Microsoft Research showed off some of the advances in augmented reality combining tablet, Kinect motion sensor and cloud computing.
You have to check out this demo. This is wild stuff. It’s preliminary but you can get your mind spinning as to what may be coming in the future.
We’ve extended two promotions:
1. Our Free Visual SourceSafe to hosted Team Foundation Server 2010 migration offer is extended until the end of the year. The mainstream support for Visual SourceSafe is going away next year and TFS is the replacement. So we want to help those of you who want to make the move. If you are interested, please contact us.
2. Red Gate Software has agreed to extend the 20% discount offer on their SQL Source Control software. DiscountASP.NET customers can use SQL Source Control in conjunction with our TFS hosting service to source control their SQL databases. Very neat stuff. We did a blog post on this previously and our friends at Falafel Software posted a very cool video on SQL Source Control, Sitefinity and our TFS hosting service. All of our DiscountASP.NET and TFS hosting customers can find more information on this deal in their Control Panel Marketplace.
Yesterday was Google’s 13th anniversary. Now, we’re primarily a Microsoft shop here, so there are a lot of Bing advocates wandering the halls, but even the most ardent Microsoftie has to acknowledge the pioneering work by Google. Bing was built on what Google created. Might someone else have done it if those wacky Google guys hadn’t come along? Maybe. But they didn’t. Might Microsoft have come up with something like Bing or Google on their own eventually? Maybe.
In any event, it seems quaint in retrospect, the sites we used for our searches on the pre-Google web. Alta Vista was the choice of geeks and shut-ins in the days just prior to Google, but its results were often baffling. As if a trained ape was sitting behind the index page of the site providing different answers every time you searched for the same thing. And does anyone remember Yahoo’s static categorized listings? HotBot? Dogpile? You certainly could find things, even if it was almost accidentally. But Google changed all that with a deeper search and more relevant results.
Google came along at an interesting time in the early history of the web. While I just mocked Yahoo’s categorized listings, there was a time when you actually could index the existing web sites that way. It was still small enough to encompass in a framework like that. There were even magazines that reviewed web sites, something that seems odd and unnecessary now. But those were different times, and it was a lot more surprising to stumble on something amazing, something that you’d never seen before. Now it seems as if the amazing is routine.
Which is as it should be, I suppose. Google is such an integral part of existence these days (many people reading this probably have it in their pockets right now) that it’s hard to imagine what we would do without it. But I do miss the underground feel so much of the web had in the early days. It was like a secret world, and most of the people that you walked past on the street had no idea it even existed.
So here’s to 13 years of Google organizing the oceans of data that make up today’s web. I’ll see you 13 years from now, when we’ll probably be searching on the insides of our eyelids somehow…
Wow. I’m still recovering from the Microsoft //BUILD conference and desperately trying to catch up at work for the past week. The conference was like drinking from a fire hose. I think I’m going to be at the //BUILD conference website checking out session videos for a while.
This was a very secretive and big conference for Microsoft. The conference was important because it was the first deep dive unveiling of Windows 8 to the developer community. And Microsoft also had to provide a roadmap on their future direction – a question that has been on the minds of all developers leading into the conference.
Prior to the conference, there were many speculations about the death of Silverlight or .NET or…or…or… But similar to the past DOS to Windows transition where both DOS and Windows coexisted, Microsoft is moving to a “metro” world targeted mainly to consumers but still making sure that the desktop as we know it is fully supported. So at least for the foreseeable future, all the skills that developers have invested in will still remain relevant.
Though much of the conference sessions was about building metro-style apps, Silverlight 5 is still coming, .NET 4.5 is coming, and MVC 4 is coming – and we are looking forward to hosting all of these new technologies.
