Office 2010 Web Apps
Most of you know Google Docs (GD) - the web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and form application offered by Google. Probably in the attempt to remove GD’s supremacy and to promote their new Office 2010, Microsoft is preparing a free online version of Office called Office Web Apps.
For the Technical Preview four application are available: Excel, PowerPoint, Word and OneNote. Each of them tries to reproduce the aspect and the functionally of their offline big brother. For Office 2007 users, the interface is well known. In the top side we have a Ribbon bar, the middle part is dominated by the working area and to bottom is reserved for an optional status bar.
In order to use Office Live Apps you need to have a Live ID and a Skydrive account. All these applications integrate with Skydrive and this is a curious fact because I would expect to be part of Office Live [very strange decision!].
The interaction with the live apps is not really fluid because it has a delay, especially in Excel, when you work with formulas – it takes 3-4 seconds to see the result. I understand Microsoft’s wish for adoption and interoperability with any browser without any addon, of the new product, but I think that a Silverlight interface would improve the usability or at least some drag/drop support and a right click menu.
Excel Live
Spreadsheets – this is Excel all about. The little brother of the offline version is, for the moment, limited to some basic spreadsheet operations. The are no more and no less then 3 sheets [does anyone know how to add/remove them?] on which you can put your data.
The simple tools available are: text format (color, font, size) and cell format (color, text alignment, data type). There is support for part of the formulas in Excel and one can use cell references to add dynamic data. There is some support for external data sources but it seems that data can only be refreshed if already exists – one cannot add/modify a data source.
Unfortunately there is no support for locked sheets, hidden sheets and data validation. If you try to open an uploaded document containing some of the previous you will get and error message for edit.
Excel Web Apps gets another minus because there is no support for diagrams/charts. It would be nice to have at least support for charts in a new sheet. Maybe in the next version?
I am thinking to migrate my expenses Excel document in Skydrive (Office Live Apps) even though it is quite limited.
Tip #5: Get 25GB Online Free Storage
Do you want 25 GB of free storage that can be accessed from anywhere you have Internet connection?
Microsoft is offering 25 GB free online storage through SkyDrive. The drawback of this service is that you can only access files through a browser and if you want drag/drop facilities you must use Internet Explorer.
Gladinet is developing a tool for mapping online drives as network drives. Using it you can map SkyDrive (and other services like GoogleDocs, Amazon S3, etc) in Windows Explorer. It is not the fastest or easy most solution but there is no other to map SkyDrive.
After you install Gladinet Cloud Desktop and configure it (it has an easy to use wizard) you get one more drive in My Computer that will contain subfolders for each online service you use. You can move files there just like they were local. Must mention that the sync is not instant. There is a tasks queue so each file is put in this queue and uploaded only after the previous has finished. Each operation works like this so you might no see online changes immediately.
Gladinet Cloud Desktop is available in two versions: free and pro. The free version has a file limit of 1000 files/batch which, I think, should be enough for most users.
Register for SkyDrive and download Gladinet Cloud Desktop.
Windows 7 Enterprise FREE Trial
It’s been a while for my last post. I was busy moving to another country – will explain this in another post.
Microsoft has announced the download availability of Windows 7 Enterprise for trial inside your environment.
The Windows 7 Enterprise trial is designed specifically for IT Professionals, so that you can test your software and hardware on a final version of the product. In addition, it provides the opportunity for you to become more familiar with the key improvements over previous versions of the Windows operating system, and experience firsthand how Windows 7 can make your PC environment more productive, secure, and manageable.
There is a time limit for downloading this version so better hurry. Access this site. However, if you are a MS Partner or Technet/MSDN subscriber you should check your software subscription page because you can access the non-trial version.
Tip 2: #if
This is a C# tip
When the C# compiler encounters an #if directive, followed eventually by an #endif directive, it will compile the code between the directives only if the specified symbol is defined. Unlike C and C++, you cannot assign a numeric value to a symbol; the #if statement in C# is Boolean and only tests whether the symbol has been defined or not.
A predefined (by default) symbol on the “Debug” build configuration is DEBUG. Using this symbol you can define code that will be compiled only in Debug; for example, a debug window will be shown only when needed.
using System; using System.Text; namespace ConsoleApplication1 { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { #if DEBUG Console.WriteLine("Debugging information"); #endif Console.WriteLine("Code that always executes"); } } } |
The code above will print “Debugging information” and “Code that always executes” when build on Debug and will display only “Code that always executes” when build on another configuration.
You can suppress the definition of the DEBUG symbol from the project properties or by removing the DEBUG from the build argument “/define:DEBUG”. Also, you can define your own symbols in order to accommodate your needs.
Define as many build configurations and symbols you need but don’t abuse this feature!
New Windows Azure Tools (July 2009)
After releasing the pricing scheme and the business model, Microsoft announced a new set of tools for Windows Azure.
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 to enable the creation, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure.
The most interesting feature is probably the support for multiple roles. Now one can deploy many web/worker roles.
What’s new in the Windows Azure SDK?
- The Windows Azure SDK supports developing and deploying services containing multiple web and worker roles. A service must include at least one role, of either type, and may include zero or more web roles, and zero or more worker roles.
