Human and Computer Evolution

 

This is so true ……

6 things Apple needs to copy from Microsoft Surface in iOS 7

 

The Microsoft Surface is an easy target. It is Microsoft’s attempt to get into touch computing and it is easy to see it as a me-too iPad competitor. Microsoft is frankly just so uncool that their products get much greater scrutiny, and people delight at picking everything apart.

 

But, the Surface RT is good. I’ve owned one for over three months now. And here’s the crazy thing: I use it all the time. More than my iPad.

Why? A bunch of reasons really. But six things really make it stand out.

1. Multiple user accounts

The Surface lets you setup multiple user accounts. It’s actually a feature I never use on a real computer, but it’s convenient to have all your settings there when you pick up a tablet.

Multiple accounts means no logging on and off of apps like Gmail and Twitter for old foggies like me who live with their significant others. Tap on your account and everything is as you left it.

I used to think that as tablets get cheaper and cheaper, people will just get one each. Here’s the reality: “Why is the email, Facebook and calendar on this !%$!$$! thing Sarah’s?”

Yes, this could be the definition of “first world problem,” but as tablets become nearly free, you’re more likely to leave one in the bathroom and wish the one in the living room just worked right.

2. Visual Feedback on Touch

It’s a subtle-but-great touch.

Every time you touch the surface, a very light-grey, transparent circular dot briefly appears on screen and then quickly shrinks into nothing. When you swipe, a faint grey trails your finger and then almost instantly disappears.

Most Surface users probably don’t even notice this detail, but it is super nice. It helps you understand where your touches are registering and makes every touch feel highly responsive  — more responsive than an iPad.

3. Two apps at a time

The Surface lets you have one app take up three-quarters of the screen

Have you ever tried to paste your favorite three bits of an article into an email on an iPad? Use cases like that make me bring a laptop on trips.

My most common use case is opening a narrow email client and copying and pasting text from a website or copying and pasting multiple URLs. Or: adding stuff to my calendar when I’m in an email app (this is a huge pain on the iPad). Or: taking notes in Evernote with a web browser open.

4. Flash

Flash is dead. Long live flash!

I hate flash as much as the next guy, but if you use the web for work, it’s a necessary evil. Say you’re the CEO of a real estate startup and you want to check in on your traffic yesterday in Google Analytics. Then Flash is like a long lost friend.

5. Left and Right Arrow Keys

If you’re a write fast, go-back-and-edit writer like me, editing text with the little iOS magnifying glass is something that unknowingly taxes you every time you do it.

On the Surface, I do what I do to write quickly and efficiently on my laptop: get close enough with the mouse and then use the onscreen arrow keys to get positioned just right. Or: Control + Arrow word by word to the place I want to edit.

6. Music Playback

Someone deserves a promotion for the work they did on Windows 8′s playback user interface.

You can play music or podcasts in the background on the Surface — like you’d expect. Here’s what the Surface does delightfully right: When you touch either of the volume buttons on the Surface, it shows you the volume level in the upper left hand corner of the screen along with rewind, pause and fast forward buttons.

This is discoverability done right. The first time you want music or a podcast playing in a background app to pause on the Surface, you turn down the volume and from there find out you can pause it.

Conclusion

This stuff has made the Microsoft Surface something I use on a regular basis. I don’t think it’s enough to make the Surface an “iPad killer” or even to steal a significant part of the market from the iPad, but it’s a strong start. The Surface is an impressive first start with some surprisingly nice features.

As an all-Apple person, I had low expectations for the Surface RT, but it has really impressed

by Galen Ward

A look at Microsoft's top-secret Surface prototypes

Microsoft made a bold bet to build its own hardware, competing directly with Apple's iPad, but it was never an easy task to create something new and unique. Microsoft's own tablet is the result of it facing a "big challenge" relying on its hardware partners to create a high quality physical device that could go up against Apple. Project "Georgetown," the codename for Surface RT, started with two simple goals: the tablet couldn't leak and it must ship when Windows 8 is ready. "The goal was, you gotta bring Windows 8 to life," says Microsoft's Panos Panay, general manager of the Surface team. Looking at the vision of Windows 8 and other Microsoft products, Panay was tasked with creating a tablet that would encompass everything Microsoft had to offer. After months and months of prototyping and tweaking, the end result was unveiled to the world on June 18th of last year. These are a few of the concepts and prototypes that led to that final product.

