Day Two of the PDC, or Professional Developers Conference is coming to an end down here in LA. So much has happened in the last few days, hours really, that a recap of the events will set things straight. Let’s take a look:
Microsoft annouced the first details of the next iteration of its browser. Microsoft stated that it is working to pass industry standard benchmarks, and is looking to make the browser much, much faster. The project has only been underway for three weeks, but seems to be (cross your fingers) off to a good start.
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Azure has been updated and upgraded across the board allowing for new runtimes, and is moving towards a launch on Janurary 1st, 2010. Azure will be opening data centers in both Europe, and Asia in 2010 as well. There was a piece of Azure to see, at PDC, take a look at the bottom image.
Pinpoint is an enterprise level application store that is built for Azure projects. If you build it on Azure, you can sell it in Pinpoint. Pinpoint adds an excellent endpoint to Azure, increasing the incentive for developers to use Azure, over other cloud offerings.
Inside of Pinpoint, Dallas is a information marketplace. People looking to use Azure, can buy data sets to use inside of their applications. The data sets currently in Dallas are quite interesting, stretching from Nasa photos, to AP content.
The Windows 7 component of #PDC09 was mostly a highlight reel, talking about how Win7 was built, and what that took. We recoreded a number of statistics from the presentation, which take note of the total work that went into the pre-builds of the software. Also highlighted were a number of neat devices that use Windows 7, and a few points on how quickly netbooks are growing.
Silverlight 4 is now in beta, and you can download it. Silverlight now has a 45% market install base, and is only accelerating that share. The new Sl4 advances the platform in terms of rich media, business usage, and the ability for applications to be run stand-alone.
Sharepoint 2010 beta is now open for download, bringing new power to the popular product. Cheif among those is “Outlook Social Connect,’ which will integrate LinkedIn into Sharepoint.
Microsoft gave all attendees a free laptop, making the whole keynote crowd (thousands) cheer for tens of seconds, quite early in the morning. The line was long, but the laptop is quite pretty, I must say. I have not used a touchscreen laptop in quite some time. Impressive, thus far.
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That is it so far, it seems. There is still another full day ahead of interesting sessions and talks, so there will be more news to come, it would seem. Despite fewer attendees than normal, Microsoft has been putting on a good technological show so far. More to come.
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