Microsoft’s announcement in today’s TechEd 2011 keynote, Windows Phone 7.5 aka Mango’s Enterprise features are trying to replace RIM Blackberry, the Enterprise Behemoth, with “Only on WP” features.

Microsoft had announced a lot new enterprise/business features for the upcoming Windows Phone 7.5 update called “Mango”, coming this summer, in TechEd 2011 keynote.

Windows Phone 7.5 called “Mango” will include below enterprise/business features:

• Pinnable email folders: Pin a folder to the start screen for quick access. This could be an email folder for a specific project, from a specific group or person (like your boss), or an RSS feed you’ve set up in Outlook.
• Conversation view in email: Emails in your inbox are organized by conversation, bringing replies to a thread into a consolidated view so it’s faster and easier to stay on top of the conversation.
• Server search: Search your email server (e.g. Exchange Server) for older emails no longer stored on yourphone, giving you ready access to all of your mail.
• Lync: Lync Mobile brings the Lync experience to Windows Phone customers by delivering Unified Communications capabilities, including instant messaging and the ability to see the presence of your co-workers. The Lync app will be a free download from Windows Phone Marketplace and will be enabled with support from your business organization.
• Security: Complex (alpha-numeric) password support
• Rights management: Information Rights Management support for protecting e-mails and Office documents
• Wireless improvements: Support for access to hidden corporate Wi-Fi networks

Lync client. Lync Mobile will provide the Lync communications experience on Windows Phone, with instant messaging and presence capabilities, and integration with hosted (Office 365) and on premises versions of the Lync server solution. The Lync app will be a free download from the Windows Phone Marketplace, according to Microsoft. (So it's not really part of Mango, per se.)

Office 365 integration. Mango will include deep integration with Office 365, which provides low-cost, hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync to individuals and customers of all sizes. This will include an Office 365 account type and Office 365 quick setup link in the Office hub.

Read more here from Paul Thurrots Paul Thurrot's blog

See in action more about the Windows Phone 7.5 aka “Mango” update in below video (video by winrumors);

Windows Azure 30-day Trial pass – Try it out folks Today (No Credit Card Required) !!!

Microsoft is providing thru different channels a 30-day Trial pass for .NET folks to try out their Windows Azure (aka Microsoft Cloud Platform as a Service offering).
I thought of sharing one such pass found in one of the blog post thru this blog for others to try it out. Follow below steps to get one such Azure 30-day account, try to deploy a .NET app like ASP.NET/MVC web app or a WCF/Windows Workflow app in Azure and see how simple it is. You don't have to give your credit card details for creating a Azure account for you thru this approach.

Follow below simple steps to get your 30-day Trial pass;

1. Go to http://windowsazurepass.com/


2. Select the country and enter DPCE01 / MPR001 as the pass code


3. You'll get further details to create / login to your account from Microsoft


4. Get latest training Kit from here


5. Get support from Azure Team by contacting them thru below options


6. In case these 2 promo codes didn't work for you, you can contact Azure team by clicking the link ?Don't have a promo code?" in this page, login with a Live/Hotmail email id, and get your own code from Microsoft


7. In case you would like to go for a Full Azure account, not a Trial one, but use it for few months to try Azure features, you can go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure , register with a Credit Card, but, still it won't be charged until you exceed the limit. Use this option with caution, as it has lot of bells and whistles, I got billed by Microsoft once for around 50$ before I figure it out and cancelled it

Note: If you need assistance with your Windows Azure platform 30-day pass, please contact Microsoft; Chat Online Now* / Call @ 1-888-346-3129 / Email: Azure 30-day Trial Help

*online chat open between 07:00am – 3:00pm PST

A Web Application developed in ASP.NET/ASP.NET MVC/Silverlight app can be deployed in a Azure Web Role (it's nothing but, very similar to creating a Virtual Directory in IIS) and a WCF Web Service / Windows Workflow application can be deployed as a Worker Role (it's nothing but deploying a WCF/WF in a Windows Service).

Below are few scenarios you can try out;

1) A simple web app deployed in Azure as a Web Role. This way, you'll get a public URL like one I've provided below for my application. In this approach, you just deployed your Web App in Azure Web Role.

2) A WCF/WF app deployed in Azure as a Worker Role. In this scenario, you'll get a public URL, nothing but a Azure Service URL, you can consume in a Windows Form/WPF/Silverlight/Java/any other Application deployed anywhere in your Desktop or another Web Application developed in .NET/Java deployed anywhere else, consuming this Azure Service. In this approach, you just deployed your Service in Azure Worker Role.

