BUILD keynote day 2–Windows Server 8 and developer tools

Highlights

• Windows Server 8 Developer preview released. Available for download
• Windows Server 8 “is the most ambitious server release since Server 2000”. Lots of streamlined features for multiplex NICs, virtualisation, storage, etc.
• Visual Studio 11 developer preview Web installer here: http://static.withinwindows.com/files/uploads/2011/09/en_visual_studio_11_developer_preview_web_installer_x86_x64_735607.exe
• TFS as a Service, hosted on Azure https://tfspreview.com/
• ASP.NET MVC4 developer preview http://haacked.com/archive/2011/09/14/asp-net-mvc-4-developer-preview-released.aspx
• .Net framework 4.5 developer preview also available for download
• The async framework is built into the Visual Studio 11 preview
• Can select a HTML DOM element, and visual studio will show you the code that generated it
• ASP.Net is smart enough to combine the .css files and run minification on combined file
• Visual Studio productivity tools is now built into Visual Studio 2011

Articles

• Mary Jo foley on Windows Server 8 details http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-windows-server-8-taking-the-cloud-to-the-operating-system/10643
• highlights of Server 8 http://www.itworld.com/virtualization/203199/windows-server-8-highlights-upcoming-server-os

BUILD keynote day 1–Metro experience with Jupiter, XAML and HTML5/JS

Highlights

• You can download the developer preview of Windows 8
  http://dev.windows.com/
  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/13/welcome-to-windows-8-the-developer-preview.aspx
• The confusion around HTML5, xaml and Jupiter is finally cleared up.
  The new immersive apps (full screen, metro style apps which are launched from the tile based interface) can be built in either C#/XAML or HTML5/JS. Under the covers it reflects into the WinRT APIs. Apps built like this will run on ANY Win8 machine (x86, ARM, etc)
  
  
• Silverlight & WPF are "legacy". They put it onto the slide for show. The Win8 xaml looks to be 90% compatible with Silverlight. Demos are shown where they take a Silverlight app, copy/paste the code into a new Win8 XAML app, and only a few namespaces need to be changed. A silverlight grid is then changed to use the native WinRT grid to make it touch enabled and "Metro-y"
• The Win8 XAML app is ported to Windows Phone 7 with only 1 line changed.
• New version of Visual Studio available to help build apps for Win 8 "Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Developer Preview" (got to love Microsoft product names)
• Expression blend works for editing the HTML5/JS apps
• The native WinRT controls work in XAML and HTML5
• New windows 8 app store. Store & submission process VERY similar to Windows Phone 7. Can submit via Visual Studio
  Paul Thurrott: "Biggest point of Windows Store: Microsoft is NOT taking a 30 percent cut. It will take a ZERO percent cut."
• Win8 machines can be easily restored back to a "clean base image" that developer can specify. Keeps all files, just reverts apps. (Reset/Refresh)
• Windows Live application integration. Nice support for photos, calendar, mail, people. Very similar to Windows Phone 7 built in features.
  Windows user account settings Synced across PCs via the cloud (profile photo, etc)
• Win8 specs are the same as Win 7. Consumes less memory after startup.
  Boot times have been massively reduced. Cold boot demo shows the PC almost starting faster than the monitor can turn on.

Useful articles

• Brief analysis of Metro on Windows 8 by Long Zheng http://www.istartedsomething.com/20110914/an-analysis-of-metro-on-windows-8-developer-preview/
• Windows 8: 101 tips & tricks for the new start experience http://www.istartedsomething.com/20110914/windows-8-101-tips-tricks-for-new-start-experience/
• Summary of Metro vs. Desktop apps by Mary Jo Foley http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-to-developers-metro-is-your-future/10611
• Mary Jo Foley on "what we do & don’t know about WIn8" http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-windows-8-heres-what-we-now-know-and-dont/10608

My community involvement in the last 2 years

PDC 2010 has come and gone. I thought it would be interesting to see what I have done in the last 2 years since PDC 2008. Looking back at my presentations and blog posts, I feel quite proud with the amount of involvement I’ve had with the community. Seeing everything laid out like that makes me realise just how much I enjoy participating in helping to share knowledge with the developer community.

