Microsoft

As a side project, I recently worked on creating a mobile app for Android (and iOS to be completed). To be honest, the development effort was quite straight forward. The development stack focused on Xamarin, because I do not know a thing about creating a native app for Android nor iOS. But, I do know C# … so, for me this was a natural choice :-) My knowledge in the area of Xamarin was quite limited and I did not create an app for Android or iOS before. However, the path from idea to prototyping was really smooth. There are a ton of kickstart packages out there and the documentation is amazing. You’ll find tons of articles, knowledge base and other posts that are really helpful. ...

Since I have been using Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AAD) for my newly AAD domain joined machine, I thought it would be a good idea to enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to my account. I really do care a lot about my (virtual) identity ?. So, I was able to domain join my machine and get everything up and running on my Windows 10 machine. However, two things then happened: 1. My Windows Phone 8.1 told me that my Office 365 (O365) account cannot sync my mail, etc. anymore and it needs my attention. I thought “no big deal … just let it configure again and add my 2nd factor to it and done”. As a matter of fact, this does not seem to work right now, the phone tries for a couple of minutes and then says that something went wrong and it cannot activate my account anymore. ...

I have been using Windows 10 for quite a while now … actually from the very first moment Microsoft released their first public preview late in 2014. I absolutely like the look and feel and how the user experience evolved from Windows 8.1. I think it is a much more intuitive way to use your computer for work and play. I am using it on a tablet and it works great with touch, but also mouse and keyboard. ...

Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. yesterday announced a partnership that will enable customers to run Oracle software on Windows Server Hyper-V and in Windows Azure. Customers will be able to deploy Oracle software — including Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server — on Windows Server Hyper-V or in Windows Azure and receive full support from Oracle. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. For additional information: Microsoft Press Release at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/Jun13/06-24WSNewsPR.aspx ...

If you are as addicted as I am with looking at Bing’s totally awesome photographs, there is now a way to actually create your own piece of art. Microsoft Research provides a nice little interactive app that gives users the power to create “Cliplets” – a type of imagery that sits between stills and video, including imagery such as video textures and “cinemagraphs”. The app provides a simple, yet expressive way to mix static and dynamic elements from a video clip. ...

Why this release mattered The spring 2012 release was a turning point for Windows Azure. Up until this point Azure was largely a PaaS-only platform built around Cloud Services (web roles and worker roles), which made sense for greenfield .NET applications but was a tough sell for anyone wanting to lift-and-shift existing workloads or run anything that didn’t fit the role model — Linux servers, off-the-shelf software, custom networking topologies. ...

Skype for Windows Phone is now officially available in Marketplace. Download it now here. It supports free voice and video calls to other Skype users (or cheaper calls to landlines and other cell phones with Skype Credit) along with other cool features like portrait mode video calling, support for joining audio conference calls, call-in-progress notifications and block and unblock contacts. See more information at Big Blog or at Skype Garage. ...

If you always wanted to learn how to script using PowerShell, this tool makes it even easier to learn and explore all the cool features. Very nice new experience of guidance and content. Check it out at https://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=29101

If you have some knowledge of Silverlight and .NET it will be so easy to leverage your knowledge and develop for WP7 codenamed Mango. Please see this new ad for Mango update: youtube!

A bit of context Windows Phone 7.5, codenamed “Mango”, was the version of WP7 that finally felt complete. It shipped in late 2011 with a serious upgrade story: multitasking, deep Twitter and Facebook integration into the People hub, threaded messaging across SMS / Facebook chat / Windows Live Messenger, IE9 with hardware-accelerated rendering, and a new Marketplace flow for both users and developers. For developers, Mango added Silverlight + XNA combined projects, Live Tiles you could update from the cloud, push notifications, background agents, and full SQL CE access on the device. ...