After so many months of starts, stops and many distractions, I finally took the time over the (long) weekend to port my Windows Mobile 6.0 GeoBlog application over to Windows Phone 7. I had searched and waited so long for a similar application on the Windows Phone Marketplace but none were there that could do what I wanted it to do.

While geo-taggers, geo-markers can be found in the dozens in the Windows Phone Marketplace, most of them doesnt allow you to share with your family and loved ones on the trails you have been to, local or somewhere exotic and far-away. Even the ones piggy-bagging on Google Maps doesnt have certain features like adding comments, taking pictures with each geo-blogging location.

Hence, I decided to port my Windows Mobile application to Windows Phone 7, taking this opportunity to add and further enhance some of the features along the way. I named this application WP7 GeoBlog and I will be taking this along to the Great Ocean Road a few weeks later.

However, I am not publishing on the Windows Phone Marketplace as of yet. Reason is because, it needs a certain back-end Server infrastructure of a web server hosting a simple web service. The push-pin points and locations uploaded will be overlaid on a Google Map, using the Google Maps API, specifically the Javascript SDK. I have no idea at this point in time how to package the back-end Server infrastructure so it is not a complete solution for anyone downloading WP7 GeoBlog without that infrastructure.

If you have a developer-unlocked or jail-broken WP7 and want to try this out, feel free to drop me a note here. For now, I will leave my readers here with an image that my WM 6.0 GeoBlog application generated when I was in Hokkaido, Japan last year.

The better-than-expected response to my SG-Drive in Windows Phone 7 Marketplace has resulted in some user feedback for a leaner version of the application. Feedback collected suggested that there is a need to just have the very-popular Navigation features of SG-Drive alone to cater to the international market who doesn't reside in Singapore. In this sense, the application would have a broader-based international appeal and I am able to price it below the psychological USD1.00 barrier mark.

I am happy to announce the release of NaviRoutes today. NaviRoutes is THE WP7 Navigation Application with Map Visuals and Live-Traffic Conditions on the Map. The trial version has limited functionalities such as incomplete navigation routes and directions, no map visuals, no live-traffic information, etc

In just less than 10 hours, it has racked up 5 downloads. I am also mindful to market NaviRoutes out of the Singapore context since the Navigation features really work everywhere. Well, almost everywhere.

If you are interested, please search for "NaviRoutes" in Windows Phone 7 Marketplace or use any of the Navigation key terms to reach the application. Thank you for your support.

One of the hidden is what I thought to be the most useful setting in IE9 - and that is to be able to split the STOP and REFRESH icons and move it before the address bar. This effectively reduce the cluster on the right of the address bar. Because all those icons were bunched up together by default, it was hard to see what you want to do and easy to make the wrong clicks.

Right-Click on the icon cluster on the right of the address bar to make that change.

Via here: BizTalk Server 2006 R2 SP1 is now available !!!

These 2 factors are great improvements, or rather - fixes:

Better reliability, performance, and scale for the following key features

• Throttling and dehydration of orchestrations.
• Archiving and purging operations.
• BAM alerts and archiving.
• HIPAA.
• Reduced memory consumption in scenarios using scripting functoids.
• Improvement in the bts_FindSubscription stored proc, resulting in faster execution and lower CPU utilization.

Better management and deployment experiences

• Performance and user experience improvements of key scenarios.
• WCF configuration management.
• Significant improvement in deployment time for send ports using a map.

While still some time away, I am very looking forward to BizTalk v.Next where there will be some very interesting innovations to push the low latency envelope (every bit of pun intended).

Sigh. I try to avoid commenting or referencing public marketing furor over Microsoft because I am just not a cult-fanatic or hold a religious view on technology (for Goodness sake - Get a life ...) BUT the story that PervX ran that says: "Black Screen woes could affect millions on Windows 7, Vista and XP" is really saying something about the responsibility issues that comes with technology journalism.

Gosh - really, is there nothing we can do about this ?

Obviously, PervX was made to eat their own words. They issued a public apology to Microsoft but there is obviously still a sense of denial in between the lines.

Ed Bott says it best here and how I wished this furor they caused stays with them for a long time until redemption time comes. As what Ed says in his closing para: "As for Prevx, they deserve to be laughed out of the security commmunity for their role in this fiasco."

A short but note(pun-intended)-worthy blog entry. Microsoft releases SongSmith: Karaoke in reverse.

 Microsoft Research on Thursday is releasing software that gives musicians, both casual and professional, a new way to speed up song development. Called SongSmith, the $29.99 application creates musical accompaniment based on whatever is sung into the computer's microphone.

In order to do this, the software processes the pitch and tone of what's recorded and lets users hear how it might sound if they had a little backup in the form of a virtual piano, drums, and keyboard. Microsoft is expecting them to use the new track either as inspiration for further song development or as a simple way to create karayoke-quality recordings for friends and family members.

The software lets users change the feel of a song completely using various sliders that adjust mood, volume levels, tempo and what instruments are being used. Users are also able to purchase additional instruments from Garritan for a small fee that can drastically change the way a track sounds. Each purchased instrument comes wrapped in a special installer that automatically adds it to SongSmith. Dan Morris of Microsoft Research tells me there may eventually be a marketplace for other sample providers, although for now the software is using it exclusively because of its the only compatible format.

SongSmith lets you simply sing into your computer's microphone to hear what it would sound like if you had a back-up band.

(Credit: CNET Networks)
SongSmith is starting out as a digital download only, and will be available from Microsoft's recently launched digital downloads store front. Morris says there are no current plans to make the software part of a larger suite of music oriented products from Microsoft. Competitor Apple has offered a slightly similar feature in its Garageband software that gives you virtual band mates that can accompany you as you record music with an in-line microphone, however each of the instruments must be programmed by the user.

One interesting thing to note is that the technology is fully capable of providing automated accompaniment in near real-time. Morris says the only hurdle there is that the programming does all its magic by seeing where users are going with a melody and compensating accordingly. Morris also says a Web based version of the software could be possible later on down the line, although development in that area has been slowed down due to latency and recording quality bottlenecks.

