Sanjay's Tech Blog

Installing Windows 8 Developer Preview in a VM with Virtual Box and VMware player

sanjayshetty — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 03:38:31 +0000

I’ve been trying to get Windows 8 Developer Preview installed on my Lenovo x220 tablet.

Virtual Box – 4.1.6-8413-Win

First, I tried my hand with the latest virtual box, what was interesting was that they have an option to create a VM for Windows 8. Unfortunately, after more than 4 tries the installation of Windows 8 failed and, I moved on to VMware player.

The issue with Virtual Box at least the latest release was that during installation windows 8 Developer preview would be stuck at different points in expanding the installation files. One time I even got to 98% and then stalled, other times it got stalled at 3% and one time at 11%. You can imagine how frustrating this was. Once it even gave a warning no. and cancelled installation, the issue was supposedly low disk space, which is insane considering that I had provided 50Gb for the virtual hard disk and I had another 100Gb free on my HDD. Well finally gave it up. I’m guessing this is an issue with the latest release of the software, as I’ve previously seen installations on the earlier versions succeeding.

VMware player – 4.0.1-528992

Here I had to choose the OS as Windows 7 while creating the virtual hard disk. I followed the instructions out here http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2899-vmware-player-install-windows-8-developer-preview.html and the install process on VMware player was easy and fast.

Finally I have Windows 8 Developer Preview loaded on my Lenovo X220 tablet.

Microsoft Analytics for Twitter – Powered by PowerPivot for Excel

sanjayshetty — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 12:46:47 +0000

Microsoft just released a tool which enables you to you to analyse Twitter data from within Excel. You can search up to 5 items and it populates the workbook with information on Topics, People, Tone, and lists all the tweets that are brought back. What is amazing is that they’ve included the source code too.

Tone Edit

Most online analytics tool kind of hide from you how they’re judging sentiment of tweets. However, here you’re provided with a Tone Dictionary which you can edit.

Slice and Dice data the way you want

Since it’s PowerPivot and Excel goodness you can easily slice and dice the data the way you want to view it. The details tab lets you dive in.

The People Tab

It shows you who is speaking positively or negatively about the search items and also tells you who is helping you spread the word by tweeting and re-tweeting your message.

You have the Source

Finally the key bits of code used to create the Excel workbook are also included.

A big thumbs up to the team for delivering this.

Windows Phone 7 App Challenge now Open

sanjayshetty — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 03:54:32 +0000

Microsoft has launched a global contest, yes I said global for WP7.

Join the Windows Phone 7 App Challenge! This contest is open to WP7 developers around the world (with just a few exceptions—see contest rules). The finalists will be announced and awards presented live at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) this summer. Submit your entry by June 6^th!

Interested? Sign up today or tell a friend. Terms and conditions are posted on the registration site.

Conversation Clean Up

sanjayshetty — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 06:33:22 +0000

If you’ve been using Microsoft Outlook chances are just like me you’ve missed out on a wonderful little tool called “Clean Up Conversation”. It’s a brilliant gem.

This is especially useful if you’ve subscribed to mailing lists or even in corporate scenarios where there are a number of mails back and forth from various people on the same topic.

Conversation Clean Up evaluates the contents of each message in the Conversation. If a message is completely contained within one of the replies, the previous message is deleted.

In case you’re worried about the kinds of mails it will remove there are various options you can control such as deciding where the deleted message go, keeping unread, categorized or flagged messages etc.

I just cleared some 2000 items from my inbox best of all you can do this for folders with sub-folders within them. There is a wonderful help file out here http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/use-conversation-clean-up-to-eliminate-redundant-messages-HA101867736.aspx which describes the features in detail.

Web Matrix

sanjayshetty — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 10:10:05 +0000

Microsoft’s Web Matrix is in beta 2 and I thought I’d go thru it in a bit more detail.

