Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R3 is now a freely available .NET-based programming environment for building robotics applications.

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R3 (Microsoft RDS) provides a wide range of support to make it easy to develop robot applications. Microsoft RDS includes a programming model that makes it easy to develop asynchronous, state-driven applications. Microsoft RDS provides a common programming framework that can be applied to support a wide variety of robots, enabling code and skill transfer.

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio can support a broad set of robotics platforms by either running directly on the platform (if it has an embedded PC running Windows) or controlling it from a Windows PC through a communication channel such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth®.
In addition to providing support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R3 provides a Visual Programming Language (VPL) which allows developers to create applications simply by dragging and dropping components onto a canvas and wiring them together.

To learn more and get started, see Microsoft Robotics Studio.

The R3 release is a minor update that has the functionality of the previous Standard Edition, but is now available at no cost to all users. As of the R3 release there are no separate Editions and only a single download.

The announcement was made on the Robotics team blog at Microsoft Announces Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R3.

You can get Robotics Studio from http://www.microsoft.com/robotics/#GetIt

Tags: Robotics, Visual Studio 2010

"Wait – this car tweets? "  Yes – and checks in on FourSquare, plus a lot more! 

As part of a program called American Journey 2.0, Ford and Microsoft ran a course at the University of Michigan this Spring that taught students to build apps on the Fiestaware platform.  The platform itself — called "Fiestaware" — is built on top of Windows 7 and Robotics Developer Studio, and includes components optimized to work with Windows Azure.  Ford, Microsoft, and UofM are showed the Fiestaware application platform at Maker Faire weekend (May 22-23rd) in San Mateo, CA, running inside of two Ford Fiestas, along with apps built on the platform by Ford and by students at the University of Michigan. 

Microsoft Technology Components for the "Fiestaware" platform used in the Ford Fiesta as part of American Journey 2.0:

• Provides new capabilities for application developers to build compelling, safe, and natural user experiences that span from the embedded vehicle network to the cloud
• Fiestaware platform technology components:
  • Built on Windows 7
  • Supports natural user interfaces, such as touch and speech interaction
  • User interface is built with .NET (Windows Presentation Foundation)
  • Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio used to manage access and coordinate use of resources on the embedded vehicle network (e.g., vehicle sensor data) and in Windows 7 (e.g., Windows 7 Speech API).
  • Platform supports using SQL CE on the PC in the vehicle to cache/synchronize with SQL Azure in order to handle intermittent connectivity gracefully
  • Application development environment is Visual Studio 2008 with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio
• Ford, with assistance from Microsoft and our partner Cumulux, have built a set of customer Distributed System Services with Robotics Development Studio that pull these Microsoft platform technologies into a specialized automotive computing application platform.  The net effect is to make 3rd party application development for the in-vehicle environment dramatically more accessible to the vast pool of application developers in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Why did Ford choose Windows 7 for this program instead of Windows Embedded?   Ford carefully evaluated whether to use Windows 7 or Windows Embedded Standard 7 for the Fiestaware platform, and selected Windows 7 to ensure that both the platform and communications about the platform would come across as accessible as possible to a broad audience of automotive and technology enthusiasts.  Ford recognizes that Windows Embedded Standard 7 offers features and capabilities that would be very valuable in a supported production deployment. 

Additional Resources:

• Official University of Michigan course link: http://pervasive.eecs.umich.edu/498poster.pdf
• John Mullinax’s Blog w/ continuing coverage: http://blogs.msdn.com/johnmullinax/archive/tags/American+Journey+2.0/default.aspx
• ReadWriteWeb Coverage: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/apps_on_wheels_making_the_internet_work_at_70mph.php#_login
• MIT Technology Review: http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/24824/page1/
• DailyTech: http://www.dailytech.com/Ford+Takes+American+Journey+to+Promote+2011+Fiesta+Windows+Apps/article18410c.htm
• Mashable: http://mashable.com/2010/05/12/ford-fiesta-american-journey/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29
• CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-20004062-76.html?tag=mncol

Tags: Robotics, SQL Azure, Windows 7, Windows Azure

Windows Server AppFabric Release Candidate was announced today at Application Infrastructure  Virtual Launch Event. The final availability will follow in June.

Windows Server AppFabric provides improved speed, elastic scale and high availability for Web applications through new, distributed caching capabilities. It also provides tools to simplify the development and management of composite applications built using Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation. Windows Server AppFabric will be available to customers with licenses for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (Standard and Enterprise editions) at no additional cost.

About Windows Server AppFabric

Windows Server AppFabric is a set of integrated technologies that make it easier to build, scale and manage Web and composite applications that run on IIS.

For Web applications, AppFabric provides caching capabilities to provide high-speed access, scale, and high availability to application data.

For composite applications, AppFabric makes it easier to build and manage services built using WindowsWorkflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation.

More information

More information about the launch event and related products is available:

• To visit the Application Infrastructure Virtual Launch Event
• To download or get more information, see Windows Server AppFabric
• To get started, see the links for tutorials, samples, whitepapers, and videos at Windows Server AppFabric.

Tags: Windows Server AppFabric

Tags: Windows Azure

If you running the VS 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 and you are getting a screen with an error message – THE APPLICATION CANNOT START, you can fix this problem:

Use Visual Studio Command Prompt (2010) and  run “devenv /resetuserdata”.

[C]:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE>devenv /resetuserdata

Tags: Team System 2010, Visual Studio 2010

Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie and Kurt DelBene were the top speakers announced for day 2 keynote.