Embedded below are before and after clips of what SongSmith is capable of. As mentioned before, to change the sound of this song users simply need to adjust a slider or two.

I had recently purchased a Canon Hi-Def Flash Camcorder HF100 at wholesale price (please dont ask me how much and where I got it from). There was a long thought process before this high-end purchase. I knew I wanted a camcorder to record in Hi-Def (HD) format. The question I had was the recorded video format. I did some research and poking around and there were some pros and cons that I was seriously considering such as:

1. What is the recording storage medium ?
2. What is the recording format ? If answer to [1] was a DV Tape or sort, then the answer would probably be HDV/MPEG-2 format.
3. Do I have enought processing power / software infrastructure to deal with the answer to [2] ?

In the end, I decided that I would not want to do the route of using a DV Tape. Tape is proven, tested, good, mature and cheap but has its limitations. The fact that it is a sequential access medium puts me off. Even newER backup solutions of today seems to provide disk storage, whose prices have dropped in recent years, as an alternative to tape. Usually, the restoration granularity and the time it takes to restore is the deciding factor for customers to champion disk over tape. Moreover, if I record on tape and then later edit on disk, it does somehow seem that I am going backwards.

So, instead of carrying bulkIER tapes around with me (and I do a lot of random recording), not forgetting that the housing for these tapes in the camcorders itself does take up some bulk and effectively limits the handling of the camera at hand, I dumped the idea of either the Canon HV20 or HV30. Mind you - their dual recording format in a choice of either Standard-Definition (SD)or HD is really attractive but I doubt that I would want to record in SD in a couple of years down the road where computing power, screens, bandwidth are all commodities.

That left me with Question [3] above. What does it take to process/edit those videos ? From searches of many forums and reviews, a lot of people buy a AVCHD Camcorder (such as the Canon HF100) without realizing that they dont have the infrastructure to process and edit the recorded HD clips. I guess a lot of peple dont realize that there is not much choice of video-editing software that can process a AVCHD video clip today. So. what most of them did was

• Pay X Dollar for the camcorder and then 2X Dollar for a brand new Mac - Holy Smokes. Since when does money grow on trees ?
• Pay a couple of hundred dollars more to buy a decent video editing software such as the Pinnacle Studio or the Sony Vegas

I didnt like both options. First or all, I edit video clips - Yes - but I dont consider myself to be a "pro-consumer" of sorts that would want to fork out much money just to have 3000 over video transitions up my sleeve ... and ... I am not a MAC fan. Yes, I admit. Crucify me. I am just not genetically engineered to use a MAC or any of Apples' products. Yes, I love my ZUNE and its marketplace very much. Thank you.

Therefore, I had to look for an intermediate solution since my old, trusted and most FREE Windows Movie Maker and Media Player cannot handle AVCHD video files natively and I am not willing to fork out anything more than SGD100.00

Luckily, my prayers are answered and my search leads me to media\video developer ShedWorx who has the VoltaicHD for both the PC and the MAC. Bascially, VoltaicHD transforms your AVCHD High-Def video clips to WMV-HD, which both Windows Media Player and Microsoft Movie Maker can handle. FAQ here. This little known shareware (just USD30.00) has gotten some great independent reviews so I went for a trial, downloaded a sample AVCHD .MTS file and it worked like a charm.

[Note to ShedWorx]: Now if you could make a command-prompt version of your awesome tool, that would be a great addition as it would complete a workflow scenario of an "unattended" conversion process of the captured AVCHD .MTS files to WMV-HD.

With that, I bought it and went broke but GOSH - what a camcorder !!! Its light, intuitive, great handling and churn out great looking HD video clips. I guess the reviews out there in the wild will do it better justice than me writing about it here.

Yes, the computing power and storage resources are high. At the best quality mode, the HF100 records at 17Mbps and my usual mode would be to record at a compromised (between storage and battery power) bitrate of 7Mbps. Even with a decent Core2 Duo Processor T7200 2.0 GHZ (highly-rated) Merom chip and 2Gs of RAM that I have, editing a WMV-HD 7Mbps video clip does require some patience. And the file recordings are huge - as a rough gauge - AVCHD are abt 120Mb (15MB) /min of footage and becomes 500Mb (wmv) after decompression !!!

Luckily, I delegated the conversion of AVCHD -> WMV-HD files to one of my servers, running a Dual Core XEON Pro 5140 2.33GHZ 4MB L2 cache 1333MHz FSB - Woodcrest Chip and this was much faster, comparatively. In any case, this can be done unattended, and this would also give me a good excuse to plug in another same processor on this 2-way box in the near future. .

All in all, this is a great buy at near-wholesale price and I already had quite a lot of fun doing roving and recording real 1080p high-definition videos and enjoying the processed WMV-HD clips on my wide-screen LCD monitor, my HDTV as well as my Rapsody N35 media center (which plays WMV-HD High-Definition videos).

Below is a "short" clip I took with the above Canon HF100, with the sarcastic emphasis on "short". I took this 50-second clip in full 1080/9Mbps HD glory. Uncompressed file size is 210MB. In order to "dumb" it down so that it can squeeze and play better over the HTTP ravine, I had to re-encode it to a smaller scale/Mbps at 856x480/3Mbps. Even then, this same 50-second 856x480/3Mbps clip's file size is still at a large 19MB !!! If you blow up the player to your full-screen, you can see that it maintains a clear and good quality at full-screen even at 3Mbps. Mind you, the source look great on my local playback at 1080/9Mbps/25fps.

Great Poster for reference. Courtesy of wikipedia

MSFT Corp has always talked about its ecosystem with regards to its developers and partners as one of its key value propositions which it offers through its platform to its customers.

Sometimes it is humbling to have customere call on you because its other systems can only work with yours and no one else. I have totally lost track of our ISV partners who are building great vertical solutions on top of our horizontal application stack, such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and others and that list is growing as I write this.

This is another take on it, albeit from another interesting perspective.

