Latest News from Alin Irimie

Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS

Tue, 10 May 2011 21:26:00 EDT

Last March Microsoft released the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7, which provided a set of generic services for Windows Azure. This toolkit was the first step in enabling developers to build native experiences on multiple platforms using Windows Azure. As the next step in this process, Microsoft released Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS. This toolkit contains resources [...] Related posts:

Python wrapper for Windows Azure Storage Sriram Krishnan, Azure Program Manager at Microsoft, published a Python...
The Windows Azure Service Package Ever wondered what is in a Windows Azure Service Package?...
Windows Azure PHP Development Kit Microsoft announced today at TechEd India — a show running...

VMworld 2010 News

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 11:58:01 EDT

OK, I admit it: I’m looking forward to VMworld like a kid looks forward to camp. But for exactly the opposite reason: VMworld marks the end of summer and the beginning of the fall tradeshow season. Summer, despite its all-American goodness, is an odd time for our industry—no less busy due to fall preparations, but [...] Related posts:

Cloud Computing In Plain English rPath has a really good introductory video to Cloud Computing....
COM and Windows Azure. Good News! Some good news here, or bad, depends how you look...
Amazon Releases Virtual Private Cloud Service Amazon Web Services announced today a limited public beta of...

Microsoft Puts Age of Empires in the Cloud

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:30:00 EDT

Microsoft announced the return of Age of Empires, one of the biggest PC franchises in the world, having sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and essentially defined real-time strategy (RTS) games for the PC, says Dave Luehmann, general manager of Microsoft Games Studios. “This next version will really change the rulebook of how those games are played”.

Amazon RDS Reserved DB Instances

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:08:09 EDT

RDS Reserved Instances are available now. You can get a lower price and know that an instance has been reserved for your use. After you make a low, one-time payment, you can use a DB Instance at an hourly rate that is significantly lower than the On-Demand pricing for the same instance class. This will result [...] Related posts:

Amazon Lowers the Price of Reserved Instances Amazon announced a significant price cut in its EC2 service...
I Just Saved A Bunch Of Money By Switching To EC2 Reserved Instances Amazon just announced a new EC2 pricing model, which they...
Amazon’s Answer To SQL Azure - Amazon Relational Database Service Today Amazon released its answer to SQL Azure, the hosted...

Migrate From MySQL to SQL Azure or SQL Server

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:02:53 EDT

Microsoft just announced the release of the first version of SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for MySQL. Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) is a toolkit that dramatically cuts the effort, cost, and risk of migrating from MySQL to SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2. SSMA 2008 for MySQL also supports [...] Related posts:

SQL Azure Migration Wizard SQL Azure Migration Wizard helps you migrate your local SQL...
SQL Server Management Studio Support for SQL Azure The long awaited build of SQL Server Management Studio with...
Free Introduction to Microsoft SQL Azure Microsoft Learning has a training clinic for Microsoft SQL Azure...

Windows Azure AppFabric SDK v1.0 July Update Available For Download

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 09:16:50 EDT

This SDK includes API libraries and samples for building connected applications with the .NET platform. It spans the entire spectrum of today’s Internet applications – from rich connected applications with advanced connectivity requirements to Web-style applications that use simple protocols such as HTTP to communicate with the broadest possible range of clients. The new version introduces [...] Related posts:

July CTP of Windows Azure SDK Released The July CTP of the Windows Azure SDK and Tools...
Windows Azure Data Centers. IP Adress Ranges. Window Azure platform AppFabric has now been deployed to more...
Download Azure SDKs Now Windows Azure SDK - The Windows® Azure SDK provides developers...

Try Windows Azure for One Month for FREE

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 09:31:58 EDT

You can try Windows Azure and SQL Azure for a month for free, with the Windows Azure One Month Pass USA. Through this unique offer, US developers can get a one month pass to try out Windows Azure and SQL Azure - without having to submit a credit card. Limited to US developers, the first 500 to sign up each month [...] Related posts:

Amazon Simple Pay Subscriptions - Special Offers (FREE) and a Free Webinar Amazon recently announced the release of Amazon Simple Pay Subscriptions....
Free Introduction to Microsoft SQL Azure Microsoft Learning has a training clinic for Microsoft SQL Azure...
Windows Azure PHP Development Kit Microsoft announced today at TechEd India — a show running...