Secrecy was essential; Microsoft didn't want to upset its OEM partners at a time when it was working to bring Windows 8 to the market. After the project was commissioned by Windows chief Julie Larson-Green, Panos Panay started to form a team of 12 people to tackle the task of creating a vision for what would become Surface. Panay previously worked on Microsoft's PixelSense table (formerly known as Surface) and slowly grew the Surface team from 12 people to 30 people, then on to 80 people and beyond.

"When we started and kind of all the visions were coming together, it was clear we were gonna go make a tablet," he reveals in an interview with The Verge recently. Despite the clear guidelines on a tablet, Panay admits "there were some other concepts, and there were a number of them beyond just tablet at the time," suggesting that Microsoft had considered other form factors. The exact timing of Surface development is still a mystery though, and Panay refused to comment whether the iPad was available before work started on Surface. The official timing statement is that the Windows 8 design vision was locked before the iPad and that Apple's tablet validated a lot of the vision for Microsoft's new operating system.

The Surface tablet started with the concept that people should be able to do more than competitor tablets. Recounting how it all began, Panay explains "we're Microsoft, let's be proud of that, let's be proud that we help people get stuff done." The primary goal was to get the product thin and light to be used as a tablet, with 3D printed prototypes and concepts helping to form the idea of a tablet. Early concepts included rounded backs and edges, but Microsoft settled with a flat back and angled edges to prevent users from feeling like they were about to drop the tablet.

"We stressed out about it."

Microsoft also wanted to protect the tablet with a cover, but enable full productivity. "We stressed out about it," explains Panay, then the team paused and looked at what it had been doing with mice and keyboards for the past 30 years. The Surface team put a magnet on its concept to figure out if it was possible to make a removable keyboard cover. "What ended up happening was we kinda found this idea of everyone needs a cover, so the cover has to be super thin and they're gonna protect their glass which is an important concept and we're like, 'let's figure this out.'

After several concepts and prototypes, the team settled on Touch Cover and Type Cover, with separate groups working on both. The goal, in plastic form, was 4.5mm, but it turned out the team was able to push this to just 3mm. "This was literally how do we make something thin enough that looks super cool and feels nice on the hands," explains Panay.

"We're Microsoft, let's be proud of that, let's be proud that we help people get stuff done."

Panay and the team then watched it evolve from one concept to another, before a final design was formed. From the pictures below it's clear to see how many Surface and Touch Cover revisions that Microsoft went through. From yellow covers to flat plastic ones, a number of ideas were thrown around in the process of making Touch Cover what it is today. "We don't have yellow, we don't have any green," he explains. "We get a lot of requests for colors. It's all in the works, we can create colors and special editions," says Panay, revealing that we'll be seeing a number of new covers in the future. The team has previously hinted that it may also be working on battery equipped covers, but Microsoft has nothing to announce in that area just yet.

Microsoft's Surface Pro, codenamed "Georgetown X," started three months after Surface RT. "We started Pro three months after we started RT, that's how the product shipped," says Panay. Explaining the gap, Panay says "it really was people, availability, time," not a delay or product issues. Pro was all about speed with an aim to make it a full PC. "So you still want it to be a device that looks elegant, looks beautiful, something you're proud of, but it's not a museum piece." Museum piece or not, Pro combined the idea of touch, PC, and stylus into a 2 pound package. Microsoft says it designed Surface Pro from the inside out to ensure the weight was evenly distributed for note taking and tablet use. "It's distributed, to a science, it's distributed in a way that takes iteration and it takes a lot of time."

Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet was codenamed Georgetown X

The Surface Pro started shipping in mid-February and Panay says "demand is higher than we initially intended for Pro to be, no doubt." The initial supply issues seem to be mostly resolved, with devices available in stores and online. Reflecting on the launch and reaction to Surface, Panay says the team feels great about what they're doing. "The people that aren't using the products certainly have opinions, but the people using them love them and I think that's what's most important to us right now."

So what's in store for Surface in the future? Panay says the team is working on future Surface generations at the moment. "When I say generations, not just one, we have the teams at full speed and loving what they're building and seeing," he says enthusiastically. "I think things just keep getting better, just hopefully what you'd expect from us."

Hint: Use the 's' and 'd' keys to navigate

• Panos Panay with the original Surface prototype

  

  The father of the Surface handles the original concept for Microsoft's tablet.

• String and plastic Surface

  

  The first prototype was built with string for the kickstand and a plastic mold.

• A strong cover

  

  Panay explains that even the prototype had to have strong magnets for the cover concept.

• Hello Courier

  

  Microsoft wanted the Surface to be protected using its cover and to take the form of a book you could easily carry.

• Surface prototype with its cover

  

  The final prototype of Surface, complete with the future Touch Cover.