Earlier this month Microsoft announced the Microsoft Media Room, which is really a rebranding of the Microsoft's IPTV platform. While I could go on and on touting the endless possibilities that TV over the internet brings, I might as well point you to Scott's blog to find out more about it.

One of the things Microsoft Media Room has that is totally mind-blowing is the fast-channel-switching, which you can actually see in the video on the MediaRoom site, that allows you to surf channels are break-neck zapping speed. You totally have to really see it to believe it. Unbelievable ! If you think your current channel switching is fast, wait till you experience this SetTopBox.

While this is a TV/Broadband provider play, I am glad (and somewhat mininalistically involved ) that we, Singaporeans, will get this very soon in our very own living rooms.

Stay tuned and dont be too quick to renew your current cable subscription of your current provider yet, if they are displaying territorial, monopolistic behaviour in your house. And even if they are not, why not exprience TV over a new medium ? How about chatting with your pals over MSN while watching your favourite reality TV on the same screen ? How about discussing with your contacts about who you are voting for in Americal Idol, or similar, while you paused the TVand then resume watching on-demand and sending your vote through the TVon the same screen ? How about sending an email/IM to your friends/contacts and notifying them of your own-content thatyou have just uploaded to your own TV channel ?

Heh. The market is sure big enough for another TV service provider. If you look at the picture below on some of the cable providers carrying Microsoft MediaRoom, you will notice a familiar national icon there.

Like I said - It is really coming to a TV near us.

I have seen this in the labs in MSFT Corp Redmond at the Centre of Information Work for some time. I am so glad that it is finally out and will be available to the public.

What is even more cool is that the user interface of Surface is done in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). How about that ?

I had talked about Yahoo! Pipeshere. It didnt take long (well, maybe longer than some of us would like ..) before MSFT Corp came up with something even better ... AND I mean real better with Silverlight and the works.

I have played around with it and I am IMPRESSED and HOOKED. Upsize my mashups, please.

While Microsoft Popfly is still in alpha, you can still check it out here. To find out what it actually is, there is a good demo-ONLY video here.

Welcome to the Social.

I have spent the last couple of months getting up-to-speed on Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server (MOSS) 2007 and I must say - I AM IMPRESSED.

A recent article in Wall Street Journal by By ROBERT A. GUTH on the April 24, 2007; Page B1 sums it up really nicely and I quote a couple of sentences from there:

Microsoft Embeds Sleeper in Business Software (I, personally, think the 'Business Software' bit is a bit of a misnomer)

 SharePoint is now Microsoft's contender in an emerging battle over collaboration software with companies from a cross section of the technology industry ...

To date, largely unheralded, Microsoft has sold 85 million licenses to the enhanced version of SharePoint across 17,000 companies. No marketing campaigns are in the works

Read the full article here.

I say it takes a lot, besides features and functionality, to be able to sell without any marketing blitz. Really, what today comes free (pre-installed) that offers Web 2.0 features and functionality (RSS, Blogs, Wikis, Suverys, Sites, Discussion Forums, Document Library), right-out-of-the-box ?

And - We are not done. MOSS 2007 SP1 will come with additional features and functionality that will anchor it as probably one of the best-kept secrets and sleeper Microsoft products of all time that will really make it hard for anyone (customers, partners, communities, alike) to ignore.

Watch out in the blogsphere or here for those announcements.

Now, aint this cute ?

Video: Microsoft's oPhone

I still get questions from many people on the field on why the fuss about mashups and why the need for it. Sometimes, it is really hard to explain when you know that the customer doesnt have a need yet. You can easily generate a "want" but a "need" is slightly more difficult...

I was recently pointed to this really nice mashup story site here. Talk about solving your own needs by rolling up your sleeves. What is really nice about this is that this is home-grown, generated from a need to automate certain processes while searching for a book in our own local national library: National Library Board.

Awesome solution to a "why-didnt-I-think-of-this" need.

Good things do come in small packages - not that I am.

This is a continuation of my previous post: WS-ReliableMessaging Simplified - WHY

While this blog sits in my draft folder while I am busy solving and fire-fighting other real-world problems, I just found out that my fellow distributed and connected systems enthusiast, Matevz has penned down the WHATs and HOWs of WS-ReliableMessaging faster than me, AND with even greater details !!!

So, instead of replicating that effort, it would be better for me to do a high level post about the HOWs of WS-ReliableMessaing. The below diagram of WS-ReliableMessaging explains the sequencing really well.

Let me explain the concepts of WS-ReliableMessaging in terms of a conversation between Alice and Bob:

Alice: Let me call Bob on his mobile telephone.(CreateSequence)
(Ring Ring ... Bob Picks up the phone)
Bob: Hello ? (CreateSequenceResponse)
Alice: Hi Bob, this is Alice(CreateSequenceResponse)
Bob: Hi Alice (CreateSequenceResponse, Identifier)
Alice: I would like to have a meeting with you tomorrow at 1000 hours (MessageNumber=1)
Bob: Cool. Roger. I got that. Sure, let meet tomorrow at 1000 hours.
Alice: Can we meet at my office in North Ryde ? (MessageNumber=2)
(Bob walks into a GSM blind spot ...)
Alice: Oh yeah, and Bob, please bring those M&A files for clearance for our senior VP (MessageNumber=3)
Alice: Hello Bob, did you get that ? Please repeat. (AckRequested)
Bob: Yes, I got that you are saying that we should meet up at 1000 hours at your office. Period (SequenceAcknowledgement)
Alice: No, you are not getting the full picture. You need to bring those M&A files for clearance for our senior VP (Resend MessageNumber=3). Kindly repeat what I just said (AckRequested)
Bob: Yeah. Got it. We should meet up at 1000 hours at your office and I will bring those M&A files for clearance for our senior VP. (SequenceAcknowledgement)
Alice: Bingo. Good. Please make a reservation for 1200 hours for lunch at "Steaks by the Bay" as well. (MessageNumber=4)
(Bob's phone went dead ...)
Alice: Hello ? Bob, did you get that ? (AckRequested)
Alice: Hello ? Bob, did you get that ? (AckRequested)
Alice: Hello ? Bob, did you get that ? (AckRequested)
Alice: Hmmm. Something is wrong. Let me call Bob again. (AcknowledgementInterval is up)
(Ring Ring ... Bob Picks up the phone)
Alice: Hi Bob, this is Alice. Sorry, I think I got cut-off from the earlier call. (CreateSequence)
Bob: Hi Alice. Sorry, yeah, my fault. I pressed the wrong button (CreateSequenceResponse with prev Identifier establised)
Alice: I was wondering if you can make a reservation for 1200 hours for lunch at "Steaks by the Bay" after that 1000 meeting tomorrow. (MessageNumber=1) Please acknowledge. (AckRequested)
Bob: Sure, of course. I will make a reservation for 1200 hours for lunch at "Steaks by the Bay" (SequenceAcknowledgement)
Alice: Alright then. Lets end this phone call. See you tomorrow. Thanks and Bye. (TerminateSequence of this Identifier)
Bob: See you tomorrow, Alice. (TerminateSequenceResponse)

