Platform contiuum.

• On premise servers. Capital intensive.
• Hosted servers. Need to carry idle capacity.
• Cloud Platform. Shared, multi-tenant. Virtualised, dynamic, scalable. Pay as you go.

Azure Services

• SQL Services
• .NET Services (communications and identity)
• Live Services (consumer focussed applications)
• SharePoint (planned for future)
• Dynamic CRM (planned for future)

Core Services

• Compute: Hyper V scalable virtualised instances.
• Storage: Flexible storage with blobs, tables and queues.
• Management: Model driven service lifecycle management i.e. load balancing, instance monitoring, deployment.

Project Templates in VS 2008 that support roles within Azure.  Project contains all the config data and can generate a zip file package to deploy to Azure.  Vs 2008 has a developer fabric that allows local deployment for testing and debugging.

Very nice web UI for deployment and management of production and staging instances of an application. The potential to get locked in is enormous.

Full Trust Frameworks, FastCGI, multiple data centers (North America only for now).

SQL Services:

• Core SQL Services (Relational Capability)
• Data Sync (synchronise data from on-premise to cloud or cloud to cloud
• Built for high availability and scale
• Interoperable with PHP, Ruby and Java
• Consistent programming model with existing .NET APIs.
• Existing apps only need change the data connection string to use Azure cloud services

.NET Services:

• Integration of on-premise application with cloud
• Connect through firewalls
• Control permissions to apps and services
• Reuse existing user accounts
• .NET Service Bus (ESB anyone?)
• Service composition and workflow. Allows you to run on-premise or in cloud.
• Access Control, define requirements for connection to services via a claims based identity model.
• Event management

Live Services – Building blocks for consumer applications, users devices, applications and Data Sync.

• Identity
• Directory
• Storage
• Comms and presence
• Search and GeoSpatial

Roadmap:

• Fall 2008. CTP Beta. Customer technology preview.
• Sprint 2009.  Update CTPs with PHP support. Extended access. New data centre. Open CTP, no invitation code required.
• Summer 2009. Pricing and SLA.
• Fall 2009. Commercial availability.

Arrived late to keynote. Full house, standing room only.

Launching this week:

• Web Platform Installer – Install your grid apps automatically. Both MS Stack and open source components like PHP. Looks slick, free to download from the MS site. Colloquially called Web PI.
• Commerce Server 2009
• Azure Services Platform. Now includes FastCGI support (yay for PHP). SQL support extended to Hibernate and other data services. Still in preview, commercial release expect later this year.
• GoDaddy and GoGrid are now Bizspark network partners
• Joel Spolsky/Jeff Atwood talking about stackoverflow.com (online help for programmers), a better search engine to solve programming problems. Votes for answers. Its a WIKI so people can improve the answers. Its built in .NET. Got great performance. UI is designed around the concept of search. Supports OpenID. URLs are clean. Optimise by denormalising the database, 64 bit architecture. Reputation system for users. They used Bizspark to keep costs zero. We did it because it was a neat “hack”.  Its not a .NET ghetto.
• Silverlight. Silverlight 3 is the latest incarnation. 300,000 users. 200 partners. New MS Telescope and Virtual Earth apps launching today. Netflix streaming 12000 shows via Silverlight.  Single player works on all platforms. Installers are evil.  20% of users won’t install/can’t install.  Content protection baked in.  Great platform for video. We can update the player transparently. SL3 GPU support (ability to seamlessly scale video).  New Codecs (H.264, AAC, MPEG-4).Raw biststream Audio/Video API. Better media analytics.
• IIS Media Services – Free streaming server. On demand smooth streaming. Bit rate throttling. No additional products required. Edge caching. Expression Encoder for encoding.  Auto archive. Web Platform Installer will install it.
• NBC’s Experience wtuh Silverlight at Bejing 2008 Olympics. 50m visitors, 1.3bn page views, 10m hours of video. 5000 clips every day. Largest digital video event ever.  People who used the web watched twice as much TV online. A higher quality experience leads to better audiences watching more video. Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010 will have rewind, superslow replay all in HD. Meta data overlays (all the juicy stats). Real time feeds of most popular content. Live ad insertion (ugh!).
• Rich Internet Applications. Perspective 3D. Bitmap and Pixel API. Pixel Shader effects. Deep Zoom improvements. Effects App. Nice demo of capabilities. Deep linking and navigation. SEO that works with all search engines. Page framework (back and forward buttons work). Better text quality (via cleartype). Multi-touch support.  Lots more controls via third parties. Library caching via separate downloads.
• Expression Blend 3. Sketchflow, layout your workflow screen by screen, very slick. Prototypes look like prototypes they use wiggly line.  Sketchflow Player allows client interaction without needing full Expression Blend App. Player allows the user to enter feedback via text feedback or drawing. Export to Word to create a full document about your website, including screen shots,  nice. Behaviours, add interactivity to yout app without writing code.  Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop support.  Demo makes stuff look very easy, but there is actually a lot going on that presumes a detailed knowledge of the application.
• Eclipse Support for Silverlight on the Mac (via third party).
• SAP Netweaver support for Silverlight (in future release).
• Silverlight outside the browser (just like AIR). Sandboxed environment. Auto update support. Offline awareness. Integration with underlying operating system. 5MB download. 40k smaller than sliverlight 2.
• Silverlight 3 will ship later this year. Beta available today.

