Moore (21 year MS veteran) about the what is behind the billing of Azure. Watch the interview on Channel 9 here. 21 year Microsoft veteran and Software Architect George Moore is involved in defining and implementing an effective strategy for taking Windows Azure from technology preview to enterprise business [...] Related posts:

Windows Azure Geo-Location As it was announced at MIX this year, Windows Azure Geo...
Windows Azure Cloud Outages The cloud is crashing too often. However, if you want...
I Have A Bad Feeling About Windows Azure After more than two “azure” months, with lots of new...

Use Windows Azure Right Now

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:15:00 EDT

Until this week, using the Windows Azure CTP meant signing up and then waiting a couple of days for an invitation code to arrive by email. No more. You can now register for access and receive an invitation code right there on the spot. No email, no waiting, no excuses. Go register now and build something cool! (Via [...] Related posts:

No More Invitation Codes Needed For .NET Services And SLQ Services No more invitation codes needed for .NET Services and...
Weekly Cloud Application Showcase We’re starting a new weekly cloud application showcase. Every week,...
Project Riviera - Windows Azure Code Samples Project Riviera is a comprehensive code sample to demonstrate how...

A Search Engine for the iPhone AppStore

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:27:49 EDT

With over 70 thousand new applications for the iPhone & iPod Touch on the iTunes AppStore, it is no doubt that Apple hit the mark there. With the tremendous success of this new emerging developers platform it is becoming really hard for end users to find the application that they want to install in their [...] Related posts:

Weekly Cloud Application: A Twitter Search Engine From Dare Obasanjo, a Microsoft employee working for the Windows...
iPhone Console for EC2 DirectThought, a New York Based company, is working on a...
IBM LotusLive Going The Cloud Way … And The iPhone Way To keep up with the competition, IBM released a full...

ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP2 Released Today

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:06:58 EDT

CTP2 of ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 release is now available for download here. ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP2 is the second tech preview release of the next version of ADO.NET Data Services. This release (v1.5) will target the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 & Silverlight 3 platforms and provide new client and server side features for data [...] Related posts:

SQL Data Services. Your Database in the Cloud. One thing in the Microsoft cloud I find really interesting...
Project “Velocity” CTP2 released Development Manager from Microsoft, Seshu Adunuthula, announced today the availability...
Cloud Data Hub. Synchronize Your Data in the Cloud. In the previous article about SQL Data Services (SDS) I...

AWS Management Console CloudWatch Support

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 09:28:32 EDT

The AWS Management Console now has complete support for Amazon CloudWatch. You can enable CloudWatch for any or all of your EC2 instances using the console and data will be available in a moment or two. You can select one or more running EC2 instances to see the CloudWatch data in graphical form. You can [...] Related posts:

Finally here - AWS Management Console Feeling the pressure from Microsoft’s Windows Azure, Amazon works hard...
Amazon EC2 New Features: Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, and Amazon CloudWatch It is easier and easier easier for programmers to...
Azure Services Management Tools Microsoft released a set of feature reach management tools for...

Project Riviera - Windows Azure Code Samples

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:07:07 EDT

Project Riviera is a comprehensive code sample to demonstrate how to develop multi-tenant highly-scalable line-of-business application on Windows Azure Platform. This sample is developed by Global Partner Architecture Team in Developer & Platform Evangelism group at Microsoft in collaboration with Cumulux (a Cloud ISV partner). Riviera uses Customer Loyalty Management scenario for illustration purpose but many [...] Related posts:

Live Framework Code Gallery - New Samples Available Microsoft Live Team have new samples available for your use...
July CTP of Windows Azure SDK Released The July CTP of the Windows Azure SDK and Tools...
COM and Windows Azure. Good News! Some good news here, or bad, depends how you look...

