Eclipse Tools for Microsoft Silverlight

Silverlight tools are coming to Mac and Linux - and towards iPhone!

Eclipse Tools for Microsoft Silverlight

Brief: App Store success several times what Apple likely expected

Brief: App Store success several times what Apple likely expected: "

The runaway success of the iPhone App Store, which Apple didn't even launch until a year after the first iPhone became available, caught even Apple by surprise. The 2-billion-apps-sold milestone, reached in late September after just a year and a half of sales, surpassed even the most optimistic expectations inside of Apple.

'We had no idea there would be 2 billion downloads by October,' Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy, manager of the then $100 million fund, told Financial Times. 'Most people within Apple, if you had told them it would be a fifth of that by now, they would have been pretty happy.'

Apple's initial reluctance to allow third-party native app development may have been influenced by those low expectations. When the iPhone was first launched in June 2007, Steve Jobs tried to sell developers on just making Web apps. When Web-based apps couldn't match the performance or capabilities of native apps, developers asked for more. Apple announced that they were changing course in October, but didn't launch the App Store until July 2008—just as Apple released the second generation iPhone hardware.

The success of the App Store is attributable to a sort of positive feedback loop among developers and users, FT explained. Developers created the 100,000+ apps that are currently available, giving users a smartphone platform that is capable of almost limitless functions. The growing user base that was attracted to the selection of apps then provides developers a large potential market to address with new applications.

"From Apple’s perspective, the gold mine was that they found a source of differentiation, independent of the hardware and basics software design, that they could never have anticipated," Professor David Yoffie, of Harvard Business School, told FT.

Besides benefitting Apple, some developers have also had quite a bit of success developing iPhone apps. Tap Tap Revenge maker Tapulous was recently profiled by Reuters, noting that the company generates about $1 million in revenue per month. While most developers won't be able to sustain such numbers, it shows that a bit of dedication, clever design, and more than a smidgen of luck, developers have a shot at making serious money.

What is a 'Brief' post?'

"

IDC: Apple App Store to Top 300,000 Apps in 2010

Olga Kharif in Business week find the estimate conservative, but conclude with this:

"There are a couple of reasons why this deceleration in developer interest in the App Store might happen. One, rival app stores, such as Google’s Android Market, will continue to gain traction. The Android Market should grow from more than 12,000 apps recently to as many as 75,000 apps by the end of 2010, according to IDC. Two, many developers are growing increasingly frustrated with Apple’s application approval process. They also complain that, as the App Store’s catalogue grows, users will find it increasingly difficult to find their apps, and it will become increasingly challenging to make money in the App Store."

- IDC: Apple App Store to Top 300,000 Apps in 2010 - BusinessWeek (vis på Googles sidewiki)

...in 2010: 'information wants a small fee.'"

It's Google Friend Connect vs. Facebook Connect

Just hours after Yahoo announced a planned implementation of Facebook Connect on its network of sites, Google announced that you can now use your Twitter credentials to register on Google Friend Connect sites

It's what PCWorlds Ian Paul expects. Later he continues:

2009 may have been the height of Google's power as the champion of the open and free Web, but the mantra 'information wants to be free' may start to change in 2010 to 'information wants a small fee.'

 And what's in it for my self and my newborn company www.noexcuseaccounting.com ? You have to read the whole PCWorld story. But I think it has a a lot to do with us:

• We have to implement Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect
• And really search where we can earn our dimes

Understanding the WCF in ‘WCF RIA Services’

RIA Services on WCF: Best of both worlds
Ever since we announced RIA Services at MIX '09, we have heard strong customers feedback that they would like a consolidated services story from Microsoft. Acting on that feedback, over the last few months RIA Services has spent a significant amount of effort aligning closely with WCF. The Data Services team at their end has been working on a similar alignment with WCF as well.
By centering all our service offerings around WCF we are maximizing developer knowledge transfer and skill reuse, both in the short and the long term.
For more details on the alignment and the motivation behind it please also check out this post by the WCF team.

From: Saurabh Pant's Weblog : Understanding the WCF in ‘WCF RIA Services’

Hver fjerde kommune vil kutte i sykehjem mot 2015

Ifølge rapporten «Framtidas omsorgsbilde» som Senter for omsorgsforskning - Sør har laget for Helse- og omsorgsdepartementet, planlegger 24 prosent av kommunene å kutte i antall sykehjemsplasser fram mot 2015.

Samtidig planlegger 13 prosent av kommunene å øke antall sykehjemsplasser vesentlig. Trenden ser videre ut til å bli at kommunene heller vil bygge omsorgsboliger. 68 prosent av kommunene har planer om å bygge vesentlig flere omsorgsboliger enn de har i dag.
in reference to: Hver fjerde kommune vil kutte i sykehjem - nyheter - Dagbladet.no (view on Google Sidewiki)

Bob Muglia on Azure, Silverlight, and Realtime

Something from the interview by Steve Gilmore:

STEVE GILLMOR: What are we going to see in Silverlight 4?

