Infosys | Microsoft

Even though what we have is still the initial developer preview, creating Metro applications seems to be gaining popularity in developer communities. Although we can create interesting applications using HTML5 and WinJS or XAML and C# or VB.NET, on top of WinRT, there are some unanswered questions like working with databases.

Any enterprise applications typically will work with some database at the backend. As of now, however, WinRT does not have any API for database connectivity.

Continue reading "Database access in Windows 8 Metro Application" »

Posted by Atul Gupta at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Microsoft launched Kinect for Windows a few days ago and this seems to be a good time to touch upon its business prospects. Infosys has been experimenting with Kinect since a while and we are quite excited with the possibilities. Kinect has an interesting combination of sensors including depth sensor, RGB camera, multi-array microphone and accelerometer. This caught the attention of innovators who created several Kinect "hacks", which far exceed any applications Microsoft would have imagined, when they originally released Kinect as a gaming controller. The main advantage of Kinect for Windows (over the Xbox version) is the "near mode" that allows subjects to be sensed as close as 40 cm. as compared to around 80 cm. in the default mode (and the Xbox version of Kinect). This opens up the doors for applications where proximity is preferred. So, let's see some business applications:

Continue reading "Exploring the business prospects of Kinect " »

Posted by Vikas Dewangan at 5:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Microsoft annouced the other day availability of Kinect for Windows SDK. This version can be used to build commercial application, something which wasn't possible with the earlier SDK. Alongside a new hardware device is also available now (priced higher than the earlier one).

While this SDK will work earlier device as well you would not be able to leverage the new near mode support which allows you to detect objects mearly 40 cms from the device unless you use the new device as well. Additionally if you are migrating your earlier code to the new SDK, you may want to use the Microsoft.Kinect.Migration assembly to aid the migration effort.

Posted by Atul Gupta at 4:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 

Location Based Services (LBS) are increasingly becoming popular especially in the consumer market. Due to inherent capability in devices to provide the user location and penetration of smartphones, Location based products and services are readily adopted by the consumers and enterprises as well.

Location Based Services take the geo-spatial data as an input from the resource or a device and provides the services that are relevant to that location. Multiple approaches can be used to locate a resource and provide the context based service to the user. In this Blog I will limit my discussion to the Device-Centric approach in which the LBS Provider gives the app to the subscriber, who then uses it to check-in at a specific location. Check-in is the term commonly used to refer the arrival of a user at a particular location. 

Continue reading "Location Based Services Value Chain" »

Posted by Manoj Jajoo at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In Windows 8, content can be shared between two metro applications using Share Contract. Content can be of below types.

• Plain Text
• URI
• HTML
• Formatted Text
• Bitmaps
• Files
• Data from isolated storage

Continue reading "Share Text Content between two Windows 8 Metro Application" »

Posted by Dhananjay Kumar at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Web Storage allows writing information at client side. Using Web Storage data can be written at client side as key value pair. There is no supported query language of Web Storage. Web Storage size varies from 2 MB to 10 MB. Usual size is often 5 MB. Web Storage is different from cookies in term of capacity. Web Storage offers much more capacity than cookies. Unlikely cookies, Web Storage data are absolute client side data. Web Storage data does not go to server with each request hence improves performance of the site.

Continue reading "Web Storage in HTML5" »

Posted by Dhananjay Kumar at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Most of us are familiar with metro applications by now. Applications for Phone 7 and Windows 8 use the Metro design principles. Inspiration for metro design comes from public transport systems where the focus is on displaying important information with great clarity and readability. Let's try to understand what it means to develop metro applications in the context of Windows 8.

Continue reading "Understanding Metro Style Applications" »

Posted by Mani Tripathi at 6:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have been coming across a lot of confusion regarding development of Windows 8 Metro style application. Will try to clear out some of the confusion in the air.

What is Metro about it?

Metro Applications follow the design principles of Metro like content before chrome, focus on typography, fast and fluid, alive in motion etc. Focus of metro application is on the content that needs to be displayed .Hence all menus, taskbar and other unnecessary controls have moved to the app bar or charms . Charms can be considered to be a system level menu that is used to perform common applications like Search\Share etc. across Metro Applications. There is a lot of emphasis on fonts, scale and weight in the Metro design. Microsoft has come up with Seago UI font for developing Metro applications. Metro UI relies on usage of tiles that are alive with notifications and animations. New controls provided with XAML and WinJS are already designed according to the Metro design principles. Hence when you use Expression Blend\Visual Studio 2011 etc. and use the controls as per the technologies selected(XAML\HTML), your application gets a Metro look automatically.

Continue reading "What it means to develop Metro Applications for Windows 8 " »

Posted by Mani Tripathi at 5:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Further to the Windows 8 blogs by my colleagues Atul and Mani, I would like to look at a rather different subject - the interesting shift Windows 8 is bringing in personal computing devices. With the new Metro-style interface, Windows 8 is uniquely poised to cater to both touch devices like tablets and devices with keyboard input like desktops and laptops. In fact, we are today witnessing an upheaval of laptop design to accommodate a tablet mode, which is bound to become an indispensible feature of Windows 8 laptops. Consumers are now demanding the best of both worlds - a laptop that can be dually used as a tablet (also called convertible laptops/tablets or as some people call it - "laplets"). There have been a few designs of this type earlier, but Windows 8 seems to have set this market alight.

Continue reading "Windows 8 convertible laptops: Who will get it right?" »

Posted by Vikas Dewangan at 6:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cloud and HPC together helps to resolve significant number of challenges around Big Data processing. However one needs to consider several aspects while weaving a Big Data solution around them. As part of "Data Insight and Social BI" executive update for CXOs, here is a whitepaper published with Cutter and can be downloaded by Cutter users only.
However for the readers of this forum, I have explicitly requested access and Cutter has been kind enough to provide a URL for our reader's access.

Posted by Sudhanshu Hate at 5:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)