12/16/2008
A few days ago, Sarah Perez reported that Pandora was available on Windows Mobile. I was pretty excited to see this, only to find out later that the application was not supported on my new Palm Treo Pro. However today, my colleague Eric Strait pointed me to this CAB download. I just tried it, and it worked fabulously. I'm not certain this is an "official" Pandora release however.
Pandora is a beautiful application that is essentially an internet radio station  with multiple channels. Pandora is a Valley crowd favorite, and has risen to the top of the list of the most downloaded applications on the the iPhone.
For my mobile music needs, I've been using Imeem over Skyfire on my Palm Treo Pro. A native application by Pandora is definitely welcome. The application is very simple which it makes it very easy to use.
Here's a video demonstrating the application in action on the Motorola Q9c.
"ai" 12/4/2008Since the launch of BizSpark in November, we've hit the road and spent time in several cities in the US. We participated at the New York New Tech Meetup in New York City on 11/11/2008, where I got to present to pitch 'BizSpark' to 300 entrepreneurs, alongside Steve Barsh of DreamIT Ventures (a BizSpark Network Partner)  
I want to send special thanks to Scott Heiferman and Dawn Barber from the New York New Tech Meetup. We followed that up with a cocktail hour where we had around 400 people in attendance.   We were in Austin on 11/20/2008 and partnered with Austin Startup District and did a 'pecha kucha' style pitch to the Austin crowd.   
I want to send out a very special thanks to Tammy Gilmore and Hugh Forrest from SXSW for helping us promote the event to the Austin area. SXSW is absolutely one of my favorite events of all time, and we're surely going to participate at SXSW 2009. So please be sure to register and attend! In the next couple of weeks we will be visiting cities in the West Coast, specifically We'd love for you to join us! "ai" [pictures courtesy Brian Solis/Bub.blicio.us] 11/11/2008We officially launched BizSpark last week. Since then, we've seen a surge of startups and network partners requesting access to the program. There are two types of entities that can join the program: - Startups - In BizSpark speak, a startup is a company that
- is less than 3 years old,
- has less than USD 1 million in annual revenue,
- is privately held, and,
- is creating a software product.
- Network Partners - Network Partners are organizations that can provide startups with the software via BizSpark (and MSDN). Some of these organizations are chartered with providing services and support beyond just the software. These organizations can be one of the following types of organizations (not a restrictive list):
- Academic Institutions that have entrepreneurial sub-organizations or venture arms
- Community Entrepreneurial Organizations (either for profit or not-for-profit)
- Startup Accelerators or Incubators
- Investors
- Government Agencies
If you're a startup, here's what you do to join the BizSpark program: A startup needs an enrollment code from a Network Partner to sign up for BizSpark. - Read the Startup Program Guide
- Go to http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/FindNetworkPartner.aspx to find a Network Partner. Select your country of residence and select a Network Partner that you would be comfortable working through
- Contact that Network Partner via email or via phone and request access to the BizSpark program. Please note that some Network Partners may require that you be a member of their organization or they may enforce other rules as it pertains to their organization's function. The Network Partner also has to verify that the Startup meets the program's requirements (see above).
- If the Network Partner sees a fit, they will respond to you with a unique URL that has a BizSpark code embedded in it. Clicking on the link will take you back to the BizSpark site.
You will notice that the enrollment code (fuzzed out) has been automatically populated. Be sure to read the "BizSpark Startup Agreement" and the "BizSpark Program EULA". - Fill in the requisite information about the company and the primary contact information.
 - Following this, the primary contact listed for this startup will receive an email he or she can then use to setup their MSDN subscription (MSDN subscriptions provide a cost-effective way to license Microsoft platforms and tools, receive technical support, and gain priority access to new versions of Microsoft products, including Microsoft operating systems, server software, and productivity applications.). MSDN online will be the portal using which the startups can access the software. The MSDN account setup could take up to 24 hours. Click on the link in the email and sign in using your Windows Live ID. Please keep in mind that the MSDN account setup could take up to a day.