• Concept vs. reality

  

  The concept sits alongside Surface Pro, showing how it progressed to reality.

• A master and his creation

  

  Panos Panay stares at the Surface he helped create.

• Other Surface ideas

  

  Some additional molds and another concept for Surface with a curved back.

• A 3D printed Surface

  

  Panos Panay handles one of the first 3D printed Surface concepts.

• Touch Cover in yellow

  

  Microsoft tried a number of different concepts and colors for its Touch Cover, including this one.

• Touch Cover concept

  

  This particular cover concept is flat plastic without any ridges for the keys.

• Under the Surface cover

  

  The inner workings of Microsoft's keyboard cover.

• Metal under the Surface

  

  Microsoft uses a sturdy frame for Surface, which is placed together to form its Vapor MG casing.

• Colorful concepts

  

  A handful of concepts for the Surface and its Touch Cover.

• Surface stacked

  

  Microsoft went through a number of variations for the Surface look and feel.

• Surface with a tapered back

  

  Some early concepts involved curved and tapered off edges for Surface.

• Curves and corners

  

  Microsoft ended up selecting a flat back without these curves to avoid the sensation of feeling like you'd drop the device.

• Where's the alphabet?

  

  One early Touch Cover concept without the full key formation.

• What could have been

  

  This Touch Cover never made it to market, but it was one of the many ideas for a keyboard cover.

• More 3D prints

  

  Microsoft 3D printed the Surface a number of times to get the size it wanted.

• The magician's box

  

  Microsoft keeps all of its Surface concepts in a secure box.

• A desktop Surface

  

  Engineers use a Surface with its chipset exposed to test sound quality.

• Surface specs

  

  The brains behind the operation, the Surface Pro innards.

• Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3

  

  A professional mic picks up noise in the anechoic chamber.

• Surface sits still

  

  Tests run on the Surface Pro.

By Tom Warren

eSynergySolutions Extracting Value from Big Data in the Cloud

7:30 - 8:15 – Breakfast 8:15- 10:00 – Presentations

Barak Regev - Turning your data problem into a competitive advantage

Michael Newberry – Big Data in a Hybrid-Cloud World

Carlos Somohano - Enterprise Data Science and the Elephant in the CIO room

Andy Cross – How to Create Advanced Web Analytics using Big Data on the Cloud

Tim Marston – mongoDB: Driving a Data Revolution

10:00- 10:30 - Questions

Intro to ASP.NET MVC 4

 

What You'll Build

You'll implement a simple movie-listing application that supports creating, editing, searching and listing movies from a database. Below are two screenshots of the application you’ll build. It includes a page that displays a list of movies from a database:

The application also lets you add, edit, and delete movies, as well as see details about individual ones. All data-entry scenarios include validation to ensure that the data stored in the database is correct.

Getting Started

Start by running Visual Studio Express 2012  or Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. Most of the screen shots in this series use Visual Studio Express 2012, but you can complete this tutorial with Visual Studio 2010/SP1, Visual Studio 2012, Visual Studio Express 2012  or Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. Select New Project from the Start page.

Visual Studio is an IDE, or integrated development environment. Just like you use Microsoft Word to write documents, you'll use an IDE to create applications. In Visual Studio there's a toolbar along the top showing various options available to you. There's also a menu that provides another way to perform tasks in the IDE. (For example, instead of selecting New Project from the Start page, you can use the menu and select File > New Project.)

Creating Your First Application

You can create applications using either Visual Basic or Visual C# as the programming language. Select Visual C# on the left and then select ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application. Name your project "MvcMovie" and then click OK.

In the New ASP.NET MVC 4 Project dialog box, select Internet Application. Leave Razor as the default view engine.

Click OK. Visual Studio used a default template for the ASP.NET MVC project you just created, so you have a working application right now without doing anything! This is a simple "Hello World!" project, and it's a good place to start your application.

From the Debug menu, select Start Debugging.

Notice that the keyboard shortcut to start debugging is F5.

F5 causes Visual Studio to start IIS Express and run your web application. Visual Studio then launches a browser and opens the application's home page. Notice that the address bar of the browser says localhost and not something like example.com. That's because localhost always points to your own local computer, which in this case is running the application you just built. When Visual Studio runs a web project, a random port is used for the web server. In the image below, the port number is 41788. When you run the application, you'll probably see a different port number.

Right out of the box this default template gives you  Home, Contact and About pages. It also provides support to register and log in, and links to Facebook and Twitter. The next step is to change how this application works and learn a little bit about ASP.NET MVC. Close your browser and let's change some code.

