MahTweets started out as a simple hobby project, but has grown from just a open source project to the first application of the MahApps MicroISV. As such, we’ve used a boat load of tools and services, but given we’re not exactly making a killing (ie, $0) in the Twitter market, we’ve looked for primarily free or very cheap services.
All of these run on Windows/Windows Server, but several of these (such as the web services and some of the apps written in Java) will work cross platform. There are also a surprising amount of tools and services available if you’re creating an open source project. This obviously won’t work for all MicroISV, but for us it has been a wallet saver.
A quick note on the Altassian software mentioned. Altassian have a range of software available for $10 each. They give you less users/repositories/plans/etc, but for $10 each, it really is incredible value. We would probably be using more of their software, but apart from JIRA and Fisheye they have horrible install experiences on Windows Server above 2003. And by horrible, I mean after a day wrestling with getting Confluence working, I gave up and installed ScrewTurn Wiki via Web Platform Installer in a matter of minutes. For other operating systems (OS X, Linux/BSD derivatives), I’m sure it’s fine since they’re all Java.
Software Packages
If you qualify and can afford the $100USD in three years time, Microsoft’s BizSpark is amazing value. Amazing enough to get its own section? Heck yes. So what’s included?
- All the software included in the Visual Studio Team System Team Suite (VSTS) with MSDN Premium subscription Expression Studio (Version 2), plus VSTS Team Foundation Server Standard Edition – for the entire development team
- The development tools provided are the same as those in MSDN Premium subscription, plus VSTS Team Foundation Server. However, there are features of MSDN Premium (such as support and internal use licenses) that are not included in BizSpark
- Production license use rights, to deploy, host and support Startup’s "Software-plus-Services" applications for delivery over the Internet, using the most current releases of the following products: Windows Server (all editions), SQL Server (all editions), BizTalk Server, and Office SharePoint Server for hosting. To deploy in production, a Startup may self-host or select an authorized BizSpark Hosting Partner through the BizSpark Network Partner directory.
That’s a crap load of very expensive software (VS2010 Ultimate!) for your entire team.
Continuous Integration
TeamCity 5 (free)
The limitation of the free version is 20 user accounts, 20 build configurations, and 3 build agents. Frankly, that’s more than enough for our usage, but given I’m now running it on my personal Windows Home Server machine, I might start using it for various other projects.
Cross platform, requires Java.
Source Code Management/Version Control System
VisualSVN Server (free)
It’s free, its dead simple to setup, there isn’t really need to have a comparison for hosting SVN on Windows. If we were to start again, we’d strongly consider Mercurial or Git, depending on integration with other tools.
TortoiseSVN (free)
Much like VisualSVN Server, TortoiseSVN is kinda "the bomb" for SVN on Windows.
Fisheye ($10)
Fisheye integrates well with JIRA, and might seem useless at first, but being able to explore code/diffs/etc without using a SVN client (which are all horribly slow) can be a life saver.
Cross platform, requires Java.
Bug Tracking
UserVoice (Service) (Free)
Very simple signup, gives a sort of forum approach to bug tracking/user feedback, with voting ala StackOverflow/Digg/etc. It works well for a public facing bug tracker.
Has free, paid and OSS accounts (you may need to sign up for free, then "upgrade" the plan to OSS). Alternative would be GetSatisifaction, but I’ve heard some nasty things about them in the past.
JIRA ($10)
Although we also use UserVoice, JIRA is the "internal" bug tracking system – that is, bug tracking that’s more technical detailed than what we maintain on UserVoice. The separation of the two is nice as it means we don’t get spam/duplicates/etc on JIRA, but it’d also be nice to import from UserVoice to JIRA.
Cross platform, requires Java.
Wiki
ScrewTurn (free)
ASP.NET Wiki, can use databases or flat file. Easy to setup if you’re using Web Platform Installer, has neat ‘template/snippet’ editor which I’ve used for embedding Silverlight videos.
MediaWiki (free) is probably a good alternative for LAMP servers, or Confluence ($10) if you can afford it.
Mailing Lists
MailChimp (Service) (Free)
Mailing lists? Really? Yes! Email is still a great way to get out information to a bunch of people (in this case, our beta testers), and MailChimp is great. Being able to send out HTML emails with plaintext fallback isn’t all that easy to do from a desktop email client, but MailChimp makes it relatively easy.
The free account gives you up to 500 users on your list, and 3000 emails/month. Requires "Powered by MailChimp" logo down the bottom.
