As if Microsoft hasn't been busy enough with developer news ? the Professional Developer's Conference and Windows Hardware Engineering Conference just took place, separated by one week ? the company also has a Tech-Ed show taking place in Barcelona, Spain.
At Tech-Ed EMEA 2008, Microsoft introduced new programs and tools modeled after the companys internal Security Development Lifecycle process that enables software developers to create more secure and privacy-enhanced applications.
Microsoft's Visual Studio software development system is getting a makeover.
Also planned for the 2010 release is a code-focused enhancement called "generate from usage," in which code recognizes what
the developer is trying to do and writes code on the developer's behalf. Inferences are made from code. This feature already
is included in the Community of Technology Preview of Visual Studio 2010 released last week.
Visual Studio 2010 will feature full support for the Silverlight 2 rich Internet application plug-in technology. "Effectively, that means for developers who want to use Visual Studio to take
advantage of editing Silverlight 2 applications, this will be the environment that has rich drag-and-drop [capabilities] for
building Silverlight applications," Mendlen said.
People who download Sun's Java Runtime Environment will be offered the MSN Toolbar as well, through a search distribution deal Microsoft has struck with Sun, the companies will announce Monday. Starting Monday, when Internet Explorer users download the Java Runtime Environment, they'll be offered as part of the setup process a download of the MSN Toolbar. The toolbar includes a search field and news headlines. The Java Runtime Environment is the engine that runs Java programs on computers. Microsoft hopes the agreement will boost the use of its search offering and in turn attract more advertisers to Live Search, said Angus Norton, senior director of Live Search for Microsoft.
Developers seeking a complete functionality overhaul for future Windows Mobile-based smartphones may have to wait until late in 2010, as comments from Microsoft's CEO indicate the next WM version is just a refresh.
Last October 30, Motorola Mobile Devices CEO Sanjay Jha made an off-the-cuff remark during Motorola's quarterly conference call, saying his company was planning for Windows Mobile 6.5 in the second half of 2009.
Effectively confirming that date, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last Thursday told analysts attending a conference in Melbourne, Australia, in conjunction with its carrier partner Telstra that the next wave of mobility features will be realized in Windows Mobile 6.5 -- not Windows Mobile 7 -- due in H2 2009.
Remote access of corporate networks can be a pain for employees and IT managers.
Employees have to remember their smart cards or type user names and passwords every time they want to log on, and IT pros have to deal with a variety of VPN clients, concentrators, and routers. A new feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7, DirectAccess, does away with most of that pain, though it requires companies to invest in a number of new technologies.
When an employee or IT pro setting up Windows 7 first logs in to the network with Windows Server 2008 R2 on the back end, DirectAccess saves the user name and password.
Expressing a now-familiar theme, a Microsoft executive at the ApacheCon conference on Friday morning touted Microsoft's efforts
to be more open, highlighting moves such as offering the company's "M" modeling language under the Microsoft "Open Specification
Promise.
"
Domain-specific languages could be built for health care or an M compiler could be developed for Mono, which is a Linux implementation
of Microsoft's .Net Framework., Ramji said. He invited ApacheCon attendees to consider the M specification.
Microsoft expects its Beijing research center to start producing breakthroughs that could lead to global products in health care and other areas, the software maker's chief research officer said Wednesday as the center marked its 10th anniversary.
Microsoft is part of a wave of companies that are expanding research and development in China to serve its fast-growing market and take advantage of a huge Chinese talent pool of scientists and engineers.
Microsoft says its Beijing center, one of six, has already exceeded expectations, producing 260 innovations that have been added to products sold worldwide. The center is Microsoft's biggest outside the United States, with 350 researchers.
For fans of Microsoft's .NET Framework who want to validate their expertise with writing ASP.NET-based applications, Microsoft is releasing a Professional-level exam into beta testing this week.
According to a post on the Microsoft Beta Exam Announcement Blog, Exam 70-564 Pro: Designing and Developing ASP.NET Applications Using the .NET Framework 3.5 is being put through its paces starting today at Prometric testing centers worldwide, with the beta cycle ending on Dec. 1. While in beta, the exam is numbered 71-564.
Microsoft is giving free software to startups around the world to encourage them to develop products that span the Web, PCs and phones, the company announced Wednesday.
The program, called BizSpark, is expected to make it easier for Microsoft to compete against Google and other Web rivals with its nascent cloud computing strategy, which was announced last week, and makes it easier for startups to work with Microsoft.
"I think it's terrific and something that's sorely needed," said Pascal Levensohn, founder of Levensohn Venture Partners in San Francisco. "They're seeding an entire new ecosystem by casting their net very widely to harness innovation."
Microsoft unveiled a series of improvements Wednesday to what it called the "fundamentals" in its next operating system, Windows 7, including better battery life for laptops and faster boot-up time, when compared with its previous operating system, Windows Vista.
The announcements came as Microsoft tries to avoid the missteps that plagued Vista's debut.
At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Los Angeles, Jon DeVaan, senior vice president of the company's Windows Core Operating System Division, told hardware makers set to receive early versions of Windows 7 at the conference that Microsoft would make sure they were ready when the new operating system arrives on the market.