Thought Garage

Microsoft’s Augmented Reality in Bing Maps (Windows Live Maps). Going beyond the street view. Crowd sourced Photographs, photographs through the timeline and augmenting real time video, awesome. And if you just look up in the sky, you can all constellations in that space at that time. Wonderful.

Quite an interesting way to put the Journey of ASP.NET (developers) from ASP.NET Page based design to MVC based applications. Hope I am not taking it out of context. Its not explicit, but it is written all over the wall. Nevertheless, towers of abstraction and magic by Visual Studio often make developers ignore the inner workings of the framework. Its not a surprise to find an ASP.NET developer that hardly knows anything about HTML beyond the acronym and yet can still develop ASP.NET pages that really work.

There are two ways to be a developer. You can be a cowboy or you can be a craftsman. A cowboy jumps right in and starts coding. A cowboy can build a software application quickly. The problem with being a cowboy is that software must be maintained over time.

A craftsman is patient. A craftsman builds software carefully by hand. A craftsman is careful to build unit tests that cover all the code in an application. It takes longer for a craftsman to create an application. However, after the application is created, it is easier to fix bugs in the application and add new features to the application.

Most software developers start their programming careers as cowboys. At some point, however, you must hang up your saddle and start building software that will stand the test of time.

Source : Stephen Walther on ASP.NET MVC

You can see the focus and so much stress on ‘hand crafting’ ( compared to code generated by, Visual Studio of course.)

I guess even ASP.NET is going through a journey of its own. by moving away from it’s Page based model and embracing MVC that the rest of the world has been using for years.

Carnegie Mellon was the final stop on Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates’ recent tour of several nationally recognized universities. As founder, chairman and former CEO of Microsoft, Gates revolutionized personal computing in the digital information age. His talk at Carnegie Mellon concluded his farewell lecture tour as he transitions from Microsoft into his new role in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, whose mission it is to bring innovations in health and learning to the global community.

As mentioned in the article, its  a big surprises.  Microsoft releasing an application that runs on non-Windows Mobile. But Location Based Service with voice recognition is a cool application.

Microsoft, purveyors of everything Windows Mobile, have just released a public version of TellMe, their new Location Based Application with voice recognition for the BlackBerry platform. TellMe is a cool little piece of software taking your GPS coordinates and providing you with search results, movie times, restaurant reviews, traffic info, and more based on your current location. As an added bonus, all of this information can be accessed with simple voice instructions, allowing you to use the software on the road without risking your spotless driving record. Currently, the software is supported on all GPS-equipped ‘Berrys, including the 8800, 8820, 8830, 8310, and we assume the 8110.

Microsoft’s new LBS for BlackBerry | The Boy Genius Report

Its no big surprise, if you have ever used linux based desktop and you are not a geek. But for those who believe that open source can beat stalwarts like Microsoft and Apple in UI design, its time to ack limitations.

Red Hat said it has dropped plans, disclosed last year, to develop a version of the Linux operating system for consumer PCs — in part because of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s dominance over the market.

“The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today’s Linux desktops simply don’t provide a practical alternative,” Red Hat officials said in a blog post Wednesday.

“Building a sustainable business around the Linux desktop is tough, and history is littered with example efforts that have either failed outright, are stalled, or are run as charities,” they said.

Linux commands only about 1.2% of the desktop market in the United States, according to research group Gartner

Red Hat Drops Plans For Consumer Desktop Linux — Linux — InformationWeek