Microsoft’s vision is one OS to rule them all – form factors that is. With the declining sales of PCs and the rapid adoption of smartphones all over the world and the rising sales of the tablet form factor, Microsoft needs to address the changing and evolving technology market. And if you think about it, the platform on which innovation is happening today is the mobile form factors – where Microsoft has a smaller market share. The “re-imagined” Windows 8 Metro UI is designed to address the mobile form factor market and was designed around touch.
So what does this mean for developers? With the continued support of the desktop, Microsoft has not really taken something away but has added a new metro platform to develop on. The challenge is for developers to decide whether to invest in developing metro apps or not and whether to solely focus on metro apps or desktop apps or do both. When the decision on metro vs. desktop platform is made, then there is the next challenge of deciding which technologies to use in order to build those apps. Because the metro and desktop platforms may use some similar technologies, but they will not be the same. For the web developer, they will need to decide if their web applications are to function in the Metro IE and/or the desktop browser. The Metro IE browser will not support flash or Silverlight plugins. And finally, if the developer decides on making metro apps, then the question is, when do you start?
At the conference, Microsoft released the following Windows 8 Platform and Tools architecture block diagram to highlight the two platforms within Windows 8.
Let’s add some additional data points to the equation. Microsoft is launching an application marketplace within the metro UI which can potentially be a huge and lucrative opportunity for developers to have access to ALL users of Windows 8 – but, of course, the opportunity depends on the adoption rate of Windows 8. There will probably be first mover advantage to developers that have metro apps ready in the early phase. During the conference, Microsoft also highlighted the current install base of Windows 7 at around 450 million – which is a huge base of potential upgrades to Windows 8 – but the keyword that developers need to bet on is “potential.” Finally, the release date of Windows 8 was not announced so it is still unknown when the new OS will launch.
Developers have some decisions to make and you’ll find varying opinions out in the blogosphere. Our friends at Telerik came up with this decision flow chart on when you may want to use the metro-style apps. The “marketecture” block diagram above has also been the subject of much discussion and has been redrawn by others.
At the conference, Microsoft had sessions talking about the Windows 8 Server too. We are looking forward to deep diving into this new product to see how we can offer hosting services. It’s way too early to provide any information about future hosting on Windows 8 but you can be sure that we are looking into it.
At one of the non-metro talks, Microsoft launched WebMatrix v2 beta. We were involved in testing of the beta prior to the conference and it was announced at the session that we are providing a Free WebMatrix v2 beta hosting sandbox for the developer community in our DiscountASP.NET Labs. So check it out.
And of course, Microsoft had their Oprah moment with the Windows 8 Tablet giveaway. Everybody was super-excited and many were patient to wait through huge lines to be the first to get their hands on one. It’s smart for Microsoft to not just release the Windows 8 preview as a download but to actually get a working mobile form factor into the hands of their developer community. I talked a lot of developers and they were excited about the tablet and the new metro app possibilities.
And if you were wondering, yup, I got one too 🙂
We will see how Microosft executes on their vision. Their success will hinge on adoption of Windows 8 and getting developers on board to create the applications that will usher in the next-generation OS.
I don’t have a crystal ball to foretell the future, but I can tell you this – I’ve taken the Windows 8 tablet to some cafes and restaurants and the patrons and wait staff have all been very curious and asked a lot of questions about it. One cafe owner asked me to come back with the tablet in the future so he can play with it more. I’ve shown the tablet to family and friends who are iPad users and they all thought the Windows 8 tablet was really cool. You can tell by the look in people’s eyes that they are all genuinely intrigued and can imagine the possibilities of what may come. If Microsoft can get the OS out fast and capitalize on this sentiment, it could be big.
As for the future with Windows 8, I expect some wins and some failures but there is one thing you can count on – and that is that all of us at DiscountASP.NET will continue to innovate and evolve our hosting business in this ever-changing landscape.
We are “all in” when it comes to hosting solutions for the Microsoft developer.
The other day I came across this raffle ticket from the Microsoft party at HostingCon last month. Looking at it now, I can see why it may not have been so lucky.