Dow Chemical, Hyatt Hotels and University of Georgia Are Now Using The Microsoft Cloud

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:47:33 EDT

The Dow Chemical Co., Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, and the University of Georgia have each selected Microsoft cloud solutions, Microsoft announced today at the start of the company’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting. With this announcement, Dow Chemical, Hyatt and the University of Georgia join the thousands of businesses and government entities representing millions of people that [...] Related posts:

Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint Online released Microsoft is pushing HARD with the Software + Services strategy,...
IBM LotusLive Going The Cloud Way … And The iPhone Way To keep up with the competition, IBM released a full...
Watch Out - Vulnerability in Microsoft Office PowerPoint Could Allow Remote Code Execution Microsoft confirmed a vulnerability in Microsoft Office PowerPoint that could allow...

Ubuntu Cloud platform

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:25:00 EDT

This guest post was written by James Mowery, a computer geek that writes about technology and related topics. For the Ubuntu faithful, the recent announcement that Canonical could be expanding their business relationship with IBM in regards to the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud platform is welcome news. Though details are vague at this point, the early buzz is that a strengthened joint venture between the two companies might possibly be forthcoming at this week’s Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon. As of late April of this year, UEC counts 12,000 active deployments and growing. This is good news as it demonstrates that business is starting to take Ubuntu seriously as an alternative to the established heavyweights in the industry.It’s just one more indicator that the Ubuntu team is making headway in their effort to further penetrate the Cloud Computing market. Of course, Canonical has a long road ahead of them if they expect to steal serious market share from the likes of Amazon and their EC2 service. If reports from the grapevine are correct, the expected announcement will entail a DB2 incarnation especially configured for Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud. Though IBM and Canonical have been partners since 2008, this newest development in their relationship signals even greater co-operation and investment in the partnership between the two companies. Related posts:

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Apple New Magic Trackpad and iMac

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:42:37 EDT

While all other blogs are reporting that apple store is down. I went to the iPhone application for Apple Store and this is what I got….If I select them, it goes into a empty page… But the cat is out of the bag then. Related posts:Embed iPhone and iPod Touch Applications In Your WordPress Blog As PcMagazine [...] Related posts:

Embed iPhone and iPod Touch Applications In Your WordPress Blog As PcMagazine put it, “uQuery is to the App Store...
iPhone Console for EC2 DirectThought, a New York Based company, is working on a...
A Search Engine for the iPhone AppStore With over 70 thousand new applications for the iPhone &...

New Amazon EC2 Instance Type - The Cluster Compute Instance

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:03:00 EDT

With Cluster Compute Instances, you can now run many types of large-scale network-intensive jobs without losing the core advantages of EC2: a pay-as-you-go pricing model and the ability to scale up and down to meet your needs. Each Cluster Compute Instance consists of a pair of quad-core Intel ‘Nehalem’ X5570 processors with a total of 33.5 ECU [...] Related posts:

Amazon EC2 New Features: Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, and Amazon CloudWatch It is easier and easier easier for programmers to...
Amazon Announces Amazon Elastic Map Reduce Amazon announced today the public beta of Amazon Elastic MapReduce,...
Amazon Lowers the Price of Reserved Instances Amazon announced a significant price cut in its EC2 service...

Windows Azure Appliance

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:31:00 EDT

It took a little longer than I was expecting it, but here it is. During its annual Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft introduced the Windows Azure Platform Appliance,designed for service providers, large enterprises and governments and provides a proven cloud platform that delivers breakthrough datacenter efficiency through innovative power, cooling and automation technologies. The Windows Azure platform appliance consists of Windows Azure, [...] Related posts:

On-Premises cloud computing It is official: cloud computing is coming to the enterprise....
Microsoft to Release On-Premises Cloud Computing in 2010 It was inevitable, and I just missed the release by...
Microsoft explains its Cloud Platform on Azure.com After Ray Ozzie started the PDC 2008 in a Keynote...

Windows Azure Architecture Guide

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:24:29 EDT

The Patterns & Practices team have just released the first part of the Windows Azure Architecture guide. This book is the first volume in a planned series about the Windows® Azure™ platform and focuses on a migration scenario. It introduces a fictitious company named Adatum which step-by-step modifies its expense tracking and reimbursement system, aExpense, so [...] Related posts:

Windows Azure Platform TCO/ROI Analysis Tool Microsoft just released a tool to help you figure out...
Free Introduction to Microsoft SQL Azure Microsoft Learning has a training clinic for Microsoft SQL Azure...
Windows Azure Service Management API Microsoft released a preview of the Windows Azure Service Management...

