The Future of Handheld Console

More than twenty years ago, Nintendo was one of the pioneers in the campaign towards invention and innovation of handheld consoles which later on evolved into products such as Game Boy and then the recent Nintendo DS. Eventually, Sony caught up and challenged Nintendo and produced one of their own, the Playstation Portable.

Nowadays, the two giants finally have competition and probably the one affected a lot by this era gearing towards everything mobile is Nintendo. Apple’s bold and quick move to go from simple iPods to a larger screen with touch screen features like iTouch and then later on evolving into iPhone which now has motion-sensing capabilities too has made quite a ruckus that the gaming audience grew massively wide. With the popularity of downloads, Apple launched iTunes and Apple Store and later on allowed downloads of casual games causing another shake up in the gaming handheld scene. Going back to Nintendo, who, back then at around 2004 was kicking Sony’s PSP’s butt with the DS, got ourselves wondering, are they still the king of handheld console?

It’s a well-known fact that the DS is by large a better portable gaming device than PSP largely because of Nintendo’s innovative product and experience in this business. The success of DS also proved that pure hardware upgrade is not always the key towards a great gaming experience which also had an effect on the current console battles. But with the arrival of iPhone and iTouch, and mobile phones with gaming capabilities, consumers are now becoming more satisfied with an all-in-one mobile device. Slowly but surely, electronics companies have incorporated camera, video, Wi-Fi, internet and even office utilities into mobile phones. Nintendo’s launch of 3DS, which is due about two months from now, is still widely appreciated mainly because of their unique push to innovation once again which is another first in handheld gaming – a portable 3D gaming experience. Their success comes from a resume of rich gaming industry experience which still attracts gamers and non-gamers alike. However, 3DS lacks the capability to text and call which is clearly one of the main features of a handy device that more and more consumers are looking for – a one-stop shop gadget.

This article ends with more of a question if Nintendo can keep up with all these recent technological breakthroughs rather than being bold and predicting their demise in the gaming industry. Also, Sony which is still at infancy stage of creation of handheld consoles may have been hit harder. Apple and Microsoft which are also entering the handheld arena know for themselves that they are not experienced enough in gaming but have one of the most powerful weapons in them – their Operating Systems. Google has been pushing for its Android OS which may also be a key factor in the scene as well. In the end, experience, innovation and true passion in gaming will prove to be the characteristics of those who will survive in the future together with embracing the constant change of technology.

Microsoft Certified Professional Certification

A few hours ago, I took and passed the 70-536 - Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation. Currently, if you pass the 70-536 exam, you'll be considered as a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP).

This is only the first of five steps on how to become a certfied MCPDEA. Here are the list of exams you need to pass for the MCPDEA track:

70-536 - Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation
70-526 - Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Windows-Based Client Development
70-528 - Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 – Web-Based Client Development
70-529 - Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Distributed Application Development
70-549 - Designing and Developing Enterprise Applications by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework

After passing all these exams, you'll be receiving the following titles:
MCP - Microsoft Certified Professional
MCTS - Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist
MCPD-EA - Microsoft Certified Professional Developer Enterprise Applications

Good luck and have fun studying! Of course having been certified is a plus factor but nothing beats actual work experience.

Dissecting the Anatomy of Modern Programming Languages

If you're new to programming and you're having a difficulty learning the current mainstream languages, chances are, you've hit a wall and haven't gotten an idea on where to start. Hopefully this article will help you lower that wall and better understand the concepts surrounding these languages.

Having been into development as a profession for almost five years now and as an avid fan of programming languages, despite all these new languages constantly being released, there are only two core syntax you need to learn and these are the following:

- C/C++
- Basic

Having yourself enriched with the fundamentals and mastery of these two core syntax, you'll most likely achieve an ease of understanding with almost any new programming languages being released in the computing industry.

C is a very old and yet one of the most influential language of all time. Of course having limitations of its own, it has evolved into C++, hence the "plus plus" sign. With the demand for object-oriented programming style rising and a variety of flavors of operating systems and platforms coming out, Sun has developed a multi-platform language based on C++ popularly known as Java. With a syntax very much close to the heart of a lot of developers, and a nifty feature in which you can run a compiled version of your source code basically on any platform as long as you have the Java runtime installed in it, Java has been successful in the revival of the C syntax as the premiere language of choice by the developers.

Microsoft, who has been on the background with Sun's success and having been developed Visual Basic, Visual FoxPro and Visual C++, attempted to encourage developers to migrate to Microsoft products by implementing Visual J++. However, of course with Java's main advantage of running executable programs on any platform and J++ unable to bring this advantage to other platforms, it has been short-lived. But all this changed with the advent of Microsoft's .NET framework. Embracing the C++ syntax, Microsoft developed perhaps one of the most influential languages they've ever developed, the C#. C# is a language also based on the C syntax. And with the .NET framework and almost similar approach to Java, the company has finally and perhaps successfully attracted Java developers to shift into C#.

With Java being stagnant for quite some time now and programming on the internet increasingly becoming popular, some developers were not ready to jump into the C# bandwagon. Hence, PHP emerged. PHP is a server-side scripting language which is open-source meaning anyone can fork, view and modify the language itself to suit for themselves. It mostly resembles the C syntax and is quite a popular choice as it is the cheapest to maintain in terms of development costs for companies investing in the internet. And with PHP becoming a force to reckon with, of course companies have offered their own brand of server-side scripting. Sun released JSP (Java Server Pages) which resembles Java, only an implementation on the internet and Microsoft released what many of us know now as ASP.NET.

