EXCELer.org

Word 2010 will display the ruler in units of inches. Is it possible to change the measurement unit?

1. Yes
2. No
3. Yes, except in the home edition.
4. Yes, depending on which country you live in, it can be changed.

How to participate:

• Answer the above question and providing your email address along.
• Only the answer provided with email address will be marked.
• Only the first correct answer will be considered.
• For further details kindly refer to the Competition Rules and Guidelines.

Some Free February Appy-ness with a new piece of free software for teachers from Microsoft every day in February. Many of these items are unknown heroes, but they all share two things in common: 1) They are useful for teachers or students and 2) they are free.

The WorldWide Telescope

If you could travel the stars where would you go? Let your students decide which planet they want to visit first using this online interactive planetarium.

WWT is a powerful virtual telescope that helps students visualise and understand our vast cosmos. It inspires learners to explore, to ask questions, and to practice the scientific skills that astronomers use to build our understanding of objects that are literally across the universe.

Young children can learn about the causes of night and day by manipulating the real-time model of Earth in our solar system. Middle school children can use it to understand seasons and Moon phases, as well as distance scales in the universe. High school students can learn how astronomers have pieced together the life cycle of stars by observing breathtaking nebulae, white dwarfs, and red giants. Tertiary students can explore important maps made by astronomers that help us to understand how gravity influences the shapes and structures we see in the universe. Every student can use it to tell and share their own stories of what they have learned about astronomy and space

Where can I find out how to use it?

There’s a WorldWide Telescope Ambassadors Program to enrich interactive learning. It’s an outreach initiative run by researchers at Harvard University, WGBH, and Microsoft Research. Ambassadors are astrophysically-literate volunteers who are trained to be experts in using WWT as teaching tool. Ambassadors and learners alike use WorldWide telescope to create dynamic, interactive Tours of the Universe, which are shared in schools, public venues, and online. Ambassador-created Tours are being made freely available and will ultimately form a comprehensive learning resource for Astronomy and Astrophysics. You can learn more at http://www.wwtambassadors.org

The other place to look is the Education page on the WorldWide Telescope website. Amongst other things, there is also a set of resources for classroom use, developed in the form of curriculum guides, lesson plans and additional resources to assist teachers and students launching into an exploration of the universe through the lens of the WorldWide Telescope. Since it uses the most current data taken from celestial imaging, users can easily pan and zoom into specific areas of outer space for fine tuned investigations. Images are taken from the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as numerous telescopes here on Earth.

• Download High School Curriculum Materials
• Download Middle School Curriculum Materials

Want to go further in using it for teaching - you need a dome!

There is a do-it-yourself option for creating a planetarium for about a thousand dollars, using supplies from local office and hardware stores and a special first surface spherical mirror.

Many students never have a chance to go to a bricks and mortar planetarium to learn astronomy, so the team created a virtual planetarium with WorldWide Telescope. However, outer space is still best experienced in an immersive environment like a dome, so they have published a set of plans that enable schools to build their own small planetarium that will allow 15-30 students at a time to experience a high-quality digital projection of space. The investment is less than $1,000 in building materials, plus a laptop and projector, along with some household tools and ‘sweat equity’ (ie there’s work involved!).

One of the principal benefits of having an on-site planetarium is that WorldWide Telescope will allow students to create their own shows to share what they have learned with the rest of the school- completing the learning cycle. You can download the instructions to build your own here.

Where do I get WorldWide Telescope from?

