Remember Microsoft's Surface? Well, Lenovo's got this thing called the IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC that it's touting as the first "interpersonal computer." It's a Window 8 dingus with a 27-inch screen that can be laid down or stood up so four people can use it all at once as though it was a big board game, which went fitted out with paddles and joysticks appears to be its main purpose. Surface, now called PixelSense, was designed for store displays and other commercial applications. The Table PC's screen, which is the size of eight iPads sewn together, is said to respond to 10 fingers touching it at the same time. Photos and videos can be rotated. It weighs 15lbs and will cost $1,699 this summer when it goes on sale. ... (more)

The Cloud Storage Wars: Windows Azure vs. Google

Azure Sessions at Cloud Expo So much happened in January 2010 for the cloud storage world. First was the Windows Azure Platform went from public preview to full production. Second was Google Docs opened up  for any file type upload/download, effectively making it a GDrive in the cloud. How would these affect you? This article will compare the two cloud storage offerings from price, speed, usability, service level agreement and to developer support. 1. Price Google’s storage cost = 25c / Gigabyte / year = 2c / Gigabyte / month. There is no additional transfer cost. Windows Azure’s storage cost is at 15c / Gigabyte / month. There is additional cost for transfer data in and out. Note: Google storage is clearly cheaper, about 10 times cheaper. 2. Speed We will use Gladinet Cloud Desktop to map both in a virtual drive in Windows Explorer and compare the time it takes to... (more)

Cloud Expo 2011 East To Attract 10,000 Delegates and 200 Exhibitors

SYS-CON Events announced today that the 8th International Cloud Expo will take place June 6-9, 2011, in New York City. The International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series is the world's leading Cloud-focused event and is held three times a year, in New York, Silicon Valley and in Europe. Over 600 corporate sponsors and 10,000 industry professionals have participated in Cloud Computing Expo since its inception, more than all other Cloud-related events put together. Cloud Computing Expo 2011 East Call for Papers Deadline November 30, 2010 - SUBMIT YOUR SPEAKING PROPOSAL TODAY! The four-day event will offer a rich array of sessions led by exceptional speakers about the business and technical value of cloud computing with more than 150 sponsors and exhibitors and over 5,000 estimated delegates from well over 48 different countries. Explore Cloud Expo Sponsorship &... (more)

Where Are RIA Technologies Headed in 2008?

I am always being told off by i-technologists for quoting Picasso as having said that computers are useless. But I still love his reasoning? "Because they can only give you answers." Picasso, like AJAXWorld Magazine, liked questions. So we thought we would share with you what some of the world's leading rich Internet application pioneers are thinking may be the next questions that we need to see answered. From that readers can themselves infer where AJAX is headed. What are the top questions to ask next about AJAX? Eric Miraglia of Yahoo! 1.  (From March'08) How do I calculate the ROI of building my RIA on the iPhone SDK vs using AJAX? 2.  How do I assess the performance of my app and decide what to do next to make it faster?  3.  When it comes to accessibility, how do I know what's required of me for my rich web apps?  Beyond what's required, what makes good business se... (more)

Microsoft Named “Gold Sponsor” of Cloud Expo 2010 April 19-21 Javits Center

Microsoft Session at Cloud Expo SYS-CON Events announced today that Microsoft has been named "Gold Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 5th International (www.CloudComputingExpo.com), which will take place on April 19-21, 2010, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. Register Today and Save $800 ! Explore Sponsorship Opportunities ! Cloud Expo is the world's leading Cloud-focused event since 2007, and is held five times a year, in New York City, Silicon Valley, Prague, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Microsoft cloud services mean freedom for businesses. The freedom to access the technology you want, where and when you want it. The freedom to take advantage of the latest technology as a capital expense, or an operational one. The freedom to focus on running your business - not running IT systems. Microsoft cloud services are Microsoft by extension: Giving you the ability to m... (more)

