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July 30 Cross-posted from http://blogs.msdn.com/vikasahuja
You already saw few blog posts and announcements regarding release of July 2008 CTP of Windows Live Tools. With this release, we have introduced ASP.NET Server Control for Virtual Earth (Map Control).
Developers have been using JavaScript Control for meeting their needs. Now, you have ASP.NET control available right from your Visual Studio toolbox which you can drag and drop on your web page, do server side web page programming (e.g. pull store locations or last location of the delivery vehicle etc.) and create push pins and show to the web site visitors.
In words of Marc Schweigert, Microsoft’s Developer Evangelist
”This is a sweet control that makes integrating Virtual Earth into your ASP.NET applications a easy as drag, drop, set some properties, and wire up some server side code. The new control, which is built on top of ASP.NET AJAX, does all the heavy lifting you've come to expect from ASP.NET AJAX enabled controls. ASP.NET AJAX also introduced the concept of control extenders. Extenders allow you to add AJAX functionality to existing server controls. The Virtual Earth ASP.NE T control ships with a ton of extenders that allow you to interact with the map without writing any code. I had the luxury of getting early access to the bits. I've taken the control for a thorough test drive. I think ASP.NET developers are going to love this thing!”
In words of Mark Brown, Virtual Earth Evangelist
”Integrating interactive, immersive maps no longer requires JavaScript, it can be done by ASP.NET developers simply. For smooth interactions this control can be combined with ASP.NET AJAX capabilities to provide the power of ASP.NET Serverside processing without the development overhead of coding JavaScript.”
Mark and Angus have an introductory channel9 screencast for you.
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With July 2008 CTP, we are releasing this control to Microsoft’s download center as well as Windows Live Dev Connect site. This CTP also fixes few other bugs which are noted in the release notes. In this post, I would only talk about Map Control. |
Map control derives from ScriptControl Class and wraps JavaScript control with necessary ASP.NET interfaces that gives developers server side methods and events in addition to client side methods and events. Thus Map Control would require a ScriptManager control to be added to the web page.
 | After you installed this CTP, you would get two new toolbox tabs – Windows Live and Virtual Earth. Virtual Earth toolbox tab provides Map Control and Extenders.
Extenders are way to add ASP.NET Ajax Client Behaviors to server controls. These extenders perform the operations on Map Control – client side only. You don’t have to write extra JavaScript for doing this – you get this functionality out of the box. |
Map Control can be dragged and dropped on the web page you are working on. Here’s how control would look like when you drag and drop on the web page.
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| | Before we hit F5 and see how this would look like, set the center for the map and zoom level. You could set it at design time as well as at run time. | | | | | HTML Markup for the Map Control. | ![clip_image002[16]](http://blufiles.storage.msn.com/y1pcbX2c-x9v7yAqYGxSGnf6qtOh1C31xf8xo38DpWrBYj-hm0GkCgzkN_ZbBTMu8QE?PARTNER=WRITER "clip_image002[16]")
| | | | You can use property grid to edit/set properties you need to get the control start as you want.
For example – Center, Mode (2D/3D), Style (Road, Shaded, Aerial etc.) Zoom Level etc. |  |
You can set these properties programmatically say in Page_Load event. This is simple code similar to what you would do for any server control. For example, following code would set the center of the Map to Microsoft’s Main Campus in Redmond, Washington, USA.
When you run the web page, following Map is rendered in the web page. |  |
Besides this, Map Control provides functionality for finding businesses, getting directions, importing KML or Virtual Earth Collections, Bird’s Eye and 3D imagery, Traffic information etc. I would briefly talk
about importing Virtual Earth Collections in this post and discuss other features in future posts. |
Importing Virtual Earth Collections: | Not only KML or GeoRSS, Map Control allows you to import Virtual Earth Collections and map them.
For Example, following code would import a collection from http://maps.live.com which defines a neighborhood called Education Hill in Redmond, Washington, USA.
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When the above code is executed, Map control renders following:
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We would love to hear your feedback. As you might have noticed that our developer community asked for
a) Transparent background for IDLoginStatus
b) Medium Trust deployment for these controls
c) Drag and Drop control for Virtual Earth Map
We have provided these features and would love to hear your scenarios. Please drop your suggestions/bugs at Windows Live Dev Connect Feedback site. | | December 07 | If you have downloaded ASP.NET Futures (July 2007) recently (I.e. version 1.3.61025), you might face following issue and this post described a workaround to mitigate the issue. | Issue:
When you use SilverlightStreamingMedia control, you might hit compilation error. For example, if you are defining chapters collection for your video content, you would hit compilation error.
Here's the declaration of SilverslightStreamingMedia control on default.aspx after drag and drop from toolbox and defining a chapter "Chapter1" for chapters collections in property grid.