Alternatively there is CampaignMonitor, which is $5/campaign + 1c/recipient.
IDE/IDE Tools
Visual Studio Express (Free)
If you don’t qualify for BizSpark, WebsiteSpark or DreamSpark, VSExpress is the next best thing for .NET devs.
NetBeans (Free)
Wait, what? Java development tools? You’re crazy Paul, get out of here! I’ve occasionally dabbled in Android development for MahTweets/MahApps as well. I’ve settled on NetBeans.
Alternatively, Eclipse is also free, and is officially pushed by Google as the Android
CodeRush Xpress (Free)
"Coding Assistance Add-in" – has some neat code navigation and code refactoring tools not built into VS2010. Like Resharper I believe.
VisualSVN (Plugin for Visual Studio) (Free for OSS or MVPs, $49 for individuals)
VisualSVN integrates SVN into Visual Studio so you don’t have to leave VS to update/commit/etc. Also shows you which files, projects, etc have been modified in the Solution Explorer window.
Requires TortoiseSVN. Also free for MVP’s.
Resharper (Free for OSS, $199 for personal)
I’ve not actually applied for an OSS license of Resharper – one of the MahTweets dev team has a personal license and swears by it. I’ve tried it before, and have been less than wow’d – and the free version of CodeRush does enough for me.
Media
Expression Encoder 3 (Free)
xEncoder comes in two versions – free and bundled-with-other-software, but for screencasting or video encoding, the free version is great.
IconDock’s Blockie Icons ($50)
If you’re not a designer, don’t design your icons. Icon’s can really make or break your app – be it web, desktop or mobile.
There are plenty of icons for free available, just make sure you’re consistent and try and use one pack. There is a long thread on StackOverflow on How does a developer with no design skill make his/her application icons look pretty
There is a bit of overlap between these tools and Scott Hanselman’s 2009 Ultimate Developer and Power Tools List For Windows, and I strongly recommend you check out that list. Scott’s list should almost be considered mandatory before you start looking into further tools and services!
So that’s my list of software and services I’ve been using as a MicroISV – what’s have I missed? I’d love to grow this list.
This was originally posted on the Deakin Student Partners Blog
In the words of Hubert J. Farnsworth, "Good news, everyone!" – Expression Studio 3, XNA Game Studio 3.1 and Robotics Studio 2008 R2 are all now on Dreamspark, free to students! Expression Studio 3 brings some awesome improvements to.. well.. every product in it – Blend 3 + SketchFlow, Web + Super Preview, Encoder now has screencasting.
Expression Studio 3 Highlights
- Expression Encoder 3
- Improved H.264
- VBR Smooth Streaming
- Source CODECs
- Audio Enhancements.
- Performance
- Live Encoding
- Screen Capture
- Improved profile pallete
- Silverlight 3 Media Players
- New player skins
- API Enhancements
- Win7 Integration
- SDK "in the box"
- Expression Blend 3
- SketchFlow – Sketch WPF/Silverlight interactive prototypes.
- Photoshop and Illustrator support
- Styling Controls: Creating templates from artwork
- Styling Controls: Creating TextBox Templates from Artwork
- States: Improved Support for VSM
- Interactivity: Behaviors
- Working with and Generating Data
- Expression Web 3
- Super Preview – view side by side comparisons of your website in Firefox, Internet Explorer 6/7/8 and more
- Publish with SFTP/FTPS
- Improved Photoshop PSD support – import just the layers you want!
- Silverlight support – uses Expression Encoder 3 to encode (nearly) any video you want to Silverlight and embed on your site!
- TFS SC support
- Deep Zoom Composer support
XNA Game Studio 3.1 Highlights 
- Avatar Support: Render and animate Avatars to use in your game to represent gamers and other characters within your game.
- Xbox LIVE Party Support: Enabling gamers to communicate, even when each gamer is not playing the same game in the same multiplayer session. LIVE Party supports up to an eight-way group voice chat for gamers and keeps gamers connected before, during, and after a gameplay session, persisting across title switches.
- Video Playback: XNA Game Studio now supports the ability to play back video that can be used for such purposes as opening splash and logo scenes, cut scenes, or in-game video displays. This set of XNA Framework APIs supports the following features:
- Full screen video playback
- Video playback to simple textures in game
- Control of playback such as pause/resume and stop
- Retrieve properties of the video, such as playback time, size, and frame rate
- Determine the type and usage of the audio track, such as if it has music, dialog, or music and dialog
- Play back multiple video streams at the same time
- Audio API: 3.1 has a new usage pattern of SoundEffect.Play. Sound instances created by Play calls are disposed automatically when playback ends, and SoundEffect.Play returns a Boolean to indicate success or failure.