3) A WCF/WF app deployed as an Azure Worker Role service, as mentioned in Scenario 2, and also develop another Web App, as mentioned in Scenario 1, deployed again Azure as a Web Role consuming your own Worker Role service. In this approach, you just deployed both your web app & service in Azure as a Web Role and a Worker Role.

4) The last scenario is just developing a Web App which consumes one/many Services already deployed in Azure as a Worker Role, nothing but a 3^rd party Service. This kind of services are nothing but called Azure Datamarket Apps (https://datamarket.azure.com/ ), which I've used in my below sample.

I've developed a tiny web application in ASP.NET and deployed using this Windows Azure 30-day trial pass in below location, as a prototype.

Simple Azure Web App URL: http://zillowazuredatamarket.cloudapp.net/

I've used Azure Datamarket Service called Zillow real-estate API, which does Mortgage calculation for US ZIP locations.

Note: Azure Datamarket is a Microsoft Cloud offering, a B2B App Market for their partners, Govt., anyone would like to share their data/API, again as a Cloud Middle tier, kind of ESB layer over cloud.

The Windows Azure platform 30-day pass includes the following resources :

Windows Azure

• 3 Small Compute Instances


• 3 GB of Storage


• 250,000 Storage Transactions

SQL Azure

• Two 1 GB Web Edition Database

AppFabric

• 100,000 Access Control Transactions


• 2 Bus Service Connections

Data Transfers

• 3 GB In


• 3 GB Out

My first Windows Phone 7 application – “My NEWS” published in WP7 Marketplace

“My NEWS” published in WP7 Marketplace

As part of my spare time over last few weekends, I was kind of trying to develop a Windows Phone 7 application in Silverlight for Mobile. It’s been published to Windows Phone Marketplace last week.

was kind of interested in developing some smartphone app in iPhone, so, I installed Apple Mac Leopard OS few months back, tried a simple app, but I didn’t released it to iOS marketplace, as there were lots of similar apps. Now, as Windows Phone 7 is very new, not many are out there, though every month 1000 app’s are getting published, aprox. 100 app’s per day, still it’s in initial stage, kind of crawling, compared to Android and iOS applications. So, I’ve developed in WP7 using Silverlight for mobile. One more reason is I’ve a solid background in Silverlight, as I’ve proposed and implemented large LOB applications for few of our clients.

This application is a Simple NEWS Application, developed with simple controls and the unique Panoramic controls (new to WP7) for rich feel/usability. I’ve used C# as the code, implemented MVVM pattern (sort of) for this. I also took help from my brother a lot, in creating the background images and loader image in the beginning and even few Silverlight screen designs. He’s a very good Web Designer/Developer, running a Web Design/Web Hosting/Domain Registration company in India called JiNiom and he’s few websites to promote them, viz.,http://NagariDomain.com (for .com/.net registration), http://NagariDomain.in (for Asia specific domains) and http://NagariDomain.us (for purchasing in USD).

Here is a link to the application in Bing Visual Search page - http://www.bing.com/browse?g=wp7&qpvt=Windows+Phone+7+Apps#toc=0&categories_rbid=9&r=81

Here is the link in Microsoft Zune (opens in Zune) -http://redirect.zune.net/External/LaunchZuneProtocol.aspx?pathuri=navigate%3FphoneAppID%3D6bc90b67-9840-e011-854c-00237de2db9e

This “My NEWS” application is a simple news reading application, to start with, it’s for non-geek users, who’re not that much aware of RSS/Atom stuff. Just hit different sources, and it’ll kind of aggregate the news from various sources in the background, consolidate and remove the duplicates, show the result as title of the news, links with brief info.

In case you’ve a Windows Phone 7 (my wife has one), you can try this app. It’s free (without Ads’). Please let me know your comments, my brother will be doing further improvements to this application going forward in managing this.

I’ll try write in a detailed post on how much easier it was to develop in Silverlight for mobile and WP7.

What Next: Planning to develop/guide my brother to develop a Windows Azure based WP7 application.

Disclaimer: As I’m an employee of Wipro, I’ve released this app as part of my brother’s company name, JiNiom, as he’s done lot of work including designing some screen in Silverlight. Also, another reason is I’m not sure whether I can personally publish app’s to Windows Marketplace, even though Microsoft itself is allowing / encouraging their employees and even they can sell the app’s and take profit out of it.

Public vs. Private Cloud – PaaS vs. SaaS

I don't' think any 1 service (over internet) since the day internet was born runs without any downtime.

Even services run as a company by itself like twitter, facebook, go down, including google search. When we're going to have such a service, like good old mainframes running simple reservation systems tirelessly without going down (very often), enterprise will believe in PaaS. Till that time, you'll see private cloud.