When you compile this, following error are reported.
| | Workaround: | - First, register Microsoft.Web.Preview assembly on the web page hosting SilverlightStreamingMedia control, by adding following line at the top of the web page:
- Remove the chapter definitions and re-add the chapter definitions. The above declaration would, now, look like following and would compile without errors in Visual Studio 2008 RTM release.
| Note: This issue is found only if you have installed ASP.NET Futures (July 2007) version 1.3.61025 (or later)
We are working on updating the Nov 2007 CTP release to fix this issue. If you have bugs or have feedback for the Windows Live Tools, you can provide your feedback at Windows Live Dev Connect Feedback site. |
Note: Cross posted from http://blogs.msdn.com/vikasahuja This is my personal blog and contents of this blog are not endorsed by my employer. The views/opinions expressed in this blog are my own and not of my employer. | November 14
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Supercomputing is in news these days. Top500.org published 30th edition of the list of top 500 fastest supercomputers in the world. The list is based on LINPACK benchmark. This list includes an Indian Supercomputer site at 4th rank for first time ever. Congratulations to Computational Research Laboratories, Pune, India. As per Top500 List, India has 9 sites hosting supercomputers which is meager 1.8% of top 500 sites.
I remember my college days when we use to read and discuss about super scalar and super pipelining technologies prevalent at that time. India received its first supercomputer (Cray 2) in 1987 to be used for agricultural research and weather forecasting. Recently, India procured another supercomputer (Cray X1E) dedicated to weather forecasting at National Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasting. As per Cray's press release, this is one of the most powerful weather prediction system in the region.
C-DAC - Center for Development of Advanced Computing, a scientific society in India also made progress in building their own supercomputers. Among other things, CDAC works on massively parallel processors, large scale symmetric multiprocessing systems(grid computing) and high performance computing. CDAC produced India's first indigenous super computer. They have produced PARAM 10000, India's first TFLOPS supercomputer. CDAC believes that they can reach PFLOPS by 2010.
Recent supercomputing news brought these memories back.
On side notes, Microsoft released its first public beta of Microsoft Windows HPC 2008. Also, Supercomputing Guru, Dan Reed joins Microsoft Research as director of scalable and multi-core computing.
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| -- Vikas Ahuja |
Update: Updated a link November 10  | Windows Live Developer Platform team has released its first CTP of Windows Live Tools. This release is available through connect download site Windows Live Dev Connect. Windows Live Tools provides four controls to help you build Web sites with windows live services.
This CTP provides ASP.NET server controls related to Windows Live Contacts, Windows Live ID authentication and Silverlight Streaming. This release brings developers closer to building Web sites using ASP.NET and Visual Studio toolset. | | Developers now can make use of these controls and integrate Windows Live services from Visual Studio IDE. This release currently works with Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer Express 2008 Beta 2 releases. Also, this release requires you to install Microsoft ASP.NET Futures (July 2007 CTP) and Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax 1.0 Extensions. More information on pre-requisites and installations are available here. There are four controls introduced with this release. These are: | - Contacts: Contacts control allows you to integrate Windows Live Contacts with your Web site. You can use contacts control to share your web site visitor's contacts, if they opt for, with your web site's functionality. For example, if your web site has service related to shipping products from your catalog, you can offer your web site users to sign-in into contacts control and choose the address of the contact from their list of contacts. This way your web site user does not need to type the address of their contact multiple times. Additionally, users can view presence information for their contacts, initiate a Windows Live Messenger conversation with their contact, Send predefined message from your web site to users' contacts.
As a developer it allows you to specify look-and-feel of the control to blend with your web page's visuals, specify which data you need to interact with, provide event handlers for sign-in/sign-out and data transfer operations. More details on the contacts control are available here. JavaScript version of this control is already available, for details click here. - IDLogin: IDLogin control provides easy hookup into Windows Live ID authentication mechanism. After you register your application with Windows Live ID, you can use your Application ID and Secret with this control to include Windows Live ID authentication. This control provides ApplicationUserID which is a unique, site specific identifier for each Windows Live ID user that signs into your web site. You can use this identifier for personalization of your web sites, provide access to certain web resources etc. IDLogin control performs sign-in/sign-out actions and provides you event handlers for sign-in/sign-out actions. More information for this control is available here.
- IDLoginView: IDLoginView control adds new templates and Windows Live ID authentication to ASP.NET LoginView Control. This control allows you to associate users' Windows Live ID and their ASP.NET membership profile to enable single-sign-in experience. After this association has been made and saved, your web site users can simply sign-in to Windows Live ID and get authenticated in other Windows Live services integrated on your site as well as ASP.NET membership authentication of your Web site. This your Web site users have single sign-in experience and get benefits of both Windows Live services and your web site. You can read more specifics about this control by clicking here.
- SilverlightStreamingMedia: This control helps you embed your videos from your Silverlight Streaming account into your web pages. After you create an account with Silverlight Streaming services and upload the videos, you can drag and drop this control on your web page, specify your account id and key, choose the video to be embedded into the web page. With these steps, you are ready to play your videos from Silverlight Streaming services. This control extends Media Control (ASP.NET Futures).
| | Try these controls and give us feedback. You can report bugs, make suggestions or feature requests, vote on a feature for Windows Live Tools by navigating to Windows Live Dev Connect Feedback site. Stay tuned for more information. | | | | -- Vikas Ahuja | | | | PS: If you were wondering, I transitioned into Program Manager role with Windows Live Developer Platform. Earlier, I was test lead with one of the teams with Microsoft.com group. BTW, we are hiring, check out at Microsoft Career site. This is my personal blog and contents of this blog are not endorsed by my employer. The views/opinions expressed in this blog are my own and not of my employer. | August 20 I did few night shoots for Seattle / Bellevue / Vancouver downtown. Posting here for comments. I downloaded free Adobe Photoshop Album Starter edition and these photographs have been edited with this software. I have, now, ordered this software.
