If you loved Angry Birds, my guess is that you’re gonna love Contre Jour, a puzzle game that’s been recently very popular on iOS. The IE team has cooked up with the developers of Contre Jour to bring the popular game to the Web with HTML5. The Web-based version of Contre Jour, available now at Contrejour.ie, includes the first three chapters of the game, or 30 levels. It offers the same look, feel, and performance of the native app, complete with 10 levels exclusively for modern browsers that support multi-touch, like Internet Explorer 10. Contre Jour, which was named the 2011 iPad game of the year, is based on the French phrase “against daylight.” Set to an orchestrated soundtrack from composer David Ari Leon, the game challenges you to navigate and survive a dark and dangerous game world. Using your finger, you morph the landscape — by pulling, swiping, and tapping tendrils, air geysers, and pulleys — to complete clever puzzles and propel a mysterious creature named Petit to safety. ...

(From My SharePoint 2013 Ignite Notebook) Part 1 Think of SharePoint 2013 as a platform, which will help you understand this new paradigm shift. Lots of developers do programming using C#, Python, Ruby, Java, PHP, NodeJS. The SharePoint 2013 App model is based on web standards: HTML 5, CSS, JS, OAuth 2.0 and OData. Today SharePoint enables most of the SharePoint API functions to be accessible remotely, with the remote interface being much easier to maintain and more secure. This concept also opens doors for SharePoint Developers create Facebook kind of applications for SharePoint and Office. Today’s Application Development Challenges Till SharePoint 2010, solution deployment could only be done in either Sandbox or Farm Solutions, ...

Build is Microsoft’s Developer Conference that happens at our HQ in Redmond, Washington, USA. It’s the second year that we’re going to do Build. Tickets were sold out in less than an hour. And there’s good reason why. [caption id=“attachment_11725” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“Live Streaming for Build happens on 30 October, 2012”][/caption] This year’s Build is going to have a strong focus on - wait for it - yup, Windows 8! At Build, we’ll dive deep to cover all the areas you care about. How to design and build beautiful Windows 8 apps. How to sell your apps in the Windows 8 Store and make money. And much more. Live streaming will be starting on October 30 at 9:00 am PST - which means October 31, Midnight - Singapore time! Tune in at http://www.buildwindows.com/ . Agenda will be updated soon! ...

Mobile devices are becoming the prevalent computing platform for most people. Not every has access to a PC, which is why it’s important for us to come up with new ways for them to develop apps for themselves and the problems that they are facing in their countries. A cool new research project that the researchers here at Microsoft have been working on is called Touch Develop. TouchDevelop is a new mobile development environment that enables anyone with a Windows Phone to create new apps directly on the smartphone, without a PC or a traditional keyboard. At the core is a new mobile programming language and editor that was designed with the touchscreen as the only input device in mind. Programs written in TouchDevelop can leverage all phone sensors such as GPS, cameras, accelerometer, gyroscope, and stored personal data such as contacts, songs, pictures. Thousands of programs have already been written and published with TouchDevelop. It’s been amazing looking at the apps that some of the students from all over the world. [caption id="" align=“alignnone” width=“320” caption=“Pacman Evolved by Chris Kurhan”][/caption] Check out more of the apps created by Touch Develop on the Windows Phone 7: https://www.touchdevelop.com/apps Visit the Touch Develop website to find out more!

Only 16 more days before Windows 8 is officially launched! We know you’ve got some amazing app ideas and dreams for Windows 8. To celebrate, we’d like to know what they are and reward you with some adorable prizes for sharing them with us! Here’s what you gotta do to win these adorable Fruit Ninja Plush Toys (worth $15 USD each.) Follow these 3 simple steps to win these adorable Fruit Ninja Plush Toys! Step 1: Like our Spiffy Facebook Page [http://facebook.com/gospiffy] Step 2: Share this picture on your Facebook Timeline. Step 3: Leave a comment on this picture. Starting with the sentence: My idea for a Windows 8 app is to … [complete the sentence with the purpose of your app]. ...

Welcome to TechNet Spotlight ! This series features the audio version of Microsoft TechNet for Directory Services. This series focus on Product Evaluation, Planning and Architecture, Solutions and Design , Deployment, Operations and Real World scenarios for Best Practices. We start our series on Active Directory Domain Service Product Evaluation. Below are the videos which explain about the new Features and Functionalities got introduced for AD DS for Windows Server 2008. Introducing Active Directory Domain Services for Windows Server 2008 AD DS Auditing AD DS Fine Grained Password Policies AD DS Read Only Domain Controllers AD DS Restartable Active Directory Domain Services AD DS Database Mounting Tool **AD DS ...

For IT Professionals, we all like components architecture. I certainly do. There is really not a very easy way to put all these server architecture posters together into a organized way to view and access whenever needed. Now there is a Windows 8 App for it! If you are running Windows 8 already you can get the app from the Windows Store here: http://aka.ms/sposterpedia One thing i love most about this app is it connects to TechNet resources. From each product architecture poster, I can view technical documents on TechNet like ...