There is so much that I’ve just forgotten about and left off the list, it is impossible to keep track of everything. You can look forward to lots more involvement in the next 2 years!

I’ve also got a running list of usergroup presentations I’ve done on my About page

Highlights

• Did my first Azure usergroup presentation within 3 weeks of Azure being announced at PDC
• Presented at Remix 2009 on Azure
• Started the Australian Azure mailing list
• Started an Azure community support site AzureQuestions.com (which has now been decommissioned)
• Flew around Australia and attended 4 out of 6 Australian Cloudcamps. It was “unconferences” style with breakout discussions where I would answer all Azure related questions
• Recorded all cloudcamp lighning talks and uploaded them, in an effort to increase cloud knowledge in the community (16 so far with more to come)
  http://www.vimeo.com/album/1469190
• Trying to involve the .Net community at large with more cross posting (via the Developer Blog banter)
• Trying to involve the community more with “Community reports” of things happening such as presentations, lightning talks or interviews with people / companies
• Recorded community group presentations and uploaded them to help increase the visibility of local speakers and improve the visibility of local user groups
  http://www.vimeo.com/album/1469195
• I still have 15 videos of sessions to process and upload
• Got 2 new presenters to start their Melbourne presentation debuts
• Presented at Codecamp 2009 on Azure & artificial life in the cloud

Cloud related activities (presentations & blog posts)

