Windows Azure Improvements since last year:

1. Support PHP, CGI, Apache, other frameworks
2. Expose very low-level programming efforts (not just .NET).
   Example was a C++ app with pointers exposed as an Azure service
3. Identity framework (support passing tokens from federated locations i.e. onsite AD instance)

SQL Azure Improvements since last year:

1. Not just RESTful consumption of services anymore
2. Works with standard TDS based tools (SQL management studio)

Microsoft has a vision of "Three screens and a Cloud".

The screens include:

1. Mobile devices
2. Desktop computers
3. Internet connected TVs

   They can all be united by data and services in the cloud.

Public Data in the Cloud (Codename "Dallas").

Repository for public data sets that can be consumed in any number of ways (and easily by Azure)

Accessed through Microsoft PinPoint

Sign up for a CTP key

Some data includes NASA mars photos, GIS data, AP News articles

PinPoint:

Centralized marketplace for partner providers, Azure ISVs and implementers, and gateway to "Dallas" public Data.

"System Center" will plugin to Azure to monitor your Azure instances, check to meet SLAs, and enable you to scale up the Azure instances directly.

2010 will include ability to have the Azure cloud be able to establish a network connection to on-premise resources (i.e. self hosted SQL Server)

WordPress is moving to Windows Azure

Tags: appfabric, azure, pdc09, WCF

After hours of loading software, I built the basics of my first TouchSmart/TouchCenter application. I wanted an easy way to check Seattle area traffic from TouchSmart, so I created a tile to grab the traffic flow image of the bridges from the mobile WSDOT site:

It took about twenty minutes to create the project, paste the shell XML from the application primer article, and register the application.

The Image control in WPF is slick because you can use a web url to a graphic file in the Source property. In WinForms I would have had to use the WebClient, get the image, save it somewhere, and load it into a picture box.

Now I need to add in a timer to refresh the image every so often, a button to manually refresh, the ability to see the North/South and full region maps, and add some visual spice.

Tags: touch screen computing, TouchSmart, traffic, WPF