By Rick Anderson

Top 7 Most In-Demand Tech Skills For 2013

 

 

 1. HTML5 / CSS

Where would the Web be without HTML? Nowhere, really. This simple markup language is literally what the Web is made of, with cascading style sheets (CSS) making everything look nice and JavaScript adding interactive functionality.

It's only natural that the language at the heart of the Web would be in high demand, even as native mobile app development and back-end cloud technologies command bigger ad bigger chunks of IT budgets. In fact, as tablets, smartphones and cloud-hosted services proliferate, the importance of the Web grows along with it. Consumers still need to access their cloud-hosted SaaS services via their Web browser. And studies show that tablet owners still love the Web.

After years of relative stagnation, HTML has made big advances in recent years with HTML5, which is now supported by the latest versions of all major Web browsers. Meanwhile, the design options available via CSS3 and the interactivity provided by JavaScript have pushed the Web even further, blurring the line between Web-based and native apps.

HTML5 makes a 23-year-old markup language is cool again - and back in high demand. Elance and Indeed both rank HTML as one of their most sought-after job skills, while other studies routinely point to it being in strong demand.

2. iOS Development

It comes as no surprise that iOS developers are sought after. Most sources that track job talent demand rank iOS development or related skills like Xcode and Objective-C programming very highly. As Apple's sales in both tablets and smartphones has exploded, so too has the demand for developers who can build apps for the iOS ecosystem.

iPhone and iPad development have been trendy for a few years now, but it's actually accelerated pretty dramatically in the last two years. After years of slow but steady growth, demand for iOS development skyrocketed over the course of 2011 and 2012, according to data from the job aggregator site Indeed. If you've been meaning to try your hand at building apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, now is a good time to get into it.

 

3. PHP / MySQL

It may lack the sexiness of mobile development or newer Web programming technologies, but PHP is still very important. The open source scripting language runs on more than 20 million websites and powers high-profile sites we deal with every day, including Facebook and Wikipedia. Any blog, news site or other website built using Wordpress or Drupal is making use of PHP as well. It's all over the Web, even if you can't see it by clicking "view source."

PHP is currently ranked as the most sought-after skill on Elance, with MySQL and Wordpress also cracking the top ten. There are more than a quarter of a million PHP programming gigs listed on Elance alone.

4. Java / J2EE

Java and the J2EE development platform are popping up more and more on job hiring boards. Indeed, Java/J2EE developers are going to be in high demand throughout 2013, according to a survey from Dice.

Unlike hot new technologies like Android development and HTML5, demand for Java skills has been fairly consistent over time, although it has been on the rise in the last few years

5. JavaScript (And Related Technologies)

On the Web, JavaScript is what makes things interactive, especially now that the rise of tablets and smartphones has bumped Flash from prominence. Whether it's the ever-popular jQuery framework or the JSON data interchange standard, companies need JavaScript-focused talent like never before. In fact, JSON is the most in-demand skill on CyberCoders.

It's worth noting that when people say "HTML5," they're often referring in part to JavaScript. That's because what makes Web apps look and feel so app-like is CSS and JavaScript, not just the plain HTML itself.

If you're looking to learn Web programming, JavaScript is the place you want to end up. If you want to start slow, a framework like jQuery could be the way to go.

 

6. IT Project Management

One of the most sought-after tech job skills isn't all that technical. Slinging code, maintaining infrastructure and designing software are all really important, but their kind of useless without somebody to see the project through to completion. That's why certified project managers can pull in six figure incomes and why 40% of IT executives are looking to hire project managers in 2013.

7. All Things "Cloud"

The cloud computing craze is still going strong, if tech job hiring trends are any indication. Specifically, companies are looking for software developers who specialize in things like virtualization and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) development, with familiarity with Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technologies.

According to one survey of IT execs, 25% of companies are planning on hiring people with SaaS and related cloud-computing expertise in 2013. In general, SaaS and virtualization are both buzzwords often cited as being on-the-rise on job search sites.

Of course, SaaS and PaaS (not to mention whatever-else-as-a-service) can utilize any number of specific programming languages and technologies (more on those below). Suffice it to say that if a given skill helps companies utilize cloud infrastructure or virtualize any aspect of their computing needs, it's in high demand.

If you promised yourself you were going to beef up your tech skills in 2013, now is the time to get moving. Based on surveys and data from a variety of sources including John Paul Titlow @ Readwrite & Patrick Crompton @ eSynergy Solutions

 

 

Cloud Rap: World's Fastest Rapper on Windows Azure Cloud