Amazon Releases Virtual Private Cloud Service

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:00:00 EDT

Amazon Web Services announced today a limited public beta of Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), a service that makes it possible for customers to create their own logically isolated set of Amazon EC2 instances to connect to their existing network over a secured VPN connection. With this, Amazon is taking a major step in making [...] Related posts:

Amazon Releases AWS Import/Export. Transfer Your Data To/From Amazon Bypassing the Internet Amazon just released the BETA of a really useful service...
Amazon is shutting down Alexa thumbnail service. I know the alternative. Amazon Web Services is discontinuing the Alexa Site Thumbnail service. The...
The Cost of a (Private) Cloud Lately I see many medium to large companies asking wether...

Amazon Lowers the Price of Reserved Instances

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:27:37 EDT

Amazon announced a significant price cut in its EC2 service offerings. The one-time fee for all Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances will now be 30% cheaper than previously offered. The reserved instances program essentially allows users to make a one-time payment for instances, ‘reserving’ them in order to receive discounts in subsequent hourly usage rates. The program [...] Related posts:

I Just Saved A Bunch Of Money By Switching To EC2 Reserved Instances Amazon just announced a new EC2 pricing model, which they...
Amazon clouds over Europe Amazon just made available EC2 to European countries. In a...
Amazon Announces Amazon Elastic Map Reduce Amazon announced today the public beta of Amazon Elastic MapReduce,...

SQL Azure August CTP Now Available

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:00:00 EDT

The Windows Azure Platform training kit was updated with new SQL Azure content in the August release of the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit. Many of the existing labs and presentations were also updated, in line with recent developments of the platform. The kit now includes: Hands On Labs Building Windows Azure Services Windows Azure Native Code Windows Azure and [...] Related posts:

Azure Services Training Kit Feb 2009 Update The Azure Services Training Kit was released the other day....
Azure Services Training Kit available for download The Azure Services Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of...
Windows Azure Mix ‘09 Videos Here’s a list of Windows Azure related videos presented at...

!exploitable Crash Analyzer

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 09:56:09 EDT

One of the most useful things I found recently is the !exploitable (pronounced “bang exploitable”), a Windows debugging extension (Windbg) that provides automated crash analysis and security risk assessment. The tool first creates hashes to determine the uniqueness of a crash and then assigns an exploitability rating to the crash: Exploitable, Probably Exploitable, Probably Not [...] Related posts:

Watch Out - Vulnerability in Microsoft Office PowerPoint Could Allow Remote Code Execution Microsoft confirmed a vulnerability in Microsoft Office PowerPoint that could allow...
Oracle in the Amazon Cloud Last week Amazon Web Services hosted a Web seminar, with...
Microsoft Encourages Families to Get Game Smart This is new from Microsoft. It reminds me of the...

July CTP of Windows Azure SDK Released

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:30:00 EDT

The July CTP of the Windows Azure SDK and Tools was just released. Download them here. What’s new in the Windows Azure SDK? The Windows Azure SDK supports developing and deploying services containing multiple web and worker roles. A service must include at least one role, of either type, and may include zero or more web roles, [...] Related posts:

F# and Windows Azure If you’re an F# enthusiast like we are, then you’ll...
Windows Azure VM Hours Calculation If you wonder how analytics are calculated in windows azure,...
COM and Windows Azure. Good News! Some good news here, or bad, depends how you look...

Microsoft Reveals Windows Azure Prices

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:40:43 EDT

Today at World Wide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Microsoft announced Windows Azure prices and made available the service level agreements (SLA) surrounding Azure services. They also announced the release date for Windows Azure. Windows Azure will be offered for purchase through a consumption-based pricing model and will continue to offer promotional discounts to enterprise customers. [...] Related posts:

Microsoft Set To Announce Commercial Availability of Windows Azure at PDC This Year Microsoft is set to deliver Windows Azure to the public...
Microsoft Reveals New Windows Phones With Marketplace and My Phone Services Today at Mobile World Congress 2009, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve...
Why Microsoft Won’t Release Windows Azure This Year … But They Should. Some time ago I had a bad feeling about Windows...