Finance institutions are the one who are creating an impression among Non-Finance folks, the Cloud is not secure.

I strongly feel, Cloud + Private Data Centers are going to go hand in hand in long-term. Cloud is not going to replace any Enterprise Data Centers in next decade or two, but, it's going to augment and provide the scalability for the Enterprise.

Microsoft Azure is the One and Only True PaaS (i feel so) in the sense, it's the only one which provide Enterprise to host their Middle/UI Tier in Azure and with Azure Connect to have their DB in-house/in their own Data Centers, which can provide best of both Worlds (PaaS/Cloud + Private Data Centers).

Disclosure: I'm a .NET Architect, and not in any way associated / working with Microsoft. Above is my personal opinion based on my belief, knowledge on Cloud, .NET & Enterprise.

Next is Windows Cloud/Azure OS

This post is wrt M$ revealing RemoteFX feature in Win 2008 Server R2 and Win 7 SP1, officially unveiled at Microsoft’s Tech-Ed conference in New Orleans today.

Oh, i was thinking few days back, what might be the Next Windows OS. It might be heading to this direction means, it'll be Windows Cloud/Azure OS.

Even Ray Oze told few day's back in All Thinks D, Chrome OS (cloud os) is in the right direction, forget Balmer didn't agreed. Ray is right, Balmer probably dont' want to share it now itself that they're planning for it as next ver.

Win 8 should be nothing but Windows Cloud from this news, with full support again for client/server app's developed in WPF but, running from Server, trying to again kill the Browser.

I feel M$ is right, what we're now trying in Browser is, trying to replicate all c/s app features thru Silverlight/Flash or may be HTML 5. So, what's the point of think web app.

May be in next 3-4 yrs, once everywhere net/bandwidth is in 100 MB speed, we dont' need browser based RIA app, we can run the whole Windows OS from Cloud, so, we can just subscribe for Windows Azure/Cloud OS and app's will install/run straight from M$ servers.

Ref:

• http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2010/03/18/microsoft-announces-quot-remotefx-quot-the-calista-based-hyper-v-requiring-pc-over-ip-competitor.aspx
• http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-reinvents-the-mainframe/2184#comments
• http://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2010/06/07/sp1-roadmap-for-windows-server-2008-r2-unveiled.aspx
• http://blogs.technet.com/b/mattmcspirit/archive/2010/06/07/dynamic-memory-and-remotefx-video-demos.aspx

James Gosling moved out of Oracle a.k.a. Oracle + Sun a.k.a. just Oracle, is this the End of Java …?

Time to move on...

Friday April 9, 2010

Yes, indeed, the rumors are true: I resigned from Oracle a week ago (April 2nd). I apologize to everyone in St Petersburg who came to TechDays on Thursday expecting to hear from me. I really hated not being there. As to why I left, it's difficult to answer: Just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good. The hardest part is no longer being with all the great people I've had the privilege to work with over the years. I don't know what I'm going to do next, other than take some time off before I start job hunting.

This is the new home of my blog. It contains all of my old blog entries from Sun: Sun's blogging policy gave bloggers rights to their own works. The few more recent blog entries that I did at blogs.sun.com were written under somewhat more strict policies :-)

James Gosling

James, We salute you. I'm literally crying that what's going to be the next step for Java and millions of Devs's around the globe, in the current hands.

I'm from India and did got involved in Java applets, servlets, JSP (in alpha stages) around late 90's and moved to .NET during it's beta and still with M$ camp now, living breathing in WCF/WF/WPF/Silverlight et all. Being said that, I've spent numerous nights with friends learning Java, in small city in Southern part of India when no one knew what it is, when ASP was the behemoth.

I've been an inspirational figure in my small town in my college during my post grad to tell everyone that im doing my MCA proj in JSP/Java Applets. Due to my frustration with Sun not releasing / progressing / having too many people involved in each spec, getting the initiative thru JSP taglibs, Tomcat and then to JSF, and lack of IDE's at that time for Java, we small set of Devs moved to .NET and VS.NET.

Still, I remember the days we spent on Java, the new thing, read about you and few other ppl in Sun, making stories about the Java cup (I never knew which one is actual one) and how James and others in Sun initial days got the Coffe cup as the symbol for Java.... Oh,mm those are good old days. Still I follow Java developments, but, you know, when the news broke that ORCL took Sun, i thought oh man, the new things in .NET space may go to an end. As you know, if there's no competition what'll happen to WinMo/Palm. Who's going to drive the Tech 4GL space now....