Still doubting on studying the C/C++ syntax? How about searching for Google's new programming language - Go and Microsoft's "Adobe Flash"-killer Silverlight? These two are also great grandsons of the C family and will presumably be something worth watching out for.

On the otherhand, while C has been embraced by most of the developers, many have still yearned for a syntax which is English-like and that of COBOL. BASIC was developed by a variety of companies but one of the most common was of Borland's implementation. BASIC stands for Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. One of the most popular implementation of it was Microsoft's Visual Basic. With Windows becoming more and more popular as a household operating system, developers wanted a rapid application development language and Visual Basic was the right tool for them. It even evolved into developement of Macros which are small snippets of implementation of Basic into Microsoft Office products which were for the purpose of achieving automation.

Although Basic was quite frankly less popular than C, Microsoft has still been its advocate even implementing it on the web through ASP (Active Server Pages) and even on the advent of the .NET framework, they've improved the support for Basic with the implementation of Visual Basic.NET which was a popular choice for developers who were Visual Basic developers and at the same time haven't been ready enough to jump into C# during those times. Quite a handful of development tools have evolved from Basic and one of the popular ones was Mercery QuickTest Pro which was an automation tool used mainly for testing purposes.

As years go by, the emergence of a very powerful and dynamic language known as Python was released. It is an open-source language which I'd like to categorize as a mixture of C and Basic. As a friend of mine suggests, it is a cleaner version of Java, hence many developers were quick to embrace it and one of its proud customer? Google. I'd probably say it's quick to learn Python for its strict advocacy for readability but you have to give it a try for yourself and see how great and promising this is.

C/C++ and Basic. If you want to go and delve deeper into the world of programming, welcome aboard. Embrace these two syntax and you'll likely be quick to learn new programming languages surfacing every now and then. Hope this article provided quite a heck of a history to prove that these two are the foundations of modern programming languages.

Microsoft VIP Blogger's Night

January 28, 2010 - 16/F 6750 Microsoft Office and Exchange Room - This was the first time I have attended a Microsoft event so I was excited about this one. I really didn't know what to expect in these types of events that Microsoft offers monthly. Luckily, I didn't feel like a first-timer after the dinner. Bloggers were invited as their audience and the speakers told us that this was also a first to them - bringing an audience of consumers instead of MIcrosoft technology developers attending. It was the other way around as I thought many of the bloggers knew each other before the event because they've been attending blogging events together as a fellow blogger thought of the fellow blogger attendees as "regulars". And I thought they were also developers as well who were "regulars" to Microsoft talks.

Judging from the audience, it was quite obvious that the product of showcase by Microsoft would be its latest Microsot Office release - the Office 2010 which is only in beta. Some of the features that very well interested me about their product was MS Powerpoint's ability to do on the fly photo editing ala Adobe Photoshop and video editing ala Adobe Premiere/ Windows Movie Maker. Incorporating the basics of these two make Powerpoint even more powerful with its multimedia capability. One thing which interests me most about the video feature is its ability to be embedded on the fly on the slides and actually play them without opening Windows Media Player. The only thing bothering me is why do you want to edit the video on the fly in Powerpoint when there's the built-in quite handy Windows Media Player?

Other products such as Office Web Apps and Windows Live Essentials were also promoted. Now, these products I think will definitely help the bloggers as well. You don't need to have Microsoft Office installed in your PC. You are actually editing the Office documents on the fly on your browser. What's even more good about it is the ability to share content and work on the same file simultaneously. As you all know, this feature is also similar to Google Docs and Google Pack but hey who doesn't use Microsoft Office and who doesn't want Office to go online?

Bloggers attending also received a Microsoft Office 2010 Beta installer with an Internet Explorer cap. Well, I guess that's about it. I'll definitely be looking forward to attending more Microsoft seminars. To wrap it up, I guess Microsoft has been aligning its products into what the trend is all about - going online and making the browser one of the most powerful software ever developed.

Windows Azure Pay-Per-Use to Start this February 2010

As of this writing, we only have exactly 15 days to play around with Windows Azure. Beginning February this year, Windows Azure will finally go commercial. You can read the entire article here for the pricing details.

Windows Azure is Microsoft's implementation of cloud computing. One of its notable features is its storage services which are of prime importance with regards to the cloud computing business. If you have time, you can download the Windows Azure SDK and tinker around with it which is one of its great advantage - running a local development fabric on your computer to simulate what is going to happen in the cloud.

If you have Visual Studio 2008 and an OS of Windows Vista, Server 2008 or Windows 7, you can give it a try. It's worth it. It has tutorials on how to create cloud-based applications which practically is very similar to creating web-based applications. Also worth noting would be its interoperability with PHP. It has PHP-support thru FastCGI so you can deploy a site created out of PHP into the cloud.

Microsoft File Transfer Manager

Just doing a quick post/tip here. Whenever you want to download large files using your MSDN account, it is best to use Internet Explorer. The ActiveX control Microsoft File Transfer Manager will then be prompted for installation. In this way, you will be able to pause and resume your downloads just like any normal file transfer.