Of course, the above is a simplistic view and there is a lot more to WS-ReliableMessaging than what I have just illustrated above with buffers, inactivitytimeouts due to infrastructure faults, in-order deliveries, maxRetryCount, maxTransferWindowSize, etc. But you get the jizz of this picture of why InOrder, idempotent-aware ReliableMessaging is needed in complex real-world enterprise-scale distributed communications.

If you want to know the WHATS and all in better detail, do visit Matevz's post here and a continuation here.

Windows Home Server will be one of the better well-kept secret products that will be ultra-cool once its released into the wild. You can go here for a brief animation overview. The official Home Server Team blog can be found here and the forums here.

Some of the interesting briefs include:

 This is not a product based on the Windows Server 2003 codebase. It's a consumer-oriented product that is quite similar to Media Center Edition, in that it's less of an "edition" of Windows Server than it is a special application (like Media Center) that runs atop a version of Windows.

There are, of course, many features on this server but what I love best about it is placed on emphasis here:

• Expandable Drive space - Add as many Hard-Drives in gigs, teras and petas as your hardware allows. (No problem with the hard-disks I have lying around. I could easily squeeze 6 SATA suckers into this once I can find the supporting muthaboard ...)
• Remote Access - Access your photos, music, videos from any computer with a WWW connection. Even give restricted access to your cronies through your free, customizable Live Web Site.
• Automatic Backup - It stores only a single copy of every file, remembering which computer had what and saving your drive space - Hard Disk Storage Space Virtualization, anyone ? (this is just music to my ears ...)

I dont know about you but my living room is ready ...

It is amazing to note the reach to the masses of a single MSDN Webcast. I had conducted a MSDN Webcast titled: "Acks and NAcks: Why We Need the Principles of TCP/IP Reliability in SOAP" in mid-2006 and till this day, I am still receiving questions and feedback about that topic I presented in the webcast. (Incidentally, you can view the on-demand webcast here.)

For those of you who do not want to go through this webcast again, I am going to break that presentation into the WHYs, WHATs and HOWs on this blog. This will make for easy-reading and straight-to-the-point as well.

WHY ?

This is rather straightforward. Why is it important? Why does it matter whether messages can be sent and received reliably? Web services is based on XML messages being sent and received. The most useful Web services will often be those that are the most complex and that rely on many messages being sent and received in a very specific order. That's the way that complex transactions can be built, after all.

Let us look at this problem in context before figuring out where the pain-points are. Most complex transactions in enterprises require far more messages to be sent and received. The messages will be much more intricate and may have very complex dependencies on one another, so that certain processes can't be kicked off until certain previous messages have been sent and acknowledged. Entire complex transactions can fail because a simple message didn't get through. And while it may sound simple to guarantee reliability, it's much more difficult than you might expect.

To add to the complexity, the main characteristics of Web services is communication over unreliable communication channels such as the Internet employing unreliable data transfer protocols such as HTTP, SMTP and FTP. These are considered unreliable, as they do not offer the reliable messaging services such as guaranteed delivery. Accordingly reliable messaging becomes one of the first problems that need to be addressed for Web services to become truly enterprise-capable technologies.

...there is nothing in SOAP or even HTTP that guarantees anyone that a message is delivered, or that allows a someone to tell the sender he/she has received the message...

Making reliable messaging more difficult is that messages are sent not just over the notoriously unreliable Internet, but also between partners that use entirely different networking infrastructures.

What many companies did in the past was to rely on proprietary messaging infrastructures to connect applications with one another. In these days of "open-standards", the industry would much prefer what Web services promises -- a messaging paradigm NOT based on any proprietary implementations."

To put it simply - If that reliability can't be guaranteed, Web services simply won't be used in the enterprise. The benefits of Web Services cannot be realized if it is not being used for complex scenarios in the enterprise.

Let us look at some of the inherent problems in which cross-boundaries communication happen today, especially over the cloud:

1. Re-ordering of Messages in Multi-Path Routing Scenario
   
   This is one problem that not many people realize because not many people would know the entire infrastructure physical topology of a end-to-end communication network channel. If you have 2 or more intermediaries that act as routers over a load-balanced network for example, messages being sent out may be routed differently over the network. In other words - The first Message ONE may be routed via Router 2 while the second Message TWO routed over Router 1. The complexity arises when the routers have their own routing table and paths and due to congestion of Router 2 over Router 1, the second Message TWO may arrive first, faster than Message ONE, at the final destination.
   
   
2. Intermediary Reliability
   
   What is not so self-explanatory is this - What happens if/when the intermediary drops my message ? How do I know if the other party has received it ? If I should send the same message again (just to be sure), how do I know if the serivce is designed to be "idempotent" ? This point has very explicit relations with the Quality-of-Service (QoS) assertions of a service. Each message sent must be received exactly once (once and only once). Failure to deliver a message be made known to both the sender and receiver.
   