BOB MUGLIA: Well, what you’ll see is more improvements along the lines of what we have today, so continuing to make the video experiences better. You’ll see us broaden what you can do with Silverlight in terms of international support and things. I mean, one of — if you talk to people who are trying to build business applications and reach broad sets of consumers, and they want to reach consumers in China and India and Thailand and everywhere else, so being able to easily support a broad set of languages, I mean, the way I sort of view it is Silverlight 3 is the mature, broad platform people can use to implement things with, and we think that that’s where we’ll see very strong application adoption. Silverlight 4 rounds it out. It takes the next step forward and continues that process.
...
STEVE GILLMOR: You stop really thinking about that in that way.

BOB MUGLIA: One of the things you’ll see as we advance Silverlight is continuing to advance the frameworks to simplify the common interactions between a server and a rich client. I mean, with Silverlight, you have a rich client, right, and you’ve got a lot of computational power, everything available there. So, whether it’s getting data down to the client or invoking rules, whatever it might be, making that simpler, and this is the sort of stuff — it turns out that if you look at the amount of time people spend building business apps, or apps of any kind, consumer-based apps, et cetera, there’s a set of problems everybody has to do again and again and again and again. And you know, the kind of stuff Scott and his team are doing is saying, okay, these are the ones we’ll just build into the framework and make real easy for people, and so that’s what you’ll continue to see as we continue to evolve Silverlight.
in reference to:

"Bob Muglia on Azure, Silverlight, and Realtime"
- Bob Muglia on Azure, Silverlight, and Realtime (view on Google Sidewiki)

Viral marketing - as Wired sees it

Vira marketing is what Google, youTube and a lot of web companies have obtained. It's characterized by that every new user brings more than 1 user with him. If you reach 2, then the stars are the limit!
Adam Peneberg discuss viral marketing in details. You owe yourself an understanding of this pattern which drives our web!
in reference to: Pass it on: the power of viral loops (view on Google Sidewiki)

Paid Application on the App Store

pinch media describes the prizes and download of the paid apps, which count for 77% of the 100 thousand apps now out in the store.

in reference to: Paid Applications on the App Store (From 360iDev) – Pinch Media Blog (view on Google Sidewiki)

Microsoft Office Accounting - RIP

Microsoft is killing off its whole Office Accounting product line on November 16, 2009.

in reference to:

"Microsoft is killing off its whole Office Accounting product line on November 16, 2009."
- Microsoft Office Accounting dies on November 16, 2009 - Ars Technica (view on Google Sidewiki)

My computer dream isn't a server-rack - now it is a server container!

CNet have been inside the new Microsoft data center in Chicago. There they are using server containers, with 2000 servers readily set up in each container, complete with water cooling, electricity and cables. Just plug it in!
The video is quite impressive - and from now my hardware dream will be that - a MS prebuildt server container ;-)

in reference to: Inside one of the world's largest data centers | Beyond Binary - CNET News (view on Google Sidewiki)

Amazon Launches Hosted MySQL Database Cloud Service

A nice pricelist from TechCrunch:

Name Memory Comp Price per hour:

• Small DB Instance 1.7 GB 1 ECU $0.11 USD
• Large DB Instance 7.5 GB 4 ECUs $0.44 USD
• Extra Large DB Instance 15 GB 8 ECUs $0.88 USD
• Double Extra Large DB Instance 34 GB 13 ECUs $1.55 USD
• Quadruple Extra Large DB Instance 68 GB 26 ECUs $3.10 USD

in reference to:

- Amazon Launches Hosted MySQL Database Cloud Service (view on Google Sidewiki)

GPS on top of search engine

Erick Schonfeld in TechCrunch writes about Google GPS and Apple. And his gives the reason why the existing GPS providers doesn't stand a change - Google GPS are buildt on its search engine!
Navigation apps are a key category for mobile phones, and the iPhone is for once at a disadvantage here. Even the paid navigation apps in the iTunes store can’t compete because Google’s new navigation app is an extension (albeit a customized one) of its search engine. When a navigation app becomes an interface to Google’s massive search engine, it begins to deliver things that GPS app developers like Garmin and TomTom will never be able to build (search along a route, natural language search). Oh yeah, and did I mention it is free?

in reference to:

"Erick Schonfeld"
- Google Should Make Apple Beg For Maps Navigation (view on Google Sidewiki)

Skanning av bilag - med iPhone

Shoeboxed lar deg ta bilde av kvitteringen. Den blir så lastet opp og OCR behandlet, og du får den tilbake som en importfil til ditt regnskapsprogram.

in reference to: App of the Week - Shoeboxed Makes Quick Work of Receipts - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Revolusjonen ligger i brukeropplevelsen

...“det neste store” ... "at revolusjonen ligger i brukeropplevelsen og ikke i teknologien."