- You will be directed to MSDN where you will be asked to create an account
 - Your MSDN account is now setup and you are ready to download software. The primary contact listed for the startup is the "BizSpark Administrator", other developers at the startup will be "BizSpark Members".
 - To give more developers in your company access to BizSpark, go back to the BizSpark dashboard and click on the "Set up and manage BizSpark memberships for individuals at your Startup". Provide their email addresses and they will get an email to setup their MSDN account.
 If you cannot find a suitable Network Partner to sponsor you to join the program please send me an email. If you want to be a BizSpark Network Partner: A (potential) Network Partner needs an enrollment code from a Microsoftie to sign up for BizSpark. - Read the Network Partner program guide.
- Go to http://microsoft.com/bizspark and click on "Become a BizSpark Network Partner".
- A Microsoftie will then respond to your request via email to join the program. He or she may ask for more information or give you an email link that will route you to the BizSpark portal to sign up. Clicking on the link provided will take you to a BizSpark page that looks like this:
You'll notice that the Champ ID has been pre-populated. - You will be presented with a questionnaire. Please be detailed as possible in providing information about your organization as startups will use this information to find you.
- Once you're done with the questionnaire, you will see the BizSpark Network Partner dashboard. You'll see links here to Get Reports, Manage your organization's information and to invite Startups to join BizSpark.
Clicking on the "Invite a Startup to join BizSpark" link will give you a way to generate a unique URL (one per startup) that you can then email to a startup. Check out our FAQ if you have other questions. If you want to learn more about BizSpark or meet local Network Partners, come join us at one of the BizSpark events we are doing around the US over the next few weeks. "ai" 11/6/2008 With the launch of BizSpark yesterday, we will be visiting a few cities in the US and partnering with Stephanie Agresta and Brian Solis of The TechSet, as well as local entrepreneurial organizations to talk about BizSpark. We encourage entrepreneurs, current startups, investors, business accelerators or incubators and students to come to our events.
- 11/11/2008 in New York, NY - we will be doing a pitch at the New York New Tech Meetup, followed by a reception at One Little West 12. Register to attend.
- 11/19/2008 in Phoenix, AZ - partnering with Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference to talk about BizSpark
- 11/20/2008 in Austin, TX - partnering with Austin Startup District where we will have 10 startups present each. Register to attend.
- 12/2/2008 in Los Angeles, CA (mark your calendars)
- 12/4/2008 in Silicon Valley (mark your calendars)
If you want to learn more about BizSpark as a Startup or as a potential Network Partner, you need to come to one of our "Ignition" events. "ai" 11/5/2008Over the years, we have built a good sturdy platform with .NET. .NET is a scalable, secure, and reliable platform that supports good applica tion performance. With the advent of "Web 2.0" and the surge of new and emerging companies betting their business on the web, we want early stage companies to be able to use the .NET for implementing their ideas. Typically startups have been concerned about costs of new tools and products. Today, we are announcing the availability of a new program for early stage startups called "BizSpark". BizSpark offers early stage companies Microsoft products at no up-front cost. What is a startup to Microsoft? Do I qualify? We have four pre-requisites for a startup to join BizSpark. To join BizSpark, a startup company - must be building a software based product,
- should have been in existence for less than 3 years,
- makes less than USD 1 million (local flavors apply for other countries), and,
- is privately held.
