The App Hub is where Windows Phone developers manage their accounts, change settings, submit apps, and stay current on Windows Phone. Microsoft has just updated the App Hub to provide:
- 19 new consumer markets including Brazil, India, Japan, Russia, and Taiwan
- 7 new developer markets including Israel and South Korea
- Updated price tiers to account for currency fluctuations
- Beta distributions to 100 testers for up to 90 days
- Targeted distribution to specific customers that’s otherwise hidden from the general marketplace
- Enhanced developer dashboard
- More detailed reporting
- Streamlined app submission process
- New app categories
Microsoft Announcement
Microsoft has released to smartphone manufacturers the first major update to Windows Phone 7, codenamed Mango. This enables the manufacturers to test the update and prepare to deliver it to users. Mango should be available to the public this fall.
Mango Hands-on Review by CNET
Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch is a simplified self-service development tool that enables you to build business applications quickly and easily for the desktop and cloud. It provides a constrained Visual Studio development environment for producing form-driven, database-backed applications. Non-developers can quickly build applications using Silverlight for deployment on PCs, Macs, and the Azure cloud platform. The advantage over Excel macro applications, for example, is that professional developers can easily migrate a LightSwitch project into a full-fledge .NET development project. Cost is $299/seat.
Visual Studio LightSwitch Homepage
LightSwitch Review on arstechnica
The Python NumPy and SciPy packages have been ported to run under IronPython, Microsoft’s Python implementation for .NET. Both packages consist of a heavily optimized native core implementation of the algorithms and a custom .NET interface.
NumPy (pronounced "Num Pie") is the fundamental package needed for scientific computing with Python. It includes a powerful N-dimensional array object, sophisticated (broadcasting) functions, and useful linear algebra, Fourier transform, and random number capabilities.
SciPy (pronounced "Sigh Pie") is large Python library for mathematics, science, and engineering. SciPy is built to work with NumPy arrays and provides many user-friendly and efficient routines for numerical integration and optimization.
NumPy and SciPy on CodePlex
Prism is a Microsoft open-source framework to help you more easily design and build rich, flexible, and easy-to-maintain Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) desktop applications, Silverlight Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), and Windows Phone 7 applications.
Using design patterns that embody important architectural design principles — such as separation of concerns and loose coupling — Prism helps you to design and build applications using loosely coupled components that can evolve independently but that can be easily and seamlessly integrated into the overall application. These types of applications are known as composite applications.
Prism on CodePlex
Developer’s Guide to Prism
Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 is the collaboration platform at the core of Microsoft’s ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) solution that helps teams to be more agile, collaborate more effectively, and deliver better quality software faster. Project artifacts are stored in a data warehouse, and rich reports provide historical trending, full traceability, and real-time visibility into project status. This service pack fixes bugs and improves stability.
Download VS Team Foundation Server 2010 SP1
SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is now available for download. SQL Server 2008 R2 service packs are cumulative updates and upgrade all service levels of SQL Server 2008 R2 to SP1. New features include:
- Dynamic Management Views for increased supportability
- ForceSeek for improved querying performance
- Data-tier Application Component Framework (DAC Fx) for improved database upgrades
- Disk space control for PowerPivot
- Numerous bug fixes and performance improvements
Download SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1
SUSE, an Attachmate Business Unit, and Xamarin, a startup co-founded by Mono legend Miguel de Icaza, are partnering to provide continued support for Mono, the open-source .NET Framework. The agreement grants Xamarin a broad, perpetual license to all intellectual property covering Mono, MonoTouch, Mono for Android, and Mono Tools for Visual Studio. Xamarin will assume support for these products and continue to develop and sell them. Existing customers can purchase upgrades. Priority support is also available for an extra fee.
Xamarin’s immediate plans for both MonoTouch and Mono for Android is to make sure that the major bugs are fixed. I just received notification today that a critical bug open in MonoTools since last October has finally been assigned to be fixed. This is excellent news for .NET developers and provides further evidence that .NET isn’t dead. Xamarin provides the best way to build fast, native .NET apps on iOS and Android.
SUSE/Xamarin Press Release
Announcement by Miguel de Icaza
Monospace provides developers a unique look at running their applications across all the platforms using the Microsoft .NET Framework by focusing on the Mono framework and open source .NET technologies. We will start with 2 days of talks and sessions, aiming to teach the attendees about the various technologies and innovations that currently exists. We will then end with a one day open space unconference where dialogs and conversations will help kick start the next wave of open source projects that will help the community remain competitive.
July 23-25, 2011 at the NERD Center in Boston, Massachusetts. Only 150 seats available, grab yours while you can! Cost is US$250 per seat.
Monospace Homepage
Scala is a general-purpose programming language designed to express common programming patterns in a concise, elegant, and type-safe way. It smoothly integrates features of object-oriented and functional languages, enabling Java and other programmers to be more productive. Code sizes are typically reduced by a factor of two to three when compared to an equivalent Java application.
Miguel Garcia, part of the Scala group at EPFL, has been striving to make the Scala productivity available to .NET developers too. In a project funded by Microsoft, he has now reached a major milestone in delivering that capability. If you have a Scala program working on the JVM, then for the most part you only need to recompile it with the Scala.Net compiler and it will run there too. The key limitation for the moment is that Scala programs cannot use libraries in .NET that are compiled using CLR generics, such as the .NET collections.
Scala Comes to .NET
Guide to Using Scala on .NET
Scala Homepage
