Tag Archives: Microsoft

Event: Exec Briefing by Microsoft on its Solutions for DevOps/Application Delivery Lifecycle

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Microsoft is hosting a half-day exec. briefing on DevOps/Application Delivery Lifecycle on Friday, 11th November, at The O Hotel, Koregaon Park.

As Software engineering practices become more dynamic, the need of the hour for businesses is to have a more efficient and agile IT setup. Microsoft’s DevOps solution enables organizations to shorten cycle times while improving software quality by streamlining the entire development workflow, right from the backlog, through build and test, to all the way into production.

In this event, you’ll get an overview of:

  • People, processes and tools involved with Microsoft DevOps Solutions
  • How Microsoft Solutions can integrate, leverage and support your existing solutions
  • How Microsoft DevOps practices can help you deliver high quality software on a shorter timeline and with better compliance

You’ll learn how to:

  • Shorten cycle times: and increase the traceability of each release by empowering development and operations teams with collaboration and automation tools.
  • Improve quality and availability by using tools to capture rich telemetry on application performance and usage so that you can make better decisions on future investments—all while understanding and anticipating issues in production before they impact your service.
  • Save time and money: Azure integrates with on-premises Microsoft technologies, so you can take full advantage of your existing Microsoft investments, skills, and knowledge—and use a common development and test infrastructure that spans data center to cloud.

Agenda

  • 10:00-10:30: Registration
  • 10:30-10:45: Keynote
  • 10:45-11:30: DevOps and Demo
  • 11:30-12:15: DevOps from Customer Perspective: Overview of issues
  • 12:15-1:00: DevOps Capabilities: Overview of Cloud Cover’s DevOps capabilities and partnership with Microsoft.
  • 1:00-2:00: Lunch

Date-Time-Venue

The event is from 10am to 2pm, on Friday, 11th Nov 2016 at The O Hotel, Koregaon Park.

Registration and Fees

This event is free for anyone to attend. You must register by sending mail to a-shjuya@microsoft.com with subject “Registration for DevOps Pune – 11th Nov”.

Tech Events this Week: Open Source, Joomla, Tech for Social Causes, Bio/HealthTech, Azure, PHP

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Here is a list of technology events happening in Pune over the next few days. To be informed of these events in advance, you should subscribe to get the PuneTech calendar event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe.

Scaale Event: Resource management for Business Efficiency for Indo-US Businesses

  • Date: Thu, 31 Jul 5:00pm – 8:00pm
  • Location: Auditorium, Cluster-C, Eon Free Zone, MIDC Kharadi

To sustain in today’s competitive global market, having a presence in the world’s best markets is imperative. A combination of the world’s best markets as well as those that are cost-effective helps in bringing in the required competitive advantage.

Both India and the United States of America have always been the centre of attraction for global investment. While India is well known as the best source for skilled human resource at the best cost, US is always a preferred market, especially the Mecca of IT, San Francisco – CA, by IT companies worldwide

While many growth stage companies are looking forward to explore both the destinations for growth and sales, there are many unanswered questions they have like, how to get started, what are the legalities, associated costs, etc.

The objective of this event is to answer this queries through insights on Indo – US relations, real life experiences of some senior entrepreneurs / industry veterans and the support system available through Scaale Group.

The event is being organized by Scaale Group, a venture resource group, headquartered in San Francisco, dedicated to implement solutions for startups, SMB’s & Corporations through innovation, sales, capital and talent in association with
Indo American Chamber of Commerce, a non-government, industry led and managed organization, playing a proactive role in India’s development process and serves as a much needed link between the business communities of India and the United States of America and UBER, a global transport network company based in San Francisco.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open to anybody, but only via registration and prior confirmation. Please register here: http://scaale.com/group/events#contact

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

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FOSSsumMIT: 2-day Free/Open Source Software conference at MIT Pune

  • Date: 1- 2 Aug
  • Location: MIT Pune

FOSSsumMIT is a 2-day conference on Free/Open Source Software, organized by the Dept. of Computer Engineering, at MIT College, in association with PLUG (Pune Linux Users Group), happening on 1 & 2 August, 2014.

The conference has introductory talks and workshops for students on various topics, and is free for anyone to attend. Day 1 has 5 tracks – Python, Scientific Computing, Linux, Linux Overview, and Big Data. Day 2 has 4 tracks – Python, Scientific Computing, Linux, and Cloud Computing.

See Day 1 Schedule and Day 2 Schedule for details.

Fees and Registration

Register here: http://fosssummit.in/register – it’s free. And you get a certificate.