I have created a new blog/website called Startup-Ireland to provide a single location where entrepreneurs and startups can find information about starting and running companies in Ireland. Its a little light on content at the moment but I plan to fix that in the coming weeks

The best thing about the site at the moment is an Irish Startups Search Engine. Thanks to to a little  help  we now have a serarch engine that contains the site of every High Potential Startup (HPSU) that has engaged with EI since 2003.

David Concannon has done a great review of the talks at  FOWA Dublin.

From Blackout Ireland.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Aubrey Robinson
Tel: 087 054 4985
Email: pr(at)blackoutireland.com

Blackout Ireland call for protest over threat of internet censorship by IRMA
Inspired by New Zealand’s recent internet blackout campaign, Blackout Ireland are organising a week-long protest, starting Thursday the 5th of March, in response to the recent court settlement deal between Eircom and the four major record labels.

Blackout Ireland believe that this deal could set a dangerous precedent of  internet censorship by private companies, as it enables the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) to ban someone’s internet access without due legal process.

Under the terms of the settlement, Eircom will disconnect users suspected of illegally downloading music based on evidence supplied by IRMA and without the need for a court of law. IRMA have also revealed that they will seek to block websites such as the Pirate Bay that they suspect of providing illegal downloads. Eircom will not oppose any such action under the new deal.

According to Blackout Ireland representative, Aubrey Robinson:  “These new policies have serious implications for internet freedom, as they open the door for other private companies to obtain similar powers in dictating, without due process, who or what is permissible online”.

IRMA have sent letters to the other Irish ISPs threatening legal action if they do not agree to similar terms, a move which has prompted the week-long protest.

As part of Blackout Week, Irish internet users are being asked to blacken out their profile images on social media sites, and to email their internet service provider to voice their oppositon to the move.

Blackout Ireland are a group of Irish Internet users who are concerned by the prospect of Internet censorship in Ireland. They do not condone piracy, and believe that music companies and individuals have every right to protect their copyright material through legal means.

They stress the following points:

•    Censorship is not the solution. The music industry must find alternative means of charging for music downloads that benefit both artists and consumers without threatening internet neutrality.

•    ISPs need to remain as impartial conduits of data and must not be required to monitor or filter internet traffic.

•    Banning someone from the internet is totally disproportionate in this context. Such a penalty should only be imposed by a judge in a court of law.

•    The technology being used to track offenders is not sufficiently accurate and will lead to people being falsely accused.

•    Blocking sites and disconnecting users will not stop piracy, as Illegal downloaders will always be able to circumvent these restrictions.

More information: http://www.blackoutireland.com

Like most Irish people with a pulse my metabolism demands at least one intake of fried pig each week. As a result I eat a fair few fried breakfasts around town. Quality varies enormously and I don’t really have a consistent location I could recommend in the city centre, but recently I have been dropping in on the Woodstock Cafe in Phibsboro.

I cycled past it for years without paying it too much attention until my friend Keith Peters mentioned 6 months ago that it did a cracking breakfast. Since then I’ve never looked back.

