I just heard about something huge. Really Huge. Microsoft just launched BizSpark. BizSpark is a Microsoft offering that allows you to get all the Microsoft software that you need for free for up to 3 years! Hear it from the man himself

Here is the site that he talks about here

http://microsoftstartupzone.com/pages/home.aspx

Wow is all I can say. You can count on hearing more about this from me in the future. It is such a exciting time for startups as the cloud is opening and now even more free software. So many opportunities are arising for startups!

Also check out the Northern California  Developer Evangelist Anand whose is as stocked with this product as I am.

Fun of with PhotoSynth

Today at microsoft PDC the lunched their cloud computing platform Azure. Think of it as software and services, but it seem like many more exciting things to come on this. Think of this as a operating system on the cloud.

Here is the code and slides from code camp.com

Code 

Power Points

I am getting ready to do bunch of presentations this weekend and I realized half my computers were running the rc of Sql 2008

So I decided to got to the site and downloaded and selected to install SQL Exrpress 2008.

Went to look for SQL Server Express Management Studio Express 2008 annnnnd nothing!

Few search engine searches later and no clear direction found this on SQL Express home page:

You can manually download and install any edition of SQL Server 2008 directly from the Microsoft Download Center:

• SQL Server 2008 Express
• SQL Server 2008 Express with Tools
• SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Services

Which edition of SQL Server 2008 Express is right for you?

SQL Server 2008 Express is available in the following 3 editions (each is available from the Install Wizard):

• SQL Server 2008 Express
  • SQL Server database engine - create, store, update and retrieve your data
• SQL Server 2008 Express with Tools
  • SQL Server database engine - create, store, update and retrieve your data
  • SQL Server Management Studio Basic - visual database management tool for creating, editing and managing databases
• SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Services
  • SQL Server database engine - create, store, update and retrieve your data
  • SQL Server Management Studio Basic - visual database management tool for creating, editing and managing databases
  • Full-text Search - powerful, high-speed engine for searching text-intensive data
  • Reporting Services - integrated report creation and design environment to create reports

So make sure you download the SQL Server 2008 Express with ToolsSql

Though I save some people some time.

One last thing:

Step 1: Download and install Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5 SP1.
Step 2 Download and install Windows Installer 4.5.
Step 3 Download and install Windows PowerShell 1.0.

I jut received this email this morning

Dear AWS Developers,

We are excited to release the public beta of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) running Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server. AWS is also announcing that Amazon EC2 is now Generally Available and includes a Service Level Agreement (SLA). In addition, we're giving you a sneak peek at some upcoming features that will make Amazon EC2 even easier to operate. Please see details below on these announcements.

You requested to be notified when Windows was available on EC2, and starting now you can employ Amazon EC2 running Windows Server or SQL Server with all of the performance, reliability, and scalability benefits of Amazon EC2. AWS customers have commonly requested Amazon EC2 running Windows Server since the service launched, and this announcement means that Amazon EC2 will provide an ideal environment for deploying ASP.NET web sites, high performance computing clusters, media transcoding solutions, and many other Windows-based applications. Like all services offered by AWS, Amazon EC2 running Windows Server or SQL Server offers a low-cost, pay-as-you-go model with no long-term commitments and no minimum fees. Pricing for Amazon EC2 running Windows Server begins at $0.125 per compute hour. Please go to aws.amazon.com/windows for more information.

Also, Amazon EC2 has entered General Availability (GA), after just over two years of operation in beta and the addition of many highly-requested features. We are also providing an SLA for Amazon EC2, with a service level commitment of 99.95% availability within a Region. If availability falls below this level, customers are eligible to receive service credits. The new Amazon EC2 SLA is designed to give customers additional confidence that even the most demanding applications will run dependably in the AWS cloud. For further details on the SLA for EC2, see aws.amazon.com/ec2-sla.

Lastly, to help its customers better plan their future hardware and software investments, AWS is providing visibility into plans to release several new features in 2009 that will make managing cloud-based applications even easier. These features will help provide even more cost-efficient consumption of Amazon EC2 and greater visibility into the operational health of applications running in the AWS cloud. These features include:

• Load balancing - Enables AWS customers to balance incoming requests and distribute traffic across multiple Amazon EC2 instances.
• Auto-scaling - Automatically grows and shrinks usage of Amazon EC2 compute capacity based on application requirements.
• Cloud monitoring - Enables AWS customers to monitor operational metrics of Amazon EC2, providing visibility into usage of the AWS cloud.
• Management Console - Provides a simple, point-and-click web interface that lets customers manage and access their AWS cloud resources.

To learn more about these new services or to sign-up for notification when they are released, please visit: aws.amazon.com/contact-us/new-features-for-amazon-ec2.

We are excited to share these exciting new announcements with you, and invite you to visit aws.amazon.com/ec2 for full details.

I can't tell how exciting this is. More to come on this!

This is one the questions that I have had for awhile. Thanks the to Lynn Langit developer evangelist extraordinare. The Oslo model is starting to take shape.

”Oslo” is the codename for Microsoft’s forthcoming modeling platform. Modeling is used across a wide range of domains and allows more people to participate in application design and allows developers to write applications at a much higher level of abstraction. “Oslo” consists of:

• A tool that helps people define and interact with models in a rich and visual manner
• A language that helps people create and use textual domain-specific languages and data models
• A relational repository that makes models available to both tools and platform components

“Oslo” was first announced by Robert Wahbe (Corporate Vice President of the Connected Systems Division) in October 2007.