   
3. Connection Management
   
   
   • “… my connection with the service drops frequently within this Wi-Fi network, but I don’t want to lose messages or the underlying session …”
   • “Bursty Connections - I may go idle for long periods of time and I don’t want to hold transport connections open …”
   • “… my service is using resources for each session and I want to release those resources if the client is not there anymore …”
     
     
4. Need for Transport Independence
   
   As I have mentioned earlier, different partners have different networking infrastructures and the need to rely on "open-standards" means that there is a need to decouple that reliablity element away from the transport. This ensures that different parties can choose to use whichever transport that suits them best but yet have a common accepted understanding on the reliability protocol that is independent of the chosen mode of transport.
   
   

To sum it up simply, we live in the real world. One that is not so perfect. The one where

• Servers fail
• Systems get out of synch
• Messages get lost
• Messages get re-ordered
• Messages cannot be safely re-tried

and the same one that explains why we need reliable messaging in Web Services.

NEXT UP: WS-ReliableMessaging Simplified - WHAT and HOW ?

With so much advances in game controller technologies, such as the ultra-cool Nintendo Wii , it really is no surprise that the Xbox controller has found its way into a "real" battlefield.

Kinda gives new meaning to the phrase: "First Person Shooter", doesnt it ?

The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), the premier definitive developer event focused on the future of the Microsoft platform, returns in 2007 after a short 2 year break ...

... and its back in Los Angeles again !

I had such a great time back in PDC2005 in Los Angeles, presenting, networking and shooting the Visual Studio 2005 launch video, etc. That event in 2005 must rank tops in my book amongst many of the Microsoft technology events I have attended and/or presented over the years.

Microsoft tends to align PDC events with key product development milestones so we tend to hold the events every couple of years, sometimes even more. There isn’t a set schedule. Therefore, there shouldnt be that "Ah - I think I will skip this and go next year" mentality or something. The last 2 PDCs were some of the biggest Microsoft public events - with the announcements of Longhorn, WinFX, Office Server systems, Vista, etc

It is definitely NOT an event you want to miss. I encourage some of my friends, developers and IT-Pros from Asia-Pacific to save up and attend. The investment made will be well-worth it.

Registration will open in Q4. Do check it out and, more importantly, stay tuned to the registration site here for more details.

Hopefully, this early announcement will help in making sure this event gets into your (or your company's) budget planning for next year.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/pdc/

One of my server's (Vulcan - I named all my machines after Gods) innards. This is used to run my Microsoft Exchange Server as well as other virtual machines.

See the 2 SATA II HDDs (250GB / 7200RPM / 300MB/s SATA II) ? A third one is on the way as well. More space for more Virtual Machines.

Close-up on one of the 2 SATA II HDD

The heart of Vulcan - Intel Dual Core XEON Pro 5140 2.33GHZ 4MB L2 cache 1333MHz FSB - Woodcrest Chip. It is a dual-socket server. I took the other one out temporary for some other purpose. Just for information: As of to-date, none of any offerings of the same class from AMD has anything to match up to the Woodcrest of Intel. In fact, the Woodcrest has whopped Opteron's ass and has taken the Opteron to school in terms of speed and power efficiency. Trust me - this Woodcrest processor IS FAST !

Can you spot the 667MHZ ECC 2R Fully Buffered DIMM (FBD) Memory ?

Barcode on MSN Live is really a great idea since none of the card-reader software applications I have come across work very well on my Windows Mobile 5 PDA. It is often very inaccurate when it comes to capturing contact information from the newer-generation namecards, especially those that have a picture image of the bearer as well.

Go check it out and see my namecard as well as some random text beside it in the barcode images above.

I had just broken my own budget this year already (and therefore I am not getting me or anyone anything this coming Christmas) ... Too bad ...

After rounds of spec'ing and phone calls with my special DELL contact, I officially accepted the quotations ...

Like I said here, I am going all out this time around as most of my machines had run its 3+ year course and I am getting it all ready for Vista as well as the upcoming Longhorn, or Windows Server 2008, or whatever PLUS the High-Performance Computing (HPC) of Virtualization Technologies (VT), etc.

So, what kind of goodies did I end up with for being much poorer (even though I got a great deal on DELL for the pricing) ? Here it is - all X64 bit Chips (Core 2 Duo and a Dual-Processor Dual Core XEON Pro)

• DELL LATITUDE D620
  CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7200 2.0 GHZ - Merom Chip
  Integrated 4MB ON-DIE L2 Cache, 667HMZ FSB
  + the works ...

• DELL POWEREDGE SC1430 Server
  CPU: Intel Dual Core XEON Pro 5140 2.33GHZ - Woodcrest Chip X 2 Processors
  4MB L2 cache, 1333MHz FSB
  RAM: 4GB (4 x 1GB) 667MHZ ECC 2R Fully Buffered DIMM (FBD) Memory. Max Support: 16GB FBD
  + the works ...

OK - Now that I have the metal, now its time to look at some nearby (I dont think I can afford the gas to travel that far ...) banks for a quick heist for the greens.

Just been given an invitation to test out the new SoapBox (Beta) on MSN. Therefore, I thought I upload one of my favourite commercial clips here. So far, so usable. Fast and smooth as well. Now it becomes a marketing battle to see who gets the better content and more eye-balls. More importantly, its who that can cannabilizes those eyes-balls that wins and laughs to the bank. As usual - The consumer wins. .

Video: Tall Person

So, while waiting for a new turn in my career to start, a couple of motivations spurred me to a 2-weekend-long project which I have completed, more or less.

It is no surprise I have always been interested in all kinds of distributed technologies and I have always wanted to hack out a interesting prototype based on GPS, Wi-Fi, 3G and the likes.

One of the motivations I had is to log events based on the trail I have been or want to go on (on a mountain hike, on a cruise, rafting, sailing, etc). It would be nice to have a map associated with it and pinpoint the locations that we left a trail with an option to leave sticky notes on those markers. With our entire landscape rapidly changing by the day, it is good to capture some good snapshots of where we have been before that landscape changes. This would even be more invaluable with a growing kid in tow so as to strengthen (future) family ties of affinity through nostalgic memorabilia.

