Introduction to Windows 8 Contracts

Windows 8 Contracts are an agreement between one or more apps. They enable your app to connect with other apps already installed on the system, the web, or devices. Contracts also allow your app to stay relevant and connected to a growing ecosystem of apps as new ones become available in the Windows Store. Watch this video to learn more about Windows 8 Contracts.
See also:

• App contracts and extensions (Windows Store apps)

See also related videos here:

• File Picker Contract
• Play To Contract
• Print Contract
• Search Contract
• Settings Contract
• Share Contract
• Tap and Send

Erik Meijer, Immo Landwerth, and Andrew Arnott: Immutable Collections for .NET

Erik Meijer, Immo Landwerth, and Andrew Arnott: Immutable Collections for .NET

Erik Meijer interviews .NET team PM Immo Landwerth and Software Developer Andrew Arnott. The topic is Immutable Collections, a new set of immutable types for .NET. You can play around with these today as part of a preview release (NuGet link below). Tune in!

Niners asked questions in advance and some of them were addressed. Thanks again for asking and sorry we didn't get to all of them, but many of the topics were covered (what, why, how, etc...).
Over the last years .NET added many features to make writing multithreaded applications easier. This includes the Task Parallel Library (TPL) as well as the new async/await keywords features to reduce the friction when writing asynchronous code. However, it's still challenging to keep mutable state under control when multiple threads are involved. A common approach is to make use of immutable state that can be passed freely between different threads. - Immo Landwerth
The NuGet package preview includes these types:

• ImmutableStack<T>
• ImmutableQueue<T>
• ImmutableList<T>
• ImmutableHashSet<T>
• ImmutableSortedSet<T>
• ImmutableDictionary<K, V>
• ImmutableSortedDictionary<K, V>

Interfaces for each of these types are also defined to facilitate exchange of immutable collection types that may be implemented differently to optimize for very specific performance or memory requirements.
See Andrew's blog for more detailed information (on immutable types for .NET and more. Lots of great info...).

Bring a little Bing to your Windows 7 desktop

Bing 10/22/2009 11:03 AM

Congratulations go out to the Windows 7 team on today’s launch – it’s a great product!
And to show our support for Windows 7, I’m excited to announce our first ever downloadable wallpaper theme for Windows 7 – Bing’s Best. A lot of people ask us for desktop versions of our images. And now you (and your friends, and your family, and your casual acquaintances) can get them!
The homepage team selected the top images from June, July, and August, and then worked with the Windows 7 personalization team to create a theme pack featuring these 20 gorgeous wallpapers:

The theme is now available via the Windows Personalization Gallery.
You can also get Bing right in your Windows 7 Windows Explorer. See how to integrate Bing into Windows 7 in three minutes or less to find out how!
Enjoy!
Stephanie Horstmanshof
Editorial lead

Best of Bing 4 is here!

Bing 10/12/2010 10:43 AM

Our latest Bing’s Best Windows 7 theme pack puts you in the middle of a storm on the plains, takes you ice fishing with a Kingfisher, and offers a seal’s eye view of a kelp forest.
There are 18 wallpapers in all… here’s a sneak peak at a few of them:

To download the full theme pack, go to the Windows Personalization Gallery. If you missed the other Bing’s Best themes, you can download them from the same site.

Enjoy!
Stephanie Horstmanshof
Managing Editor
Follow the homepage team on Twitter
Find Bing on Facebook

Bing Gets More Social with Facebook

Bing

10/13/2010 11:20 AM

• Comments (14)

Please note that information contained within this post has been updated.  For the latest information regarding Bing social search features please see the following update. - Bing Team, 11/2/2010

As you read in Satya’s post, today we announced a significant expansion of our partnership with Facebook, where Bing will provide much more personalized experiences to you by allowing you to bring your Facebook friends into your search experience. We think the addition of this new “social signal” will allow us to deliver a number of valuable enhancements into the Bing experience.
Today, we want to share two features we will be rolling out in the days to come, that are a starting point in our journey to make Bing more social, and continue to make Bing the best place to come to make decisions and complete tasks.
Enhancing Results with Facebook Likes
People ask their friends for information to help make decisions all the time. How was the food in that new restaurant, should I go see that movie in the theatre or wait till DVD, or what do you think of that hot new phone? Today Bing launches a new feature called Liked Results, which uses Facebook “like” information to help you discover new information and get more personalized results in Bing.
Original Bing Results


Let me give you an example of how this can really help you get better results. Recently, I headed to San Francisco and was looking for a great steak restaurant. In typical fashion I searched for it and got a great list of restaurant results with maps, phone numbers and even reviews to help me narrow the choices. Now with Liked Results I discover a restaurant called Alexander’s Steakhouse that my friends also like. This result is not only personalized for me due to the fact that my friends like it, but it is actually put into the top results based on this social signal.
Bing with Liked Results


While Liked Results won’t show up for every query, this is just one of many examples where the social information from your friends in Facebook can really add richness and depth to standard web results to help you make more informed decisions.
Facebook Profile Search
More than 4% of Search Engine queries are related to finding people. Yet most search engines simply return the same bunch of web links for everybody, which can make it difficult to find the right person without a lot of effort. Welcome to Facebook Profile Results. Let’s say I’m looking for an old high school friend Brian Lee. A traditional search gives me famous Hockey players, a pro wrestler, actors, photographers, and a whole bunch more. But by bringing my Facebook friends with me into Bing, I can narrow down my options to help me find the right Brian Lee – the one from my high school. We’ve also enabled you to take action and add the friend, or even send them a message to make the task of finding the right person that much easier.
                      
