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Microsoft Hero Launch Event in Second Life

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 18:26:13 GMT

I recently attended the multimedia Microsoft Hero launch event in Second Life; also simulcasted in Microsoft Live Meeting.

Though I attended the live Launch event and was not expecting much more, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the multi-media and multi-streams of information worked out - Participants were actively chatting giving useful url's while presenter used the voice/live meeting tools.

Some of the useful links from this event:

Team Foundation Server Guide

MSDN Virtual Labs

Visual Studio Presenter's Blog

Technorati Tags: microsoft,secondlife

Horse Race in AJAX

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 09:22:02 GMT

When I was little, I used to play a game on my Apple II called the Horse Race. Basically, there were 5 horses, I placed my bet(s), and the computer randomly decided to pick the horse an the pace to move at each time interval. The first horse to reach the finish line won.

I recently took the effort to convert this simple app into an AJAX-enabled ASP.NET application, as part of my education into writing AJAX applications. You can access my simple application via this link.

ASP.NET AJAX framework allows you to achieve simplistic AJAX effects without resorting to go into Javascripting. The framework provides common used constructs such as timer, progress report, various layout controls and user toolkits. It's ideal for ASP.NET server programmers who just want to achieve some AJAX effect without a lot of work.

You can read my blog here on my development process of this simple AJAX application and my observations.

DiscountASP.Net

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 06:34:57 GMT

With the arrival of ASP.NET 3.5, there is no better and cheaper place to host your website than Discount ASP.NET.

What does Discount ASP.NET offer that other sites don't? For one thing, it's cheap! For $60/year, you can get a personal website running the latest Microsoft ASP.NET technology. Furthermore, there is very little restriction on what you can do (for example, godaddy restricts your webpages from accessing outside web services).

If you want to host a more commercial website with 7 by 24 uptime "guarantee", you may want to try crystal tech. They are more reliable running more powerful servers, but then, they are about twice as expensive as discount asp.net - I guess you get what you pay for.

I have recently set up my techie personal website hosted by discount ASP.NET. I am very happy so far with it.

Texas Hold'em Poker Winning Percentages

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 04:17:29 GMT

New generation of web applications is moving towards the direction of distributed information provider. One standardized way to make information available for consumption programmatically is the use of web services.

To explore the ease in creating a web service, I created a Texas Hold'em evaluation library and then converted it to a web service. The conversion process required no more than 10 lines of code, especially since Microsoft Visual Studio has support for creation of ASMX web service.

I then proceeded to create a simple web page to access my web service. The whole process took less than 30 minutes.

For a directory of available web services, try this directory service.

Virtual Earth and 3D Model with 3DVia

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 06:36:12 GMT

Microsoft virtual earth has added a beta tool recently called 3DVia. 3DVia makes creation of simple 3D models very easy, plus, it has the ability to upload your 3D creations onto virtual earth to share with the entire world.

I added a model of the Ark Hills building in Tokyo recently. You can access it here. I used to work in this building when I was living in Tokyo.

Google also has a similar tool called sketchup which works with Google Earth.

Fun with Microsoft popfly

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 04:55:40 GMT

The trully interactive Web is finally here - Web 3.0!

Web 1.0 revolution was driven by businesses publishing contents on the Internet and ways to find information - google, ebay, amazon, etc.

Web 2.0 revolution is driven by average person sharing information about him/herself and by people collaborating - social networking, video publishing, wikipedia, etc.

So, what is Web 3.0? Web 3.0 is the ability to mash up, or combine, information found in various sources to present it to the web. For example, combine google map with craigslist real estates auction will show the local real estates market.

Microsoft Popfly is one of the leaders in creation of mash-up applications. I have only begun to scratch the surface but it already blows me away. Please check out some of my mash-up creations here.

Today My Space Is Born

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:14:59 GMT

I am officially retiring my old space and effective today, this will be my official space.

I am quite impressed by all the facilities available at live.com, especially impressive is the ability to share photos and documents via explicit url reference, a lot more convenient than what google document or flickr has to offer.

If you are a developer, you may want to check out the developer's portal to live.com at dev.live.com. You also want to check out Microsoft Silverlight, which is a great way to create trully rich internet applications - a step beyond what AJAX has to offer.

If you are not a developer but are interested in creating interesting contents, check out Microsoft Popfly. Its mash-up ability to combine information from multiple webpages is trully amazing.

As you can tell, I am trully a Microsoft fan. I love the just released Visual Studio 2008, especially WPF - a trully paradigm shift in creating super looking GUI applications!

Photo Album: February 11

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 06:55:15 GMT

February 11

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