Eirik Solheim i NRKbeta skriver videre:


Tanken er ikke på noen måte ny. Og når jeg titter tilbake skrev jeg om dette på min egen blogg en gang i 2006. Med følgende refleksjon:

Ingeniøren tror det kommer til å slå an bare fordi det er mulig
Økonomen tror det slår an bare det blir billig nok
Markedsføringsavdelingen tror det kommer til å slå an bare de får slengt ut nok reklame
Men få tjenester slår an før de er tydelige og brukervennlige nok.

in reference to:- Revolusjonen ligger i brukeropplevelsen (view on Google Sidewiki)

Cloud Computing - Amazon fire back at Microsoft

VisualStudio reports that Amazon will be hosting MySQL in its Cloud. Commenting the prices the said:
Amazon's pricing move establishes a price ceiling for Windows hosting, said Jeffrey McManus, CEO of consultancy Platform Associates, in an e-mail. "Very few hosting providers are going to price their offerings higher than that of EC2," McManus said.

in reference to:

"Amazon's pricing move establishes a price ceiling for Windows hosting, said Jeffrey McManus, CEO of consultancy Platform Associates, in an e-mail. "Very few hosting providers are going to price their offerings higher than that of EC2," McManus said."
- Amazon Sets Stage for Cloud Battle With Microsoft -- Visual Studio Magazine (view on Google Sidewiki)

SQL Azure Team Blog : Updated CTP for SQL Azure Database includes complete feature set for PDC 2009!

New version of SQL Azure. New locations, new commands... The CTP is featurecomplete for PDC in November.

SQL Azure Team Blog : Updated CTP for SQL Azure Database includes complete feature set for PDC 2009!

Screencast – What’s new in the Entity Data Model Designer in VS2010 : Don't Be Iffy

The life of programming is just getting a lot easier ;-)
Screencast – What’s new in the Entity Data Model Designer in VS2010 : Don't Be Iffy

Silverlight på iPhone - det er spørsmålet!

Det vi mangler i prosjektet vårt er iPhone programmeringskompetanse. Men det er små hint der ute at vi kanskje ikke trenger dette. Hvertfall ikke med en gang. Scott Gurthie er sjef av sjefer i utvikling i Microsoft og han sa:
"Expect to see Microsoft putting Sliverlight on as many mobile devices as possible, not just Windows Mobile devices…. *pause*… anything with an SDK."
Vi knytter fingre...l

in reference to:

"Expect to see Microsoft putting Sliverlight on as many mobile devices as possible, not just Windows Mobile devices…. *pause*… anything with an SDK."
- Scott Guthrie Hints At Silverlight On iPhone at Simon’s Blog (view on Google Sidewiki)

Plan for RIA Services drops at PDC 2009 / drops for VS 2010 Beta2 : The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site

The new Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 make us to take a lot of caution: our favourite feauture .net RIA services, will not work with VS10 until the RTW which are expected between November and March.
Plan for RIA Services drops at PDC 2009 / drops for VS 2010 Beta2 : The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site

Silverlight and ViewModel meet F# | DavideZordan.net

Davide Zordan, who is an MVP, wrote:

Many MVVM implementations are available on the net, personally I love the approach used by Laurent Bugnion in the MVVM Light toolkit and Michael Sync in the Silverlight MVVM toolkit (Jeremiah Morril have posted a great article about this pattern, don’t forget to read it here).

All these examples use C#, what about F# for describing ViewModel classes? F# is a very powerful and readable language and permits to perform operations using a small amount of code. Last, but not least, at this time it’s a first citizen .NET language and can be easily used in Silverlight applications as well.

More on Silverlight and ViewModel meet F# | DavideZordan.net

Blendable MVVM : Introduction and Databinding . Blog . Compiled Experience . Silverlight Development

Blendable MVVM : Introduction and Databinding . Blog . Compiled Experience . Silverlight Development
A strange header. I will explain it. Blendable is usable in Expression Blend. MVVM is a variant of Model-View-Controller pattern. The article seems througout.