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Now Supports SSL Encrypted Connections

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:47:21 EDT

RDS now generates an SSL certificate for each DB Instance. If you need a certificate for an existing instance youll need to reboot it using the AWS Management Console, the RDS command-line tools, or the RDS APIs. Here are a few interesting things things to keep in mind: SSL encrypts the data transferred ‘over the wire’ between [...] Related posts:

AWS Management Console Now Supports Relational Database Service Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a web service...
Amazon’s Answer To SQL Azure - Amazon Relational Database Service Today Amazon released its answer to SQL Azure, the hosted...
Microsoft the First to Deliver Full Relational Database in the Cloud SQL Data Services team at Microsoft, proudly announced that SDS will...

Security Best Practices for Developing Windows Azure Applications

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:11:00 EDT

As businesses seek to cost-effectively consume IT services, interest is growing in moving computation and storage from on-premise equipment to Internet-based systems, often referred to as "the cloud." This new document from Microsoft focuses on the security challenges and recommended approaches to design and develop more secure applications for Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform. Microsoft Security Engineering Center (MSEC) and Microsoft’s Online Services Security & Compliance (OSSC) team have partnered with the Windows Azure team to build on the same security principles and processes that Microsoft has developed through years of experience managing security risks in traditional development and operating environments.

Windows Azure CDN Pricing

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 09:35:00 EDT

The Windows Azure CDN enhances end user performance and reliability by placing copies of data, at various points in a network, so that they are distributed closer to the user. The Windows Azure CDN today delivers many Microsoft products – such as Windows Update, Zune videos, and Bing Maps - which customers know and use every day. By adding the CDN to Windows Azure capabilities, this large-scale network is available to all Windows Azure customers.

AWS Management Console Now Supports Relational Database Service

Tue, 25 May 2010 08:49:00 EDT

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a web service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient, resizable capacity for an industry-standard relational database and manages common database administration tasks. Amazon RDS gives you access to the full capabilities of a familiar MySQL database. [...] Related posts:

Amazon’s Answer To SQL Azure - Amazon Relational Database Service Today Amazon released its answer to SQL Azure, the hosted...
AWS Management Console CloudWatch Support The AWS Management Console now has complete support for Amazon...
Microsoft the First to Deliver Full Relational Database in the Cloud SQL Data Services team at Microsoft, proudly announced that SDS will...

Programming Windows Azure: Programming the Microsoft Cloud Book

Mon, 24 May 2010 09:00:00 EDT

The book by Sriram Krishnan “Programming Windows Azure” is now available on Amazon. Sriram Krishnan is a Program Manager on the Windows Azure team at Microsoft. At Windows Azure, he ran the feature teams which built the service management APIs, geo-capabilities and several back-end infrastructure pieces. He is a prolific speaker and has delivered talks at several conferences [...] Related posts:

ASP .NET MVC 1.0 Book Available The book written by Phil Haack, Scott Hanselman, Rob Conery, and Scott Guthrie is in stock...
Python wrapper for Windows Azure Storage Sriram Krishnan, Azure Program Manager at Microsoft, published a Python...
Microsoft Set To Announce Commercial Availability of Windows Azure at PDC This Year Microsoft is set to deliver Windows Azure to the public...

Sending Email in Windows Azure

Fri, 21 May 2010 10:59:00 EDT

Steve Marx has a blog post and an example on how to send email in Windows Azure. Sending email directly from Windows Azure presents some challenges, because you don’t have a dedicated IP address, and it’s quite likely that spammers will use Windows Azure to send spam. Once that happens, spam blacklists will quickly flag [...] Related posts:

Email Archiving in the Windows Azure Cloud Using SQL Data Services I wrote previously about the potential of SQL Data Services, the...
I Have A Bad Feeling About Windows Azure After more than two “azure” months, with lots of new...
Weekly Cloud Application: Email Center Pro From Palo Alto Software, creators of Business Plan Pro and...

Amazon CloudFront Streaming Access Logs

Tue, 18 May 2010 08:18:41 EDT

CloudFront delivers your static and streaming content using a global network of edge locations. Amazon CloudFront delivers your static and streaming content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your objects are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance. You can now enable logging for an [...] Related posts:

Amazon CloudFront - Distribute your Content in the cloud CloudFront, the new service from Amazon, will provide you with...
New Amazon AWS SDK for .NET Developers Released Under the pressure from Windows Azure release in a week,...
Amazon vs. On Premises Price Calculator It is a common question these days whether to go...

