Microsoft Live Volta

 Microsoft Live Labs hs announced the Volta technology preview, a developer toolset for building multi-tier web applications using existing and familiar tools, techniques and patterns. Volta’s declarative tier-splitting enables developers to postpone architectural decisions about distribution until the last possible responsible moment. Volta enables new end-to-end profiling and testing for higher levels of application performance, robustness, and reliability. Using the declarative tier-splitting, developers can refine architectural decisions based on this profiling data. This saves time and costs associated with manual refactoring. In effect, Volta extends the .NET platform to further enable the development of software+services applications, using existing and familiar tools and techniques.

You architect and build your application as a .NET client application, assigning the portions of the application that run on the server tier and client tier late in the development process. You can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and all communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together. In effect, Volta offers a best-effort experience in multiple environments without requiring tailoring of the application.

Learn more about Microsoft Live Volta.
Download Microsoft Live Volta

27 February 2008 in Beta Testing & Developer Tools & Live | Comments (0)

Pre-register for Microsoft Office Live Workspace

Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta is your online place to save, access, and share documents and files. Use it to group related information for work, school, or personal projects.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace is free and there might be additional features that are charged.  View the FAQs.

Learn more about Microsoft Office Live Workspace.

Pre-register for Microsoft Office Live Workspace.

21 February 2008 in Live & Office & Web Services | Comments (0)

Windows XP SP3 Release Candidate 2 Released

Microsoft has released the Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 2 for the public via the Windows Update.

All you gotta do is to download a small registry fix for making your system ready for the Service Pack 3 RC2 via the Windows Update.

 Download the Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 2 via Windows Update.

Download the script and run it on a machine currently running Windows XP Service Pack 2. The script sets a registry key on your system. The registry key is required for Windows Update to recognize your machine as a valid target for Windows XP Service Pack 3 RC2.Versions of Windows XP Service Pack 3 prior to Release Candidate 2 should be removed before attempting to use the registry key. Windows Update will not offer Release Candidate 2 to machines with previous versions of the Windows XP Service Pack 3 beta.It is recommended that you apply the resulting update package to an activated, genuine copy of Windows XP, in a test environment. As with any pre-release software, it is also recommended that you back up files and settings on your machine before applying this update package.

Windows XP SP3 RC2 Release Notes
Windows XP SP3 TechCenter

21 February 2008 in Windows | Comments (0)