GreenButton revolutionising on-demand compute tasks with Azure
Posted Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 4:36 pm by Jason Cartwright
This year, Tech.Ed broke the keynote into 2 distinct audiences, IT Pro and Developer. One of the most impressive demo’s during the developer keynote was from GreenButton. CTO of Green Button, Dave Fellows showed off how a large 3D rending job can be distributed across Azure to perform incredibly time expensive compute tasks, in a matter of seconds rather than minutes.
During the demo attendees seen a complete 3D rendering drawn block by block in just 20 seconds, a task that would typically take around 30 minutes. This was achieved by distributing the workload across a number of high powered servers, but because the compute hours spent was low, the cost of using this extreme horsepower amounts to very little.
GreenButton has plugins for major modelling applications like Blender, as well as a SDK to allow developers to integrate with their existing applications. With a simple elegant web front end, jobs are not only managed, but also costed. Green Button provides a cost back to the users of just how much that task cost, so there’s no waiting for an end of the month bill.
This kind of immediate horsepower at an affordable rate will fundamentally transform the way design and animation firms work. Wether it be creating the next Pixar movie or working out the fluid dynamics of an F1 car, GreenButton on top of Windows Azure is making a massive impact in the economics of business.
I got a chance to sit down with Fellows and discuss the New Zealand origined company, to discuss GreenButton at Microsoft’s Tech.Ed conference.
More info @ http://www.greenbutton.net/
Family HQ is a private social network for your extended family
Posted Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 8:09 am by Jason Cartwright
Family HQ is a new concept in social networking – it’s private. An Internet start-up that is 100% owned and developed within Australia, Family HQ is the first Australian social network of this type. During Microsoft’s Tech.Ed conference I got a chance to sit down with the Co-Founders Jase and Brooke Farmer.
Family HQ was created as a result of a personal need, that was then requested by friends. The private social network is designed for those that want to keep content private, so security is strong focus.
More info @ FamilyHQ.com
There is NO law that prevents offshore data storage in the cloud
Posted Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 5:17 pm by Jason Cartwright
Image by karindalziel
There is a trend developing amongst Australian companies. Those who went down the outsourcing route, are now reining back services and looking to cloud solutions to solve common business functions. With this trend, a number of questions arise around the storage of sensitive data outside Australian borders.
Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft Australia, Greg Stone, says there is actually no legislation in place that requires businesses to store private information in Australia. This is a common misconception which is often quickly dissolved when legal advice is sought, rather than just assuming or following hearsay. One exception suggested was highly sensitive government information that may need to be stored locally for national security reasons.
Often concerns about the ability for foreign governments to force the turnover of data adds to the concern of data centres being located off-shore. In reality, the ability for international governments to request data is enabled through existing channels, wether the documents be stored in a filing cabinet, or on a server.
WP7, Surface and Slate demo shows off the future
Posted Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 11:24 am by Jason Cartwright
Science fiction has always taught us to think about the possibilities of technology far into the future. In fact, many technological developments have been heavily inspired by what we see in movies, often making that a reality is a a timely and very costly exercise. For consumers, its a frustrating wait to go from where we are today, to what we know will be reality in the years to come.
We’ve all been teased by concept videos, but here at Tech.Ed, Microsoft are demonstrates a working application that integrates a Windows Phone, Microsoft Surface and Windows Slate to form a futuristic experience. By placing a WP7 device on the Surface, the user interface is expanded beyond the device to the table below.
Smart phones are great, but the current trend in screen size is certainly up. From 3”, to 3.5” to 4” and even 4.3” and beyond, it shows that more screen real estate is needed. By transferring the content from your small portable device, to a large, interactive display, it solves 2 problems. First of all you don’t need to try and fit a surface in your pocket, second of all you can keep the portability of a mobile phone while accessing a larger display.
So while the concept works, and even extends to tablets or ‘slates’, there are a couple of issues with it going from a neat demo to a reality in your home. The first is the price and availability of the Surface table. You’ll notice in the video that the Surface being used is still a version 1 (i.e. a big freakin table). Version 2 Surfaces are yet to make it to Australia, after being shown off at CES in January.
The second issue is the technology being used for the devices to communicate with one another. Right now devices that interact with the Surface, namely WP7 and Slates require a special tag to be placed on the back. This seriously needs to be NFC. Given this is a technology demo, this part of the problem is really up to developers and hardware manufacturers to solve.
Photos from Tech.Ed Australia keynote
Posted Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at 4:52 pm by Jason Cartwright
The Tech.Ed Australia 2011 keynote is underway, check out some photos below, including opening keynote presenter aka Geek MC, Adam Spencer. If you can’t be at Tech.Ed this year, then the photos will go some way to you living the experience. The keynote is being recorded and will be made available by Microsoft after the event.
Microsoft Tech.Ed 2011 begins !
Posted Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at 1:48 pm by Jason Cartwright
Technically it began yesterday for those in deep dive training sessions, but today marks the official opening of Microsoft’s Tech.Ed 2011 conference. Held again on the sunny Gold Coast, the action starts with a Keynote at 4:30pm this afternoon.
This is a strange year for Tech.Ed, the current stage in product cycles means that while we may be keen to know more about Microsoft products and services, they may not be able to speak about a number of them.
In the Windows division, Windows 7 has been out for a few years now, with most consumers and businesses now having made the move. The attention has certainly turned to what’s coming in Windows 8, however there’s unlikely to be any breaking news ahead of the Build conference next month.
Office is in a similar position with most of those who are going to implement Office 2010, having already made the move. Those who were happy with office 2007 will stay there till Office 2012 arrives. On that note, there’s been almost no news about the next version of Office.
On the Mobile side of things the timing is also intriguing. Windows Phone 7 is still trying to gain the mind share of the mainstream public. While the most important update WP7.5 or better known as Mango is in developers hands, it’s not yet being discussed at length. Hopefully we get to see and go hands-on with some more of those 500 new features. There’s still no word on an official release date for Mango, but its expected to go close to the timing of iOS5, around late September, or early October. Remember the first Mango device has shipped, leaving the big question about distribution to existing WP7 owners. We can only hope that Microsoft learnt and has rectified the process after the disaster of the last major update.
It is understood that Visual Studio Next (VSNext) will be demo’d at the conference. Attendees will also get the chance to go hands-on with the unreleased, no delayed Star Wars Kinect.
Look out for lots of content from Tech.Ed 2011 right here on techAU. Be sure to follow #auteched on twitter for all the updates.
Update
This year, the developer and it pro sections of the keynote have been split into separate sessions prior to the main keynote. This was based on feedback from previous years.
Disclaimer: techAU is attending Tech.Ed as a guest of Microsoft.
More info @ Tech.Ed