I have a PocketPC running on Windows Mobile 5, which I absolutely love. One of my favourite accessories is this Rikaline GPS 6033 Receiver that usually corrects when I feel (or am) lost. With the advent of greater usability, adoption and availability of some great virtual earth or maps technology such as Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth, I knew I could have more possibilities.

Lest you dont know, in Singapore, while GPS Receivers can be bought cheaply and easily, there is a law permitting against the sale of GPS Transmitters without a govt-issued license, for now anyways. This obviously ties back to privacy concerns, which is understandable. However, I dont see how we cannot control the misuse of that if we know the ins-and-outs of this specific technology.

This is where I decided to spend a few days cooking up this project. I used my favouite modelling tool for this one. No need to pay and install anything, learn a new domain language or any sort of technical or programming notations. In any case, it is only meant for me.

Basically, what I wanted to do is to write a small piece of PocketPC software that can read GPS data from a COM port that is already communicating with my GPS Receiver. Depending on what kind of network access you have, you can either stream the data to a host server over the Internet or have a mechanism to capture and log those GPS data in a meaningful way (which means not capturing GPS data in NMEA data format) so that we can send the data across when we get connected.

I always believe a good solution architect needs to have a good grasp of a wide-area of technology breadth. Having experiences with a different variety of technology, solutions and platforms helps to build that.

For example, while it is so much more cool to do real-time streaming, it is generally not feasible to open up that socket to do this for a period of time on a mobile device. Unless there is some significant breakthrough in mobile cell technology, your PDA will die on you before you even walk for 2 kilometres. And to do some effective real-time streaming, you will probably need 3G access (since you will be walking in wide-open spaces) and that usually sucks out the mojo of your PDA big-time. I think its better to log marker points and then transmit that data in a file when you find yourself a hotspot.

Having said that, the days of one big giant hotspot with WiMAX will happen very soon for us in Singapore. So, we may find ourselves in always-connected land soon. Then, I have to think about interested people who are paying bandwidth by the bits. The payload of the transmitted file MUST be small. Transmission must be quick and it must be WWW-Firewall friendly (since its likely you won't be doing this in the comfort of your own intranet environment, but most probably through a public security-tight hotspot). Only relevant data need go through Port 80 - That is a key design principle.

Many people here would think that I would use (W3C) SOAP as a web service to send that data across. I am ONLY looking for a point-to-point scenario, with no interoperability and security in mind for now, so using SOAP (with the extra overheads of the verbosity of its namespaces and angle-brackets) is not a preferred solution for me in this context.

I would stick with a time-tested architecture for this one - Just using Plain Old XML (POX) and Representation State Transfer (REST).

Using my-own partially modified version of JW Hedgehog's GPS Reader and a bespoked Window Mobile 5 Form application, I came up with this:

I had obviously blanked out my co-ordinates because I treasure my privacy as much as the next person. . You can save the data in 2 ways. One - via a single point marker so that you location will always be current as-is. There is no trail. Two - via an array of point markers. In the latter sense, you can choose to leave a trail.

Once I press the Send button, an XML Data file is transmitted to my host server POX-style. In this sense, it only transmits when you tell it to. It doesnt transmit on its own. Like I said, it doenst really make sense to do a full streaming transmission (like a transponder) because of mobile cell power capabilities (or lack thereof). Privacy concerns should be subdued here. Some processing would be done at the data host server upon receipt and using Google Maps (Documentation API here), the point markers would be rendered like this on your webpage (WhereWasI.html or something to that effect):

I termed this geoBlog (tm). I thought that is really cool. I can capture these snapshots and save them as part of my Glog and keep a memory trail of where I went and what I did. I intend to use this cool project on my cruises, hikes, holidays and vacations soon, especially the one to Alaska, which I hope to be doing soon.

F * * * * I N G    A W E S O M E ! - if I can say so myself.

Some of these images can be retrieved over the years over family dinners when the kids have all grown up and the landscape totally changed and I am sure it would bring up some great conversation.

To the geeks out there, I will make this application free-for-all-to-use. And because this is freeware - dont expect any support, service-level-agreements, warranty or any sorts of guarantee from me.

I have only tested it via my ETEN-M600 PocketPC. The data host is just a IIS6 Web Server on Windows Server 2003.

There are 3 parts to this entire solution (More details of the setup can be found here.):

1. The Windows Mobile 5 Application. You will need to install the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 for this to work, if you havent done so. 
2. The Host page that receives and processes the data
3. The WhereAmI page that renders the map.

Of course, for [2] and [3], you would have to host the service yourself somewhere. I used Classic ASP technology for this. Why ? Because, I only needed to simple single host page to parse the XML coming over and saving it to a file and its easy to set up (no need for any complex IIS setups) if you want to transmit this to your own self-hosted server (for more privacy) if you have sufficient pipes. This is my own example here (anony) and here (auth) or here. (auth). If you would like to add more of your own features and port it to a ASP.NET version, you are more than welcomed to do so and share this with everyone else.

To the paranoid in us who suspects some kind of secret routing during data transmission, I am neither interested in knowing where you are/went nor do I care. But, for now, I will make the source bits available to you if you request for it. I intend to make the source bits public once I deem it ready. I am still doing some optimization and tweaking around it but it is generally very usable for now. I could think of different features and functionality to add into this but this is supposed to be a weekend long project for me. Nothing more than that. I will let the others decide what they want to do with it.

In the meantime, I have set up a simple forum here to collect any form of comments / criticisms / feedback / bugs / requests or whatever. Any enhancements, clarifications can be found here as well. Once I have the source bits ready, I will announce the host place for it. In the meantime, if you want the source bits for inspection now, just let me know.

Have fun geoBlogging (tm) ...

This little interview I had done with INETA APAC just got published here.

Up Close with .Net Leaders

In this issue, we get up close and personal with William Tay (Microsoft Regional Director based in Singapore) to understand what makes him tick and his passions.