So here’s what I’ve come up with, a one image snapshot of WebMatrix

So you start viewing this image clockwise, with first the Audience

Audience: It’s targeted purely at Newbies
Installation: you need to go thru the Web Platform Installer
Architecture: Well suffice to say Microsoft has come up with an engine called Razor which goes thru the code you write. The promise of Web Matrix is to allow you to go up to full scale ASP.Net or use MVC as you progress.
Capabilities/Worspaces: Well out of the box it does 4 things, helps you create sites (which could be based on templates or from their web gallery which includes stuff like WordPress installation etc.) or from a Template or just a plain vanilla blank site.
1. Files: You can work with files CSHTML or VBHTML –> basically code via VB or C#
2. Database: You get SQL Compact edition with it, or alternatively you can also code against an existing SQL DB.
3. Reports: It also does SEO stuff telling you if your pages are missing the title tag etc.
4. Web Traffic: It also tells you the kind of requests received for your site basically analyzing web traffic.

Coding: Lastly the way you write code is by inserting the @ symbol followed by your code.

Helper Classes – simplify code, for instance picking up a Twitter feed and displaying it in your pages etc. These are quite useful.

Hmm, I think I’ve about summed it up

Windows Phone 7 developer tools Beta is here

sanjayshetty — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 03:06:17 +0000

After a long wait, you now have access to tools which are close to final release. Grab them here.

Some things you need to keep in mind, you need to un-install the earlier CTP builds if you have them on your machine, the setup doesn’t remove them for you.

You need to un-install in the following sequence:

* Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP Refresh

* Windows Phone 7 Add-in for Visual Studio 2010 CTP Refresh – ENU

* Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Resources

* Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0

* Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0 Windows Phone Extensions

More devices are also going to be available, there are many more things such as training which you certainly need to know about and the team blog covers it all http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2010/07/12/windows-phone-developer-tools-beta-released.aspx

The Web simplified via Web Matrix

sanjayshetty — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 03:15:54 +0000

If you’ve not noticed the slew of blog posts and comments in the online world on the new products Microsoft has release you better get up to speed. Web Matrix and especially the new helper classes in ASP.Net enable adding social media elements into your website very easily.

What is WebMatrix

“WebMatrix is everything you need to build Web sites using Windows. It includes IIS Developer Express (a development Web server), ASP.NET (a Web framework), and SQL Server Compact (an embedded database). It streamlines Web site development and makes it easy to start Web sites from popular open-source apps. The skills and code you develop with WebMatrix transition seamlessly to Visual Studio and SQL Server.” Source – http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix/

I would recommend you read these four posts on ScottGu’s blog …

Getting Social easily

Some interesting new helper classes in the ASP.Net API help you to integrate social elements in your website quite easily.

Here are some of the classes in the API which I’m going to explore…

1. Twitter.Profile(twitterUser) – Renders a Twitter stream for the specified user. e.g. @Twitter.Profile("billgates") -

2. Twitter.Search(searchText) – Renders a Twitter stream for the specified search text. e.g. @Twitter.Search("asp.net")

3. Link sharing -

LinkShare.GetHtml(title)
LinkShare.GetHtml(title, url)

Renders social networking links using the specified title and optional URL.

e.g.

@LinkShare.GetHtml("ASP.NET Web Pages Samples")
@LinkShare.GetHtml("ASP.NET Web Pages Samples", http://www.asp.net)

4. Gravatar and Gamecard.

GamerCard.GetHtml(gamerTag)

Renders the specified Xbox gamer tag.

e.g. @GamerCard.GetHtml("joe")

Gravatar.GetHtml(email)

Renders the Gravatar image for the specified email address.

e.g. @Gravatar.GetHtml("joe@contoso.com")

5. Facebook Like Button - Facebook.LikeButton(url) – Lets Facebook users make a connection to pages. e.g. @Facebook.LikeButton(www.ASP.net)

6. There are two others which I’m not sure exactly how they function, I need to try them out not exactly social however, related to Analytics – Google and Yahoo

Analytics.GetGoogleHtml(webPropertyId)

Renders the Google Analytics JavaScript code for the specified ID.