BizSpark is meant for companies building web applications, or delivering web based services. A startup can be a part of the program for three years (they will have to renew their membership annually), unless they get disqualified because they have gone public (or have been acquired by a company that does not qualify for BizSpark) or if their revenue is greater than USD 1 million. What kind of software is BizSpark offering? We are offering development tools as well as production licenses of our server products. For development, testing and demonstration, startups can download the software included in the Visual Studio Team System Team Suite (VSTS) with MSDN Premium, plus VSTS Team Foundation Server (Standard Edition). For production use (that is, to deploy and host an application over the internet), startups can download and use Windows Server, SQL Server, BizTalk Server, and Office SharePoint Server for Internet Sites hosting, as well as Systems Center for managing hosting server operations. (please refer to the BizSpark Startup Program Guide for full details) "No up-front cost" - do I pay when I leave the program? Yes, we will assess a $100 fee when a startup exits the program. What happens after three years of participation in BizSpark? After three years in BizSpark, a startup will exit the program. A startup can continue to use the development tools they would have obtained through the program even after the three years of being a part of the program. If a startup wishes to continue receiving updates to development tools however, it has to renew it's MSDN subscription at usual rates and terms. To continue using the production licenses, a startup may choose to take advantage of a licensing program like Microsoft’s Services Provider License Agreement program (or other Microsoft licensing programs that may be available at the time) but is in no way obligated to do so. How do I join BizSpark? As we launch this program, we have been partnering with select organizations to help us build out a startup ecosystem. This ecosystem will comprise of Network Partners (academic institutions, entrepreneurial organizations, business accelerators or business incubators and investors etc.) who will help startups enroll in to the BizSpark program. Find a Network Partner near you. How does this help me, a startup? - Software - via the program
- Support - via MSDN (two support incidents per startup) and the resources that the Network Partner has to offer for startups
- Visibility - via BizSparkDB. Startups can profile themselves on BizSparkDB.
Is Azure going to be a part of the BizSpark offering? Windows Azure, announced at PDC last week, is a natural platform choice for early stage companies. As I'd mentioned in my post last week, While Azure is appealing to everyone from large enterprises to hobbyists, it is going to be particularly interesting to startups and Web 2.0 companies as well who want to take advantage of a rich, highly versatile web-based platform to build scalable applications for the web. BizSpark program startups will receive preferential access to the Azure Community Technology Preview. To sign up for the CTP, BizSpark participants should enroll on the Azure site and profile with the same Windows Live ID they used to enroll in BizSpark. During the CTP, access will be assessed and assigned on a company-by-company basis and will be confirmed as capacity becomes available. What startups are using .NET today? We have several startups that have been recruited in to the Startup Accelerator Program. Here is a list of just some of the startups we have been working with. Why the name, BizSpark? Last year, we launched this program called DreamSpark for students. BizSpark just seemed to be a logical extension to that name for businesses or startups. Where can I get more information? http://www.microsoft.com/BizSpark We will also be visiting several cities in the US as a part of our "Ignition" event series, and partnering with local community organizations to talk about BizSpark: - Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, CA 11/5-11/7
- Flashpoint Innovation Awards in Chicago, IL on 11/6
- New York New Tech Meetup in New York, NY on 11/11
- AZ Entrepreneurship Conference in Phoenix, AZ on 11/19
- Startup District Austin, TX on 11/20 (link TBD)
- Los Angeles, CA on 12/2 (link TBD)
- Silicon Valley on 12/4 (link TBD)
"ai" 10/17/2008Plug and Play is one of the valley’s most popular startup incubators. They house several hundred startups in their facilities. Plug and Play has been doing a great job of  complementing their business acceleration efforts with offline events. Their next big event, called the “Plug & Play Acceleration Collaboration Track (PACT)” will be held on October 20 and 21, 2008 at their main offices in Sunnyvale, CA. The speaker list is extremely impressive. Dan’l Lewin, corporate VP of the Emerging Business Team at Microsoft will be doing a keynote at the event on October 21. And I will be participating on a panel called “Completing the Ecosystem” alongside key representatives from Cisco, Sun, Yahoo!, Orange and Symantec. The agenda looks brilliant – I strongly encourage you to come check it out. “ai” 10/14/2008 Yesterday, we announced our release of Silverlight 2 to the web. Silverlight 2 builds on its predecessor,  Silverlight 1, which brought HD video and interactive animations via the browser plugin. The most compelling aspect about Silverlight 2 is that it brings the .NET runtime to the browser. This means developers who are familiar with any of the .NET Languages (languages like VB, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby) can leverage their knowledge to create rich interactive applications that run in a web browser. Cross-browser support Silverlight was designed with cross-browser and cross-platform support in mind. Silverlight supports Internet Explorer and Firefox on the PC and Safari and Firefox on the Mac. Through our friends at Novell, the Moonlight project will be the Silverlight answer for Linux machines. Silverlight 2 is small in size (4.6MB) and only takes seconds to install on a machine that doesn't already have the runtime installed. It does not require the .NET Framework to be installed on a computer to run - the Silverlight setup download includes everything necessary to play video or run applications. Adoption Facts Silverlight’s adoption has been growing at a rapid rate since Silverlight 1 was launched last year. From the Silverlight press release: - One in four consumers worldwide has access to a computer with Silverlight already installed.