Microsoft To Release On-Premises Cloud Computing in 2010

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:15:00 EDT

It was inevitable, and I just missed the release by a few months, however, Microsoft is working hard on releasing the “Private Cloud”, your own on-premises cloud computing software. With the Microsoft cloud strategy, organizations can now move towards cloud computing models with the confidence that their existing investments in their datacenter are safe, and can [...] Related posts:

On-Premises cloud computing It is official: cloud computing is coming to the enterprise....
Sun Microsystems Expands Cloud Computing Offerings With Acquisition of Q-layer Sun Microsystems, today announced it has acquired Q-layer, a cloud...
The Cloud Has Been Hacked! Back on premises … OK. So there are two main reasons why companies are...

SQL Data Services Rebranded to ‘SQL Azure’

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:15:00 EDT

Microsoft announced the rebranding of SQL Services to SQL Azure. SQL Server is the data platform of Windows Server so it made sense to align the name of the relational database platform of Windows Azure, SQL Azure. SQL Azure is built on the SQL Server technology foundation which delivers relational database capabilities in the cloud. [...] Related posts:

Email Archiving in the Windows Azure Cloud Using SQL Data Services I wrote previously about the potential of SQL Data Services, the...
SQL Data Services. Your Database in the Cloud. One thing in the Microsoft cloud I find really interesting...
SQL Server Data Mining Cloud Services The SQL Server Data Mining team is working to extend...

.NET Services June 2009 QFE to be Released Thursday

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:23:40 EDT

According to the .NET Services Team blog, they’re going to release the June 2009 QFE on 6/18/2009 (Thursday). Users will have NO access to .NET Services Portal and .NET Services during the scheduled maintenance down time from 6/18/2009 noon to 6/18/2009 5pm. There are a few things you should be aware if you’re using .NET Services [...] Related posts:

No More Invitation Codes Needed For .NET Services And SLQ Services No more invitation codes needed for .NET Services and...
Windows Azure Management Tool Released Microsoft released a new Windows Azure Management tool. The Windows...
Yahoo! Distribution of Hadoop Released on GitHub The Yahoo! Distribution of Hadoop is tested and deployed on...

Using Paging and Leverage Concurrency in Windows Azure Tables, Sync Between Devices and the Cloud with FeedSync

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:33:24 EDT

There are three new “How Do I” videos on Windows Azure, you can watch and learn from. How Do I: Use Paging in Windows Azure Tables. To improve application usability, many applications need to support viewing data page-by-page. In this screencast, you’ll learn how Windows Azure table storage provides a built-in mechanism that allows you to [...] Related posts:

Project “Huron”. Early Adopter Program. Cloud Sync. In case you missed it, here’s an update on Project “Huron”. ...
Porsche, Live Mesh and Windows Azure Using Azure Services Platform, a Microsoft “motoring guy” links his...
Windows Azure - Data Storage The goal of Azure storage services is to allow applications...

Yahoo! Distribution of Hadoop Released on GitHub

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:00:00 EDT

The Yahoo! Distribution of Hadoop is tested and deployed on Yahoo!’s clusters, which are the largest Hadoop clusters in the world. The Yahoo! Distribution of Hadoop is a source distribution that is based entirely on code found in the Apache Hadoop project. Hadoop is a free Java software framework that supports data intensive distributed applications.

Windows Azure PHP Development Kit

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:15:00 EDT

Microsoft announced at TechEd India — a show running simultaneously with TechEd 2009 in Los Angeles, a new software development kit for people interested in building apps in PHP for Windows Azure cloud. The PHP SDK for Windows Azure, a.k.a. PHPAzure, is an open source project, available for download from Microsoft CodePlex. The SDK provides consistent programming model for Windows Azure Storage (Blobs, Tables, Queues).