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

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My Story @TiEPune: Bikram Dasgupta, Founder & Executive Chairman, Globsyn Group

  • Date: Fri, 1 Aug 6:30pm – 8:30pm
  • Location: Sumant Moolgaokar Auditorium, Ground Floor, Wing A, ICC Trade Center, SB Road

TiE Pune presents a “My Story” session with Bikram Dasgupta, Founder & Executive Chairman, Globsyn Group

Career History of Mr Dasgupta:

  • Alumnus of Harvard Business School, USA and IIT Kharagpur, India
  • Dell Deal : Single handed win of the single largest (US $50 million) export contract from Dell Computer, USA
  • Conceptualised Globsyn group of companies
  • Pioneered the first IT Park in India in form of Infinity in, formed the roadmap for IT Parks in India
  • Software Finishing School : Pioneered the concept of Knowledge Finishing Schools in India (high aptitude engineering students are exposed to the relevant software engineering & management skills – SFS has trained over 15000 students, across 21 states in India)
  • Setup India’s first Corporate B-Schools in India (Crisil A** rated & AICTE approved)
  • Setup India’s first integrated BPO Training institute
  • In the form of Globsyn crystals, created “Work Habitat”, bringing Life and Work Together

Industry Connects :

  • President, TiE Kolkata, Member – Executive Council, Indian Chamber of Commerce; Member, Eastern Region Council, NASSCOM;
  • Confederation of Indian Industry : Member of Executive Committee – Easter Region; Member of National Skills Council; Member of National Commitee, Integrity & Transparency in Governance

About TiE Pune My Story Sessions!

“My Story – Inspiring Journey of an Entrepreneur”

This program is created to celebrate entrepreneurship and bring stories from successful entrepreneurs in their own words. The invited speakers will share their entrepreneurial journeys and talk about lessons learned, mistakes they wish they avoided, and key decisions that helped make their venture successful.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://tiepune1staugust.eventbrite.com/

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

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Pune Joomla User Group Meeting

  • Date: Sat, 2 Aug 6:30am – 8:30am
  • Location: Tekdi Office, #6, Silver Fern Building, Karve Road, Opposite Kothrud Bus Stand & Above Canara Bank

Hey all ! Its been a while since we had a Joomla meetup in Pune. So make sure you don’t miss this one ! From Beginners to advanced users, we have topics to interest all. Plus a chance to socialize & meet Joomlians like yourself !

Schedule

  • 6 30 to 7 00 : Open Networking
  • 7 00 to 8 00 : Tech Sessions
  • 8 00 to 8 30 : Discussions

Session Topics ( 30 mins each)

  1. Joomla 3 (Site Builders) – Are you Building it right ?
  2. 10 mistakes to avoid when writing Joomla code (Developers)

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://www.meetup.com/Joomla-User-Group-Pune/events/194988962/

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

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Global Shapers (GSC) Pune: Tech 4 Dev

  • Date: Sat, 2 Aug 10:00am – 2:00pm
  • Location: Courtyard Marriott, Near Pune Station

A half-day session organized by Global Shapers Community- Pune Hub (an initiative of World Economic Forum) on the theme of “Tech 4 Dev” – How technology is playing an important role in revolutionising the development sector.

The program will be attended by I.T professionals from Amdocs, KPIT, Convertex amongst others companies, NGOs in the city, Youth activists, Students and other like minded individuals. It will be a platform for a wide range of stakeholders to interact and explore possible avenues of engagement.

This 3-hour convention will brainstorm on:

  • Technology in Governments
  • Technology in Politics
  • Technology in Education
  • Technology in Non-Profits

About Global Shapers Community Pune

The Global Shapers Community (GSC), is a World Economic Forum (WEF) initiative that comprises a network of hubs founded and led by young people who are exceptional in their potential, their achievements and their drive to make a contribution to their communities.

The Mission and Vision for the Pune Hub and these are:

  • Mission: ‘To make Pune the world’s most inclusive and caring city’
  • Vision: ‘Leverage the World Economic Forum and Global Shapers Platform, to successfully execute projects that will directly impact every citizen of Pune and will improve Gross Happiness Index (GNH) of Pune > 20% by Dec 2018’.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Prior registration is required: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1T9wRe5aG0ycXnchnmnp1yiGvSL27wyf5XGSJhJyRAIc/viewform

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

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Venture Center Event: Planning and Funding BioTech, HealthTech and other Bio-Enterprises

  • Date: Sat, 2 Aug 10:00am – 12:30pm
  • Location: Library, Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park, Pashan Road

Venture Center presents an event on Planning and Funding Bio-Enterprises with emphasis on Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIRAC)

The primary aim of this event is to in crease awareness around an important grant funding opportunity in the biotechnology and healthcare space, viz. the DBT-BIRAC Biotech Ignition Grant (BIG) scheme. The focus of this event is to provide background information on this grant, the application through funding process-flow, guidance on writing winning proposals, and an opportunity to interact with BIG grantees and learn from their experience.

DBT-BIRAC’s Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG) scheme

  • BIG provides for high level of discovery and innovation in the Biotechnology sector to establish and validate proof of concept, and enable creation of spin-offs. BIG is a very attractive funding scheme for budding bio-entrepreneurs. It is offered as a grant to carry proof of concept and proof of concept validation activities. This is a great opportunity for innovators and entrepreneurs to begin building a start-up.

