Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 is RELEASED - Here's 5 minute videos to get you up to speed quick

Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 is RELEASED - Here's 5 minute videos to get you up to speed quick:

Jason Zander announced today that Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 is RELEASED to web. The .NET Web Tools Team (the team I'm on) has coverage on their blog as well. I thought I'd showcase some Tiny Happy Features that the team worked on just because it made life better. Some are large some are small, but all are tiny happy features.
I'll continue for a few more Tiny Happy Features over the next few weeks but this last week I took some time and recorded 13 (ya, thirteen, oy) short videos to show you guys these features in action. These are SHORT videos that are at most 4 to 6 minutes. It's hard to watch 60 to 90 minute screencast so I did these little one-take quick shots so you could watch them at lunch.
If you watch all these videos it will take you less than an hour and you'll have a good practical idea of what's new in Web Development and Tools with Visual Studio 2012. This is by no means exhaustive, but it's a lot.
The other concept that's worth pointing out is One ASP.NET. We've pulled the Web Tooling and Templates out into extensions in Visual Studio 2012. This means we can update Web Tools without updating all of Visual Studio. I talked about this in the One ASP.NET keynote at aspConf. We'll be updating the tools - not in major scary ways - but in useful and important ways that make front end web development easier. We'll look at small updates either quarterly or maybe semi-annually so when a new technique comes out you don't have to wait for the next version of Visual Studio.

Download Visual Studio 2012

MSDN Subscribers can download now at the MSDN Subscriber Download Page. For volume licensing customers, Visual Studio 2012 products will be on the Volume Licensing Service Center tomorrow. If you want to download Visual Studio 2012 free trial versions, or to download the free Express versions, head over to the the Visual Studio product website.
Here's the 13 short videos showing each of my favorite features in just a few minutes.

Model Binding

HTML Editor

CSS Editor

JavaScript Editor

Page Inspector

ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms Strongly Typed Data Controls

Web Publishing Improvements

ASP.NET MVC 4

ASP.NET Web API

Bundling and Optimization

SignalR and Web Sockets

Async and Await

OAuth in the Default ASP.NET 4.5 Templates

Related Links

• Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 is RELEASED - Jason Zander's Blog
• The  .NET Web Tools Team and the new Web Tools in Visual Studio 2012
• ASP.NET vNext Videos

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© 2012 Scott Hanselman. All rights reserved.

Source Filmmaker

Source Filmmaker:

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Watch High-Speed Trading Bots Go Berserk - Technology Review

Watch High-Speed Trading Bots Go Berserk - Technology Review:

Watch High-Speed Trading Bots Go Berserk

A chart shows the ascent of high-speed algorithmic trading, a phenomenon that is unnerving the financial markets.

25 comments

WILL KNIGHT

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

The animated .gif above shows the rise of high-frequency trading across several U.S. stock exchanges over the last five years. You'll notice that there's relatively little activity in 2007, followed by spikes in activity at the opening and close of the market starting in 2008. And then, sometime around the start of 2010, activity becomes much, much more frenetic and erratic. The image was originally posted by Nanex, a company that provides market data to traders.

Algorithmic trading lets financial firms to spot and exploit market patterns at lightning speeds. This can bring a tidy profit, but it also puts computers in charge of making decisions that can cost a company millions, and that may have an unpredictable effect on the rest of the market.

The ascent of high-frequency trading has long been a concern within the financial industry (see “Trading Shares in Milliseconds”). But criticism reached a fever pitch last week when Knight Capital Group, a well respected and fairly conservative trading firm, suffered catastrophic losses when one of its algorithms went haywire for 30 minutes. Reuters’ financial blogger, Felix Salmon, suggests that the chart above shows that algorithmic trading is already out of hand:

The stock market today is a war zone, where algobots fight each other over pennies, millions of times a second. Sometimes, the casualties are merely companies like Knight, and few people have much sympathy for them. But inevitably, at some point in the future, significant losses will end up being borne by investors with no direct connection to the HFT [high-frequency trading] world, which is so complex that its potential systemic repercussions are literally unknowable.

(Thanks to Tom for the tip).

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Artificial skin lets robots feel

Artificial skin lets robots feel:

BioTac Artificial Skin Technology is sure to be a storm with Robotics Designers. Giving them the opportunity to add a third sense to there robotic marvels. Now they can have the sense of touch to go along with existing technologies of sight and of sound.  Thanks to the technology coming out of the University of Southern California making this possible.
They have chosen to call their sensor BioTac, which is a new type of tactile sensor designed to mimic the human fingertip with its soft flexible skin. The sensor makes it possible to identify different types of texture by analyzing the vibrations produced as the sensor brushes over materials. This sensor is also capable of measuring pressure applied and  ambient temperature around the finger tip, expect to see this technology in next gen prosthetics. Let us know your thoughts on it.
[via technabob]

Filed under: Medical hacks, news

I'd Kill to Play Games on This 72-Screen, 36-Computer Virtual Reality System [Video]