Microsoft SQL Azure FAQ

Mon, 10 May 2010 08:59:54 EDT

In case you missed it, Microsoft released SQL Azure FAQ, providing an architectural overview of SQL Azure Database, and describing how you can use SQL Azure to augment your existing on-premises data infrastructure or as your complete database solution. Some of the questions answered in the document: How do I connect to SQL Azure? I am unable [...] Related posts:

SQL Azure Migration Wizard SQL Azure Migration Wizard helps you migrate your local SQL...
New CTP for SQL Azure Today, the SQL Azure October CTP 2 was released. This...
Free Introduction to Microsoft SQL Azure Microsoft Learning has a training clinic for Microsoft SQL Azure...

Free Introduction to Microsoft SQL Azure

Fri, 07 May 2010 17:08:48 EDT

Microsoft Learning has a training clinic for Microsoft SQL Azure with lots of useful information. If you’re a newbie or even an experimented Windows Azure developer this is a required reading. This two-hour clinic explores the capabilities of Introduction to Microsoft SQL Azure and covers topics from understanding the SQL Azure Platform to how to achieve [...] Related posts:

SQL Azure August CTP Now Available The Windows Azure Platform training kit was updated with new...
Microsoft the First to Deliver Full Relational Database in the Cloud SQL Data Services team at Microsoft, proudly announced that SDS will...
New CTP for SQL Azure Today, the SQL Azure October CTP 2 was released. This...

Windows Azure Blob API

Wed, 05 May 2010 10:19:25 EDT

Do you want to learn more about Windows Azure Blob API?: * Using the StorageClient library, take a lap around the Blob API and discover the common operations * Hear the latest news and announcements for the platform * Discover a quick tip/gotcha for running the AppFabric Service Bus in Windows Azure Check out the show on channel 9. Useful [...] Related posts:

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 Data Centers. IP Adress Ranges. Window Azure platform AppFabric has now been deployed to more...
Windows Azure Content Delivery Network Microsoft just announced the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network...

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud Now Available In Europe

Tue, 04 May 2010 15:43:17 EDT

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is now available in our EU (Ireland) region. Customers with existing IT infrastructure in the EU can now deploy Amazon VPC in the same region in order to provide the best possible experience for their users. They can also deploy an Amazon VPC in the EU to ensure that their data [...] Related posts:

Amazon Releases Virtual Private Cloud Service Amazon Web Services announced today a limited public beta of...
Amazon clouds over Europe Amazon just made available EC2 to European countries. In a...
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Troubleshooting SQL Azure Connectivity

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:07:00 EDT

Awesome post on how to troubleshoot SQL Azure connectivity by SQL Services Team, helping you to understand some of the common connectivity error messages that you would see while connecting to SQL Azure as listed: A transport-level error has occurred when receiving results from the server. (Provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.) System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding. The statement has been terminated. # An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. A transport-level error has occurred when receiving results from the server. (Provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - An existing connection.

SQL Azure Labs

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:56:14 EDT

I just stumbled upon the SQL Azure Labs website, a place where you can access incubations and early preview bits for products and enhancements to SQL Azure. The goal is to gather feedback from users. All technologies on this site are for testing and are not ready for production use. Some of these features might not [...] Related posts:

New CTP for SQL Azure Today, the SQL Azure October CTP 2 was released. This...
COM and Windows Azure. Good News! Some good news here, or bad, depends how you look...
Amazon’s Answer To SQL Azure - Amazon Relational Database Service Today Amazon released its answer to SQL Azure, the hosted...

ASP.NET MVC 2 Released!

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:05:19 EST

The final release of ASP.NET MVC 2 is now available for VS 2008/Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with ASP.NET 3.5. You can download and install it from the following locations: Download ASP.NET MVC 2 using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer Download ASP.NET MVC 2 from the Download Center The final release of VS 2010 and Visual Web Developer [...] Related posts:

WCF REST Starter Kit Released. Source Code Included. The WCF REST Starter Kit is a set of .Net...
Windows Azure SDK and Tools May 2009 CTP Released Today New for the May 2009 CTP: Support for Visual Studio...
Windows Azure Tools and SDK March 2009 CTP Released Good news! The Azure team at Microsoft Just released the...

SQL Azure Database Size Calculator

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:01:41 EST

Ryan Dunn, the Technical Evangelist for Windows Azure, posted a neat trick on how to measure your database size in SQL Azure. Here is the exact queries you can run to do it: select sum(reserved_page_count) * 8.0 / 1024 from sys.dm_db_partition_stats GO select sys.objects.name, sum(reserved_page_count) * 8.0 / 1024 from sys.dm_db_partition_stats, sys.objects where sys.dm_db_partition_stats.object_id = sys.objects.object_id group by sys.objects.name The first one will give you the size [...] Related posts:

Amazon’s Answer To SQL Azure - Amazon Relational Database Service Today Amazon released its answer to SQL Azure, the hosted...
SQL Azure Migration Wizard SQL Azure Migration Wizard helps you migrate your local SQL...
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Research in the Cloud

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:15:00 EST

Microsoft Corp. and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have announced an agreement that will offer individual researchers and research groups selected through NSF’s merit review process free access to advanced cloud computing resources. By extending the capabilities of powerful, easy-to-use PC applications via Microsoft cloud services, the program is designed to help broaden researcher capabilities, foster collaborative research communities, and accelerate scientific discovery. Projects will be awarded and managed by NSF. More details about funding opportunities are available here.