Broad domains allowed for BIG:
– Health care & medical biotech: Therapeutics, Biologicals, Vaccines & preventives, Diagnostics, Biomedical devices, Tissue engineering, Oncology etc
– Agriculture, food security, secondary agriculture and allied: Agro and plant biotech, Animal biotech, Marine biotech, medicinal and aromatic plants, Seri biotech, Biocontrol/biofertilizers, Food and nutrition, etc
– Industrial product and processes
– Green technology & industrial biotechnology: Biochemical engineering, Biomass value addition to fuels/ chemicals/ materials
– Others: Bio-IT interface, bioinformatics, Analytical methods and new techniques, etc
– Others falling in to DBT mandate

Participants would also get to learn about how to plan a scientific start-up.

About Venture Center

Entrepreneurship Development Center (Venture Center) – a CSIR initiative – is a not-for-profit company hosted by the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. Venture Center strives to nucleate and nurture technology and knowledge-based enterprises by leveraging the scientific and engineering competencies of the institutions in the Pune region in India. The Venture Center is a technology business incubator specializing in technology enterprises offering products and services exploiting scientific expertise in the areas of materials, chemicals and biological sciences & engineering.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend, but prior registration is necessary. Please register here: http://vcevents.pandaform.com/pub/xzyhwf/new

For more information, contact: Miss. Lipika Biswas, Venture Center, Phone: +91-20-20250934/64011024; Email: eventsdesk@venturecenter.co.in

See also: http://www.ipface.org/workshops.php

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

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>@PuneUserGroup event: (Microsoft Technologies) Transforming the Data Center

  • Date: Sat, 2 Aug 10:00am – 5:30pm
  • Location: Sumant Moolgaokar Auditorium, Ground Floor, Wing A, ICC Trade Center, SB Road

In the face of an exploding need for technology that supports the business, we need to transform the datacenter to increase agility and make it easier to deliver resources faster. Today, every area of the business, from marketing to sales to human resources, depends on technology. As a result, the need for IT resources is growing steadily. The move to cloud computing reflects the trend: as business requirements grow, a flexible option for keeping up with that growth is by accessing cloud capacity.

We are all seeing trends that reflect the growth of cloud—the question is: how can IT build a cloud strategy that makes sense? And just as important, how can IT continue to take advantage of the strengths of today’s datacenter while evolving to a new hybrid cloud model? One critical step is upgrading older resources. Now is especially timely for an upgrade as July 14, 2015 marks the end of support date for Windows Server 2003. This provides a wonderful opportunity for you to modernize your infrastructure.

Please join us and learn how latest Microsoft technologies provide great options for reducing cost and complexity, as well as simplifying management. As we mark one year until Windows Server 2003 end of support, we want customers to feel confident that they have a great
path forward. During this event, you’ll learn many features of Cloud and Datacenter management including:

  • Computing with Cloud OS
  • Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Still with Windows Server 2003? Migrate it!
  • Virtualization and Cloud Backup
  • System Center in Datacenter Management

About Pune User Group

Pune User Group (aka PUG) is a Pune (India) based not-for-profit organization, an association of professionals and students interested in Microsoft technology who are dedicated and devoted to the noble cause of spreading knowledge. It is a platform for you to share your experiences and educate professionals through the learnt lessons of the best Gurus in IT indutry….because “Knowledge is wealth..” and we “Gain Knowledge by Sharing knowledge…”

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032592405

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

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PHP Reboot Meetup: Web Security in PHP

  • Date: Sat, 2 Aug 11:00am – 1:00pm
  • Location: GraciousSoft Office, First Floor, Above Jijamata Sahkari Bank, Karve Nagar Bus Stop

Speaker: Kapil Sharma, Technical Architect at Eastern Enterprise with 10 years experience in Web Development.

Web securities in PHP.

Most important factors for a web application are:

  • Performance
  • Maintainability
  • Scalability
  • Reliability and
  • Security

Among developers, Security is one of the most ignored topics. In this session, we will discuss some of the common security threats for a web application and how we can fix them.

Web Security is technology/language independent topic and most of the session will not use any specific programming language. Thus any web developer is most invited to attend the event. However please note, towards the end, we will use simple PHP examples to demonstrate how can we practically take care of security issues.

About PHP Reboot

Today, web development is completely different from what it was two decades ago. PHP matured and developed many new features during this time. However one of the biggest problem with any old language like PHP is, developers have access to lot of old training material/book and learn things which were good in past but not in present.

Major and only goal of PHP reboot is to share and learn, latest and best offering from PHP. This is continuous learning curve and we are here to do it continuously.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://www.meetup.com/PHPReboot/events/187702032/

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

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Talk: Research in Programming by Asst. MD of Microsoft Research India, July 5

External Visitors, ,

CSI Pune presents a talk on “Research in Programming” by Sriram Rajamani, Assistant Managing Director of Microsoft Research India, on July 5, 6pm, at Persistent, SB Road.

Abstract of the Talk

Most people think about programming as a routine implementation activity,
primarily done in the industry, and primarily for economic gain. In this talk
it will be explained, why the topic of programming is an important subject of
research and scientific enquiry, with several interesting and hard questions,
such as: How do you write correct programs? How do you write programs that run
fast on modern multicore processors?  What does it take to program the cloud?
How do you debug a large program? Some research projects at Microsoft Research
India will be presented, that aim to address some issues in these questions.