WorldWide Telescope is available as a programme to download, or a web-based virtual telescope.
You can get both versions at the WorldWide Telescope website

#wp7dev_jp #wp7jp

Dream.Build.Play 2012 開催

今年もゲーム開発者のコンテスト、Dream.Build.Playが米マイクロソフトで開催されます。
今年のターゲットプラットフォームはXbox 360とWindows Phone！

昨年は、Xbox 360部門で Grand Prizeの賞金は 4万ドル！
以下First Prize が2万ドル、Second Prizeが1万ドル、Third Prizeが 5千ドルとなっていました。
今年は Windows Phone も対象となるので、Windows Phone 部門の賞金が気になりますね。

今後、概要や公式ルール、賞金などが公開されるので、興味がある方はまずはメールを登録しておくといいかもしれません。
http://www.dreambuildplay.com/Main/Default.aspx

日本からの参加も可能ですが、主催は米国マイクロソフトですのでご注意ください。
ぜひ日本の開発者・企業からも参戦していただきたいですね！

ご興味がある方はぜひ！

#wp7dev_jp

ときどき、ファイル名などで他と確実にかぶらないユニークな文字列がほしいときがあります。そんな時に方法。

• 日付を使う（1秒単位でユニーク）
• DateTime.Now.ToString("yyMMddHHmmss")  →  120223235959
  
• GUIDを使う（完全にユニーク）
• System.Guid.NewGuid() → 6fcff952-bcaf-456b-9d33-245a241c1d3c

確実なのはGUIDですが、日付も手軽でいいです。なにせ文字列でソートすると、結果的に時間でソートが出来るなんて小さいメリットも。

This blog post assumes you have read the introduction to C++ AMP exceptions.

An instance of the unsupported_feature exception type is thrown on executing a restrict(amp) qualified function on the host that does not support intrinsic operations (such as tiled_index<>::barrier.wait()) or on invoking a parallel_for_each/allocating an object on an accelerator which doesn’t support certain features needed for the execution to proceed.The table below lists the common scenarios that result in unsupported_feature exception.

My next blog post covers out_of_memory exception.

1. Peter Vogel: Construct XAML Forms at Runtime with Resource Files
2. Keith Ward: Choosing the Best .NET Platform
3. Eric Lippert: Generating Random Non-Uniform Data In C#
4. Beth Massi: Trip Report–TechDays 2012 Netherlands
5. Tim Heuer: Shrinking your Subtext database [a lesson in database maintenance]
6. Daniel Moth: C++ AMP Overview
7. Steve Deitz: Projections in C++ AMP
8. Channel 9: Inside Windows Phone #32 | Microsoft Developer Carlo Rivera on Making Money
9. MSDN Blogs: Phone developers should use the cloud
10. Alan Hakimi: The Evolution of the Modern Enterprise Architect

Visual Studio on Facebook | Follow @VisualStudio on Twitter | Learn more about Visual Studio | Learn more about Visual Studio Testing Tools | Visual SourceSafe Upgrade

1491

le buzz du moment, c’est bien la campagne marketing digitale, en Darija, de Microsoft et Buzzef, autour d’Internet Explorer 9 : www.tconnectabikhir.ma.

L’objectif est de rappeler aux internautes, les piliers d’Internet Explorer 9 :

• Performances : utilisation des processeurs multi-cœurs et des puces graphiques pour accélérer le rendu
• Sécurité et protection de l’internaute : NSSLabs.com confirme qu’Internet Explorer est le navigateur qui protège le mieux les internautes des menaces du web moderne
• Interface optimisée pour mettre en valeur les contenus
• Sites épinglés : permet à un site de se comporter comme une application : menus spécifiques, notifications…
• Support des standards du Web : HTML5, CSS3, …

Particularité de cette campagne, elle est pratiquement totalement en Darija : depuis le site www.tconnectabikhir.ma, les bannières sur les sites partenaires, les médaillons facebook, etc.

DistribuTECH is always a great event as there is probably no place on earth where you get to see so many of the world’s smart grid leaders in one place. Last month’s DistribuTECH 2012 in San Antonio was no exception as it was a terrific event for meeting with customers and partners. It really is a who’s who of Microsoft smart grid partners with ALSTOM Grid, ARMOR, Bentley, EMC, Enspiria, General Dynamics – Itronix, Infosys, Intel, Itron, Logica, MobileDemand, OSIsoft, Schneider Electric, SUBNET Solutions, and Telvent all participating.

