June 2010 - Posts
I’m an Acronis True Image user and yesterday, I received an email for a new Acronis product. It’s called Acronis Drive Monitor and its purpose is to monitor hard drive health. The good news is that it’s free so I gave it a shot and installed it on my desktop and my server (yep, it support desktop and server Windows OS).
My server has been acting strangely recently and I suspect the main hard drive to be the culprit. I did run the usual CHKDSK and that helped but my Spiderman senses were still telling me that something was still wrong. Well, Drive Monitor told me exactly what was wrong by reporting the hard drive S.M.A.R.T. attributes. Basically, my drive is getting old. Time to pay a visit to the folks at my local MicroBytes store.
So how long do hard drives live? I guess that the answer is the classic “It depends” but it think that 3 years is fair enough for a drive spinning 24/7. For now on, I’ll start a hard drive labelling system sticking an expiration date on them. Gee, if it’s good enough for milk, it must also be good for hard drives! ;-)
http://www.visualstudiotalkshow.com
Dominic Sevigny: Silverlight dans la grande entreprise
Nous discutons avec Dominic Sevigny de l'adoption de Silverlight dans la grande entreprise. Silverlight est un plugin pour navigateur web multiplate-forme (Windows et Apple, Linux via le projet MoonLight), qui permet de développer des applications web riches dans un moteur de rendu vectoriel. Silverlight a comme concurrents principaux Adobe Flash et Flex, et dans une moindre mesure des solutions telles que JavaFX ou Quicktime d’Apple. Tout dépend si l’on se place du côté outil de conception de véritables applications ou de simple diffuseur de média (vidéos, musiques…).
Dominic Sévigny est président de RunAtServer Consulting, une entreprise spécialisée dans la consultation ASP.NET et offrant une expertise de développement Web exemplaire par la qualité de ses développeurs séniors. Dominic est reconnu comme étant un conférencier très dynamique. En effet, il donne à l’occasion des conférences sur les technologies Web telles que ASP.NET et Ajax. Il a donné plusieurs conférences à la Communauté .Net de Montréal ainsi qu’au DevTeach où il a été nommé « Best Speaker » en 2007. Il est le formateur exclusif de toutes les formations ASP.NET et AJAX pour le plus grand centre de formation de Montréal, Technologia. Pour la quatrième année consécutive, il a obtenu de Microsoft le titre de MVP ASP.NET.
If you’re interested in learning Windows Phone 7 development, check DevTeach’s Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp with superstar trainer Colin Melia.
More info here
Oh and save a whopping $100 by using this super special secret code while registering: G0005GUVSM
I was wondering how WPF would perform when running in Remote Desktop and found this great article from Jossef Goldberg.
Basically, WPF apps can run smoothly inside Remote Desktop. You need to turn off animations and “screen candy” and tweak some Remote Desktop settings.
Read the article here. Highly recommended!
Students can get their hands on Office Pro Academic 2010 for a mere $80 in the US or $90 CDN in Canada. The offer is also available in more countries.
For more info check the Microsoft student Website
I just found out about this community written free ebook about Windows Azure. It’s a series of articles edited by Eric Nelson and written by 15 authors.
You can download it here.
Microsoft released an update to its Azure training kit.
Here is what is new in the kit:
- Introduction to Windows Azure - VS2010 version
- Introduction To SQL Azure - VS2010 version
- Introduction to the Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Service Bus - VS2010 version
- Introduction to Dallas - VS2010 version
- Introduction to the Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Access Control Service - VS2010 version
- Web Services and Identity in the Cloud
- Exploring Windows Azure Storage VS2010 version + new Exercise: “Working with Drives”
- Windows Azure Deployment VS2010 version + new Exercise: “Securing Windows Azure with SSL”
- Minor fixes to presentations – mainly timelines, pricing, new features etc.
Download it here
More Azure news from TechEd US 2010. This time, it’s from the SQL Azure team:
- 50GB databases available on June 28th
- Support for Spatial Data
- Data Sync Service for SQL Azure
- Microsoft SQL Server Web Manager
- Access 2010 Support for SQL Azure
Read at about it here
The Expression 4 suite of products shipped today. Good news, it’s a free upgrade for Expression 3 owners.
New with version 4 is the Expression Studio 4 Web Professional suite. Basically, it’s Expression Studio 4 Ultimate without Blend and SketchFlow.
The Azure team did a few announcements today at TechED US 2010:
- June 2010 Azure Tools SDK with support for VS 2010 RTM and the .NET Framework 4
- Production launch of the Azure CDN
- OS Auto-upgrade Feature
Read all about it here
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