About the speaker – Sriram Rajamani

Sriram holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley. Currently, he is the assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India. More information on him can be found at: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/sriram/bio.aspx

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here

For any additional info, contact shekhar_sahasrabudhe@persistent.co.in

Overview – Pune User Group: Forum for Microsoft Technologies Developers & Students

Featured, Overviews, , ,

(The Pune User Group is one of Pune’s biggest tech user groups, and is a platform for all people interested in Microsoft Technologies in Pune. In this article, we try to give an overview of PUG, it’s structure, and activities. The answers have mostly been provided by Mahesh Mitkari, co-founder of PUG, with additional inputs from Vikram Pendse and Pradnya Naik.)

What is Pune User Group?

PUG is a group of technology enthusiasts who are dedicated to spreading knowledge about Microsoft Technologies. It consists of people from various educational background and different age groups – students as well as professionals. PUG is a not-for-profit organization, a user group supported by Microsoft Corporation, the International .NET Association (INETA), and GITCA (formerly Culmanis).

How did PUG get started?

PUG was formed in February 2003 through the combined efforts of a few volunteers, Microsoft and INET. It started as an online discussion group for .NET Developers of Pune. In December 2003 the first offline user group meet was held in Wadia College and after this PUG has never looked back back. It’s no more just a .NET user group, and now it became a group for all Microsoft technologies. Every year new sub-groups have been added to PUG and now PUG became a big family – including PUGStudent – Pune User Group for students, PuneITPro – Pune User Group for IT Professionals, where we generally talk about IT related topics like servers, clients, networking etc., PASS Pune Chapter, for SQL experts, and PUG-MED i.e. Pune User Group for Mobile and Embedded Devices, SharePoint, SIG etc.

How big is PUG now and what are its major activities?

PUG is almost 8 years old now. We have around 7 special interest groups, around 20+ campus clubs in various colleges, 2100+ online members, around 8000 mailing list subscribers and a Team of 40+ volunteers. PUG regularly hosts lots of online and offline activities for professionals as well as students. Activities include regular monthly User Group meetings, various Product launch events for Microsoft Products, workshops, boot camps, online webcasts and our very special annual events like DevCon (developers conference for professionals), AcadDevCon (developers conference for students) and SharePoint Day. At college level, we have a team of 20+ MSPs (Microsoft Student Partners) who actively run campus clubs in their colleges and regularly conduct seminars, and workshops.

What help are you getting from Microsoft to run PUG? Also, what other organizations are there that help PUG?

PUG is an independent not-for-profit organization. It relies on the support of its various sponsors. PUG is officially supported by Microsoft Corporation and also by various international Associations like INETA, GITCA, PASS, and Microsoft UGSS. Support comes in various forms, specially funding for events and speakers, pre-release product trainings to our speakers, and books, training material, beta products etc. Along with these there are many IT companies and educational institutes of Pune who always support us by sponsoring our event or providing their Infrastructure for our activities, best example of this I can say is Persistent Systems Ltd.

Has your involvement with PUG helped you personally or professionally? How?

Mahesh Mitkari writes:

Of course, yes! PUG has played a big role in my carrier development. I was part of PUG from its birth, as I was one of the founder-volunteers of PUG. Today I feel very proud of this. I meet many technology gurus at PUG and learn so many things from them which always helps me in my Professional life. I made many friends not only in Pune but many other cities of India. They are just a one click away from me – for professional or personal help. I’ve been awarded “Most Valuable professional (MVP)” award by Microsoft 5 times so far, and I don’t think it could have been possible without PUG and the biggest support of all my friends here.

Vikram Pendse writes:

I joined PUG online forums as regular “User” who logs in to check on the latest Microsoft Technologies at PUG. At that time I was a student doing my post graduation. I got inspired by various PUG enthusiasts and I started conducting PUG sessions in my college and also slowly started contributing to the online forums. PUG lead, Mahesh Mitkari, and other members recognized my contribution and encouraged me to attend PUG meetings and I became a volunteer of PUG. Due to this, I was able to get the Microsoft MVP Award in the Year 2008

It was because of PUG that I started Silverlight activities, and as a result was awarded the First South Asian Silverlight MVP. PUG has given me recognition in the Pune community as well as various other communities across India and outside India as well. PUG has helped me to enrich my technical skills and added much more to me to become good IT Professional. PUG is fun and learning, and it is a good friend and teacher for me, and will be with me for years to come.”

What other related user groups could be created in Pune, and how?

As mentioned earlier, from last 8 years we adding User Group for all Microsoft Technology, While thinking about Expanding PUG and starting other related user group, I think we still have big scope to expand PUG, we still don’t have a User Group for Office Users, Architects, Project Managers, Business owners, and one biggest community of Consumers – the regular users of Windows or MS Office – specially non-technical or semi-technical people.

