My iPhone 4 is a lemon, oh my!
Summary
Say what you will about the iPhone 4, but mine’s a lemon. Reviewers have called it “the best smartphone,” “worth upgrading” and “game changing,” but they’re all bogus superlatives that don’t apply to mine. Sure, it looks great, it’s all shiny and gorgeous, but what good is a phone that can’t make phone calls?
Where to [...]
A Private Social Network for Cell Phones
Users can share information, but the network only sees encrypted data.
if you love #privacy, this is an interesting approach...
Silverlight/Expression behavior, WPF custom control and Windows Phone 7 samples implementing Multi-Touch Manipulation (Gestures) and Inertia.Silverlight 4 sample uses code and libs from "Microsoft Surface Manipulations and Inertia Sample for Microsoft Silverlight" http://tinyurl.com/y8pzuec
Live demo of the Silverlight behavior available on the Expression gallery: http://tinyurl.com/ycp75c4
Useful links:
"Enabling Multi-touch gestures in WPF using Expression Blend 4 RC and the TranslateZoomRotate behavior" http://www.davidezordan.net/blog/?p=1938
"Introduction to WPF 4 multi-touch" by Jaime Rodriguez http://tinyurl.com/ygpjrcgLast edited Today at 11:10 PM by davidezordan, version 12
Microsoft Brings Developers and Designers Closer Together With Expression Studio 4 Release
Latest version of professional design suite streamlines Web application, design and development.
NEW YORK — June 7, 2010 — Today at Internet Week New York 2010, Microsoft Corp. announced the immediate availability of Microsoft Expression Studio 4. The newest version of Microsoft’s professional suite of design tools, Expression 4 distinguishes itself by enabling designers and developers to collaborate and create dynamic applications using their existing skills and current toolset.
Here are some of the other Windows Phone 7 features Microsoft is promoting as of interest to business users:
Integration of the forthcoming Office Hub with Exchange Server and SharePoint Server 2010. When Windows Phone 7 devices ship this holiday season, they’ll be able to sync with Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2010 and the current version of Exchange Online (that is based on Exchange 2007). After that (no dates yet), Microsoft will enable syncing of the phones with 2010-enabled versions of Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. (Microsoft showed offline syncing of the SharePoint client that is on the phones during the morning keynote today). The secure connection is provided by Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG).
Microsoft is planning to add secure connectivity for other BPOS apps, including Communications Online, at some point. No dates for that yet. On the CRM front, Microsoft is going to allow developers who’ve created front-end client apps that connect to Dynamics CRM on the back end to offer their wares via the Marketplace. But Microsoft itself isn’t going to be providing a Windows Phone 7 version of its CRM product.
There will be no IPSEC virtual private networking available for Windows Phone 7 devices. (This was available for Windows Mobile 6.x phones). Microsoft is providing, however, passwords, PINs, remote wipe, factory resettable settings and other security measures on top of the UAG connectivity, giving users an extra layer of secure connectivity, officials said.
Windows Phone Marketplace remains the one and only place where certified Windows Phone 7 apps will be available. But Microsoft will be providing a secure subsection of the Marketplace to developers who want to make beta versions of their apps available to a select group of testers. Microsoft is still evaluating when/if/how it will allow enterprises to distribute versions of their business applications to their own employees only; nothing new to say at this point.
Microsoft isn’t changing its stance on requiring Windows Phone 7 applications to be written in managed code. If there are business applications that developers are having problems getting to work without native raw-socket access, Microsoft will work with those companies to try to find a workaround, officials said.
At TechEd, Microsoft also released a set of new Windows Phone Marketplace policies today. These include
Annual registration fee of $99
No limit to the number of paid apps submitted
5 free apps per registration, $19.99 each
Free registration to DreamSpark students
A new optional push notification service for third-party developers
A new optional Trial API, for developers who want to create try-then-buy apps
The ability to publish to all available Marketplace markets though a new “worldwide distribution” option
Support for free, paid, freemium (free with a paid upgrade path) and ad-funded models
Developer devices are also on everyone’s lips. During the Windows Phone session yesterday, Terry Myerson (he runs engineering for Windows Phone 7) stated that we will start putting phones into select developers’ hands next month. That’s exciting stuff. Obviously we’re starting with the developers who have invested in the Silverlight and .NET platforms, registered at Windows Phone Marketplace and have begun building apps with the Windows Phones Developer Tools. Specifics of the programs are TBD, but we are going to want to get phones into large ISV hands, small team hands…you name it. We’re definitely not going to carpet bomb phones; we want to get maximum leverage for our phone distribution to developers.
If you are developing WP7 applications in Switzerland, drop me a line (stefano.malle@microsoft.com).
Microsoft now has more than 10,000 customers (each with an unspecified number of users) using its Windows Azure cloud environment.
That new milestone was mentioned by Doug Hauger, General Manager of Windows Azure, during his appearance on June 3 at the Cowen & Co. Tech Conference. (I listened to him via the Webcast.)
Hauger shared some other new data and statistics. There are four main workloads customers are running on Windows Azure — Microsoft’s cloud operating environment which became commercially available in February this year. The four: On/off batch job computing; quick start-up (with no need or money to build out a private data center; unpredictable bursting; and predictable bursting.
