Microsoft WebsiteSpark

 

If you are a team of independent web developers that build web applications and websites for others, Microsoft has a new program targetting you.  Scott Guthrie, Microsoft Corporation’s VP for the Developer Division has announced the WebSiteSpark program, on top of the two existing start-up programs BizSpark and DreamSpark (for students). This program enables you to get software, support, and business resources from Microsoft at no cost for three years.

In a nutshell, the programs that you can immediately use upon confirmation of enrollment are the following:

• 3 licenses of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
• 1 license of Expression Studio 3 (which includes Expression Blend, Sketchflow, and Web)
• 2 licenses of Expression Web 3
• 4 processor licenses of Windows Web Server 2008 R2
• 4 processor licenses of SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
• DotNetPanel control panel (enabling easy remote/hosted management of your servers)

For more information, you can check the official announcement of the program here.

Silverlight 3.0 Released!

I am a bit excited with the release of Silverlight 3.0 and while searching the pages of Silverlight, a download link has been made available for the public to get the Released To Web (RTW) version. Likewise, developers can also take advantage of the Silverlight 3.0 SDK though you need to remove any beta pre-RTW Silverlight 3.0 SDK. Aside from that, Silverlight 3.0 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 is also available for download.

Here are some useful links that you can check out (links open in a new window):

• Silverlight 3.0 RTW Download Page
• Silverlight 3.0 SDK
• Silverlight 3.0 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Key improvements for the release are grouped into 4 categories:

• Media: GPU hardware acceleration, new codec support (H.264, AAC, MPEG-4), raw bitstream Audio/Video API, and improved logging for media analytics
• Graphics: GPU Acceleration and hardware compositing, perspective 3D, bitmap and pixel API, pixel shader effects, and Deep Zoom improvements
• Application development: Deep linking, navigation and SEO, improved text quality, multi-touch support, 60+ controls available, and library caching support
• Data: Data-binding improvements, validation error templates, server data push improvements, binary XML networking support, and multi-tier REST data support

Still, I am waiting for the launch of the site See The Light (www.seethelight.com). It is already 10 July 2009 here in Manila but perhaps the launch of the site would be the time in the US. 🙂

Renewed

I finally got word from Microsoft that I was renewed as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for ASP/ASP.NET for another year!

Thank you Microsoft and I hope my contributions did really help a lot of people!  The new fiscal year is exciting starting with Windows 7 as well as Visual Studio 2010.

Windows 7 RC First Impressions

I had the privilege of trying out the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Release Candidate, thanks to my MSDN subscription which is due to expire in the coming months. This is not the first time I tried Windows 7 since I am already trying it during the Beta stage.

Contrary to previous versions of Windows, setting up Windows 7 took me around 22 minutes with few clicks to complete the installation. I opted to test 64-bit this time since I want to maximize the available hardware in my laptop that a 32-bit system won’t be able to fully utilize (that is the OS physically using the whole 4 GB installed in my machine).

A lot of blogs/news articles has been written with regards to the features of Windows 7 so I won’t elaborate/repost them here but since I am more of a developer, I tried setting up the usual tools that I use developing ASP.NET/Silverlight applications.

Get Ready For The Face of the New Web