One of the really fun parts of DistribuTECH is when I discover a really cool company for the first time. This happened with a company called Switch Automation which was in the Intel booth at DistribuTECH. Switch Automation provides a cloud based platform for automation and energy management in homes, apartments and commercial buildings.

Switch is a very interesting company and different from most of the other providers in this space as they are cloud based as opposed to being a hardware platform and they provide IP intercom and a full sustainability platform for data aggregation and promotion of corporate sustainability credentials.

Switch’s platform is end to end Microsoft which includes Windows Azure, SQL Server and Silverlight. Why? Because Switch wanted a scalable solution that would meet customer and partner demands anywhere in the world. Switch started with hardware/software solution back in 2002 and realized over time that this model doesn't scale to support their business which led them to switch (no pun intended!) to a cloud based solution strategy that incorporated all lessons learned from 8 years in market.

Switch is focused on the HEMs market - high end residential, commercial, education facilities, multi-residential, industrial and their solution has been market ready since 4Q 2011 with many customer deployments.

What’s been the key to Switch’s success? According to Deborah Noller, CEO of Switch Automation, it’s been the move to a scalable cloud based platform based on Azure and their drive to provide a superior user experience for their customers.

Switch Automation has posted several YouTube videos that demonstrate their solutions, platform capability and overall direction. I highly recommend that you give them a look here, here and here. Enjoy! – Jon C. Arnold

Too often I get asked whether the Windows Azure trial is actually FREE because you have to enter a credit card when signing up. With the introduction of Spending Limits, yes, yes, it is.

Here’s the situation – you’ve been following the Canadian Developer Connection, my blog, or wherever you get your updates on what’s new and exciting in the developer world. You’re sitting down to give Windows Azure a try (check out the Windows Azure Challenge for a fun way to get started with Windows Azure). You go to create your free Windows Azure trial and boom – it asks you for a credit card. You scratch your head and say: “If I put my card in there, I’m going to get charged – but it’s a free trial…”

The truth is that, up until recently, it was technically possible to get charged for your Windows Azure usage if you went over the resources that come with the free trial. But now – no more. Your FREE trial is actually FREE because of a new feature that was added to Windows Azure called a Spending Limit, and the nice thing is that it is enabled automatically to ensure that you’re protected!

Now when you sign up for a new trial subscription and deploy applications to Windows Azure, the spending limit, which is by default set to $0 (meaning you don’t want to spend any money) will prevent you from being charged! If and when your usage exceeds the monthly amounts included in your subscription, Windows Azure will disable your service for the remainder of that billing month, which includes removing any apps you have running (though your data in your storage accounts and databases will be accessible as read-only). At the beginning of the next billing month, your subscription will be re-enabled and you will be able to re-deploy your Windows Azure apps and have full access to your storage accounts and databases. Perfect for ensuring that you are not charged for playing around and getting comfortable with Windows Azure.

Here’s what you’ll see as you approach the limit of your subscription:

and then when you’ve reached the limit, rather than charging your credit card, the subscription is disabled:

No more worries of being charged

With spending limits in place, there are not more excuses as to why you can’t give Windows Azure a try. Here are two great ways to do so:

	Windows Azure Camp Challenge Downloads the tools and a hands-on lab to complete on your own computer. You can then reward yourself with a few drinks on us. Go >>
	Basics of Application Development for Windows Azure on TechDays Online Use our virtual environments to complete the lab. You won’t have to download or install the tools. Just the remote viewer. Go >>

Join the Conversation

I’d love to hear all about your first experiences with Windows Azure – what compelled you to give it a try? What was your first time like? Did you have any “ah-ha” moments? Did you come to any realizations? Did you make any sort of conclusions about Windows Azure? Once you’ve gone through one of the above (and/or the many other hands-on labs on TechDays Online), join the conversation about first experiences in Canadian Developer Connection group on LinkedIn.