- Content Pipeline Enhancements: improvements making it much easier to add custom types (custom attributes for run-time of an object and run-time type version of an object, and the ability to determine if deserialization into an existing object is possible).
- XACT3 Support: includes support for XACT3 with new features including the ability to enable a filter on every track, and support for the xWMA compression format.
- Visual Studio Changes: XNA Game Studio 3.1 supports both 3.0 and 3.1 projects, and it includes support for upgrading projects from 3.0 to 3.1.
If you’re interested in the APPrentice competition but have questions on the inner workings of the Windows Mobile Marketplace? Well, the Codemasons guild are holding a series of (free, I think) events on down the east coast of the country.
Next week we will be holding a series of events to help developers get their application development moving for Windows Mobile 6.5 and into Marketplace.
These Debug Days will be held from 4.30pm till 9pm on;
- Monday August 10th – Microsoft Brisbane, Level 9 Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane
- Tuesday August 11th – Microsoft Sydney, 1 Epping Road, North Ryde
- Wednesday August 12th – Microsoft Melbourne, Level 5, 4 Freshwater Place, Southbank
We will provide an update on Marketplace, the signup/registration process, and the guidelines.
The evening is then over to the developers – so what are the topics you want out MVPs to cover – let us know;
- post your comments to this post
- Tweet James McCutcheon or Nick Randolph on Twitter
We’ll update the topic lists here @ WMOZ, @ the Codemasons’ Guild, and James/Nick will Tweet as well.
Rego links coming soon – but slot some time in your diary.
PS – we’ll have some drinks & food on hand as well :-)
via WinMoOZ
This series of posts, Living the Microsoft Life, are designed to show off some of the cool stuff from Microsoft that you can use in day-to-day life free, so that you can live a “Microsoft Life”. This was originally posted (by me) over on the Deakin MSP blog.
The list was so large and wordy I needed to split it into two parts! Part 1 was all about free software, this part (part 2) is about the free services and learning from Microsoft. This list doesn’t include every single one of Microsoft’s free services, but it is a fairly substantial list.
Then there are the free services…
Windows Live branded services
- Windows Live Home
Windows Live Home is a portal for your Live services, and a social network of sorts. Perhaps ‘social network aggregator’ would be more accurate, as you’re able to add your ‘Web Activities’ such as any RSS feed, blogs, Flickr, Twitter, Daum, Flixtser, iLike, Pandora, Photobucket, StumbleUpon, TripIt, WordPress and Yelp.
In turn you’ll be able to see a “stream of activities” (much like what Facebook or Twitter already do) for all your contacts as they add their “Web Activities”. This “What’s new with your network” stream also appears down the bottom of Windows Live Messenger.
- Windows Live Sync (formerly FolderShare)
Synchronise files between two or more computers (with Live Sync installed) over a network, or the internet easily. If you don’t want Live Mesh limitations (of 5gb) or don’t want to store it in the cloud, LiveSync could be for you.There are Windows and Mac OS X clients, and it integrates into Windows Live Photo Gallery to sync albums between computers.
- Windows Live SkyDrive
(formerly Windows Live Folders)
25gb online storage, each file gets a unique url which you can share with anybody, or if you prefer, have it secured and private.Photos uploaded with Skydrive can be turned into galleries at Live Home
- Windows Live Hotmail
5 GB of mail storage that grows when you need it. Email address can end with @hotmail.com (or localised versions such as @hotmail.co.uk, @hotmail.fr) or @live.com (again it can be localised to domains such as @live.ca, @live.co.uk, @live.fr or @live.com.au)POP3 access is slowly being turned on around the world, as of February (2009), United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, Australia, France, Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherland had access to it.
Personally, I’m loving the new(ish) interface on Live Hotmail and prefer it over Gmail. That being said, for my uses I prefer the IMAP access which Gmail gives me, so I use that service.
- Windows Live Spaces
Live Spaces is a combination of blogging platform and social network. If you want to start blogging, and want a non-technical setup, and don’t have to worry aboutLive Spaces includes blogging, photos, lists, friends, and guestbook functionality.
If you do setup Live Spaces, don’t forget to use Windows Live Writer!