I think some young grds in MIT, or even maybe in IIT India/China, may need to comeup with a New language / platform and give a paradigm shift to developer community.

I think, Change does have lots of meaning, as it changes whenever it happens.

Now, I believe 2012 had already begun, but, I still've hope like the few people might save the Dev community, like in that 2012 Noah's Ark, try to give birth to a New World.

We all Salute you, millions, No, Billions of Devs across the World.

HTC HD2 from T Mobile – Get Bing.com 35% Cashback

Bing.com gives 35% bing cashback right now. I've ordered 1 thru the same. My friend got 30% cashback when 3GS was released, but it took 1 month to get the cashback.

Steps to get HTC HD2 with Bing.com 35% cashback:

1) Go to Bing.com
2) give "HTC HD2" and hit search
3) you'll get the 1st link in your search result as "HTC® HD2 From T-Mobile®·T-Mobile.com Bing cashback" - saying "Big Screen, Big Speed, Big Story. 35% Cashback from Bing. Free S&H"
4) Hit the link "Bing cashback", it'll redirect with a pop-up window saying 35% cashback
5) Give your email/live email id, type the image letter/number in the textbox, and hit the link "shop and get cashback"
6) You'll be redirected to T-Mobile .com website to HTC HD2 page
7) You'll see a Pink button in the right side top called "I want one"
8) Hit that Pink button called "I want one", it'll ask whether you're a T-Mobile customer with Yes/No button. Click "No" if you're New to TMobile
9) You'll see the page gets refreshed with HTC HD2 selected in your cart and it ask you to select a plan
10) You've 2 options -
       - Even More & Even More Plus plans
       - Even More is with Contract from TMo
       - Even More Plus is with out Contract from TMo
11) Select Even More Plus plan (as you need to go with a minimum plan for at least 1 month) to buy without contract also
12) I've selected 59$ plan, but it's not a contract, so you can cancel before they charge next month
13) Then proceed with checkout (if you want you can add few ascessories, but ive not ordered anything now)
14) Give all details, and check-out

BTW, if you use IE7/8, there seems some issue, it gives in the final page saying tmobile site is experiencing some issue. Im not sure about other versions of IE. So, after i tried 4-5 times, i did the whole process (from step 1) thru chrome browser and checked-out and got a confirmation mail to my gmail id just now.

Happy HD2, as WP7 will take another 6-8 months min, if it's not delayed more than than.

I'm upgrading from my iPhone 3G to HTC HD2, for the powerful beast. Below are my USPs to go with HD2 from iPhone 3G.

1) Flash Lite
2) External Memory Card
3) 5MP camera
4) I can do some app and try/release, as it supports .NET (iphone sdk is not avl in Win)
5) Big screen
6) Office support
7) I hope the last WinMo without stripped down OS

Happy buying HD2.

Tx & Regards
jinishans

Silverlight 3 – Conceptualize, Design, Develop a AdHoc Querying / Reporting Framework

Here I’m going to write about how I conceptualized a AdHoc querying / reporting reusable Framework in Silverlight 3.

When our client came and requested they wanted to go for Business Objects / SQL Server Reporting Server kind of reporting server/tool last year in the mid of a big recession in Financial Sector and everyone wanted to reduce the cost of anything (including in our project), i was having doubt on what the end users of our project really want.

As I was with this project for almost 2yrs, and as it went to live just 6 months back when they requested this reporting feature, i told them, do we really need such a tool/server for this small application. Cos, i felt the maturity of the application is more important for going to such a product. Of-course you might think it makes sense, but, i felt, the application is not so mature to go for such a product.

I gave 4 options for reporting;

1) Silverlight based AdHoc querying/reporting tool

2) SQL Server / SSRS based reporting

3) Business Objects based AdHoc tool

Our users wanted below mentioned high-Fi features too;

• Select the Table they wanted to Query
• Query the Transactional/Historical tables on need basis
• Drag & Drop the required columns
• Have their own condition for required columns
• See the result in a Nice gird
• Re-arrange the columns, etc
• Generate couple of simple graphs
• Export the data in Excel, save the graphs as images for reporting purpose, etc.
• Finally, a Nice looking UI for showing to their end clients that they use such a sophisticated tool for generating their reports

Due to above feature requirements and cost restrictions, they’ve decided to go with Silverlight.

Finally when I prepared the presentation, I gave a glimpse of what we’re planning in Silverlight.

Conceptualization

When I conceptualize to provide these features, i came up with below wire-frame ppt for my development team.

BTW, due to the last point in the above requirement, we’ve decided to use Telerik Silverlight tools.