I'd Kill to Play Games on This 72-Screen, 36-Computer Virtual Reality System [Video]:

Later this year, the University of Illinois at Chicago will take the wraps off something it's calling CAVE2. You, however, will most probably call it "that badass virtual reality system". More »

True Peace for a Geek [Comic]

True Peace for a Geek [Comic]:

[Source: Joy Of Tech]
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Georama’s Map-Based Travel Search Service Goes Live

Georama’s Map-Based Travel Search Service Goes Live:
Chicago-based Georama is now launching what it calls a “map-based travel platform.” In layman’s terms, that’s a travel search service that’s entirely based on top of a map. It can either suggest places for you to go based on your interests or other factors (e.g. time of year), or, if you already have a few places in mind, you can use Georama to explore things like local attractions and activities, restaurants, nightlife, weather, news, deals and more.
The company has bootstrapped itself to $250,000 and raised another $250,000 from undisclosed New York angels a couple of months ago.
Georama was founded by Nihal Advani, an ex-Microsoftie who previously worked in Search (Bing) and Display (Microsoft Media Network). He also interned at Google while in college. Serving as CEO, Advani leads Georama’s team of 17, who are based in both Chicago and India.
So, what’s the big idea with a “map-based” platform, I wanted to know.”We believe in providing an experience for travelers, something that hasn’t been done that well in the online travel industry so far,” Advani tells me. “We built a one-of-a-kind interactive map from scratch  - it’s patent pending – to craft a visual experience that is unique, immersive, and fun,” he says. “Georama is also the only true one-stop solution…we have partnered with 20+ providers (and this is just the initial list) bringing together the best content, fares, and social networks from across the web in one place.” The partners provide the content related to fares, destinations, news, deals, etc. on the site.

To be completely frank, color me skeptical about the benefits of a “map-based” travel platform. That’s something that sounds like what people want, but in practice, navigating and exploring through numerous destinations via a map feels unwieldy and cumbersome. I remember talking to JetPac CEO Julian Green earlier this month following his company’s raise of $2.4 million for its iPad travel search platform. He told me that the company had specifically not focused on a map interface, because “even though people like looking at the map – it’s sort of cool – they get stuck, they don’t know where to start.”
To be fair, Georama is trying to help people figure out where to start – its interface lets you click on icons like “beach,” “family,” “golf,” “ski,” “eco-friendly,” etc. to narrow down ideas. But I found that, when pulling up items on the map, pushpins would be dropped on top of other pushpins from the zoomed out worldview, meaning you had to zoom in to click accurately. There is a lot of information available once you have a destination pulled up, however, and the Facebook Connect option lets you see if you have local friends, which is handy. But overall, the UI here needs work – its pop-up destination windows, cluttered interface, and black-and-white icons felt a little old-school for my tastes. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.
However, it is nice to have the destination discovery, social features (it also connects with Foursquare, Instagram and YouTube), and the ticket booking process under one umbrella. That’s something that not all competitors in the “social travel” search space currently offer, often focusing more on the “inspirational” rather than the “transactional” part of the equation. One-stop shopping is one of the many reasons why newly-IPO’ed Kayak is so popular, for example. You can browse interests and deals before booking. But Kayak still feels like it’s more for the final step in travel process – buying tickets – and is not as focused on “where do I want to go?”
Georama has some interesting advisors on board, it should be noted. Currently an ex-Orbitz COO, an ex-President of United.com, an ex-VP of Sabre, the Country Head of Microsoft India, and the Head of BMGI India are all helping Georama, Advani tells me.
The platform launched into private beta at the DEMO conference this year, but is opening to all, with the “official” launch arriving on Wednesday.

US Regaining Manufacturing Might With Robots and 3D Printing

US Regaining Manufacturing Might With Robots and 3D Printing:
For years, the U.S. has been hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs to China because of the vastly cheaper labor pool. But now, several different technologies have ripened to the point where U.S. companies are bringing some operations back home. 3D printing, robotics, AI, and nanotechnology are all expected to dramatically change the manufacturing landscape over the next several years. From the article:
"The factory assembly that the Chinese are performing is child’s play for the next generation of robots—which will soon become cheaper than human labor. Indeed, one of China’s largest manufacturers, Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group, announced last August that it plans to install one million robots within three years to do the work that its workers in China presently do. It found Chinese labor to be too expensive and demanding. The world’s most advanced car, the Tesla Roadster, is also being manufactured in Silicon Valley, which is one of the most expensive places in the country. Tesla can afford this because it is using robots to do the assembly. ... 3D printers can already create physical mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry, and even clothing. The cheapest 3D printers, which print rudimentary objects, currently sell for between $500 and $1000. Soon, we will have printers for this price that can print toys and household goods. By the end of this decade, we will see 3D printers doing the small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods. It is entirely conceivable that in the next decade we start 3D-printing buildings and electronics."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.