Today, Microsoft has been launched the Windows Phone 8 Software Development Kit (SDK), which allows developers to developed applications for Windows Phone 8, over the Win RT OS.
New high-availability options with AlwaysOn Availability Groups which allows you to use your disaster recovery (DR) environment for reporting or backup purposes.
Database Recovery Advisor, which helps DBAs in creating a correct restore sequence using the new backup timeline dialog
SQL Server 2012 includes new features for PowerPivot for SharePoint such as the ability to install a PowerPivot server outside of the SharePoint farm, PowerPivot gallery, scheduled data refresh and management dashboard. (See What’s New (Analysis Services) and Upgrade PowerPivot for SharePoint)
BI Semantic Model – which is actually a combination of Analysis Services 2012 (supporting both the multidimensional model which was available in 2012 and the new tabular model) combined with the power of PowerPivot.
SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services introduces Power View, an interactive data exploration, visualization, and presentation experience which provides intuitive self-service reporting for business users against data exposed through the BI Semantic Model – see Channel 9 Exploring SQL Server 2012 Power View
Last week I did a session on porting XNA Windows Phone 7.x games to Windows Store apps using MonoGame. I have to thank Dean Ellis from the MonoGame project team for all the help.
While XNA is not a framework directly supported by Microsoft for Windows Store apps the current version of MonoGame is compatible with Windows 8 and, the most important thing, the applications pass the WACK. There are already several games available in the Windows Store developed using MonoGame (Armed, Skiddy, Rune Legend and I guess there are more).
For the session I ended up using the Simple Animation sample but seeing how easy is to share the code between the platforms (Windows, Windows Phone,PC, MAC, iOS, Android, Playstation, Linux) I started looking for a physics engine. The most used Open Source physics engine seems to be Farseer Physics but it was too late to do the porting for my session. On Sunday I tried the porting and everything went pretty smooth. The only thing I've changed was the serialization/de-serialization of the "World" state. I compiled the engine and also the sample. For the Sample project the Content Project was compiled using Visual Studio 2010 (for the moment Visual Studio 2012 doesn't recognize this type of project) and added the xnb's to a Content folder inside the Visual Studio 2012 solution.
You can see the result in this YouTube video:
I've used SnagIt to capture the movie and it influenced the frame rate (when running without capturing the framerate is always at 60 fps). The test device was the Samsung Slate which has a powerful cpu. I would love to know if a WinRT device will be able to run at the . If any of my readers has access to a WinRT device please deploy the sample to the device and let me know if the framerate is as expected. For the sample you will have to use an external keyboard and mouse as the touch screen is not working in this version. I will try to fix it for the next release (the problem seems to be inside the MonoGame framework as I only receive the move event and not the pressed and released from the touch screen).
Use this link to download the full project (engine and sample):
I just got the news that I have been renewed as SharePoint Server MVP. I became a SharePoint MVP in 2005 – so this is my 8th year in a row as SharePoint MVP – back in 2005 there were only a handful of SharePoint MVPs and I’m forever grateful to Patrick Tisseghem for introducing me into the wonderful world of SharePoint – without him there wouldn’t be such a vibrant SharePoint community here in Belgium.
There’s a lot of buzz out there with the re-launch of the Belux Information Worker User group – BIWUG – don’t forget to register on www.biwug.be to stay up to date with the latest SharePoint information – there are a lot of interesting sessions planned in the coming months.