Check out his blog at http://www.softwaremaker.net/blog

William Tay Microsoft Regional Director MVP (Solutions Architect)

1. What are your visions for INETA APAC? My vision for INETA APAC is simple. I would like it to be the de-factor facilitator for the birth and co-ordination of usergroups in this region. In addition, I would love for it to add value to the younger usergroups by providing mentorship and guidance to their leaders as well as providing the in-between services to help usergroups grow to reach their potential. 2. What does being a MSRD mean to you? It means being part of a closely-knitted group of independent Microsoft experts and professionals around the world and being that bridge between the product groups in Redmond and the read world. 3. What do you think will be the next killer application? Great question. Surprisingly, I think a non-new application will be the next killer application. With the proliferation of the internet as a platform today, it is key that the mass-consumed killer application must be of a non-intrusive technology and instead work on top of the Internet to bring out its best. Any application/technology that re-invents itself by plugging the current holes as-is today deserves a shot to be the killer application, and it must not be limited to platform of choice. I think Cardspace and the propogation of the Federated Identities and the Metasystem on ALL platforms is my next killer application. If I have my way today - I will kill off all disparate identity systems, especially passwords and all those password minder / digital wallet systems that prey on top of the fact that security and human convenience is, most often, oxymoron to each other. What they are doing is essentially breeding more chaos into a system that wasnt designed for it in the first place. As an analogy, I tend to view it as "Re-arranging the furniture on board an already-doomed Titanic" Just like the above, any kind of distributed technology will always catch my attention. Once we get the intrinsics of the plumbings out-of-the-way (which I think may take some more years), I would love to see personal-portable computing. The ideal would be the concept of portable codes embedded in a chip that makes full use of the entire meshgrid infrastructure (again, a few more years to hit mainstream use once the vendors get their act together). With that, you can download your entire desktop workstation to wherever you are by carrying a small chip. There are pieces of it available today - but the entire picture would take some years to piece together. 4. If you are trapped on an island without network connectivity, what would you like to bring? Who would you like to be on the same island? All the books I couldnt read because I have network connectivity ;) And on an deserted island where all dimensions of stimulation is key, there is no one else I would like to bring with except my wife and kid :) 5. What words of wisdom would you give to fellow user group leaders? Stay with that burning passion that brought you there in the first place. If you stay true to that void of any distractions, only good things can result. The journey itself and the people you meet along the way is, most of the time, the ultimate reward itself. That said, do remember that great leaders look ahead of their time and one of the key things they do is to prepare, mentor and groom the next generation.

In reference to my post here, plus my very early post here, I have always try NOT to be drawn in all the hype, fluff and marketing innuendos designed to drive FUD and irrationality.

I try to focus on what users really want and that really is all that matters.

Coincidenally, bu showed me this Foxtrot comic strip today and it looks like Bill Amend has also echoed my exact thoughts.

So, after a massive HDD upgrading exercise, it is time to take stock of my own internal machines of notebooks and desktops and see how it fits into the arrival of Vista and Longhorn later.

Lunch with some folks from Intel and Dell last week in Malaysia revealed some interesting lookouts for me. I am told to wait for the Dell Intel Core 2 Duo machines. This is unlike the Duo Core Intel chips that Dell is selling right now. The Core 2 Duo(s) are a lot better as one of the world's best processors and is a lot more powerful and power-efficient than the Duo Core ones.

The main difference lies in the chip architecture, obviously. As put in the simplest way: "Duo Core chips are essentially 2 chips put together physically. The penalties (and constraints) lie in the bond that welds them together. Whereas, the Core 2 Duo chips is actually a single physical manifestation that is cut into 2"

This will explain how much better, faster and efficient the Core 2 Duo chips are going to be.

However, I was told during lunch that the Core 2 Duo chips are not available the DELL (APAC) online site yet - so I would have to wait.

Through seo, now many web hosting companies are expanded this one business opportunity beyond the conventional dedicated servers.

However, I am well-known to be impatient and so decided to try my luck with my own special Dell connections back home in Singapore. As luck would have it, there are specific desktop and notebook models that are already equipped with a Core 2 Duo Intel chip. It is just not available online yet and the only way to get it today is to know someone in HELL (ooppps, I mean DELL) who can get it done for you.

The specifications given to me looked awesome and the "special" price quoted to me by my own Dell connections take the cake - so it looks like I will be one of the first in my part of the world to own a Dell Latitude D620 / D820 that comes armed with a Core 2 Duo chip and the price I am getting for that is just sooooo GOOD !

With that in tow, x64 Vista - Here I come, baby !!!

For the 4th year in a row, I will be speaking in Microsoft TechED 2006 Asia. This time, the event will return to its original roots back in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Unlike the previous rounds, I wont touch base on any Level 400 topics and going nitty-gritty into details of <angleBrackets/> messaging or gnarly-XSD'isms. From previous experiences, it doesnt sit too well with the asian crowd. Instead, I am going with a couple of very interesting topics. One focuses on a specific implementation of identity and service-orientation, the other is for the audience to have a better idea on what Web Services are all about first before embarking on that journey.

• ARC323 Federated Identities and the Metasystem \ Architecture & Team Development Track

This session, I will explain the basis forces driving the concepts of the Identity Metasystem that has the world watching and waiting. How do we plug the missing gaps of the Transactional Internet? Imagine the WWW without passwords. Not only that, I will explain how this infrastructure setup can be used for business transactions other than for authentication. See demos that are not  seen anywhere yet in this region. [Level 300]

• DEV243 Developing Web Services: Tips & Tricks \ Developer Technology Track

What exactly are Web Services and When and Why do we use them? William explains the basis of SOAP in clear concise terms and coins up some tips to help you in your Web Services Development today and tomorrow. [Level 200]

Of course, there are a whole hosts of reasons for you to attend this mega-event with tons of great speakers talking on some great topics gracing this event. KL has always been a very dynamic city and it should be a good time for all.

And even if browsing through the event site doesnt attract you enough yet, how about this?

I will be giving away 2 FREE MSDN Premium Subscription with Visual Studio Team Suite that is worth US Dollars 30,000 each to 2 lucky souls who will be attending my sessions. I may also give away other goodies like cannot-find and hard-to-get Microsoft Product Platform T-Shirts and NEW books.