ASP.NET MVC For Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 Released

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:00:00 EDT

Microsoft released ASP .NET MVC for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1, you can find the installer on CodePlex. Many of the new Visual Studio 2010 features intended to support the TDD workflow fit very nicely with ASP.NET MVC, which ScottGu will describe in an upcoming blog post.

Email Archiving in the Windows Azure Cloud Using SQL Data Services

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:15:00 EDT

I wrote previously about the potential of SQL Data Services, the sql-in-the-cloud offering from Microsoft. Today, Shankar Pal, the Principal Program Manager for SQL Data Services (SDS) team mentioned in the SQL Data Services blog that Microsoft Exchange Hosted Archive (EHA) is built in the cloud, using SDS. He writes about how well the SDS relational database service platform scales.

Cloud Data Hub. Synchronize Your Data in the Cloud.

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:06:52 EDT

In the previous article about SQL Data Services (SDS) I mentioned one of the most exciting technologies coming out from Microsoft this year: Data Hub, “an aggregation of enterprise, partner, desktop and device data within SQL Data Services”. It is a service, hosted in the Azure data centers along with SQL Data Services you can use to [...] Related posts:

SQL Data Services. Your Database in the Cloud. One thing in the Microsoft cloud I find really interesting...
Codename “Huron” - Sync Enabled Cloud Data Hub “Huron” provides synchronization capabilities within SQL Data Services to enable...
Project “Huron”. Early Adopter Program. Cloud Sync. In case you missed it, here’s an update on Project “Huron”. ...

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Timelines Shared Today

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:06:52 EDT

Steve Guggenheimer’s anniversary keynote address at leading OEM conference highlights partner opportunities with upcoming Microsoft innovations: “Today during a keynote address at Computex 2009 in Taipei, Microsoft’s OEM Division Corporate Vice President Steve Guggenheimer revealed that the company is confident with the progress made with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and that as a [...] Related posts:

Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate Now Available For Download Buried under the buzz around Windows 7 RC release, here’s an important...
SQL Server Data Mining Cloud Services The SQL Server Data Mining team is working to extend...
Windows Azure Tools and SDK March 2009 CTP Released Good news! The Azure team at Microsoft Just released the...

Windows Azure SDK and Tools May 2009 CTP Released Today

Thu, 28 May 2009 23:11:34 EDT

New for the May 2009 CTP: Support for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 Update for Visual Studio 2008 Improved integration with the Development Fabric and Storage services to improve the reliability of debug and run of Cloud Services from Visual Studio Enhanced robustness and stability Release notes/Known issues are available here. Visual Studio 2010 compatible samples are available here. Direct download link [...] Related posts:

Windows Azure Tools and SDK March 2009 CTP Released Good news! The Azure team at Microsoft Just released the...
Windows Azure Updated SDK and Tools for Visual Studio Available Now Today, in less than three months since its announcement, Microsoft’s Windows...
Windows Azure Management Tool Released Microsoft released a new Windows Azure Management tool. The Windows...

SQL Data Services: Your Database in the Cloud

Thu, 28 May 2009 14:00:00 EDT

One thing in the Microsoft cloud I find really interesting is SQL Data Services and Huron/Data Hub - SQL cloud sync service, one of the “cloud” offerings I believe has lots of potential and will really make sharing of data in the cloud so much easier.

COM and Windows Azure. Good News!

Mon, 25 May 2009 02:00:50 EDT

Some good news here, or bad, depends how you look at it. COM is not supported in Windows Azure. Azure VM’s don’t have COM runtime installed. Currently the only native code supported in Windows Azure is standard C++ library and standard Win32 API. There’s no MFC, COM or COM+. To expose the C++ library as a [...] Related posts:

Windows Azure Tools and SDK March 2009 CTP Released Good news! The Azure team at Microsoft Just released the...
Windows Azure Geo-Location As it was announced at MIX this year, Windows Azure Geo...
Windows Azure PHP Development Kit Microsoft announced today at TechEd India — a show running...