If you would like to watch the keynotes on-demand, you can do so at www.microsoftpdc.com site.

Silverlight 4

Scott Guthrie announces the public beta of Silverlight 4. The beta can be downloaded at http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta.

New features:

• Extended out-of-browser capabilities to enable deeper desktop experiences without additional code or runtimes
• Powerful enhancements for enterprise application developers, including full support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, providing access to Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint Server, and improved printing,  networking, reporting and charting capabilities
• Richer Web experiences, including new webcam and microphone capabilities, native multicast support for wide-scale media content delivery, and more than 60 customizable controls to build compelling, interactive applications

If you want training, go to Channel 9 to Silverlight 4 training: http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/Silverlight4/

Office 2010 Beta and SharePoint 2010 Beta

The are public betas of Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010, Microsoft Project 2010, Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 and Office Web Apps for business customers. The 2010 release is designed to give people the best productivity experience across PCs, phones and browsers. The betas can be downloaded at http://www.microsoft.com/2010. Also announced: PowerPivot for Excel 2010 – CTP version is available – http://www.powerpivot.com/

Tags: Office 2010, PDC09, SharePoint 2010, Silverlight, Silverlight 4

Here are the headlines from yesterday’s announcements at Professional Developers Conference (PDC09).

Windows Identity Foundation, ASP.NET MVC Beta 2 Supported on Windows Azure

Windows Server virtual machine support on Windows Azure, RTM of Windows Identity Foundation, and ASP.NET MVC beta 2, a free, fully-supported framework that enables developers to rapidly build standards-based Web applications.

Windows Azure

Windows Azure release schedule was announced, the services are free to evaluate through January 2010. We will begin charging customers on February 1st, 2010.

Learn more, download the tools: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/

Commercial, Reference Data Service Offered in Cloud

Dallas” the commoditization of data.Microsoft introduces an information and brokerage service, codenamed “Dallas” that enables access to commercial and reference data from partners including Associated Press, Citysearch, ESRI, DATA.gov, NASA, National Geographic, RiskMetrics Group, the United Nations, WaveMarket, Weather Central, and more. Check it out and request your trial token: http://blogs.msdn.com/dallas/archive/2009/11/17/a-quick-overview-of-dallas-for-developers.aspx

AppFabric Supports Moving Your Web Application from Windows Server to Windows Azure

Microsoft releases Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1, a set of integrated application services that enable developers to more easily deploy and manage applications spanning both server and cloud. Available for download today at http://msdn.microsoft.com/AppFabric with availability in 2010. Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Azure platform AppFabric include the capabilities from projects “Dublin” and “Velocity,” as well as the Service Bus and Access Control services that were formerly under the “.NET Services” brand (today, these services are now called Windows Azure platform AppFabric Service Bus and Windows Azure platform AppFabric Access Control services).

• For Web applications, AppFabric provides caching capabilities to provide high-speed access, scale, and high availability to application data. This feature was previously codenamed "Velocity".
• For composite applications, AppFabric makes it easier to build and manage services built using Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation. This feature was previously codenamed "Dublin."

Tags: AppFabric, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Dallas, PDC09, Windows Azure, Windows Identity

Its here!

msdn subscribers can download now, general availability is 21st October. Visit the Visual Studio 2010 / .NET Fx 4 Beta site for more information, downloads, forums and to submit feedback.

You’ll also notice that MSDN website has undergone a redesign and MSDN subscribers will also see new benefits such as Azure compute hours, Team Foundation Server and e-learning options.

You can read Soma’s blogpost announcing Visual Studio 2010 / .NET Fx 4.

Tags: .NET 4, Team System 2010, TFS

Just published on CodePlex  -WCF Load Test tool.

Project Description from the project home page on CodePlex:

This tool takes a WCF trace file and a WCF client proxy, or a WCF interface contract, and generates a unit test that replays the same sequence of calls found in the trace file. The code generated is easily modifiable so that data variation can be introduced for the purpose of doing performance testing.
The tool generates code for both Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008. It also installs a wizard into both editions of Visual Studio for creating the trace and processing it from inside Visual Studio. If both editions are present the tool is installed into both editions. The source code is a Visual Studio 2005 project.

Latest Release June 2009

A new beta was released in June 2009 adding support for ASMX web services. Download it from here.

Features

The tool has the following main features:

• Replay of captured scenario in a unit test that can be included in a load test.
• Support for the DataContractSerializer.
• Support for message contracts.
• ASMX support (beta)
• Support for proxies generated using svcutil.
• Support for clients that create proxies at run time from contract interfaces.
• Supports calls to multiple services in a single scenario.
• Supports multiple calls to the same service operation.
• Filtering by SOAP action of which messages in the trace to replay.
• Readable and modifiable code is generated.
• Automatic association of trace message with proxy method (requires all operations to have a unique SOAP action).
• Support for client and server side traces.
• A command line tool for processing traces and generating code.
• Visual Studio 2005/2008 integration (Team Developer, Team Test, Team Suite and for 2008 also Professional)) that can be used instead of the command line tool.

Tags: .NET, load test, Tools, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio Team System, WCF

ASP.NET MVC 1.0 RTW (Release To Web) is now officially released. You can download it right now here.  Also check out Phil Haack’s post on the release.

MSDN Documentation for MVC is also now available at the following link http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=145989

Tags: ASP.NET MVC