And from Bill Gates at Tech Ed

“I think one of the biggest trends in application development that I talked about… is modeling, and we're making a big investment in that. We have what's been code named Oslo, and talked a little bit about it on our Web sites and our blogs, which is this model-driven development platform. It's actually taking the kind of models that you're seeing arising in specific domains, like software management in System Center, or your data design over in SQL, or your process activities over in BizTalk and saying, we need to take all these domains and be able to put them into one model space. In fact, we need to let people create their own domains that aren't just isolated, but that exist in this one modeling space. And that's what Oslo is about.”

Take a closer look at it from a website that Microsoft Has Set up for SOA and OSLO Here. I look forward to seeing what this is all about since I have been playing alot with the entity framework. Models make the code not only more readable there fore easier to understand. What will they announce on this at PDC bring us?

I can't tell you how many of people have asked me what is Mesh? Why should I interested? Well

David Treadwell (CVP, Live Platform Services)  Tells all and what else is going down at PDC..

Countdown to PDC2008: What the heck are Microsoft’s Live Platform Services? Treadwell Tells All!

I just reading on Angus Logan's Blog that you can sign up for some free windows live training on DEC 1 and 2 2008

Sign Up Here

It will be held in the Downtown LA offices. There is so much stuff packed in Live now that if you haven't started to look at it you really need to. I can't wait till next week when we hear about the cloud computing that is coming out for Microsoft.

Here is a taste of the agenda

Agenda

DAY 1

8.30 – 9.00 AM
Introduction
Meet and Greet

9.00 – 10.45 AM
Live Services – An All-Up Technical Overview
In this session, we’ll give you the foundation for everything you need to know with regard to Live Services. You could almost only attend this session… but you won’t.

10.45 AM – 11.00AM
Break

11.00 AM – 12.00 PM
Microsoft online identity – Part I [Live ID 101]
Almost everything in the Live Platform pivots around a person, and people are identities too. We’ll take a quick detour and look at Microsoft’s online identity, specifically Live ID 101, and then we’ll look at delegated authentication which is required for the next session.

12.00 – 1.00 PM
Lunch

1.00 – 2.30 PM
Communications – Messenger
I’ll “MSN” you! Windows Live Messenger is the world’s largest IM network; tens of millions of people are online concurrently. Presence should be pervasive, apps should be immersive – you’ll learn how to build on top of this powerful network.

2.30 – 2.45PM
Break / labs / discussion

2.45 – 4.00 PM
Infrastructure services
We’ll talk about Search, Virtual Earth and Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live. These services run at Internet scale and can be used to complement your existing site.

4.00 – 4.30PM
Re-cap

4.30 – 6.30 PM
Hands-on labs, informal Q&A

DAY 2

8.30 – 9.00 AM
Hands-on labs, warm-up

9.00 – 9.30 AM
Recap of Day 1

9.30 – 10:00 AM
Future Direction of Live Services
The world of Live Services is continually changing. We’ll share the roadmap for the evolution of the Live Services platform.

10.00 – 10.30 AM
Resource Model Session
A deep dive into the types of resources that can be stored and synchronized. After you understand the structure, you can start thinking “Sync”.

10.30 – 10.45 AM
Break

10.45 – 11.45 AM
Cloud APIs
Learn to store and synchronize resources across diverse platforms with the intuitive, REST-based cloud APIs. Whatever programming language you use, there’s a protocol that fits your needs.

11.45 AM – 12.45 PM
Lunch

12.45 – 1.45 PM
.NET Libraries
There’s more than one way to sync. We’ll show you how to target the platform from rich client applications, Silverlight, JavaScript and more.

1.45 – 2.45 PM
Mesh Applications
Learn the true meaning of “write once, run anywhere”. Mesh applications let users access their data wherever they are – online, offline, on the client and in the cloud.

2.45 – 3.00 PM
Break / labs / discussion

3.00 – 4.00 PM
Microsoft Online Identity – Part II
Identity is a huge topic! In Part II you’ll get the details on federation, client authentication, and how to connect your infrastructure to the Identity backbone.

4.00 – 4.30 PM
Re-cap

4.30 – 6.30 PM
Hands-on labs, informal Q&A

I was just talking about windows/SQL server in the cloud with my buddy James and after reading my blog he was still a little confused about what was going on. So I found a much more interesting link that I think will be more relevant to the average .net hoster here is the relevant information that I think that you will need to get started.

Starting later this Fall, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) will offer you the ability to run Microsoft Windows Server or Microsoft SQL Server. Today, you can choose from a variety of Unix-based operating systems, and soon you will be able to configure your instances to run the Windows Server operating system. In addition, you will be able to use SQL Server as another option within Amazon EC2 for running relational databases.

Amazon EC2 running Windows Server or SQL Server provides an ideal environment for deploying ASP.NET web sites, high performance computing clusters, media transcoding solutions, and many other Windows-based applications. By choosing Amazon EC2 as the deployment environment for your Windows-based applications, you will be able to take advantage of Amazon’s proven scalability and reliability, as well as the cost-effective, pay-as-you-go pricing model offered by Amazon Web Services. Customers will only pay for as much or little as they actually use; of course the actual price will be higher than Linux-based instances, due to the cost of Windows licenses. We’ll announce specific pricing when we make the service broadly available later this Fall.

Our goal is to support any and all of the programming models, operating systems and database servers that you need for building applications on our cloud computing platform. The ability to run a Windows environment within Amazon EC2 has been one of our most requested features, and we are excited to be able to provide this capability. We are currently operating a private beta of Amazon EC2 running Windows Server and SQL Server

 

You can sign up for more information about this from here

After doing some basic analysis about what it cost to relocate some common domains that were more brochure site we figured we could incur a common savings of over 50%. The question still is how is the SQL server instance going to work and replicate across the data centers.

I think the biggest question here is what is microsoft going to do with its cloud and what announcements are going to come out at PDC?