Azure Commercially Available from November

Fri, 22 May 2009 04:15:00 EDT

Microsoft is set to deliver Windows Azure to the public by the end of this year, with an imminent announcement at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles on November 17, 2009.

Amazon Releases AWS Import/Export. Transfer Your Data To/From Amazon Bypassing the Internet

Thu, 21 May 2009 11:15:07 EDT

Amazon just released the BETA of a really useful service if you’re dealing with huge amounts of data. AWS Import/Export accelerates moving large amounts of data into and out of AWS using portable storage devices for transport. AWS transfers your data directly onto and off of storage devices using Amazon’s high-speed internal network and bypassing the Internet. For significant data sets, AWSImport/Export [...] Related posts:

Anything connected to internet has “cloud” in the name, even hardware Nowadays, everything that has to do with the internet has...
NASDAQ Is Using Amazon For Data Storage In a story at Wall Street & Technology, Penny Crosman writes about how...
Amazon Announces Amazon Elastic Map Reduce Amazon announced today the public beta of Amazon Elastic MapReduce,...

Windows Azure Management Tool Released

Wed, 20 May 2009 14:24:14 EDT

Microsoft released a new Windows Azure Management tool. The Windows Azure Management Tool was created to manage your storage accounts in Windows Azure. Developed as a managed MMC, the tool allows you to create and manage both blobs and queues. Easily create and manage containers, blobs, and permissions. Add and remove queues, inspect or add [...] Related posts:

Windows Azure - Data Storage The goal of Azure storage services is to allow applications...
Azure Blob and Queue Library for .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5 - No Azure SDK Needed This is something I really like. It is a library...
Windows Azure PHP Development Kit Microsoft announced today at TechEd India — a show running...

ASP.NET MVC For Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1

Mon, 18 May 2009 16:42:58 EDT

If you haven’t heard yet, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 is now available for MSDN subscribers to download. It will be more generally available on Wednesday. You can find a great whitepaper which describes what is new for web developers in ASP 4 which is included. One thing you’ll notice is that ASP.NET MVC is not included [...] Related posts:

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 Available Today! On Monday, May 18th, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 (Professional,...
Windows Azure SDK Jan 2009 CTP doesn’t work on Windows 7 Beta In a post on windows azure forums, a Microsoft employee...
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio As Ray Ozzie was announcing yesterday during the Microsoft Professional...

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 Available Today!

Mon, 18 May 2009 12:10:54 EDT

On Monday, May 18th, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 (Professional, Suite and Team Foundation Server) will be available to MSDN Subscribers through MSDN Subscriber Downloads and to the general public on Wednesday, May 20th through Microsoft Downloads. Related posts:Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio As Ray Ozzie was announcing yesterday during the Microsoft Professional...Windows Azure [...] Related posts:

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio As Ray Ozzie was announcing yesterday during the Microsoft Professional...
Windows Azure Updated SDK and Tools for Visual Studio Available Now Today, in less than three months since its announcement, Microsoft’s Windows...
Free Windows 7 Beta 1 DVD What’s the catch? You’ll need to attend MSDN Developer conference....

Amazon EC2 New Features: Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, and Amazon CloudWatch

Mon, 18 May 2009 09:17:43 EDT

It is easier and easier easier for programmers to build sophisticated, scalable, and robust web applications using AWS, and now it became even easier. Amazon just released a new set of features to complement its EC2 offerings: load balancing, auto scaling, and cloud monitoring are now available. The features work together to help you to build highly [...] Related posts:

Amazon Announces Amazon Elastic Map Reduce Amazon announced today the public beta of Amazon Elastic MapReduce,...
Finally here - AWS Management Console Feeling the pressure from Microsoft’s Windows Azure, Amazon works hard...
Amazon clouds over Europe Amazon just made available EC2 to European countries. In a...