What do you mean by INETA APAC, GITCA, PASS, MVP, MSP?

Well out of these INETA, GITCA and PASS are international associations who support User groups worldwide. MVP is the award given by Microsoft and MSP is educational program.

  • INETA APAC: The International .NET Association Asia Pacific (INETA APAC) provides structured, peer-based organizational, educational, and promotional support to the growing worldwide community of Microsoft .NET user group, INETA’s mission is to offer assistance and resources to community groups that promote and educate their membership in Microsoft’s .NET technologies. INETA welcomes user group or special interest groups from all facets of the .NET user community including developer, architects, project managers, and IT Professionals.
  • GITCA: The Global IT Community Association represents over 1000 member organizations and over 5 million IT professionals. GITCA is the world’s largest international not-for-profit independent organization powered by dedicated volunteers devoted to the development and growth of the IT community by providing services to support leaders and connect user groups, associations, and student IT organizations. GITCA stands committed to the free exchange of resources, ultimately elevating the status of the IT Professional both in their industry and in the community.
  • PASS: The Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) is an independent, not-for-profit association, dedicated to supporting, educating, and promoting the Microsoft SQL Server community. From local user groups and special interest groups (Virtual Chapters) to webcasts and the annual PASS Community Summit – the largest gathering of SQL Server professionals in the world
  • MVP: Most Valuable Professional: The Microsoft MVP Award recognizes exceptional technical community leaders who foster the free and objective exchange of knowledge by actively sharing their real world expertise with users and Microsoft. Over 100 million people take part in technical communities every year. Microsoft awards around 4000 MVPs, in recognition of their exceptional community contributions, sharing of real world expertise with others. We have around 4000 MVPs in over 90 countries, speaking over 30 languages and awarded across nearly 90 technology areas. Over 65% of MVPs are outside the USA.
  • MSP: The Microsoft Student Partners is a worldwide educational program to sponsor students majoring in disciplines related to technology. The MSP program attempts to enhance students’ employability by offering training in skills not usually taught in academia, including knowledge in various Microsoft technologies.

Event Report: TechWeekend Pune 7 – Mobile Application Development

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TechWeekend Pune 7, on Mobile Application Development was held on Saturday, 19th Feb. These are the live-tweets, collected here for your benefit. Remember, they are live-tweets that were being typed while the event was happening, so they’re not necessarily as coherent and as well-organized as a regular article.

Windows Phone 7 by Mayur Tendulkar

The first talk was by Mayur Tendulkar talking about Windows Phone 7

  • This talk is a basic overview of Windows Phone 7. Important now, because Nokia has now thrown its weight behind it.
  • “If windows is not behaving well, you format your drive and start again. MSFT did same with its Mobile OS. Win Phone 7 is completely new”
  • Mobile phone world suffers from large number of devices of different resolutions that behave differently. This is not true of Win Mobile 7. Windows Phone 7 insists on a standardized hardware & screen configuration. So your Win Phone 7 will always look and behave the same.
    • WinPhone7 screen config: 480×800 or 320×480. No other sizes allowed. S-LCD/AMOLED capacitive touchscreen. 4-point multi-touch
    • WinPhone7 will always have these sensors: A-GPS, proximity sensor, accelerometer, compass, light.
    • All WinPhone7 devices must have these three buttons: Start, Back, Search. (As usual, to shutdown, you press Start 🙂
  • App Development for WinPhone7: regular apps using Silverlight, and game apps using XNA.
    • “Silverlight is just like Flash”. Modern app UI framework. Apparently has 500,000 developers spanning windows, web (and now mobile)
    • Visit the Tata Nano site or the Hard Rock Cafe New York site to see some cool uses of Silverlight
    • The XNA framework for game development is mature and widely accepted – because it was in XBox 360, Windows and Zune.
  • WinPhone7 developers get all the goodness of Visual Studio for developing mobile apps with Visual Studio 2010 Express for WP.
  • Other developer tools: Silverlight Dev Kit. XNA Game Studio 4.0. Expression Blend 4.0. Also VB for WinPhone7.
  • All these development tools for WinPhone7 are free.

This was followed by a walk through of building a WinPhone7 app using Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight.

Some interesting audience Q&A:

  • Q: What languages are supported for WinPhone7 development? A: At this point, only Visual Basic and C#
  • Q: Does WinPhone7 support multi-tasking. A: No. Some standard system services can run in the background; but apps don’t multitask.

Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development by Rohit Ghatol

Next up: Rohit Ghatol talking about cross-platform mobile app development using phonegap, titanium etc.