So - c'mon - what are you waiting for ? Sign up today and "Change your Destiny" ...

I cannot help but grin when I found out the next Crypto API (CAPI) - or termed - Crypto NextGen (CNG) and the suite it encompasses will be all included in Microsoft Windows Vista.

This article says it all. Elliptical Curves Cryptography (ECC) should definitely be there (and is) when the Base Smart Card Cryptographic Service Provider (Base CSP) is there as well.

It will be a long post to explain why the industry is adopting ECC and slowly adopting it and making it the cryptographic algorithm of choice. If you do understand the key concepts of prime factoring behind the concepts of Public-Private (or Asymmetric) Key Cryptography and the constraints of it moving forward into the future and the proliferation of mobile embedded devices, these 2 diagrams should suffice.

Doesnt that give you a hint of where we are going with computing processing power and where it may be next time ?

This popped into my inbox a while ago ...

Contests like this are just great. Not only are you receiving money (if you win... Who cares, even if you dont, a digital mutation of your idea may still evolve to a sellable one), you are competing with the best to generate a innovative, marketable, secured and (hopefully) usable product. The byproduct derived from the entire process would be similar to a mini-version of an RFC. Bad and unsecured ones would have been shot down and the good ones could be made better with a few ingenious tweaks.

Now only if I can find 25.5 hours in any given day ...

Singapore has just announced an bold ambitious move to wire up the entire nation with a extremely high speed backbone that would move data in speeds beyond 1Gbps, or 500 times the common access speed of 2Mbps with the use of optical fibres or other technologies. Most of the crowded centres and streets would be "WI-FI"-ed by late this year.

My dream of having the entire nation being one BIG hotspot would be coming true in probably a couple of years time.

I have heard that the term "disconnected applications" will be thrown out of the window in Singapore very soon .

Ah - the wonders of living in a [garden] city-site.

Now if XML-RPC aint enough (I had blogged about this here and here), now we can add REST-RPC into the mix. The main difference would be the use of HTTP to provide application semantics via its verbs. This would mean that there would hardly be any XML or Request payload of any kind.

I recently had a chance to sit down with a client to discuss about software systems as well as to find out what we can do for them in their new system proposal.

I mentioned the 80/20 rule and explained to him what is was.

Then, we talked about (Web) Services and he was aghast that we could still be using (Web) Services even within his own LAN - and not connected to the WWW.

"...but I thought you need to be using a browser and connected to the internet to be using (Web) Services ? ..."

Sigh. I have heard that one too many times. One of the recent misnomers, no doubt.

Services, Services, Services. Code and Location is irrelevant. I had posted something like this a while back. It is good that the industry is taking some steps to correct this. See Point [1] of this referenced post.

Sounds like SPAM ? It is not.

This is a 100% ASP.NET 2.0 based CMS solution -- best of all it is free -- check out this blog post for some sites built with it.

All the info you need is here. Let me know your thoughts if you are using it. I will be embarking on it very soon.

What an awesome Translator !!!

Where was this a year ago when I had to port something from C# to VB.NET ?

The next enhancement should have something that translates business requirements to code. I would definitely buy that.

AJAX, Maps and all the cool works

This is a good move. No. Wait, I correct myself. This is a GREAT move.

Windows Live ™ and MSN is indeed shaping up very nicely ...

Fellow Singaporean Microsoft MVP, Aaron Seet has a very interesting take on the above subject. It is a definite read.

I had posted this thought quite a while back on an old blog. Seems like the recent exchange in W3C, more or less, have re-visted my thoughts on this issue.

Jim Webber sums it well here.

I received my Certified Web Services Professional (CWSP) Certificate today in an official business ceremony. I have known this for some time but this is the first time it was made known to the public in an Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) Weave Event. I am one of only 8 people who are in the pioneering batch to receive this certificate. The other 7 people come from technology vendors such as SUN Microsystems, IBM, Software-AG and members of the tertiary educations of higher learning academia.

More on the CWSP:

The CWSP is announced during XMLAsia 2003 and the Framework is developed jointly by IDA, the National Infocomm Competency Centre (NICC), Singapore Information Technology Federation (SiTF) and XMLOne User Group (UG). It aims to develop Infocomm professionals and re-skill them with Web Services competencies by meeting the career and skills-progression needs of Web Services talent at all levels, ranging from Developers, Professionals, Architects to Consultants.

I just broke the piggie, took what has been accumulated in there for the last 2 years. Add that to the bank I just robbed and therefore it looks like I will be there.

The WinFX Runtime Components Beta 1 is available here, and the WinFX SDK is available here.  Also, check out the new Windows Vista Developer Center at http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista.

With this release comes with the official names for many of the technologies that they've been talking with our developers about for several years. In particular, Windows Longhorn is now Windows Vista, Avalon is now the Windows Presentation Foundation, and Indigo is the Windows Communication Foundation.

“Former” code name	Official name
Longhorn	Vista
Avalon	Windows Presentation Foundation
Indigo	Windows Communication Foundation
Metro	XML Paper Specification (XPS)
Least-privileged User Access	User Account Protection
WAP	WinFX Runtime Components

To those whom have attended Indigo Ascend and have asked me via emails: What acutally happens in the plumbings of the IsOneWay part of a Indigo Duplex Contract ?

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted is the answer. This is the explicit return.

HTTP/1.1 100 Continue

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:56:07 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50215
Cache-Control: private
Content-Length: 0

This, of course, only applies to the HTTP Bindings.

"The request has been accepted for processing, but the processing has not been completed. The request might or might not eventually be acted upon, as it might be disallowed when processing actually takes place. There is no facility for re-sending a status code from an asynchronous operation such as this.

The 202 response is intentionally non-committal. Its purpose is to allow a server to accept a request for some other process (perhaps a batch-oriented process that is only run once per day) without requiring that the user agent's connection to the server persist until the process is completed. The entity returned with this response SHOULD include an indication of the request's current status and either a pointer to a status monitor or some estimate of when the user can expect the request to be fulfilled."