• 28/10/2008 – 1/11/2008 Windows Azure was announced at PDC: A total of 6 blog posts on PDC sessions on Azure including liveblogs of the Azure announcements in the keynotes.
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/my-notes-from-pdc-day-1-keynote/
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/my-notes-from-pdc-day-2-keynote/
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/my-notes-from-pdc-session-es-16/
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/my-notes-from-pdc-session-es-01/
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/my-notes-from-pdc-session-es-02/
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/my-notes-from-pdc-day-2-keynote-2/
• 9/11/2008 Blog on azure starting links
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2008/11/09/windows-azure-beginner-starting-links/
• 19/11/2008 Presentation: Introduction to Azure at Melbourne RDN
• 2/12/2008 featured as a guest blog post on Long Zheng’s website IStartedSomething.com
  http://www.istartedsomething.com/20081203/guest-post-windows-azure-review-from-a-developer/
• 9/12/2008 how to host WCF on Azure
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/wcf-services-hosted-on-windows-azure/
• 10/12/2008 Hosting Silverlight on Azure
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/silverlight-hoste-on-windows-azure/
• 19/1/2009 Created the Australian Azure mailing list
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/australian-azure-mailing-list-is-now-live/
• 7/2/2009 Azure training kit released
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/new-february-version-of-the-azure-services-training-kit-is-now-available/
• 7/2/2009 Created a new XHTML 1.1 template for Azure
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/azure-web-role-template-%e2%80%93-xhtml-11/
• 15/2/2009 Listed new training videos that are available
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/windows-azure-how-do-i-videos-now-available/
• 14/04/2009 Presentation: Australian CodeCamp – Azure & artificial life in the cloud http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/im-presenting-at-code-camp-oz-2009/
  with the video http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/artificial-life-in-the-could-using-windows-azure/
• 3/6/2009 Availability of latest Azure tools
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/may-2009-ctp-azure-tools-now-available/
• 14/6/2009 Presentation: Remix – Intro to Azure
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/remix-presentation-intro-to-windows-azure/
• 27/07/2009 http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/07/27/july-2009-ctp-windows-azure-tools-now-available/
• 15/11/2009 update on the new features available in the latest Azure tools http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/november-2009-tools-windows-azure-1-0-sdk-now-available/
• 15/11/2009 Analysis of the new Azure instance sizes
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/analysis-of-windows-azure-virtual-machine-sizes/
• 19/11/2009 Created a new Azure community site (1 year later I have now decommissioned it) http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/new-cloud-computing-community-website/
• 19/11/2009 Again more live blogs on Azure announcements at PDC
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/my-notes-from-pdc09-day-1-keynote/
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/my-notes-from-pdc09-day-2-keynote/
• December 2009 Presentation: MOSSIG – Will all software run in the cloud by 2020?
• Jan 2010 Presentation: Silverlight codecamp – lightning talk
• Jan 2010 Using Azure to scale your Silverlight applications
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/using-windows-azure-to-scale-your-silverlight-application/
• Jan 2010 Using Silverlight (hosted on Azure) to distribute workloads out to clients http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/using-silverlight-to-distribute-workload-to-your-clients/
• Feb 2010 Availability of latest Azure tools
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/feb-2010-azure-tools-now-available-3/
• March 2010 Best practices for the cloud
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/architecting-for-the-cloud-best-practices-from-amazon/
• March 2010 live blogs of the new Azure announcements at MIX
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/my-notes-from-mix10-day-1-keynote/
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/my-notes-from-mix10-day-2-keynote/
• June 2010 Presentation: Melbourne xRM usergroup – Integrating xRM and Azure
  No slides to share
• June 2010 Availability of latest Azure tools
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/june-2010-azure-tools-now-available-2/
• June 2010 Changes coming to SQL Azure
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/changes-to-sql-azure-database-sizes-coming-june-28th/
• June 2010 list of Azure sessions at TechEd
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/windows-azure-sessions-from-north-america-teched-2010/
• June 2010 Posted Melbourne cloudcamp lightning talk
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/melbourne-cloudcamp-2010-lightning-talk-vmware-emc/
• June 2010 Posted another Melbourne cloudcamp lightning talk
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/melbourne-cloudcamp-2010-lightning-talk-salesforce/
• July 2010 Posted another Melbourne cloudcamp lightning talk
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/melbourne-cloudcamp-2010-lightning-talk-gen-i/
• July 2010 Posted another Melbourne cloudcamp lightning talk
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/melbourne-cloudcamp-2010-%e2%80%93-lightning-talk-connect2field/
• July 2010 Azure presentation at Hobart.Net usergroup
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/community-report-hobart-net-usergroup-windows-azure-windows-phone-7-series/
• July 2010 Presentation: Azure presentation at Hobart.Net usergroup http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/presenting-at-hobart-net-user-group-on-windows-azure-july-16/
  with a summary of the presentation http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/community-report-hobart-net-usergroup-windows-azure-windows-phone-7-series/
• August 2010 video of Brisbane lightning talk
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/brisbane-cloudcamp-2010-%e2%80%93-lightning-talk-connect2field/
• September 2010 posted another Brisbane lighting talk
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/community-report-brisbane-cloudcamp-2010-lightning-talk-fluccs/
• September 2010 posted another Brisbane lighting talk
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/community-report-brisbane-cloudcamp-2010-lightning-talk-fluccs/
• September 2010 Community report – Interviewed a cloud computing startup based in Sydney http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/community-report-interview-with-orion-vm/
• September 2010 Attended and recorded Sydney cloudcamp lightning talk http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/community-report-sydney-cloudcamp-2010-%e2%80%93-lightning-talk-netsuite/
• September 2010 posted another Sydney lighting talk
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/community-report-sydney-cloudcamp-2010-vadis/
• September 2010 Vic.Net –  Using Azure to dynamically generate Silverlight Pivot collections.
  Also got a new presenter to present for the first time ever, Ko-lin Chang. She co-presented with me and did the first ½ of the session.
  (Video pending processing)
• August 2010 posted another Sydney lightning talk
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/community-report-sydney-cloudcamp-2010-ibm/
• October 2010 posted another Sydney lightning talk
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/community-report-sydney-cloudcamp-2010-ultraserve/
• October 2010 posted another Sydney lightning talk
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/10/18/community-report-sydney-cloudcamp-2010-quest/
• October 2010 spread the word about the free beta Azure certification exams http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/free-silverlight-azure-beta-exams/
• October 2010 who is on the Azure team in Australia
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/who-is-on-the-windows-azure-team-in-australia/
• October 2010 PDC liveblog of Azure announcements
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/my-notes-from-pdc10-day-1-keynote/
• October 2010 List of Azure sessions at PDC 2010
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/list-of-azure-sessions-at-pdc-2010/
• October 2010 Helped with the 2 Melbourne cloudcamp. Recorded lightning talks and participated in all the breakout discussions
• November 2010 Collection of Windows Azure samples
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/windows-azure-code-samples-collection/
• November 2010 posted the first lightning talk of the 2^nd Melbourne cloudcamp http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/community-report-melbourne-cloudcamp-2010-myob/
• November 2010 uploaded the 2^nd lightning talk from the 2^nd Melbourne cloudcamp http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/575/
• November 2010 uploaded the 3^rd lightning talk from the 2^nd Melbourne cloudcamp http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/community-report-melbourne-cloudcamp-2010-microsoft/