Food quality is outstanding with tasty premium sausages, lean thick sliced bacon and the key addition that lifts a fried breakfast, fried potatoes, yum! They also cook eggs to order and offer mushrooms, black pudding, tomatoes and beans (Heinz!) on the side. Hot plates mean the food arrives hot at your table even if you have to queue (which is often, this place gets busy).

What really takes Woodstock to a different place is the friendly and efficient service. Nobody likes to queue for long in the morning and in Woodstock no one has too.

Check it out next time you are in the area, breakfast finishes at 12.00pm.

 Others seem to agree.

HP has abandoned the online backup service. I recieved this email today,

Thank you for your interest in HP Upline.
HP continually evaluates product lines and has decided to discontinue the HP Upline service on March 31, 2009.
HP will no longer be backing up your files to the HP Upline servers as of Feb 26, 2009 at 8 am Pacific time. HP will keep the file restore feature of the Upline service operational through March 31, 2009 Pacific time in order for you to download any files you have backed up to Upline.
If you have a paid subscription to HP Upline, you will be refunded the full amount of the fees you paid for the service. That refund will be credited to the credit card account or PayPal account that you used to subscribe to the Upline service. If you do not receive the refund prior to March 31, 2009, please contact our customer service team at https://www.upline.com/support/email.aspx.
HP looks forward to offering you additional technology products and services in the future.
Thank you.
HP Upline team
Frequently Asked Questions:
How do I restore files that are missing from my computer?
Files that are missing from your computer appear within the Missing Files window of the Upline desktop application.
Click ‘Retrieve All’ to restore all missing files to your computer or select individual files to restore and click ‘Retrieve’.
How do I uninstall the Upline software from my computer?
Exit the Upline desktop application.
For Windows XP users: Uninstall the software using Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel.
For Windows Vista users: Uninstall the software using Uninstall a Program in the Control Panel.
How do I turn off the Backup Summary message which happens after each attempted backup?
Click the ‘Settings’ link within the Upline desktop application.
Uncheck the ‘Show Backup or Retrieval summary’ box that appears on the Schedule tab and click ‘OK’.
You will need to provide your password for the change to take effect if you are using the Upline feature to prompt for password when making changes to settings.

I guess they realised they weren’t in the consumer business.  If you need a replacement online backup service, do please try out PutPlace.com.  Use the invitation code “joe” to get three  months free service.

I did this presentation today at the offices of Mason Hayes Curran. This is complemented by an excellent presentation by Philip Nolan on the legal aspects of cloud computing, Philips is below mine.

I attended Damien Mulley’s Collision Course Event tonight at the Edelman offices (thanks Piaras). The  show kicked off with a talk from Emily Hughes about her hugely successful Wispa Fan Club page on Bebo. A slow start and pretty much no promotion ended with thousands of fans and was instrumental in actually persuading Cadbury’s to relaunch the Wispa brand. They were contacted by the Cadbury’s PR company (Murrays) to help relaunch the bar and also got a few Wispa bars into the bargain.

Emily was refreshingly open and somewhat in awe of what she had achieved.  She answered a bunch of questions afterwards. In short, she didn’t get paid, but was very happy with what she had achieved and it certainly helped with her post-graduate degree application.

Damien then had us divide into three groups, with each group containing bloggers and PR people. We then had three scenarios to work up a PR response for,

• Get the Public to vote yes to the Lisbon Treaty
• Get a team who is in dispute with the manager to get their message out
• Help a major financial institution who’s CEO has had to resign for financial skulduggery

We all had 20 minutes to come up with a plan. Each team had one representative who them presented the plan.

The team I was on got the financial institution. We had worked through several high end blog/social network scenarios but were brought down to earth with a bump when one team member reminded us that the most effective way to deal with queries was a Locall number and a call centre. Chalk one up to the old school 🙂

The general consensus from all groups was,

• Identify your audience(s)
• Identify an effective channel to reach them (print media, social network, website, blog, call centre etc.)
• Provide a way to collect feedback (both solicited and unsolicited)
• Provide an internal clearing house to keep the message and feedback consistent

The finally issue we recognised is that unless the users can see that the dialog is having an effect they will see through a PR whitewash whether its done through the Irish Times or Facebook.

A very useful evening. Thanks Damien.