@Analytics.GetGoogleHtml("MyWebPropertyId")

Analytics.GetStatCounterHtml(project, security)

Renders the StatCounter Analytics JavaScript code for the specified project.

@Analytics.GetStatCounterHtml(89, "security")

Analytics.GetYahooHtml(account)

Renders the Yahoo Analytics JavaScript code for the specified account.

@Analytics.GetYahooHtml("myaccount")

My top 5 Wish List for Windows Phone 7

sanjayshetty — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:58:31 +0000

Ok, yeah I know this is premature, but here’s what I think based on what I’ve seen at http://www.windowsphone7series.com/ about the latest Windows Phone 7 from Microsoft.

1. User/Developer Created Hubs – First I think the concept of hubs(People, pictures, Music, office, marketplace etc… ) is cool, and it’s a beautiful integrated story, however, what I’d like really love to see is the ability for people to add their own hubs, or for developers to create their own hubs. For e.g. I want a hub called Finance, which would show me stock quotes for stocks I’m watching, show my latest portfolio holding, show blog posts from favourite financial bloggers I track etc.

2. Extensible Hubs – I should be able to extend an existing hub, for instance the Office hub could maybe have an application which is integrated into it which notifies me of key data which I might need on the move.

3. The Keypad – All the demos I’ve seen seem to show a soft QWERTY Keyboard, I hope one can set a global default soft keypad, I personally like the phone keypad, I just work faster with it and it suits a one handed operation.

4. The Camera Flash – I’m an avid photographer, and I’ve been happily using my Nokia N82 which comes with Carl Zeiss Lens and Xeon flash. I know Microsoft supposedly has a specification like a 5Mp camera for hardware vendors, but that really means nothing unless it’s got a good lens + good flash as well.

5. App Sharing – Picture a scenario, you’re with a friend, and he’s showing you a cool new app on the phone, and you’re like I want that, and he just zaps it to you over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, now wouldn’t that be fun!, and yes if it’s a paid for app, you get to go online and get a license right away. But the point is you avoid the lengthy download etc.

Mouth watering that’s how I’d describe it Windows Phone 7 is here

sanjayshetty — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:06:02 +0000

Gizmodo has a great introduction to it, along with videos and quite a few details, yep I know every thing ain’t there but hell it’s going to make you swoon like the beautiful red head you meet at a party whom everyone is eyeing http://gizmodo.com/5471805/windows-phone-7-series-everything-is-different-now

It also has a Hands on article about Windows Phone 7(it’s a mouthful isn’t it http://gizmodo.com/5472222/windows-phone-7-series-hands+on-pics-and-video?skyline=true&s=i

Awesome Awesome Awesome… that’s how I feel and finally it’s out

Will be a while till the holiday season when people would actually get it in their hands but I’m so glad to see what’s out there… Hopefully at the MVP summit 2010 which starts today or at Mix 2010 they will give all the juicy details… Will post more

Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate is here

sanjayshetty — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 03:25:01 +0000

I’ve been using the earlier beta’s and I’m looking forward to using the RC You can find download links here.

To start with you need to un-install VS 2010 Beta2 and .NET 4 Beta2(everything associated with it) before installing the VS 2010 RC, in addition I’d advise to double check and remove other beta stuff like Visual Studio Tools for Office from your computer, don’t just stop at removing VS 2010 Beta, also remove things like office

Silverlight 4 projects are not yet supported(If you are doing active Silverlight 4 development stick with the VS10 Beta 2 build for now). There are some other issues as well, and Scott Guthrie’s post highlights a few of them.

If you do find an issue with the beta, you can file a bug report via the Visual Studio Connect site and Scott mentions that you can email him directly (scottgu@microsoft.com) with details about it. Kinda neat!

Lastly the installation takes a long while so be prepared for it, as a friend of mine mentioned the installation takes longer than a OS(Win7) installation