  • Two ways of developing cross-platform apps. 1. Develop html5 apps for webkit. 2. Use a translator that translates your app to native code.
  • For now, all major mobile platforms have a webkit based browser (except WinPhone7). So writing an app targeting webkit is “cross-platform”
  • Q: Will a webkit based app work with WinPhone7? A: No. But Mango release of WinPhone7 will support html5, so you should be close.
  • Translating common codebase to different native apps – Titanium. Write in JavaScript, and translate to Native.
  • PhoneGap = HTML5 + CSS3 + JavaScript + special ability to make calls to access phone sensors etc.
    • Note: HTML5/CSS3 development for mobile apps works because all phone browsers are much more advanced on this issue than desktop browsers
    • Features supported by phonegap: accelerometer, camera, compass, contacts, file io, geolocation, audio recording, sound, vibration, storage. Note: not all these features are supported on all mobile phone platforms
    • PhoneGap prerequisites: Need to be a html/javascript expert. Also, it doesn’t help you with UI, you need to be able to develop that
    • So with PhoneGap app development, you’ll probably be doing UIs by using JQueryUI or something like that.
    • Note: PhoneGap ultimately creates a native app that users install. Not just a website that they visit in the browser.
  • At this point, Rohit, showed actual PhoneGap code for a mobile app – to write an app that shows a google map of my current location.
  • Big challenge of PhoneGap is that you need to bring your own UI development framework. This is an advantage also! – PhoneGap allows you to have same UI framework for website as well as your mobile app.
  • Rohit’s suggestions for UI framework – 1. GWT 2. jQueryMobile
  • With Titanium, you write apps in Javascript. This is interpreted by MozillaRhino on Android, and by Webkit JavascriptCore on iOS
    • You have two different directories for images – one for Android, & one for iPhone, because they handle images differently.
    • iPhone requires just one size of images. Android allows different images for different screen sizes/resolutions/orientations.
    • Titanium problem – layout is absolute. For people used to the great layout capabilities of Android, this is a big step down
    • Titanium uses native UI (iPhone and Android), where are PhoneGap uses non-native (html/css) UI. Former gives better experience…
  • PhoneGap/Titanium both use Javascript Interpretation, so both can’t do multi-threaded apps
  • Building your own webkit based cross-platform framework makes sense if you want to overcome limitations of phonegap/titanium.
  • This won’t be as clean as phonegap/titanium, but might be good for your specific case. Steal phonegap/titanium code if required!
  • Comparison of PhoneGap vs Titanium. Titanium more proprietary, limited UI, …
    html5/css3/javascript is the future; but not there yet. Until then, write to webkit specs…

Android Performance Tuning by Anand Hariharan

Next speaker was Anand Hariharan talking about Android Performance tuning.

  • For app performance: first focus on what the user wants, don’t just improve performance for the sake of improving performance. Optimize only after measuring performance, and having specific performance goals. A lot of performance tuning, is really about managing user perception. When doing something that will take time, keep user engaged.
  • Don’t optimize everything for performance – you don’t have the time. Focus on the most important user visible features and fix those. In mobile world – reduce features and use the time saved on fixing performance.
  • Manage user perception better: e.g. Apple’s use of loading a bitmap image of app at beginning to give impression that app has loaded. At app startup time, load a bitmap that looks like your app without the latest data. Gives impression that app load is fast.
  • Performance tips: All platforms have a “recommended best practices” doc. Read that – many developers dont 🙂 e.g. Android best practice: for tasks that take time, use a background service (not an activity).
  • Anand talking about how to avoid an “Application Not Responding” (ANR) dialog for your app
    • An android app is single-threaded. So don’t do io (network or disk) synchronously. Use an async mechanism.
  • Keep activities small. Don’t overload activities. Use different activities to do different things.
  • Use the minimum number of views. Do not use a deeply nested view hierarchy. Your view hierarchy shouldn’t be more than 3 levels deep. If you’re views are getting complicated, consider writing custom views.
  • Track memory allocations. Garbage collection happening during user activity causes slowdowns.
  • Close your cursors. Otherwise garbage collector cannot reclaim memory. Then you get GC cycles, and slowdowns.
  • use onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() to retain large amounts of data between device orientation changes (landscape to portrait)
  • Use SoftReferences to cache data so that the garbage collector can reclaim the memory when required.
  • Avoid database writes as far as possible. Writes take 5ms to 200ms. And full SD card has slower writes.
  • Avoid using data from mutiple tables in a single list (AdapterView). First copy data from multiple tables to a single table and show that. e.g. in Email app, subject and body came from different tables. This really slowed down the inbox view (which shows first line of body).
  • Tools to help with android app optimization: Fix your views using: hierarchyviewer, layoutopt. Check flow & times using: traceview. Use zipalign to optimize your apk (improves app load time).
  • Above all, you must understand what you’re optimizing and why. Measure, measure, measure.

