-
MSR - Microsoft Portrait for PC
-
There is lots of research activity that happens from the MSR division and some really neat ideas get realized as platform or product features. Here is one such cool idea from their side.
Microsoft Portrait is a research prototype for mobile video communication. It supports .NET Messenger Service, Session Initiation Protocol and Internet Locator Service on PCs, Pocket PCs, Handheld PCs and Smartphones. It runs on local area networks, dialup networks and even wireless networks with bandwidths as low as 9.6 kilobits/second. Microsoft Portrait delivers portrait-like video if users are in low bandwidths and displays full-color video if users are in broadband. In low bandwidths, portrait video possesses clearer shape, smoother motion, shorter latency and much cheaper computational cost than do conventional video technologies. Microsoft Portrait pursues providing presence notification, chat/voice/video functions anytime, anywhere, on any device.
Download it here.
-
SQL Server Publishing
-
This is an interesting topic by itself. I have seen many asking how do we expose SQL Server to the external world easily. So here is an answer for a typical hosted environment. Check these downloads:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=29B4FFD8-AC3A-4481-B352-9B185619A901&displaylang=en
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=B8133957-C210-4C24-9E05-308280F2C98D&displaylang=en
I will try to get my hands dirty on these and maybe publish some content here or over my website.
-
MS release of AJAX Framework
-
ASP.NET AJAX integrates client script libraries with the ASP.NET 2.0 server-based development framework. This new Web development technology extends ASP.NET, offering the interactive user interface benefits of AJAX with a programming model that is more familiar to ASP.NET developers, making it very easy to add AJAX to your applications quickly and with minimal effort. However, ASP.NET AJAX isn’t just for ASP.NET development. You can take advantage of the rich client framework to easily build client-centric Web applications that integrate with any backend data provider. Download ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 here.
The shared-source project of the AJAX Toolkit site is also still kicking and you can visit it here.
-
Patterns & practices: Web Service Software Factory (WCF Release)
-
The Web Service Software Factory (also known as the Service Factory) is an integrated collection of tools, patterns, source code and prescriptive guidance that helps our customers quickly and consistently construct Web services that adhere to well known architecture and design patterns. The Service Factory provides guidance that addresses many of the challenges associated with building WCF and ASP.NET Web services and the components of a distributed application. These challenges include:
- Designing WCF and ASMX messages and service interfaces.
- Creating service contracts from existing WSDL and XSD files.
- Applying exception shielding and exception handling.
- Designing business entities in the domain model.
- Translating messages to and from business entities.
- Designing, building, and invoking the data access layer.
- Validating many aspects of the service using code analysis.
- Applying message-level security to WCF services.
- Planning for the migration to WCF.
- Applying message validation.
Resouces:
MSDN, Community Workspace, Webcasts
-
Business Scorecard Manager 2005 Compatibility Release
-
What are the capabilities and changes include in the release?
The release consists of the following capabilities and changes:
1. Enables BSM 2005 to install and work with MOSS 2007.
2. QFE roll-up fixes with code changes to support MOSS 2007.
For more detailed information visit this link.