To choose the Table, I thought we’ll use CoverFlow control.

Also, I convinced the users that selecting the Table and querying would be time consuming & daunting task for end-users. Instead it’ll be called Business Specific Pools (aka Views in our terms technically).

Now, the Whole AdHoc Query/Report Framework needs proper flow of controls to be placed to achieve all above features/requirements.

I thought of several other options and went with “Dockable Panel Control” called RadDocking in Telerik Silverlight. I’ve given below the wire-frame I created out of it for our AdHoc Fx.

Design

As we already use Silverlight 2, our team doesn’t have any issue in doing it in Silverlight 3. This is what we went with for different layers;

UI – Silverlight 3 + Telerik SL controls

Service – WCF

DB – LINQ (I’ll tell the reason behind this)

There’s nothing much to talk about UI/Service as this is easy to understand. But, with SL 2 in 2009 beginning we went with LINQ, but with SL 3.0, we thought we’ll go with Data Services. When we started investigating it, we came to know only with .NET 4.0 Data Services gets’ support for calling SPs directly, we’ve decided to go with again LINQ.

Developed AdHoc Fx

Once the team finally developed it, users very well received it and appreciated on the features we’ve provided and moreover the way it’s been implemented.

Conclusion

This blog is not just to tell whether what we can do with Silverlight/Telerik/.NET/C#. It’s all about how we should Conceptualize, Design & Develop a small piece of module when users come with such requirements, of-course with cost in tab.

It’s not about only Architect can do it, everyone who can visualize what client wants, can come up with such options.

Note: As a last note, I need to Thank my Development Team who implemented this in an excellent way, what I envisioned. Without their excellent contribution, it would not be an useful tool and got this much appreciation from users.

Windows Mobile (6.5 / WinMo 6.5) Marketplace Launched !

Seems M$ Windows Mobile Marketplace has been launched partly, although not available fully.

I thought I’ll check in MSDN blogs, and got some links which led me to a nice Silverlight based Windows Mobile Marketplace site.

Also, in US, only 2 devices will be available with WinMo 6.5 loaded tomorrow morning.

Also, only the US site is in Silverlight with comparison, other country sites are just web-pages, not with Silverlight.

And about other M$ features comes with any WinMo 6.5 are here.

Here are few snapshots of them and I’ve created even my first Custom Theme and downloaded to my laptop, yes, it’s running Win 7. Atleast for this we should try WinMo 6.5.

My Phone is not yet up, but check back on 6th Oct 09;

Windows Live for Windows Mobile;

Active Sync;

Insider, to get more news about Windows Mobile apps, products, etc;

Few apps on Software & Services;

Netflix, Fusion (voicemail s/w), NewsBreak Lite, Facebook, Photo Contacts 4.0 (still this is not yet avl. in iPhone without jailbreaking), Viigo (socio utility), Kinoma (mobile media player), Windows Live for mobile, Bing for mobile, etc.

Also, like Zune HD, some crap games, so not worth to mention here.

Custom Theme creation screenshots;

Select your background, select the color scheme / choose your own color;

Downloading custom theme to my laptop;

It’s 1.79 MB, a CAB file, I can’t install as I dont’ have a WinMo 6.5 device yet. If someone can tell me how to install it in my iPhone 3G, that would be awesome.

BTW, you can send the custom theme to your mobile too.

 

i think pretty much most of the stuff are available, i couldn’t test rest except custom theme, cos, I don’t have a WinMo 6.5 yet. Planning to go for HTC Pure with AT&T. Let’s see tomorrow for more news.

Microsoft “Spark” programs – FREE for 3 yr’s

Microsoft, at a time when the current economic climate is still tough, launches something called “Spark” programs, WebsiteSpark, BizSpark & DreamSpark. It’s all FREE for 3 yr’s.

Microsoft WebsiteSpark, for people who want to start a Software Service co. with less than 10 member (entrepreneurs/fresh grads’/IT pro’s/etc.) wanted to setup a firm with their friends/known people, will help support developers and companies by providing the business resources, training, and software necessary for companies to get started and grow successful businesses on the Microsoft Web Platform. More about WebsiteSpark from ScottGu is WebsiteSpark.

 

Microsoft BizSpark, if you want Software? Support? Visibility?, and your business is Developing Software, Privately held, Less than three years old and Making less than US $1M annually, then BizSpark is for you.

 

Microsoft DreamSpark, simply for Students. Register with your university/college email id and you’re in. You can download any latest s/w from Microsoft DreamSpark site, get Training, etc.

Also, you can get more info on these from Microsoft StartupZone too.

Nice right.