- Penetration of the Silverlight runtime is approaching 50 percent in some countries.
- The partner ecosystem includes more than 150 partners to support Silverlight development, design and support.
- During the 17 days of the 2008 Olympics Games in Beijing, NBCOlympics.com, powered by Silverlight, had more than 50 million unique visitors, resulting in 1.3 billion page views, 70 million video streams and 600 million minutes of video watched, increasing the average time on the site (from 3 minutes to 27 minutes) and Silverlight market penetration in the U.S. by more than 30 percent.
- In August 2008, the Democratic National Convention was streamed live using Silverlight, and broadcast a 2Mbit live video feed of the event and speeches - receiving outstanding feedback from audiences watching it.
- Several 1000s of Silverlight applications.
Community Support and Interoperability - We will be providing new controls to developers with the Silverlight Control Pack (SCP) under the Microsoft Permissive License.
- We announced plans to support additional tools for developing Silverlight applications by providing funding to Soyatec, an IT solutions provider based in Paris, France, and an Eclipse Foundation member, to lead a project to integrate advanced Silverlight development capabilities into the Eclipse IDE. Soyatec plans to release the project under the Eclipse Public License Version 1.0 on SourceForge and submit it to the Eclipse Foundation as an open Eclipse project. A technology preview of the Soyatec project is available today at http://www.eclipse4sl.org, with a complete version available in second half of 2009. You can follow their progress at the Eclipse4SL blog.
- Through our Open Specification Promise we plan to make available the Silverlight XAML vocabulary.
Future The future for Silverlight is very promising. Some examples of applications to come: - CBS College Sports Network will be streaming 20,000 hours of live games for 150+ college and university partners.
- AOL is launching their new AOL Mail browser version to 60 million users using Silverlight 2.
- Blockbuster will be launching their new MovieLink subscription service using Silverlight.
- Yahoo! Japan is live today enabling live streaming of Major League Baseball games.
- Hard Rock International will be updating their memorabilia site with new features.
- And companies like Toyota, HSN and hundreds of others will be live soon.
Also, we’ll be covering a lot on Silverlight including Silverlight’s support for Mobile devices at PDC. How to get started “ai” 10/3/2008 myspace launched it’s online music service, myspace Music last week. I’m a little torn about how I feel about the service and whether what they have to offer will lure me over. My initial take on it is that it’s a lot like a very popular service I have used for as long as I can remember, called imeem.  v 
myspace is a social network with a music streaming service in myspace Music. imeem’s approach is kind of the opposite – it is a music streaming service with a social networking overlay. 
myspace has the clear advantage when it comes to number of users and the number of popular artists on the site. However, imeem is growing at a preposterously high rate: - In September 2007, TechCrunch had reported that imeem was the fastest growing social network in the US, up 1590% in monthly uniques.
- According to Comscore, imeem had displaced Yahoo! Music as the top (US) music streaming site.
- Back in August ‘08, the SF Chronicle reported that imeem was seeing 27 million uniques and about 65,000 new registrations each day.
