Kit Ong's News Pick Of The Day - October 2008 Entries

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October 2008 Entries

Microsoft ReMix UK 2008 recorded sessions available on the web

What is ReMix?

A 48 hr conversation all about the ‘Next Web’, what it means today and the potential impact of technologies, tools and techniques for the future. Inspiring designers and developers to take the media they love to new levels of user experience.

ReMix UK 08 has ended, here are the recorded sessions for your viewing pleasure.

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/remix08/agenda.aspx

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Posted On Friday, October 10, 2008 12:38 PM | Comments (7)

Develop your own Augmented Reality application with Touchless

I came across this InfoWorld news article today on an open source SDK for creating multi-touch based applications using a webcam for input.

Wouldn't it be cool to have this kind of application to work on your mobile phone with the built-in camera?
I have played a couple of proprietary games on the mobile phone that have this kind of capability, it's nice that Microsoft CodePlex is making touchless SDK accessible to the masses.

Get the SDK here: www.codeplex.com/touchless

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Posted On Thursday, October 9, 2008 1:04 AM | Comments (48)

Windows Azure, the new Windows Cloud OS

The Windows Cloud OS called Windows Azure that had been under the code name Red dog project for a long time has been officially announced in the keynote by Ray Ozzie on the first day of the PDC in LA (27th Oct 2008).

I blogged about coming across the name Windows Strata previously but this turned out to be a red herring, Strata name have never been confirmed by anyone in Microsoft.

For announcements made at PDC 2008 see the following blog post: http://geekswithblogs.net/kit/archive/2008/10/03/125633.aspx

The PDC sessions technology category "Windows Strata" is what made me previously suspected that this is the new name of the Windows Cloud OS, see screenshot below. This technology name were removed shortly afterwards from the sessions list.

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Posted On Wednesday, October 8, 2008 10:17 AM | Comments (1029)

Comparison between Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008

The following table summarizes the differences between different Server OS's capable of Hyper-V.

http://www.microsoft.com/servers/hyper-v-server/how-to-get.mspx

The following table outlines which Hyper-V–enabled product would suit your needs:

Virtualization Needs	Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008	Windows Server 2008 Standard	Windows Server 2008 Enterprise	Windows Server 2008 Datacenter
Server Consolidation
Test and Development
Mixed OS Virtualization (Linux and Windows)
Local Graphical User Interface
High Availability—Clustering
Quick Migration
Large Memory Support (Host OS) > 32 GB RAM
Support for > 4 Processors (Host OS)
Ability to Add Additional Server Roles
Guest Virtualization Rights Included in Host Server License	None—Each Windows Guest VM Requires a License	1 Physical + 1 VM*	1 Physical + 4 VMs*	1 Physical + Unlimited VMs (Free)

* Each additional Windows guest VM requires a license.

If you need to acquire and host new server licenses, Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter provide the best value.

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Posted On Saturday, October 4, 2008 3:50 PM | Comments (28)

Announcements at PDC08

The following lists the announcements made at Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in LA

Major announcements:

Cloud services: SQL Services (includes SSDS), .Net Services, and Live Services
- .NET application development technologies for the Internet cloud. New set of .NET APIs for developers to build applications to deploy to the cloud.
Cloud OS: Windows Azure
- Based on Mary Jo's post way back in June, Red Dog project describes the Windows Cloud OS called Windows Azure.
- This platform as stated by Ballmer, will be Windows Server for the cloud, I would add that Windows Azure is seen as a service running in data centres rather than a actual client OS. Windows Azure provides a highly scalable infrastructure for hosting cloud applications.
Keynote related announcements on SharePoint: Sharepoint Online, SharePoint services (not in the context of WSS) - part of Windows Azure services framework.
SharePoint: There was also a closed door discussion with the SharePoint product team at PDC with around 20 or so people on an invitation-only basis. I can't say anything about what was discussed due to NDAs but I can say that Mike Ammerlaan is working on much awaited and improved infrastructure features for the next version of SharePoint. In terms of timeline, expect the beta of the next version of SharePoint by end of 2009
Windows 7: UI and performance improvements to name a few. Revamp of traditional Windows apps such as Paint with Ribbon interface. Better tabbing experience to access your running programs and applications.