Remember, You’re in Control
One of the top things that privacy experts emphasized, and customers told us about all the Facebook features, was that privacy and control were very important to enabling Facebook information within Bing. So, we took that feedback very seriously and put user privacy at the core to all these features in Bing.  Bing’s “Liked Results”, for example, will surface content that is designated as “public” and linked to a person’s Facebook friends. This is the same information someone could access by viewing their Facebook network directly, except it adds relevancy by being presented alongside “traditional” Bing search results.
Our goal is to deliver the most recently shared links and information in a way that demonstrates our commitment to user privacy. While the social search feature only uses information from an individual’s Facebook network, we take additional steps to provide customers with greater control over their information and to help safeguard people’s privacy. Some key functions we’ve built include:
· You will be notified that we will be enhancing your Bing experience before we actually do it, with an opportunity to say “disable” or to go and learn more before you decide if you want to take advantage of the feature.
· People will only see Facebook Profile Search results for people in their Facebook network when signed into Facebook. Users will only see “like” information from their Facebook friends. In both cases, only information that is intended to be shared broadly across the internet is shared.
· Facebook requires users to be 13 or older to access its services, and Bing’s Facebook Profile Search feature will only surface results for users who are 18 or older based upon their Facebook profile.
While the benefits of a more personalized search experience are enabled by default if you are signed into Facebook, there is a control feature that sits at the top of the Bing Page and a notification with first five searches in Bing that enables customers to learn more about the feature or turn it off the feature within Bing with a few simple clicks.
A final question we heard is whether people can see what you’re searching for. Your searches are private; your friends cannot see what you are searching for. Bing only connects with your Facebook network to bring you the content they have “liked” and the people in your network you know. Your search information is not shared back with your Facebook network.
Personalized Results Coming Soon
Today we are announcing these two new exciting features with Facebook – Liked Results and Facebook Profile Search. We are excited to launch these features to give Bing and Facebook customers more personalized results and help them make more informed decisions. Look for your personalized results to be live in very soon. In the meantime, we encourage you to check out this video to see these features in action. And once you try it, we hope that if you love Facebook, you’ll love Bing’s personalized results too.

Paul Yiu – Group Program Manager
Todd Schwartz – Director of Product Management

Pranav Kalyan in puthiya thalaimurai channel

Pranav Kalyan in puthiya thalaimurai channel - Pranav MCTS achievement in tamil news channel..

9 Year Old Indian Origin Boy Is Youngest Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist

9 Year Old Indian Origin Boy Is Youngest Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist - 9 Year Old Indian Origin Boy Is Youngest Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist

Pranav Kalyan, a nine year old boy now has the distinction of being the youngest Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist ( MCTS), according to a Times Of India report. Pranav's father originally hails from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. With this distinction, Pranav surpasses the record that was held by Babar Iqbal of Dubai who was 12 years old at the time of obtaining the certification.

Pranav is a fourth grader at Willow Elementary School in the American state of California. He cracked the MCTS exam in the ASP.Net platform, and hopes to be a scientist one day.

“As a toddler, Pranav was more fascinated by computers than toys. He started writing small software programs at the age of six.”, said Pranav's father Kalyan to the Times Of India.

“He is capable of solving problems in differential calculus and integral calculus. His efficiency in mathematics helped him write programs”, Mr Kalyan went on to state.

This, sure is an amazing feat as writing ASP. Net programs at the age of nine certainly requires some intellect. The boy had earlier participated in the Math Bee competition that was organized by the North South Foundation of the United States. Pranav was only seven years old at this time.

PIO, 9, is youngest MS certified techie

PIO, 9, is youngest MS certified techie - Nine-year-old Pranav Kalyan, an Indian origin fourth-grader living in the US, has become the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) in ASP and .NET.

“As a child, Pranav would play on the computer than with toys. He started writing small programmes when he was 6. I was so fascinated by this that I started motivating him to take up Microsoft certification, which will add value to his current skills,” Pranav’s elated father Kalyan Kumar, who works at Bank of America in Los Angeles, told The Asian Age on Tuesday.
Pranav wants to pursue research and become a scientist.
Even as the rest of Palamedu in Madurai district was busy watching and taking part in Jallikattu on Tuesday, a 70-year-old man was celebrating the triumph of his little grandson over computer in faraway Los Angeles. Mr R. Mohan, who has spent most of his life as a small-time clerk, is a proud man today after his nine-year-old grandson created the world record.
Mr Mohan’s son Mr Kalyan Kumar is the first graduate in the family and lives in Los Angeles, working at Bank of America. “I am proud of my grandson’s achievement. We celebrated his success by cooking mutton biryani today,” said Mr Mohan, who struggled to help his third son Mr Kalyan pursue his education.