Confusing menus and links: the web's biggest challenge

Berrt McGovern does every sunday come up with nice observations and strategy about web sites. This week he says:

Menus and links need to be designed in the context of the task the customer is trying to complete. That means stripping away higher-level options and creating links that point forward based on the task at hand.

in reference to:

"Confusing menus and links: the web's biggest challenge"
- Confusing menus and links: the web's biggest challenge (view on Google Sidewiki)

Forecast for Microsoft: Partly Cloudy

Bred artikkel om Microsofts tilstand innenfor high-tech og hva fremtiden vill bringe. NYT spiller hele tiden på et ordspill om "Cloudy forecast" og "Cloud Compueting". God gjennomgang av IT-bransjens ledende aktører!

in reference to:

"Forecast for Microsoft: Partly Cloudy"
- Microsoft’s Future, Beyond Windows 7 and the PC - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

IDC’s New IT Cloud Services Forecast: 2009-2013

As we noted last year, IT cloud services adoption is currently in the “crossing the chasm” stage. This revenue and growth data is very much in sync with this view. As Geoffrey Moore pointed out, in this period, total revenues are small, but – as the market is on the steep part of the adoption curve – growth is extremely high. The lesson of past technology adoption waves is that suppliers who wait to position themselves until revenues get big (e.g., greater than 10%), are too late, and find themselves edged out of the all-important mainstream adoption phase.

in reference to: IDC eXchange » Blog Archive » IDC’s New IT Cloud Services Forecast: 2009-2013 (view on Google Sidewiki)

De tre lovene om tilgjengelig offentlig informasjon:

1. Hvis det ikke kan bli indeksert, finnes det ikke
2. Hvis det ikke er tilgjengelig i et åpent ,maskinlesbart format, kan det ikke engasjere
3. Hvis det ikke er lov å bruke det fritt, gir det ikke makt til brukerne

in reference to: The Three Laws of Open Government Data | eaves.ca (view on Google Sidewiki)

Microsoft Dynamics NAV heads toward social apps

"As they use more of their internal tools such as Silverlight, SQL Server Reporting Services and Windows Workflow Foundation, they will be able to move towards more social, connected enterprise-class apps," Wang said. "Continued investment in dynamic user experiences, business process, and community connectedness will give Microsoft Dynamics a head start towards the development of more Social Enterprise Apps."

in reference to:

"particularly"
- SP1 Adds Improvements to Dynamics NAV 2009 -- Visual Studio Magazine (view on Google Sidewiki)

Regnskapsprogrammet Outright gjør mye riktig

PCMag er svært fornøyd med dette amerikasnske regnskapsprogrogrammet. En amerikansk SMS uten ansatte skal kunne klare seg med 29 min. i mnd. Dette vil firmaet ha ned til 15 min.
Outright henter banktransaksjoner og fakturaer fra Freshbook og Shoeboxed.
in reference to: Outright (September 2009) - Full Review - Reviews by PC Magazine (view on Google Sidewiki)

The wrong marketing for open source

Matt Asay from CNET: "Open-source advocates for years have waved the banners of "freedom" and "no vendor lock-in" to sell the value of open source. It hasn't worked. Chief information officers don't buy vague concepts. They buy high-quality software at a compelling price. To better market open-source software to the world, open-source advocates need to match their message to what CIOs actually want to buy."
...
"Sell the CIO on open source's value, in terms of cost and quality, as Forrester reports. That's the marketing message she needs to hear right now."
in reference to:

- The wrong marketing for open source | The Open Road - CNET News (view on Google Sidewiki)

App store in accounting programs

Intuit QuickBooks new version include an App Store, where you can see, try and buy 25 different add-ons. One more imitating Apples brilliant idea.

in reference to: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2353409,00.asp (view on Google Sidewiki)

@pcmagradio review

Laplink PCMover is a very viable solution to move from XP to Window 7. At $20 it's also moves yours application. The free Windows Easy Transfer has some traps even to move your data.
in reference to: PCMag Radio on USTREAM: Get the scoop from PCMag.com experts on the latest products. We deliver practical solutions to everyday problems, provide insight i... (view on Google Sidewiki)

Fjernstyring av andre PCer - support

Citrix GoToAssist Express er et alternativ til TeamViewer. $660 i året for ubegrenset antall brukere. PCMag Editors Choice borger for kvaliteten.
in reference to: Citrix GoToAssist Express - Full Review - Reviews by PC Magazine (view on Google Sidewiki)

Using the startup community resources

Creating a new startup is a overwhelming project. There is just so much to do!
I have requested help from two sources: Business Plan Pro Coaching and StartupToDo. The first will start October the first, the second I joined to day.
Yesterday I got TweetDeck up and running, so now I also have a decent way to "twit" ;-)

New company, new blog, "new" life?

Creating a new company is like beginning all from start. It's nice. Like earlier I'm fixed in the will to do everything right. Bob Walsh in "The Web Success Startup Guide" told me through his book two things, release early and often, and create a media presence including Twitter and Facebook. The former is hard. As I'm born in -52, I had hoped not to mesh up in the social media - but alas. Blogging is however trivial. My private blog iakttakelser is many years old and have 436 posts (be warned - it's in Norwegian). I was looking at the posts this morning, trying to create tags for old posts. It was like going back in history...
Well - welcome to my new blog, company and upcoming services. Hope to see you a lot!