Vinod Kumar Mindmap

InterOp on Windows Azure

2009-11-20T04:37:00Z

This recent PDC over the couple of days has tons of announcements to go a look forward from a Microsoft technologies point of view. One of the important announcement which I had the privilege to watch is the InterOp story esp around the Cloud Platform. At the PDC Keynote, we did see how WordPress was ported to make it work on Windows Azure. So I thought I will bring some of these interesting InterOp stories and resources you might love to go ahead and read. Windows Azure SDK for Java™ The Windows...(read more)

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 5.0 - CTP

2009-11-10T03:38:00Z

The Solution Accelerators Team is offering customers and partners added inventory and assessment capabilities with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 5.0 Community Technical Preview (CTP). The MAP Toolkit 5.0 CTP provides customers and partners with new features such as inventory of heterogeneous server environments; the ability to determine usage of deployed System Center Configuration Manager (a member of the Core Client Access License Suite); and readiness assessment for migration...(read more)

Free useful Tech-Books

2009-11-09T04:25:00Z

Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/C/0/5C0BD0AB-040D-4C56-A60B-661001012DDA/Windows_Server_2008_R2_e-book.pdf Learn about the new features of Windows Server 2008 R2 in the areas of virtualization, management, the Web application platform, scalability and reliability, and interoperability with Windows 7. Download Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2, written by industry experts Charlie Russel and Craig Zacker along with the Windows Server team at Microsoft. Microsoft...(read more)

IronRuby and IronPython CTPs for .NET 4.0 Beta 2

2009-10-24T09:21:00Z

Now to continue from what I posted in my last post around the VS2010 and .NET Beta 2 update, here is another. This is the third preview of IronRuby and IronPython running under the Dynamic Language Runtime that is built directly into .NET 4.0. As before, this release allows you to use IronRuby objects and types as .NET 4.0 dynamic objects from within C# and Visual Basic code. These binaries are roughly equivalent to the functionality found in IronRuby 0.9 and IronPython 2.6. Take a look at Harry...(read more)

VS 2010, .NET 4.0 Beta2 & Channel 9

2009-10-23T15:45:00Z

Couple of days back we did announce the availability of Visual Studio 2010 to the MSDN subscribers and there are enough online buzz around the product. I will be installing the same just like you folks sometime on Monday as I have a session to deliver tomorrow and refrained from rebuilding this week :). You can surely download the same now online at the VS 2010 Download page . It is also very refreshing to see the new Logo and all the reports have been how sleek the tool is now … I just gotta...(read more)

PowerPivot for Excel 2010

2009-10-20T16:26:00Z

I just installed the internal Beta of Office 2010 and couldn’t wait to see this new add-in working. PowerPivot for Excel is a data analysis tool that delivers unmatched computational power directly within the application users already know and love—Microsoft Excel. Leveraging familiar Excel features, users can transform enormous quantities of data from virtually any source with incredible speed into meaningful information to get the answers they need in seconds. Using SQL Server PowerPivot...(read more)

IIS Media Services 3.0 is RTW

2009-10-20T07:48:00Z

IIS Media Services is a set of extensions for Internet Information Services 7 (IIS) that provide an integrated HTTP-based media delivery platform. This includes the new IIS Live Smooth Streaming and the separate IIS Advanced Logging package. Also with it is the release of Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit, which allows developers to easily create Smooth Streaming experiences using Silverlight. Supported features include PlayReady, DVR controls, instant replay, slow motion, multiple camera angles...(read more)

Extending Life of your Computer - Tips

2009-10-15T07:28:00Z

Recently, I have had the opportunity to replace my home laptop and one of my demo Laptops because of different reasons. I have been a bit relaxed on maintaining these laptops and hence the headaches followed and some resolution had to be made. Now that they are behind my back and I take utmost care of the work-laptop from time-to-time, I thought I share some of these with you in this online space. These are my suggestions and felt worth sharing with you. I am going to learn a lot from your personal...(read more)

SQLCAT Articles – SQL 2008

2009-10-07T16:29:00Z

The SQL Server Customer Advisory Team handles tons and tons of large deployments and they try to go ahead and document all their findings for the benefit of the larger community. Their whitepapers are generally loaded with loads of information that I have had instances where I used to read the article 2-3 times to get the facts and reasons behind their suggestions. Just listing some of these for your reference, do bookmark and read them when time permits - The Analysis Services 2008 Performance Guide...(read more)

A’bad UG CTD and Gandhi Ashram …

2009-10-05T16:33:00Z

I have been planning to write the trip report from my recent trip - Community TechDays in Ahmedabad over weekend. Well, flying on a holiday Oct 2nd ( Gandhi Jayanthi ) and executing the event on a Saturday Oct 3rd was something I had to first skilfully negotiate with my family for permission. Having gone past all that, it was the session preparation. I was allotted 120 mins for two sessions i.e. Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2010. I have been doing tons of work to get a lot of trivia and interesting...(read more)

Two System Center Beta’s

2009-10-01T03:15:00Z

System Center Essentials 2010 PM blog - http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenteressentials/archive/2009/09/29/sce-2010-public-beta-is-here.aspx www.microsoft.com/SCE SCE 2010 is designed specifically for mid-sized organizations and delivers a unified physical and virtual IT management experience. It enables you to better secure, update, monitor, and troubleshoot from a single console, so you can efficiently and proactively manage your IT environment: A unified solution with a single console for managing...(read more)

Web Application Toolkits – V1.0

2009-09-30T05:00:00Z

I think we maybe a bit late to talk about these, nevertheless it is worth mentioning. Recently a week back MS launched the WebsiteSpark initiative and this surely has brought all the buzz in the web world and it surely is catching some spark in a number of forums … I personally feel there is tons of reasons to be excited about. If you want the specifics, feel free to check ScottGu’s blog which has the specifics. Along with release has also come a number of Web Application Toolkits. The...(read more)

MapPoint Add-in for SQL Server 2008

2009-09-23T06:35:00Z

It has been close to a month of the release and I have been wanting to drop a line on this. The MapPoint 2009 Add-in for SQL Server 2008 capitalized on the spatial data that come out-of-box with SQL Server and integrates with the maps. More about it is over the homepage I have shared. You can get various views of its integration and get amazing views like a heat-map or button locate or analyze environment data etc. An intro video of this integration of MapPoint and SQL Server is available . For folks...(read more)

Estimated Vs Actual rows

2009-09-22T13:27:39Z

I have seen this as a constant struggle to understand even when people come to the performance labs in our environments. Today I got a chance to read this post from Gail Shaw on Estimated rows, actual rows and execution count which are all a common areas of confusion. Gives a very good indicator to what to lookout for …...(read more)

Visual Web Developer Express Videos

2009-09-20T13:53:00Z

Using Express edition is something I recommend a lot in my sessions. But a number of times people ask do we really have easy to learn videos … Well, with all the web-technologies hype here are a number of too good video’s that you can use from the ASP.NET site. Intro to Visual Web Developer IntelliSense Intro to Web Forms Page Layout Page Lifecycle Events Intro to ASP.NET Controls Submit and Postback Application Level Objects Session Level Objects Debugging CSS MasterPages An Introduction...(read more)