TechWeekend7 (#tw7): Mobile Application Development – 19 Feb

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TechWeekend 7 (#tw7) will focus on Mobile Application Development, and we have these talks lined up:

  • Application Development for Windows Phone 7 & Marketplace – by Mayur Tendulkar. With Nokia throwing all its weight behind Windows Phone 7 for all its smartphones, Windows Phone 7 has suddenly become a much more important platform than it was before. Get an overview of what Windows Phone 7 is in this talk. Mayur works on various mobile and location aware technologies at Zevenseas India. Click here for Mayur’s full background
  • Cross-Platform Mobile Application Development – by Rohit Ghatol. With the smartphone market becoming increasingly fragmented, frameworks like PhoneGap and Titanium are becoming popular as means of writing an app just once and deploying it across different mobile platforms. Rohit will talk about his experiences with using PhoneGap/Titanium, and will also touch upon how you could create your own cross-platform framework. Rohit is an associated architect for QuickOffice – the mobile office software suite. Click here for Rohit’s full background
  • Performance Tuning for Android Applications – by Anand Hariharan. Performance is a very critical factor for success of a mobile app, since cellphones are still under-powered as compared to the desktops. This talk will cover Java/Android performance tips, best practices; benchmarking and tracing tools, and what areas to look at in your app for improving performance. Anand is Director of Engineering–Product Development at the India office of Android-based tablet software maker TapNTap. Click here for Anand’s full background
  • Using HTML5/CSS3 for Mobile App development – Arnab Chakraborty. HTML5 is fast becoming an alternative to native apps for mobile app development. This talk will cover the specific features of HTML5 and of CSS3 that make it appropriate for development of mobile apps. Arnab is a senior developer at Thoughtworks. Click here for Arnab’s full profile

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here

About Techweekend

TechWeekend Pune is a volunteer run activity. TechWeekend talks are held on the 3rd Saturday of every month from 10am to 2pm at Sumant Moolgaonkar Auditorium, Ground Floor, ICC Trade Center, SB Road. Each TechWeekend event features 3 or 4 talks on advanced technical topics. These events are free for all to attend. See PuneTech articles about past techweekends to get an idea of the events.

Join the techweekend mailing list to keep in touch with the latest TechWeekend activities.

About the Sponsor – Microsoft

Many thanks to Microsoft for sponsoring the venue for Techweekend. Microsoft wants to get more closely involved with the tech community in Pune, and particularly the open source enthusiasts – with the intention of making everybody aware that their cloud technologies (like Azure) actually play well with open source, and that you can deploy your php applications, your drupal/joomla installs on Azure.

Register

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here

TechVista 2011: Microsoft Research’s Annual Showcase Event – Jan 21

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TechVista 2011 is a one-day event by Microsoft Research India to Showcase the work done by Microsoft Research worldwide. This year, it is being held in Pune on 21st January. The event consists of two parts: a morning session that consists of keynote lectures (speakers include Rick Rashid; Mathai Joseph), and an afternoon session with demos (technologies from Microsoft Research Labs worldwide), poster sessions (by PhD students across India), and technical lectures (by Microsoft Researchers).

This event is free for all to attend. Register here if you want to attend the whole day, or register here if you want to only attend the afternoon session

Morning Session Details

  • Dr. Richard F. Rashid, Senior Vice President, Microsoft Research, and the head of Microsoft Research worldwide. (Note: Rick Rashid was also the principal developer of the Mach OS Kernel, which influenced many operating systems, including Mac OS X.)
  • Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman, Microsoft India.
  • Dr. P. Anandan, Managing Director, Microsoft Research India.

The morning session will also feature two distinguished lectures:

  • “Kinect: the start of something NUI” by Prof. Andrew Blake FRS, Managing Director, Microsoft Research Cambridge and a key member of the team that developed the Machine Learning technology for Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect.
  • A talk by Dr. Mathai Joseph, Advisor, TCS, and member ACM India Council titled “The Time is Now!”. He is also the former Executive Director, Tata Research Design and Development Center.

Afternoon Session Details

This session will feature a large number of cutting edge demos from the different Microsoft Research labs worldwide, technical lectures by leading researchers and a poster display by Indian Ph.D. students. These will take place simultaneously; participants can attend talks or the demo and PhD poster sessions based on their specific interests.

The technical lectures include the following:

  • Dr. Wolfram Schulte, Principal Researcher and founding manager of the Research in Software Engineering group, Microsoft Research Redmond. Talk: Formal Methods: A Disruptive Technology!
  • Joseph Joy, Principal Software Architect, Microsoft Research India. Talk: Rich Interactive Narratives: Taking Storytelling to the Next Level
  • Dr. Bill Thies, Researcher, Technology for Emerging Markets, Microsoft Research India. Talk: Bringing Programmability to Experimental Biology

The demos encompass a large spectrum of fields in computer science and represent some of the cutting edge research being conducted at Microsoft Research. This session will also feature some of the newest developments across other divisions of Microsoft. Click here for demo details

The Ph.D. poster display will showcase some of the best work by Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Ph.D. students from India, selected through a competitive process. Click here for a list of posters

Logistics

The event is from 8am to 6pm at the Westin, Koregaon Park. This event is free for all to attend. Register here if you want to attend the whole day, or register here if you want to only attend the afternoon session

See the event page for more details

DevCon2010 – Pune Microsoft Technologies User Groups Annual Developer Conference – 18/19 Dec

Events,

The Pune (Microsoft Technologies) User Group is a very active forum for developers who work with Microsoft products. In addition to regular events, they also have an annual conference which is attended by a very large number of people.