I am still searching for different locations from I can get better view of Seattle Skyline. I tried shoots from Alky beach, Admiral Avenue (Alky beach) and Gas works park. One thing from this have come up; I need better wide angle lens or need to learn how to use better Nikon 28-80mm lens I have.
First two photographs were taken from Gasworks Park, Seattle. First photograph (left) was around 9:30pm, sky was still blue on full moon night. Photo specs: F/10 @ 62mm exposed for 10 seconds
Second photograph (below) attempts to cover the whole skyline for Seattle but skyline is not clear, moon and its reflection is more prominent than the skyline. Photo specs: F/11 @ 28mm exposed for 15 seconds around 10:00pm.
Third photograph (below) brings majestic space needle prominently in the photograph. I have yet to find what street is in highlight where flow if incoming traffic is evident from 15 seconds exposure. 
Next set of photographs is from downtown Vancouver, BC, Canada. I stayed at Best Western Chateau Granville, Vancouver and photos are taken from 15th floor. This photograph (below, first photograph on left) is covering Granville street from 15the floor at 9:33pm. You can notice the vehicle head and tail lights marking yellow and red lines on the road. Photo specs: F/14 @28mm exposed for 10 seconds. Second photograph (below) shows Granville road from 15th floor exposed for 30 seconds at focus 80mm. I always wanted to capture head/tail light lines (on freeways) on I-90 (Seattle) and SR-520 but not been able to find a perfect spot.
 
The following two photographs are an attempt (not so nice) on reflection at night. Both photographs though reflection has come out but not so prominent as I wanted. These photographs are taken from Bellevue downtown park. First photograph, attempting to cover Westin Hotel, Bellevue, has reflection of hotel but hotel itself is not completely captured in the photograph. You can notice reflection of railing just on top of water body besides other buildings. Photo specs: 30 seconds exposure at 28mm focal length at 10:12pm. Second photo is little better than the first one where you can notice the reflection of construction crane and buildings. Photo specs: 30 seconds exposure at 28 mm around 10:14pm.
 
(posted via Windows Live Writer) March 30 I am test lead with Microsoft.com team and we are looking for Software Design Enginee in Test (SDET) for our team.
What an SDET does in our team? This description is provided here:
The current job description is also posted on Microsoft.com's career site:
Are you intrigued by the world of open source development? Are you interested in enabling shared source development at Microsoft? We are building the premier collaborative software development platform for the .NET developer community and need an experienced Software design engineer in Test - SDET - to help architect, design test and deliver a new suite of on-line services to support community collaborative development activities for GotDotNet, including an all-new version of Workspaces. This is a unique opportunity to re-shape the way that Microsoft interacts with the developer community. The individual will work with program management and development team to scope out features and understand the customer requirements, and work side-by-side with vendor resources to ensure the quality of the application. The candidate should have a demonstrated track record of delivering test automation, quality requirements, deliverables that exceed commitments. The candidate should also be comfortable presenting technical material to internal and external audiences. Candidate would be responsible for writing and executing test plans and cases, designing and developing test tools, debugging and reporting code bugs and pushing quality upstream. Qualifications for this position include a minimum of 3-7 years of commercial software development and testing experience. In addition, demonstrated technical leadership, strong problem solving skills, and prior experience tester is required. Expertise in the following areas is highly desirable: ASP.NET, SQL, C#, and Test-Driven Development. Experience developing web-based applications, object-oriented design, and strong communication skills are required. The ideal candidate will have a BS or MS in Computer Science.
December 29 I decided to wander on Oregon coast during this Christmas (Dec 24 & 25, 2005). I started from my residence at 5:00am and hit woodburn (about 35 miles south of Portland) via I-5 around 8:30am. I took a break for about an hour and a half and then moved towards Corvallis, OR and reached Corvallis at about 11:00am. After having lunch and strolling through Corvallis downtown, i took OR-20 state highway towards Newport.
From Seattle till the Vancouver, WA, it was pouring heavily but in Oregon, it was pleasant weather and sky was getting clear as the day was progressing. The route to Newport was very scenic; through green woods and forests.
Depoe Bay was very scenic as you can imagine from from the photos, the waves were making loud sounds. The reason that explains "spouting horns" at Depoe Bay is that presence of lava tubes within the coastal rock formation allows the pulse of the sea to be realized and water in these lava tubes is thrown skyward in release of energy. This results in spectacular display of waves rising skyward and making spouting horns and loud sounds. This varies with the power of the furious ocean waves.
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