Other community involvement

• December 2008 Presentation: Vic.Net – WPF 3.5
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/slides-from-my-wpf-talk/
• December 2008 Presentation: Vic.Net – Workflow Foundation 3.5
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/slides-from-my-workflow-talk/
• March 2009 Created training materials and volunteered as a trainer to raise money at the WPF bushfire training weekend organised by Mahesh Krishnan
• October 2009 Presentation: Vic.Net usergroup – Databinging with the Bing maps Silverlight control
• June 2010 Helped organise the Melbourne Cloudcamp
• June 2010 Was involved in the Windows Phone 7 Bizspark camp. Helped out other participants at the event and came runner up for Beachy. Recorded the presentation
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/beachy-runner-up-windows-phone-7-application-at-bizspark-camp/
• June 2010 attended the Melbourne Alt.Net and recorded the event
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/june-2010-melbourne-alt-net-usergroup-presentation-by-simon-cuce/
• July 2010 community report of the South Australian code camp
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/community-report-code-camp-south-australia/
• July 2010 Community report of the Melbourne Alt.Net
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/community-report-melbourne-alt-net/
• July 2010 Started the community blog banter
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/developer-blog-banter-1-what-is-your-preferred-technology-stack/
• August 2010 Presentation: Vic.Net usergroup – Windows Phone 7 UI guidelines
  (video pending. Waiting for it to be processed)
• August 2010 Presentation: Melbourne Alt.Net – Lightning talk on Windows Phone 7
• August 2010 Phone 7 application featured during the Australian TechEd keynote
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/microsoft-teched-2010-keynote-deck-of-secrets-screenshots/
• August 2010 Community report: Attended and recorded the Melbourne SDDN presentation
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/community-report-melbourne-sddn-august-2010/
• October 2010 kicked off the 2^nd Developer Blog Banter
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/developer-blog-banter-2-how-do-you-test-your-applications/
• October 2010 Community report on the MXUG
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/community-report-melbourne-mxug-august/
• October 2010 Presented at the Melbourne Mobile SIG and got a new presenter to present for the first time in Melbourne
  http://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/im-presenting-on-windows-phone-7-at-the-melbourne-mobile-sig/

List of Azure sessions at PDC 2010

Now that PDC has finished, I decided to collect all of the Azure sessions up so that I could tick off which ones I have viewed, and which ones I have yet to watch. Most them them don’t have the session available as a download, but they are all available as a live stream immediately!

CD07: Building Windows Phone 7 applications with the Windows Azure Platform	http://bit.ly/a9kLZz
CS01: Building High Performance Web Applications with the Windows Azure Platform	http://bit.ly/9n4t9S
CS02: Building Scale-Out Database Solutions on SQL Azure	http://bit.ly/ctEdfw
CS03: Building, Deploying, and Managing Windows Azure Applications	http://bit.ly/cN3E3F
CS04: Composing Applications with AppFabric Services	http://bit.ly/9M8xgA
CS05: Connecting Cloud & On-Premises Apps with the Windows Azure Platform	http://bit.ly/bhoUkt
CS06: Enabling New Scenarios and Applications with Data in the Cloud	http://bit.ly/dhtBeO
CS07: Identity & Access Control in the Cloud	http://bit.ly/8ZnXbT
CS08: Inside windows Azure	http://bit.ly/977D0A
CS09: Migrating and Building Apps for Windows Azure with VM Role and Admin Mode	http://bit.ly/9h1jcy
CS10: Open in the Cloud: Windows Azure and Java	http://bit.ly/bUH4jQ
CS11: Windows Azure Storage Deep Dive	http://bit.ly/bfu1iw
FT04: Building Web APIs for the Highly Connected Web	http://bit.ly/c7aT9h
FT07: Lessons Learned from Moving Team Foundation Server (TFS) to the Cloud	http://bit.ly/9lfF3U