This year, DevCon 2010 will be held on 18th and 19th December, at MCCIA Trade Tower, Room 505, in the A-Wing, on 5th Floor. This is at the ICC convention center at S.B. Road. It goes from 9am to 5:30pm on both days.

This event is free for all to attend, but you need to register.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any other information about the event – the schedule, the sessions, the speakers, because the conference website is in Silverlight which I don’t have installed. But if you are interested in Microsoft Technologies, then you probably don’t want to miss this event.

Techweekend Pune – Rich Internet Apps (HTML5, Javascript, Flash, Silverlight) – 27 Nov

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The desktop is dead. The browser and the mobile have killed it.

For years now, there has been a shift away from traditional desktop apps and native OS GUIs towards browser based interfaces for all applications, whether they’re personal/consumer apps, or enterprise apps.

Now, with the rise of very smart phones like iPhone, tablet devices, 3G internet available everywhere, and the coming of age of rich interactions in HTML with HTML5 and javascript, “ubiquitous computing” has finally arrived. People expect to be able to work on their applications from anywhere – from their desktop PC at work, or their laptop from home, or their iPad or iPhone or Blackberry when on the road. And the easiest way of ensuring that your app is available on all these platforms is to go with a “RIA” platform.

That’s what we’ll discuss this weekend on Saturday, November 27, at MCCIA Hall in ICC Towers on S.B. Road. We will talk about HTML5, and why it will take over the world. We will talk about how Javascript is the one language you cannot afford to not know, whether you’re talking about apps on your laptop or on your mobile phone. We will talk about Phonegap and Titanium, cross-platform platforms that allow you to write once using Javascript/HTML/CSS and run the app on desktops or mobiles alike. We’ll talk about Adobe’s offerings – AIR and Flash, and how they are the “incumbent” rulers of this space, and will not easily lose to HTML5. And we’ll talk about Microsoft’s Silverlight, and how that plans to break into this club.

The talk is free for all, and you must come, if you want to know what the world will be like for the next 3 years. You need to register at http://techweekend4.eventbrite.com. That page also contains the current list of speakers (which is being updated as we get more confirmations).

Yes, you, the people working on desktop frontend GUIs using java or .NET or VB or Qt – you are the ones who definitely need to come. Some might argue that desktop apps are certainly not dead – definitely not in enterprises. That is true, but only in the same sense as mainframes are still not dead in the enterprise, and COBOL is still not dead in the enterprise. But, for the forward-thinking, RIAs are the way to go, even when you are confined to the insides of your enterprise – just the expansion of that term will change to Rich Intranet Apps. That’s all.

Many thanks to Microsoft for sponsoring the venue for Techweekend. Microsoft wants to get more closely involved with the tech community in Pune, and particularly the open source enthusiasts – with the intention of making everybody aware that their cloud technologies (like Azure) actually play well with open source, and that you can deploy your php applications, your drupal/joomla installs on Azure.

Microsoft Office 2010 Launch Event by PUG – Aug 7

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What: Pune (Microsoft Technologies) User Group‘s Microsoft Office 2010 Launch Event
When: Saturday, 7 August, 9am-1pm
Where: Sumant Moolgaonkar Auditorium, ICC, SB Road
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Register here

PUG is Pune's user group for Microsoft Technologies. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles related to PUG.
PUG is Pune's user group for Microsoft Technologies. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles related to PUG.

PUG Developer Summit

Microsoft Office 2010 Launch Event

Pune’s Microsoft Technologies User Group will have a half-day event this Saturday to give developers details of the latest features in Office. Pushkar Bhat will speak about what’s new in Microsoft Office 2010, and Aviraj Ajgekar will talk about Microsoft Online Services.

About the Speaker – Aviraj Ajgekar

Aviraj is a Computer Engineer from Mumbai and currently working with Microsoft India. In his present role he’s accountable for managing IT Infrastructure of Microsoft India – West Region. An active member of IT Professional communities across India specially Mumbai User Group and Pune User Group supported by Microsoft. A real blogger, he is very compulsive on adding his thoughts to online blogs, forums, community and media. You can check his technology blog at http://blogs.technet.com/aviraj. He is very fanatical about speaking on IT Professional topics such as technology screencasts for Microsoft TechNet EDGE @ http://edge.technet.com/people/aviraj. He a regular speaker at various Microsoft Events such TechEd, MS TechDays, Virtual TechDays, Microsoft India Webcasts and many more technology events. In his spare time he likes to spend time with his family, hang around with friends, listening to rock music and he’s also passionate about long drives. You can follow him on twitter @aviraj111

About the Speaker – Pushkar Bhat

Pushkar is a Solution Specialist at Microsoft; he works with customers in the Manufacturing and ITeS vertical on solutions for Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Portal Strategies, Document Management and Business Process management. His specific area of interest is in B2B and B2C Collaboration Portals which integrate analytics and innovation management frameworks for large enterprise. Another area which I have worked off and on is Enterprise Project management. He is also keeping alive my interest in the area of Demand Planning, Supply chain optimization, Sales Reporting and Sales Force Effectiveness.

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