Service Bus Connection Pricing

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:25:55 EST

C – Connection T – Time is seconds during 5 min interval for which connection is active. Value cannot exceed 300 ( 5*60=300seconds) C1*T1+…+Cn*Tn TWC = ——————— T1+…+Tn Cost = max (TWC1,…, TWCn)/no.of days in month * 3.99 Related posts:Amazon’s Answer To SQL Azure - Amazon Relational Database Service Today Amazon released its answer to SQL Azure, [...] Related posts:

Amazon’s Answer To SQL Azure - Amazon Relational Database Service Today Amazon released its answer to SQL Azure, the hosted...
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Windows Azure SDK And Tools February 2010 Release

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:48:52 EST

This release supports VS 2008 and the upcoming VS 2010 RC. For VS 2010 Beta 2 you can use the November 2009 release. New for version 1.1: Windows Azure Drive: Enable a Windows Azure application to use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive. This allows the Windows Azure application to mount a page blob as [...] Related posts:

Windows Azure SDK Tools November 2009 Release Microsoft just released several new features for Windows Azure through...
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Microsoft Brings Cloud Interoperability Down to Earth

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:45:00 EST

An interoperable cloud could help companies cut costs and governments connect constituents, say Microsoft executives. Governments and businesses alike are looking at cloud services as a way to consolidate IT infrastructure, scale their IT systems for the future, and enable innovative services and activities that were not possible before. To help organizations realize the benefits of cloud services, technology vendors are investing in the hard work of identifying and solving the challenges presented by operating in mixed IT environments, and are collaborating to ensure that their products work well together. In fact, although the industry is still in the early stages of collaborating on cloud interoperability issues, there has already been considerable progress. But what does ‘cloud interoperability’ mean, and how is it benefiting people today?

Windows Azure Data Centers IP Adress Ranges

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:05:00 EST

Window Azure platform AppFabric has now been deployed to more data centers around the world. Previously, when you provisioned a service namespace, you were asked to select a region from a list that contained only United States (South/Central). Now, when you provision a service namespace, you have three more regions from which to choose - United States (North/Central), Europe (North) and Asia (Southeast). If your firewall configuration restricts outbound traffic, you will need to perform the addition step of opening your outbound TCP port range 9350-9353 to the IP range associated with your selected regional data center. Those IP ranges are listed at the bottom of this article. Related posts:

Windows Azure Geo-Location As it was announced at MIX this year, Windows Azure Geo...
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Data Services Update for .NET 3.5 SP1

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:24:00 EST

Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (aka ADO Data Services v1.5) has been re-released and is available for download. If your target is Windows7 or Windows 2008 R2 you can pick it up here. For all other OS versions you can get the release from here. This release targets the .NET Framework 3.5 [...] Related posts:

ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP2 Released Today CTP2 of ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 release is now available...
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Architecting for the Cloud

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:36:00 EST

If you are a software developer and didn’t read this paper you should. This paper is targeted towards cloud architects who are gearing up to move an enterprise-class application from a fixed physical environment to a virtualized cloud environment. The focus of this paper is to highlight concepts, principles and best practices in creating new cloud applications [...] Related posts:

I Have A Bad Feeling About Windows Azure After more than two “azure” months, with lots of new...
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Cloud Mashups - Web 3.0 or Cloud 2.0 ? There’s no question: web mashups are integral part of Web...

Windows Azure Service Status Dashboard

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:43:00 EST

Current status on the health of the Windows Azure Platform is shown here. If you wish to receive notifications for interruptions to any of the services, you can subscribe to the respective RSS feeds. They also maintain the history of the health status for each service for the past five weeks in the form of running [...] Related posts:

The Windows Azure Service Package Ever wondered what is in a Windows Azure Service Package?...
Windows Azure was announced today at PDC “Build new applications in the cloud - or use interoperable...
Weekly Cloud Application: Cloud Status Cloud computing makes it easy to build applications that run...

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...
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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...
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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:

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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:

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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).