The SF Chronicle article brings me to my next point – what I love about imeem is their involvement in the local music scene. They are small enough that they can get involved in music festivals and help promote local artists. Yet they are big enough with their reach that these artists want to get on imeem. Most recently, imeem sponsored the Treasure Island Music Festival and Outside lands, two very popular local festivals here in San Francisco. imeem definitely has a very viral angle to it and has the potential to lure local indie artists. I can see these artists getting lost in the fray in myspace Music. imeem also has a fairly comprehensive flavor of international music on their site - I’m only guessing this is something imeem tends to overlook for now, but this helps sustain imeem’s international visitor growth. Both myspace and imeem have adopted OpenSocial. This was a decent move for myspace given that they had blocked sites like imeem from their site not too long ago, but I think it was also a safe move to appease the web 2.0 world, really. For one, I can’t think of one application from this list that is of any relevance to me. I wonder what the adoption of these applications on myspace has been. While imeem has also adopted OpenSocial, what’s more compelling is their Media Platform APIs that they launched in March this year. I can see a lot of potential for adopting imeem’s services through mobile devices or even desktop applications. imeem also recently launched a site redesign, something that is welcome by most users. I remember having a discussion with my sister about a year and a half ago, and what had turned her off about imeem was that it looked cluttered and a lot like this site she used at the time called (surprise surprise) myspace. It’ll be interesting to see how this battle plays out in the long run. Competition is undoubtedly a good thing - in fact I’d like to think that myspace Music may have had something to do with imeem’s site redesign. But I don’t think there should be any concern about myspace dislodging imeem’s existing user base and having them pack up and move over. They key to winning in this space will be about how easily users outside of myspace can discover new music. “ai” 9/24/2008One of the most impressive DEMOs I’d seen at DEMO last year was Skyfire’s. For those of us who have had smartphones with limited web browsing capabilities (like Pocket IE with Windows Mobile), Skyfire will forever change the way you use your smartphone. Today Skyfire announced that it has opened up its beta to all US residents. Here’s a demo of Skyfire in action:
Skyfire is not a conventional mobile web browser, it’s more of an application that lets you view and consume web content. For example, the notion of having to install plugins for your browsers, like Silverlight or Flash doesn’t exist with Skyfire. When you launch Skyfire on your phone, you are logged in to their servers. A proxy sitting on Skyfire’s servers intercepts web traffic flowing to your device that is then Skyfire-optimized. Skyfire’s proxy servers are responsible for dealing with dynamic content on their end, and what you get is a stream of interactive and dynamic “images” and audio on your phone. You’re probably wondering, how can a cluttered and dynamic website, like Facebook for example, render on my tiny phone screen? One of my favorite features on Skyfire is the Zoom feature. You can selectively zoom in and zoom out of select portions of the web site.
