Microsoft sponsoring Open Source Census
And here Open Source Census has a new sponsorer, Microsoft. But why is Microsoft sponsoring ? A mystery. The Open Source Census is a project started earlier this year that aims to track and catalog the use of open-source software in enterprises worldwide.
Have you heard about Doloto ???
Have you heard about Doloto ??? Well Doloto is an Code Splitting system from Microsoft Research labs. As of this writing it is not available publicly yet. But if you are interested you can read a pdf about it from here.
The goal of Doloto is to reduce the initial startup time for Web 2.0 applications. Well generally most Web 2.0 applications have all the Javascript in a single file and is sent to the browser. So the user has to wait till all the file gets downloaded, before he can start interacting with the application. Dial Up users would have experienced the frustration of seeing a ‘loading…’ for a long time, Doloto’s goal is remove that frustration.
If you take a look at this link, you can see that most of the websites hardly use 20 - 30% of the Js code when the page initially renders, so by cutting this initial payload to a minimum, these sites can be loaded much faster.
The idea of Doloto is to send only the initial payload and the rest can be transferred silently in background or on demand. Well yes it is a very interesting topic, dont forget to read the 25 page pdf at the Microsoft’s research site.
Links Referred:
1) Doloto: Code Splitting for Network-Bound Web 2.0 Applications
Microsoft to make Subscription based Office
Microsoft plans to make Office subscription based, i.e you dont buy office instead you pay a monthly fee. Microsoft is also looking towards making Office free and support it by ads. I hope most people already know the free Office alternatives: Open Office. As well as Google docs though web based you still get a good functionality. If microsoft approves on making Office free. You would be seeing PC’s pre-installed with Office and you can use Office without worrying about expiring.
ASP.NET Dynamic Data Preview Released
ASP.NET Dynamic Data is a powerful new feature that provides two significant usability improvements to working with data controls in ASP.NET Web sites and Web applications.
The first improvement is for existing applications that use DetailsView, FormView, GridView, or ListView controls. The DetailsView and GridView controls have been extended to display fields by using templates instead of by using hard-coded rules that are programmed in the controls. These templates are part of the project, and you can customize them to change their appearance or to specify what controls they use for rendering. This makes it very easy to make a change in one place that specifies how to present dates for editing, as one example. FormView and ListView controls can implement similar behavior by using a DynamicControl control in their templates and by specifying which field in the row to display. Dynamic Data will then automatically build the UI for these controls based on the templates that you specify.
The second improvement is that the controls look at the metadata for a LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework data model and provide automatic validation based on the model. For example, if a column in the database is limited to 50 characters, and if a column is marked as not nullable, a RequiredFieldValidator control is automatically enabled for the column. (The controls also automatically support data-model-level validation.) You can apply other metadata to take further control over display and validation.
One mistake I did while buying Laptop
I went to Costco and bought a preconfigured laptop, great it looks fabulous and the features are worth the money. They have only Windows Vista Home Premium, I picked it up. I checked the other laptops they also come with Windows Home Premium. Now when I try to install Virtual PC on it, it says unsupported OS. You know what I decided never again buy a preconfigured laptop. So developers who want Virtual PC dont buy Windows Vista Home Premium please. :(. Any tips on how to install Virtual PC on Windows Vista Home Premium ???
