My game for the next six months (at least) will be
Beautiful…
Battlefield 3 Beta is looking beautiful – Caspian 64 player
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Monthly Archives: September 2011
10 Great Questions to ask about the Windows Azure Platform
On Friday David and I are delivering an new session as part of a great agenda for the BizSpark Azure Camp (places still available – details and how to register).
Our session is on “10 Great Questions to ask about the Windows Azure Platform”.
First problem – David and I came up with 20+ questions to choose from, all based on the most frequent stuff we get asked in our roles. We currently have it down to 9. I know, I know…
I will share the questions and answers in glorious techno-colour post the event – but for now, how do these look?
- Where is Windows Azure?
- Will my code just work?
- How big/small a solution can it handle?
- Can you deploy on-premise OR cloud?
- What are the differences between SQL Azure and SQL Server?
- How fast is it?
- Will it Autoscale?
- How secure is it?
- How much will it cost?
- ?
Related Links:
October 4th to 6th–FREE Online Conferences on Phone, Azure and IE
Three days of FREE conferences on the latest technologies from Microsoft – without even needing to get out of your pjs 🙂
Windows Azure Online Conference / Tuesday 4 October, 3-5pm
Register for this event here / Click here for more details
If you are just getting started with cloud computing with Windows Azure, this is the perfect starting point for you This online conference will help you get over any initial stumbling blocks, so you can quickly be productive in this new environment.
Windows Phone Online Conference / Wednesday 5 October, 3-5pm
Register for this event here / Click here for more details
We’ll help you familiarise yourself with different aspects of designing for Windows Phone, including the philosophy behind Metro and Application design. You don’t need any experience of Windows Phone development, you just need an interest in developing phone apps.
Internet Explorer Online Conference / Thursday 6 October, 3-5pm
Register for this event here / Click here for more details
In this conference we’ll discuss the difference between a website and a web application. You’ll also learn about HTML5 features that allow applications to do more than is currently possible with just AJAX and HTML 4. In-depth web development experience isn’t necessary you just need to be keen to build your knowledge of the different aspects of IE9.
Related Links:
Hilarious – BF3 comparison of PC vs PlayStation 3
This made me smile so much 🙂
Do you remember when games looked this good? 🙂
Windows Azure sessions from the BUILD conference
Although the BUILD conference was primarily about Windows 8, there was still a lot of great sessions on Windows Azure. Now… how do we collectively find the time to watch them 🙂
Overview
- Getting started with Windows Azure by Brian Prince
- Introduction to Windows Azure: the cloud operating system by Mark Russinovich
- Inside Windows Azure: the cloud operating system by Mark Russinovich
- What’s new in Windows Azure by James Conard
Windows 8 and Windows Azure
- Building social games for Windows 8 with Windows Azure by Nathan Totten
- Building Windows 8 and Windows Azure apps by Steve Marx
- Delivering notifications with the Windows Push Notification Service and Windows Azure by Darren Louie and Nick Harris
Data
- Inside Windows Azure storage: what’s new and under the hood deep dive by Brad Calder
- Analyzing "big data" with LINQ to HPC by Ade Miller
- Your devices + OData + Windows Azure == happiness by Mike Flasko
- Using cloud storage from Windows apps by Wade Wegner
- F# 3.0: data, services, Web, cloud, at your fingertips by Don Syme
Devices
- Building Web APIs in Windows Azure with WCF to reach any device by Glenn Block
- Building device & cloud apps by Wade Wegner
Operations
Development/Other
- Taking your Application Lifecycle Management to the cloud with the Team Foundation Service by Doug Neumann
- Building and running HPC apps in Windows Azure by Greg Burgess
- Building global and highly-available services using Windows Azure by David Aiken
- Building scalable web apps with Windows Azure by Matthew Kerner
- Building loosely-coupled apps with Windows Azure Service Bus Topics and Queues by Clemens Vasters
- Building apps with Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Azure by Jurgen Willis and Josh Twist
- Identity and access management for Windows Azure apps by Vittorio Bertocci
Related Links:
- Roger Jennings has a more comprehensive post which also covers related cloud technologies such as skydrive
Cloud computing is full – you will be connected as soon as possible
One interesting example of cloud computing is the OnLive (http://onlive.co.uk) gaming service which went live in the UK today.
And… must have proved to be very popular…
And alas, not as elastic as one might have hoped 
Followed by:
Working with Windows Azure on the Windows Developer Preview of Windows 8
There is a new Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8. Which is cool. The kit includes templates and samples to start using some of the new features of Windows 8 in your Windows Azure applications – and from a Windows Metro Style App. And there are several blog posts showing you how to use the kit:
- Nick Harris’s Blog: Delivering Notifications with Windows Azure and the Windows Notification Service
- Vittorio Bertocci’s Blog: Using ACS in Metro Style Applications
- Wade Wegner’s Blog: Metro Style Apps with Windows Azure
So far so good.
But read on before you try any of the above…
You may run into a few issues getting an Azure development up and running on the Developer Preview. Which is where Wade Wegner can help with his post on running Azure tools and the SDK on the Windows Developer Preview. The three issues he addresses are:
- The current Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio do not yet support Dev11
- There are a few quirks getting dependencies for IIS installed on Windows 8 using the Web Platform Installer.
- After Visual Studio 2010 and the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio are installed on a machine with Dev11, the Windows Azure tools will grab an environmental path variable that points to 11.0 instead of 10.0
Related Links:
Early Windows 8 Resources to sift through
Last week while I was on holiday in Seville, sipping sangria and enjoying full sun and 37 degrees (actually I was hiding in the shadows), we made a few small announcements at the BUILD conference. Actually we made lots of big announcements 🙂
I’m just working through the announcements (and some of the details behind them) myself and came up with the following starting points – some reflect the buzz/conversation from last week and others will increasingly be a great place to find more detail in the future.
Conference:
- BUILD Conference Site – http://www.buildwindows.com/
- BUILD Conference Twitter hashtag – http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23bldwin
- BUILD Conference Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/bldwin
MSDN Developer Site:
- MSDN for developer information – http://dev.windows.com
The team “speak”:
- Building Windows 8 Blog – http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/
- Building Windows 8 Twitter – http://twitter.com/#!/BuildWindows8
Forums:
- Windows Developer Preview: Metro Style Applications Forum
- Windows Developer Preview: Desktop Development Forum
- Windows Developer Preview: Hardware Development Forum
Nice idea–“Under Fire” resources for the Windows Azure Platform
Just stumbled across this work from Alik. He has grouped together resources for those moments when you need answers quickly. Thanks Alik.
Hello Windows 8… wow!
My Lenovo W520 (nice machine by the way) now has the Windows 8 Developer Preview running on it.
After 30mins of use can I just say … wow!
A 4.8 GB Download and setting up boot from VHD got me:
- 64-bit Windows Developer Preview
- Windows SDK for Metro style apps
- Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Developer Preview
- Microsoft Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview
- 28 Metro style apps including the BUILD Conference app
Related Links