My notes from PDC10 day 1 Keynote

Overview

Keynote 1

• New IE9 preview out. No real news apart from they are putting a lot of emphasis on HTML5
• There is a new profiling tool for Windows Phone 7!
• New OData SDK

Keynote 2

All about Azure

• Extra small instance ($0.05/hour)
• Remote desktop
• New “Virtual Machine” role. Take a Windows Server 2008 R2 image and upload
• Enhancements to Azure Access Control Service. Can federate authentication to Facebook, Google, Yahoo, etc.
• App fabric caching available
• New Azure app composition service

Other links

• Zdnet on Microsoft’s cloud roadmap http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-provides-updated-cloud-roadmap-technologies-to-developers/7816
• New things in IE9 that the keynote didn’t mention… http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-releases-another-new-test-build-of-ie-9/7821
• IE9 preview 6 download www.ieTestDrive.com
• http://www.microsoftcloudpartner.com/

My notes from PDC09 Day 2 Keynote

Highlights

• Scott Gu Rickrolls the entire PDC audience
• Silverlight 4 beta is out now!
• Silverlight can now access local resources on your computer like cameras, filesystem, drag/drop support
• Silverlight has updated WCF support
• IE9 is announced
• Work on IE9 has been going on for 3-4 weeks. Performance and Acid3 results are improving
• There will be videos on http://channel9.msdn.com/

My notes from PDC09 Day 1 Keynote

Day1 is on Azure and backend services
Day2 is on client side, Win7, IE9 and Silverlight

The keynote can be downloaded from http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/KEY01

Highlights of today
• Windows Azure can now have apache, tomcat and others installed
• You can have full control of your instances, install what you want on it, then set that as your new baseline to deploy apps to
• App fabric is a new add-on for Windows Server. Lets you deploy applications to your servers easier. Also lets you easily deploy to either on premise or Azure
• Dallas CTP announce. Is a way of exposing your data feeds in an easily discoverable and consumable way http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/dallas/

My notes from PDC08 Day 2 Keynote 2

COMPLETEY demo driven, but I wouldn’t really recommend watching this one

Azure is built using web standards (uri, HTTP, XML)
Exposes functionality so you can use it
Gives you choices/options for how you can take your code and hook your apps into it

Show an application that they built that lists processes on a box via a RESTful service.
Var request = WebRequest.Create(url
Request.getresponse
Showing how to manually call GET or DELETE against a RESTful service to list/kill the processes.

Net services Service bus
Going to host this service so that others can use it

My notes from PDC Session ES 02

Notes from ES 02: Architecting Services for Windows Azure

Presentation will cover how to architect Azure services
Describe the service life cycle management
Show how azure architecture enables automation
Show how developers are freed from cloud platform issues

Main points of the presentation
• Cloud services have specific design considerations
    ○ Are always on, distributed, large scale, failure is expected so how to handle
• Azure is an OS for the cloud
    ○ Handles scale out, dynamic and on-demand.
    ○ Each machine is running its own kernel
    ○ But all the services sitting on top are what make up the Azure OS
• Azure managers services not just servers
    ○ Tell it what you want, and it will help automate the details
    ○ Servers, load balancers, etc.
    ○ Just describe what you want, and it auto deploys it all
• Azure frees devs from all the underlying stuff
    ○ Allows developers to concentrate on the business logic instead of cloud logic
They need our help building services. If we build it correctly, MS can help us automate things and make them healthy.Cloud computing is based on scale out not scale up (scaling outwards with lots of parallel computers, rather than scaling up and just beefing up a single computer with more ram)
Automation is the key to reducing costs

My notes from PDC Session ES 01

Notes from ES 01: Developing and deploy your first cloud service

Talk is composed of 90% demos, so noting down what he does

In this session he is aims to create a blog website hosted on Azure using ASP.Net MVC & Azure storage

Azure SDK provides a “consistent, familiar development” environment.

Can use .Net, IIS7, WCF

The ‘cloud on your desktop’ development environment is a lot like cassini. When I develop my website and click run, my webpage is launched. But instead of cassini, the developer fabric spins up instances and runs my website.

Can develop in Visual Web developer Express