Konnichiwa! I am currently based in Japan and I was kindly invited to attend Pycon Japan 2012 that is held from 15th September to 17th September at Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology located at Shinagawa, Tokyo. Here’s a brief account of my adventure at my 1st developer conference in Japan. It was a great Saturday morning at 9am in Shinagawa, Tokyo. The Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology is the host venue for Pycon Japan 2012. After walking for 5 minutes from the Shinagawa Seaside Train Station, I finally reached the venue. It was an exciting sight to see the sheer amount of Pycon passes available for collection by the eager participants from all over Asia. I was so excited about the event that I arrived at the main event hall 30 minutes before the start of Pycon Japan 2012. Here’s a closer look at my press invite for the event. At 9:30am, Pycon Japan 2012 is officially opened. The main theme of the convention is to connect and communicate with fellow developers and to share our ideas freely. Everyone embraced the idea of communicating ideas freely during the convention and proceeded to introduce ourselves to each other. The keynote of Pycon Japan 2012 is “Happiness Through Ignorance” by Armin Ronacher. I felt that the keynote was inspiring as it encourages everyone to have the courage to try our ideas. The most important part of developing an idea is the journey and what we can learn from it. We should not be too concerned with failing or else we would never develop or create anything. And of course, Armin also highlighted our love for Python, which is easy to learn and fun to use. After the end of the keynote, everyone dispersed to their respective Japanese and English sessions for the day. A big thank you to the Pycon Japan committee and Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology for a successful convention. I had a great time at the convention and I will be returning for Pycon Japan 2013. Here’s the Youtube video for Pycon Japan 2012 keynote speech by Armin Ronacher: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EDlFk1hc8kc Other Pycon Japan 2012 Youtube videos are located at: http://www.youtube.com/user/PyConJP Pycon Japan 2012 information are located at: http://2012.pycon.jp/en/index.html Here’s also a quick python trick for setting up on Windows Azure! All you need to do is go to this link http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/python/and you can start implementing a simple Hello World application written in the Django Python web framework and deploy the application to Windows Azure! Have fun! What do you think of Pycon Japan 2012? Do you have other great tech events to recommend for us to participate? Do share with us your recommendations in the comments below and we might just do a special report based on your recommendations!

App of the week is a weekly showcase of an awesome app developed on Windows 8 or Windows Phone. Got an app you love that you want us to talk about? Leave us a comment and tell us which app and why you love it! One of my favourite apps to read news on the web is Pulse.me. Pulse started as a beautiful app which pulls content from thousands of news sources and blogs bringing together a customized view of your favorite content in one stunning experience. The success of the app was, and continues to be, phenomenal. With Internet Explorer and HTML5 that beautiful app experience has come to the web – all without compromising the performance, or the award winning UI. And because IE10 and Windows 8 are perfect for touch – the Pulse touch experience on a Windows 8 device surpasses anything you can do on today’s tablet. The Pulse site is part of an exciting new trend we’re seeing: companies that have built successful apps are looking to expand their reach even more through the web, without compromising the experience their customers have grown to love. Tapping into the capabilities of a modern browser, like IE10, and advancements in web standards, companies like Pulse are able to provide users with an experience that meets, and may even exceed, what is possible in an app. Check it out: For quick access to the pulse.me application, all you need to do is to pin the app from your IE browser. That way, you can access it as an app on your Windows 8 Start screen. Have fun reading everyone!

Thank you everyone for your warm participation in our MEP2012 event. It was great to see the breakout sessions were filled with people. Due to keynote overrun, we went through things rather quickly. As promised, I am posting all PowerShell Scripts during my session here. Do change the scripts parameters that is specific to your environment To enable Resource Metering for all VMs within a host: Get-VM -ComputerName | Enable-VMResourceMetering To enable Resource Metering for a specific VM: Enable-VMResourceMetering –VMName To get resource utilization on all VMs within a Host Get-VM -ComputerName | Measure-VM To get resource utilization on specific VM Measure-VM –VMName To set bandwidth on each VM Set-VMNetworkAdapter -VMName -MaximumBandwidth 5000 During the Demo, I also showed a script to get VM cost. Here is the script # Get-VMCost Script Function function Calculate-VMCost($VMName) { $BaseCost = 50 $MemoryCostPerGB = 20 $ProcessorCostPerGHz = 30 $IncomingNetworkCostPerGB = 10 $OutgoingNetworkCostPerGB = 30 $ChargebackData = Measure-VM $VMName Get-VM $VMName | Reset-VMResourceMetering $VMCost = $BaseCost $VMCost += $ChargebackData.AverageMemoryUsage * $MemoryCostPerGB / 1024 $VMCost += $ChargebackData.AverageProcessorUsage * $ProcessorCostPerGHz / 1024 $IncomingExternalTraffic = $data.NetworkMeteredTrafficReport | ? { ($_.Direction -eq “Inbound” ) -and ($_.RemoteAddress -eq “*.*”)} $OutgoingExternalTraffic = $data.NetworkMeteredTrafficReport | ? { ($_.Direction -eq “Outbound” ) -and ($_.RemoteAddress -eq “*.*”)} $VMCost += $IncomingExternalTraffic.TotalTraffic * $IncomingNetworkCostPerGB / 1024 $VMCost += $OutgoingExternalTraffic.TotalTraffic * $OutgoingNetworkCostPerGB / 1024 $VMCost } # Calculate VM Cost Calculate-VMCost ...