In Attendance @ DevConnections
Hot on the heals of DevReach 2012, Managing Director, Colin Wynn, is also please to announce his attendance of DevConnections, held at Bellagio, Las Vegas during October 29th and November 1st!
DevConnections consists of over 250 in-depth sessions for several technologies, Visual Studio, Windows Azure, ASP.Net, HTML5, SQL Server, Sharepoint, Cloud, Windows and Exchange, all under one roof!
Several keynotes will be provided during the course of the conference from non other than Microsoft.
Colin was in attendance for the first time last year, and found it highly informative to say the least.
The release of Visual Studio 2012 and SQL Server 2012, the newly chosen development tools for Move Administer 2, the eagerly anticipated release of Windows 8 makes this all the more reason to attend.
In Attendance @ DevReach 2012
Managing Director, Colin Wynn, is pleased to announce that he will be in attendance at the forthcoming DevReach 2012, held in Sofia, Bulgaria during October 4th & 5th.
DevReach is an annual conference, with 2012 being the 7th consecutive year. This year over 40 prominent speakers from 10 countries on 3 continents will deliver 60+ sessions in 6 parallel tracks covering a broad range of topics.
Tracks include: Web Development, Mobile Development, Agile & Testing, Architecture and Cloud.
Thankfully DevReach will be recording ALL sessions, making them available to VIP attendees, that’s over 60 hours of recordings!
Colin will mainly be attending the Web Development, Mobile Development and Architecture sessions as development of Move Administer 2 is already underway, and Web and Mobile will play a prominent part in its future.
Enhancing Windows 8 for Multiple Monitors
This article was first published on May 21st on the MSDN blogs.
Connecting multiple monitors to a PC is one of the easiest ways to enhance your Windows experience. Plug in a second monitor and you instantly double your working surface. I’ve had a multi-monitor setup for the past 10 years; once you start using multiple monitors, you’ll never want to go back to your old setup. A multi-monitor setup allows you to be more productive by having more windows across multiple screens. We’re very excited about the ease at which tablets in Windows 8 will be able to support large screen and high resolution monitors (often through HDMI connectors), as this opens up a broad range of exciting new scenarios.
When we embarked on planning Windows 8, enhancing multi-monitor functionality was an important area to improve. A multiple monitor setup is certainly more common today than they used to be, and many technical professionals (developers, graphics professionals, architects, etc.) have started using it. Today, support for multiple monitors is standard on virtually all PC hardware, and monitor prices are at an all-time low (as of writing this post, you can purchase a 21†LED display in the $140 USD range). As a result, we continue to see increased adoption of multi-monitor configurations, both by enthusiasts and technical professionals.
Data collected through the Windows Feedback Program indicates that approximately 14% of desktop PCs and approximately 5% of laptop PCs have run with multiple monitors. It is important to note that this particular opt-in data set is enthusiast-leaning so represents the high end of usage (relative to previously shared measures that look at the entire universe of PCs), but we thought we would share this data set to reinforce another data source.
Creating the Windows 8 User Experience
This article was published on May 18th, 2012 on the MSDN blogs by Steven Sinofsky.
The user interface of Windows has evolved and been transformed over the course of its entire 27-year history. Although we think about certain aspects of the Windows UI as being static or constant, the reality is that the interface is always changing to keep up with the way people use PCs. It is amazing to reflect back on the history of the Windows UI, and to see the level of dramatic change that has transpired over time.
Since Windows 8 marks a significant evolution of the user experience, I will focus on the releases where the user interface of Windows changed most significantly, and some of the initial perception surrounding those shifts. If you are interested, a full history of Windows is available to read on the Microsoft website.
Destiny Digital Pens
Destiny Digital Pens
On February 21st in a meeting room at Old Thorns in sunny Hampshire, Tom Thiselton from Destiny Wireless presented to a group of 22 attendees the benefits of using Digital Pens in today’s workplace.
After a good intake of caffeine, the morning sessions kicked off with Tom giving an introduction to both Destiny Wireless and the technology of the Digital Pens including Anoto technology. Tom then proceeded to provide a ‘live’ demonstration of the pen in action, by completing a document and the transferring the data captured by the Digital Pen to his Blackberry via Bluetooth and then from the Blackberry to Destiny’s server. Using his laptop he logged into the Destiny server to display the captured form. Not only did Tom display the captured form but he also showed an electronic version of the form, where his handwriting was converted to text, where any misinterpretations could then be corrected, but as the pen learns your handwriting gestures over time it was indeed spot on.
After a hearty lunch break which included some stunning desserts, those wanting to discuss the Digital Pens in further detail stayed behind to share information they currently gather on their survey sheets and to discuss other forms that could be digitised.
All in all it was a great day, which ended back where it really began 24 hours previously, in the Sports Bar although only for a swift alcoholic beverage this time around.
MSSQL – What Exactly Does It Mean?
Well as per our Press Release – September 2011, MSSQL will provide increased stability, portability and more importantly speed. Speed is something we have been testing of late and we would like to share our results with you.
We took a client’s activity audit data file comprising of 423,189 records for more than a single trading company and ran the following tests which returned data from all fields with in the file:
Test 1
Return all accounting activity for the year 2010.
Clarion returned 75,608 records in 9 seconds.
MSSQL returned 75,608 records in 1 second!
Test 2
Return all accounting activity for the year 2010, but for a single trading company.
Clarion returned 21,651 records in 7 seconds.
MSSQL returned 21,651 records in 1 second!
Test 3
Return all sales accounting activity for the year 2010, but for a single trading company.
Clarion returned 13,518 records in 6 seconds.
MSSQL returned 13,518 records in 0 seconds!
Test 4
Return all records.
Clarion returned 413,459 records in 56 seconds.
MSSQL returned 413,459 records in 9 seconds!
I’m sure you’ll agree that MSSQL has returned some pretty impressive times, but we would just like to end this snippet of information by stating all tests were ran over our network – which makes MSSQL very impressive indeed, especially as no fine tuning has been done!