Well, no harm done, I suppose. I already had a copy of FrontPage 98 or whatever it was they were giving away, and I made it home safely even with this diabolical, dangerous thing in my pocket.
Better luck next time?
Our sales and marketing department often fields questions about Team Foundation Server pricing. Those question range from clarification of the tiered user pricing to a very general and straightforward, “Why is it so expensive?”
We don’t believe it is expensive, considering the service provided, but one particular argument we often hear is, “I can buy TFS and run it myself, why should I pay you to host it?”
That’s a fair question. There are a few good reasons why you might not want to host your own TFS server:
– Hardware costs
– Maintenance and upgrades
– Access outside of your LAN
– Security
Okay, I know what you’re going to say about the first one; “Man, I have fifteen old computers in my basement I could use as TFS servers!” That’s probably true for most of us. But do you really want to trust your source code (i.e., your hours, days or months of hard work) to that dusty old Compaq? Kind of scary when you think about it. Especially if that code belongs to a paying client.
And what if you want to open your source code to someone else to work along with you, only you live and work in Atlanta and they are in Iceland? I’m sure most of us can poke a hole in our local firewall (you have a local hardware firewall, right?) to allow your new Icelandic coworker to connect to the server, but do you know how to keep everyone else on the Internet out? Ask yourself honestly how much of your own time you spend keeping up with the latest security issues and best practices. Probably not as much as you should, if you are like most busy people.
Okay, so lets say that you have a powerful, enterprise-level server that you can use and you are a network security guru. You still have to keep up with O/S updates, SQL updates and TFS updates – at the bare minimum. If you run any additional services parallel with TFS, those have to be maintained as well.
When you take all of that into consideration, I suppose whether or not our TFS service seems expensive depends on how much you believe your time is worth. Not to mention the safety and security of your work.
It’s an old saying, but it’s true; time is money. If you agree, do a quick calculation and add up the time that you’ll save using our hosted TFS compared to the time you would spend maintaining it yourself. You may be surprised to find that the price we charge to take that job off your hands is actually quite reasonable, and in many cases is even less than the cost of doing it yourself.
We’re always discussing The Cloud around here. There are some who have come to believe The Cloud is a three pound burger but the answer finally came to me today as I was passing a used car lot on my way to the office.
As much as I try, I can’t shake the negative portrayal of the used car salesman who’s attempting to sell a lemon. The whole idea of a “pre-owned” vehicle that I remember hearing back in the 90s always struck me as odd but it was marketing genius and it translates nicely to The Cloud.
I can confirm at this point that The Cloud is not a burger, but instead, it’s a Certified Pre-Owned Internet (CPOI) that has gone through a rigorous 600 point inspection check and doesn’t do anything new or spectacular.
It’s the same old Internet – which isn’t a bad thing – and we’re keeping on top of potential uses to provide effective hosting solutions.
The biggest, most attended code camp on the west coast takes place on October 8th and
9th, 2011 at Foothill College in Los Altos, California. This code camp is none other than the two-day Silicon Valley Code Camp 2011!
The first Silicon Valley Code Camp started in 2006 with a mere 55 sessions and a little over 850 registrants. Last year, the Silicon Valley Code Camp had 193 sessions and approximately 3,000 registrants. This year’s code camp looks to surpass those numbers as there are already over 200 sessions scheduled and just under 1,800 registrants. To view the popularity of the sessions, check out the “Session Interest Chart” where you can view the top 25 most popular sessions, which are listed and sorted by interest level.
The Silicon Valley Code Camp will start with registration on Saturday morning followed by a short briefing and then the sessions will begin and will last throughout the day. Sunday will be very similar except that there is no opening meeting and if you registered on Saturday, then you go right to your session (make sure you bring your badge from Saturday’s registration).
So if you live or will be in the Silicon Valley area and are interested in networking with other developers and learning new skills, then head out to the Silicon Valley Code Camp (it’s FREE!). To register, click here