- The new PowershellRole sample hosts the Powershell runtime within a Windows Azure role. It demonstrates a simple remote console web role as well as a worker role whose implementation is a Powershell script. The host also includes the CloudDrive sample snap-in to provide access to Windows Azure Storage from script.
What’s new in Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio
- New project creation dialog
- Support for developing and deploying services containing multiple web and worker roles. A service may contain zero or more web roles and zero or more worker roles with a minimum of one role of either type.
- Ability to associate any ASP.NET Web Application project in a Cloud Service solution as a Web Role
- Support for building Cloud Services from TFS Build
- Enhanced robustness and stability
The new CTP Release can be downloaded from this link.
What is Windows Azure?
Just found a nice video describing what Windows Azure is.
I already explained what Azure is a previous post, Windows Azure Application Architecture, but I find this video funny and interesting.
PS: Sorry but this post is not XHTML valid :( I haven’t managed to embed the object in a proper way. Does anyone have a suggestion of how to correct this?
Azure Pricing Revealed
Today, at PDC, Microsoft announced the pricing for Windows Azure, SQL Services and .NET Services. The business model is the one described in the table below:
| Windows Azure | SQL Azure | .NET Services |
| Compute: $0.12/hour | Web Edition (up to 1 GB relational database): $9.99 | Messages @ $0.15/100K message operations , including Service Bus messages and Access Control tokens |
| Storage: $0.15/GB stored | Business Edition (up to 10 GB relational database): $99.99 | |
| Storage Transactions: $0.01/10K | ||
| Bandwidth across all three services will be charged at $0.10/GB in and $0.15/GB out | ||
Windows Azure compute hours are charged only for when your application is deployed so while developing and testing your application you may want to remove the compute instances that are not being used to minimize compute hour billing. Windows Azure storage is metered in units of average daily amount of data stored (in GB) over a monthly period. Storage is also metered in terms of storage transactions used to add, update, read and delete storage data. These are billed at a rate of $0.01 for 10,000 (10k) transaction requests. Bandwidth is charged based on the total amount of data going in and out of the Windows Azure platform services via the internet in a given 30-day period.
Microsoft Partners receive an additional 5 percent promotional discount on Windows Azure compute, SQL Azure and .NET Services.
A more detailed description on the pricing model is available on the Windows Azure Blog.
Software That You Should Install
Here is a list of what I recently installed or I plan to install. It is a list of software (updates) that you might consider useful:
Windows Vista/2008 Service Pack 2
It was released a few hours ago for general audience and it brings some important fixes. I think is a must-have. It is a must have and now can be downloaded through Windows Update.
I have just installed it through Windows Update. It took about 30 minutes to complete (download + install).
Visual Studio 2010 Beta
The lastest version of the well known IDE brings a lot of new features: editor completely written in WPF, a more eye candy user interface, .NET Framework 4 (dynamic types for C#, named parameters, implicit values, etc.). It is available for free and you can download either Professional or the Team Suite edition (I recommend the last one).
Office Mobile 6.1 Upgrade
Software + Services. A Modern Approach. Part 2
Part 2 – The idea
Contents:
- A little more Live Mesh (CTP)
- The Actors
- The Modern Approach
1. A little more Live Mesh (CTP)
Today, online and offline tend to be two different approaches for building software. Most software companies offer either online or offline versions of their software.
If they somehow offer both then mostly sure one is a limited (reduced functionality) version of the other. Moreover companies tend to create a gap between the time when the offline and the online version gets updated. You always hear thing like “the online version does not yet support feature X that is available in the desktop version. Will be available soon”. The bad thing is the soon might mean a couple of months.
Creating software that works the same way both online and offline is not a new idea but until not it would require a lot of overhead. There was the need to simulate either the offline environment online or the reverse.
Now, with Live Mesh, the online environment is simulated on the local machine with no overhead for the developer. The guys from Microsoft resolved this problem and they’ve simplified our lives.
There are some aspects that need to be clarified as pointed in Part 1 about online services and applications:
- The user experience: this problems was somehow resolved by enabling applications to be based on Silverlight. This technology enables web applications to deliver an improved experience compared to the classical web apps. It is client-side technology.
- The need of permanent connectivity: just like smart clients, Mesh Enabled Applications can run with no network connectivity, persist offline what needs to be processed online and continue the process when connectivity is available. In other words what can be done offline is done anytime and if Internet access is required the task is queued.
2. The Actors
Lets consider a company named InvoiceGuys which offers a service called InvoiceService that exposes functionality for processing invoices. Anyone can subscribe the this service – for the sake of simplicity we’ll just ignore authorization and authentication; just don’t do this in real life!
Subject: Problems with my new computer
Dear Mr. Bill Gates,
We have bought a computer for our home and we have found some problems, which I want to bring to your notice.
1. There is a button ’start’ but there is no ’stop’ button. We request you to check this.
2. One doubt is whether any ‘re-scooter’ is available in system? I find only ‘re-cycle’, but I own a scooter at my home.
3. There is ‘Find’ button but it is not working properly. My wife lost the door key and we tried a lot trace the key with this ‘find’ button, but was unable to trace. Please rectify this problem.
4. My child learnt ‘Microsoft word’ now he wants to learn ‘Mi crosoft sentence’, so when you will provide that?
5. I bought computer, CPU, mouse and keyboard, but there is only one icon which shows ‘My Computer’: when you will povide the remaining items? Read the rest of this entry »