Thursday, December 18, 2003

Book Review from Mobile Software Developer's Blog From: Doug Reilly, Mobile Software Developer's Blog http://blog.mobilizedsoftware.com/archives/000843.html Book Review: Building Solutions with the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework Recently a copy of Building Solutions with the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework: Architecture and Best Practices for Mobile Development by Dan Fox and Jon Box crossed my desk. A huge number of books come across my desk, and this book happened to have arrived as I am also working on a review for Dr. Dobb's Journal on a couple of .NET Compact Framework books. These two books each weigh in at about 1000 pages, while this book is about 400 pages. This is a "small book" in the best sense of the word. Sometimes you want a book that tells you everything about a topic, and other times you just want a book that will give you guidance without the need to cover every detail. This is such a book. That is not to say that the book does not cover the topic. In some respects, the authors seem to have covered the topics that I care about. For instance, I have been poking around looking for best practices for determining if a Pocket PC is connected to the network. In looking at the two books I am doing for the Dr. Dobb's review as well as another book concerned solely with Pocket PC Networking, I did not find a better explanation of what is required than in this book. I will be looking at sensing connections in upcoming entries. This is not a book with huge amounts of code, but in general the code that is present is there for a reason, and you will likely find yourself using a fair amount of the code. Especially useful was the fairly large section of the book devoted to synchronizing with remote data. When you come right down to it, often synchronizing data is the biggest problem in any mobile application. Another major area of concern these days is the area of security, and this is also covered as well, both security of the application proper as well as security of communications from the mobile device. Overall, this is a very good book. Don't be put off by the relatively small size of the book. In this case, good things do come in small packages! 12:55:44 PM    comment []

MDC 2004 announced Microsoft Mobile DevCon is the premier developer event for building and bringing to market mobile applications, content and services for the Windows Mobile and Windows platforms.  This a must attend event for developers seeking knowledge about the latest platform advances for mobile technologies, including Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs and Smartphones, .NET Compact Framework, SQL Server CE, ASP.NET, and MapPoint Location Server and other mobile technologies. Together with VSLive! San Francisco 2004 This year's Microsoft Mobile DevCon is happening together with VSLive! San Francisco.  VSLive! provides pragmatic, technical content on building .NET applications today - plus you get a preview of tomorrow's hottest tools from "Whidbey" and Indigo" to "Yukon", to help you plan your applications now to work with emerging technologies. Registering for the VSLive! Gold Passport gains you access to all Microsoft Mobile DevCon and VSLive! technical content. 12:23:30 PM    comment []

EMC's Latest Acquisition: VMware Tim Landgraves, the RD from Louisville, forwarded this to me this morning. http://www.vmware.com/news/releases/emc.html EMC to Acquire VMware, Advancing Convergence of Server and Storage Virtualization HOPKINTON, Mass. & PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 15, 2003--EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), the world leader in information storage and management, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Palo Alto-based VMware, Inc., a rapidly growing, privately held software company and the world leader in Intel-based virtual computing software, in a cash transaction valued at approximately $635 million. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, and is expected to be completed early in the first quarter of 2004. The acquisition of VMware will play a key role in EMC's strategy to help customers lower their costs and simplify their operations by deploying virtualization technologies across their heterogeneous IT infrastructure to create a single pool of available storage and computing resources. This "Virtual Information Infrastructure" will enable organizations to dynamically configure and reconfigure their compute and storage environments with no downtime as their business needs change. EMC expects VMware's leadership in server virtualization, together with EMC's innovation in storage virtualization, will serve as a strong foundation for next-generation information lifecycle management solutions. VMware's technology enables multiple operating systems -- including Microsoft Windows, Linux and NetWare -- to run simultaneously and independently on the same Intel-based server or workstation and dynamically move live applications across systems with no business disruption. These "virtual machines" integrate seamlessly into existing physical infrastructures and management frameworks, allowing users to see resources as if they were dedicated to them, while administrators manage and optimize those resources globally across the enterprise…   11:15:58 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Jon Box. Last update: 9/1/2004; 12:05:23 AM.