A lot of articles that went out today talking about Skyfire’s announcement talk about the lack of a good browser on WinMo devices, unlike Safari for the iPhone. But something I’m curious about is how many iPhone users still actively use Safari? With the number of applications for the iPhone and over a 100 million installs of different applications in just the first couple of months, I can only imagine that the need for a Safari on the iPhone has diminished. Although Apple will likely not let Skyfire into their App Store, Skyfire will get plenty of traction from the other non-1% of the smartphones out there. While Apple’s App Store concept is innovative, it doesn’t exist for other smartphone ecosystems yet and we still rely heavily on the mobile browser. The question then arises – what content can Skyfire not handle? I’ll be honest, I don’t know right now. There haven’t been webpages that I’ve wanted to visit that Skyfire hasn’t been able to handle. The only catch is that you’d have to have a phone number associated with your Skyfire account, you can’t just your WiFi card on your phone to get on the internet. And aside from that, the only other limitation is your handset itself – for me, I find it a little kludgy with my front rotary scroll wheel to navigate content. Skyfire’s beta product definitely drains my phone’s battery life. I’ve noticed my Blackjack 2 heat up and lose battery life fairly quickly as I use sites like Imeem to stream and listen to Music. The one other thing I’d wary of is security – remember that Skyfire’s proxy servers stream the data coming from a website to your phone, and vice-versa. Today, Skyfire supports Windows Mobile and Symbian devices. Crunchbase tells us that Skyfire has raised $17.8M in funding from Matrix Partners, Trinity Ventures and Lightspeed Ventures. Get Skyfire now! “ai” 9/12/2008This week, TechCrunch reinforced itself as the most powerful tech blog on the planet. TechCrunch50 was everything it was made out to be. Startups, press, speakers – these guys were the crème de la crème of their respective contingents. The TechCrunch50 crew received over 1000 applications from startups wanting to demo their product at the event. My favorite startups Most of the companies that made the 50, were consumer facing software products. Here are 3 of my favorite startups (when I was picking these, I was thinking of products that I could use right away):  1. FitBit – FitBit sells a piece of hardware that you can wear to keep track of your fitness. The hardware, when it gets close to its charging base station, will then sync to automatically upload this information to a website. Users can use the website to get a more holistic view of their health trends. The founder mentioned that he lost 15 lbs by using this device. The fitbit sells for $99 – a very affordable price. And guess what, I just placed an order for the FitBit. The only downside that I can think of is that unlike a software product, there’s no real way to beta test this to figure out if this is something that will work as they claim. It looks great though.
 2. Swype – This product really blew me away. I actually got a demo of Swype the night before TC50 opened up. Swype is an intuitive application that users finger motions on a keyboard to spell out a word. So you’d essentially ‘swype’ through the keyboard connecting letters to spell out a word. In the case that there is a conflict, you’re presented with the list of possible words that you then get to choose from. I was actually very surprised when I heard that Swype wasn’t the winner at TC50. This product has the most potential to make money and a decently sized market to tap into.
 3. VideoSurf – I have a blog post in the works about how I feel the future of search is in “vertical search”. While YouTube and Vimeo have made a clear difference in being able to publish and gain access to content, VideoSurf gives you the ability to search for the content in a visual manner. You can search for specific pieces of content in a video visually, share specific pieces of content in a video, and even search by characters in a video. They also claim that they can process videos in realtime. They demo’d the need for VideoSurf really well by searching for a keyword, like “Phelps” (I think) in Google, and seeing a video of a static photograph.
My favorite talk Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban has been my hero for over a decade. I wish I had some specific highlights from the talk I could talk about, the whole talk was quite memorable and amazing. Cuban also stopped by our booth and I had the chance to have a pretty good chat with him about the Surface and applications we could develop for it. We talked about practical applications of the Surface for fans in the stadium, or maybe even for coaches to analyze game data.
[Mark Cuban at the MSFT Booth] Here’s Mark Hendrickson’s report on the chat. My favorite moments - During Mark Cuban’s chat with Jason Calacanis, Cuban said, “when I die, I want to come back as me”.
- Ashton Kutcher mentioning the Microsoft Surface as the most exciting thing he’d seen at TC50.
- Of course, Cuban stopping by the Microsoft lounge.
- And, last but not least, this:
[MC Hammer] It’s hammer time! “ai” |
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Anand Iyer
Developer Evangelist
Anand joined Microsoft in January 2005 as a Developer Evangelist, Microsoft's ambassador to the technical community of Northern California. During his tenure there, he has been in the midst of several launches, such as Visual Studio, SQL Server, Vista, Office and many others. He has spoken at over a hundred conference...
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Recent Posts
How do I Join BizSpark?
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Interested in the startup world? Come learn about BizSpark at Ignition
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Announcing BizSpark for early stage startups
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Windows Azure - Microsoft's Cloud Platform
Monday, October 27, 2008
Completing the Technology Ecosystem – PACT
Friday, October 17, 2008
Silverlight 2 Released to the Web
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
myspace Music v imeem
03:15 PM Friday, October 03, 2008
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