Microsoft’s First Cloud Server Hits Public Beta

Microsoft Wednesday sent Exchange 2010 out into public beta. It’s its first server built from the ground up, according to Microsoft, to be deployed in the cloud as an online service as well as on-site. Microsoft expects to start selling the thing in the second half. It will be available as a cloud service from both Microsoft and third parties. Microsoft also conceives of it being available as a hybrid: a mix of both the cloud and on-site. What it will cost as an online service is still a mystery. Microsoft already has a hosted version of Exchange, Exchange Online, based on Exchange 2007 that users will eventually be able to upgrade to Exchange 2010. Microsoft also said it expects Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 to go into technical preview in Q3, ahead of release to manufacturing sometime in the first half of next year. Office 2010, ... (more)

Windows Azure Mobile Services for Android

Recently the Windows Azure Mobile Services team released official support for Android. Along with the SDK Microsoft has also written a number of tutorials to help you get started. The best place to start if you’ve never used Windows Azure Mobile Services before is the Getting started with Mobile Services tutorial. After you complete the initial walkthrough, there are a number of options you can look at depending on what your specific needs are: Data Get started with data - Learn how you can use Mobile Services to store and retrieve data from an app. Validate and modify data using server scripts - You can use server scripts to validate and modify data when you are inserting and updating it. This tutorial show you how to define and register server scripts with mobile services and how to modify your app to take advantage of the new behaviors you define through the scr... (more)

Microsoft Piggybacks on Eclipse

A release candidate of Eclipse4SL has arrived. That’s the open source plug-in Microsoft commissioned from Eclipse Foundation member Soyatec, a French-based “open solutions” company, so cross-platform Silverlight-based rich Internet applications can be built with the famed open source Eclipse IDE and make use of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform. Microsoft (whose Silverlight supremo, Scott Guthrie, is pictured below) says it will make for better interoperability between Silverlight and Java investments in web sites and web services. Soyatec is releasing Eclipse4SL under the Eclipse Public License 1.0 on SourceForge and has submitted the thing to the Eclipse Foundation as an open Eclipse project. With Eclipse4SL, Microsoft says developers can use pure Eclipse project & resource management or Visual Studio. A project explorer is also available to manage the project re... (more)

Book Review: Dependency Injection in .NET

Ugh. Sometimes my ability to be a complete ignoramus really annoys me. When I first saw this book on the upcoming list of books to be published I thought, "That sucks, I just got done reading Dependency Injection by Dhanji R. Prasanna last year. I don't need to read the .NET version", and so I ignored this book. As time went on I saw all the great reviews coming out about the book and it made me curious. A buddy of mine had purchased it and I know that Manning gives ebooks with there book purchases, so I asked to borrow it. I ordered the book the next day. I have nothing bad to say about Dependency Injection by Dhanji R. Prasanna, it was a great book. The difference is this one spoke my language of choice, .NET. It made the read so much better for me. Plus all the coverage of the popular DI Containers for .NET rocks. This book is broken down into 4 parts the first par... (more)

Book Review: Pro .NET Best Practices

I personally do not find software development an art form. It is not an unpredictable activity driven by crazy business users that come to work every day inventing a new way to operate their businesses just to savagely changing your requirements. Project teams that use changing requirements as an excuse for their dates constantly slipping and bugs being pushed to production are simply not good development teams and they are poorly managed. Even when you're in an environment where requirements are volatile, proper architecture and process engineering can level the playing field. One of the reasons for incompetent software development teams is what I like to call home brewed enterprises. A company that does not welcome external resources to the table when they are changing to meet the demands of today's hi-tech requirements for doing business will usually create a home ... (more)

Step-by-Step: Connect System Center 2012 App Controller to Windows Azure

The article I’m writing for part 13 our “31 Days of Servers in the Cloud” series involves using App Controller to create a virtual machine.  But to do this, you first need to connect and associate App Controller (a component of System Center 2012) with your Windows Azure subscription. So in today’s Part 12, as a preliminary document for part 13, in this article I’m going to show you how to connect App Controller to your Windows Azure account. To do this, we need to have a few preliminaries in place: You have a Windows Azure subscription, and have requested the ability to preview the use of Windows Azure virtual machines.  (If you don’t have an account, you can start a free 90-day trial HERE.) You have System Center 2012 App Controller installed.  (Download the System Center 2012 Private Cloud evaluation software HERE.)  NOTE: In my examples I’m using System Center 20... (more)