- Live Mesh
Live Mesh is currently in beta, but with clients on the Web, Windows, OS X and Windows Mobile, Live Mesh is the easiest way to sync files between multiple devices, and without having to interact with the syncing process at all.5gb online storage for free, that’s can be synced between all your machines and devices without you having to lift a finger? Doesn’t get much better than that.
- Windows Live Calendar
It’s a web-calendar – supports iCalendar, intergrates with Live Hotmail (and the desktop client, Windows Live Mail). Features daily, weekly, monthly, and agenda modes.It integrates with Windows Live Alerts too, allowing you to get calendar information (such as an upcoming event) pushed over email, SMS, or Live Messenger alerts.
- Windows Live Admin Center
Want to use Live Hotmail, but instead of a “@live.com” or “@hotmail.com”, you’d prefer your own custom domain? Live Admin Center lets you create up to 500 email addresses (more if you meet certain requirements), free, with all the benefits of Live Hotmail (ie, growing mailbox, integrated calendar) on whatever domain you have.Setting it up isn’t overly complex…if you know how to change DNS/MX records (one MX record, and one DNS setting is all you need to get going)
Other services
- PhotoSynth
PhotoSynth is a way to take together photos taken of a similar location (or object), then stitch them together in 3D, and navigate around.
It was also featured on an episode of CSI.
- Office Live Workspace EDIT:See the comments, Jeff from MSFT Office Live team points out
“… the web-app versions of Office have not been launched yet. ….you can save more files than just MSFT Office file formats- most file formats are accepted in your Workspace, except for file formats like .exe that can cause harm to your computer”
Office Live Workspace gives you 5gb online to store Office documents. There are plugins for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook to save/load directly from “the cloud” as well.
Office Live Workspace allows you to collaborate with others, see what they’re uploading, what they edited, etc. Or you can keep it all private.As part of Office Live Workspace, Office Web Applications are included, which are lightweight/cut down versions of Word, Powerpoint, Excel and Onenote.
(these screenshots are all “edit mode” screenshots, click for the larger screenshots)
- Worldwide Telescope
WorldWide Telescope (WWT) enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world. Experience narrated guided tours from astronomers and educators featuring interesting places in the sky.This is part software and part service (no way is the client going to come with all those star maps, it’d be huge!), but entirely free.
- Silverlight Streaming
If you have a large hi-def video you want to stream through Silverlight, chances are you’ll kill your web-hosts bandwidth allowance very quickly.The Silverlight Streaming service is in beta, but it gives you up to 10 GB of storage, and streaming is free up to 5 TB of aggregated bandwidth per user account per month.
…And then there is free learning!
This series of posts, Living the Microsoft Life, are designed to show off some of the cool stuff from Microsoft that you can use in day-to-day life free, so that you can live a “Microsoft Life”. This was originally posted (by me) over on the Deakin MSP blog.
As you all know students (or should by now!) can get some of Microsoft’s software for free via Dreamspark, and there is some more available cheaply through the Its Not Cheating/Its Not Piracy program. Is that all Microsoft can give away for free? No!
I’ve compiled a largish list of some of the more useful (in my opinion) free programs and services from Microsoft, however this list still isn’t everything Microsoft gives away for free.
First there are the free programs…
- Office Accounting Express 2009
"It can create estimates, invoices, track customer payments, set product and service pricing and can export and import data using Microsoft Excel formats, and can export to e-mails, Microsoft Word documents, or PDF files, and even sell items on eBay."
(from http://tim-stanley.com/post/Office-Accounting-Express-2009.aspx)
It’s a bit full-on for personal use (I think), but a free accounting application is a free accounting application.
- Windows Media Encoder 9
For students, you get access to Expression Encoder 2 via Dreamspark which is much easier to use and has some more up to date options. The downside is that Expression Encoder 2 doesn’t support more than two channels (stereo) audio, but Windows Media Encoder 9 does!
32bit and 64bit versions are available.
For the developers who like to encode things, WME9 has an API as well, if you want to build a ‘better’ or more specific GUI on-top of it.
…and then there are the free development tools and utilities…
- Deep Zoom Composer
Don’t know what Deep Zoom in Silverlight is? The Hard Rock Memorabilia is one of the best examples of Deep Zoom. Deep Zoom Composer allows you to add as many images as you like to a composition, and generates all the levels of zoom (and even resulting Silverlight file to show it off) for you.
- Visual Studio Express (C#, VB.NET, Web)
If you are a student, don’t click here, go to Dreamspark instead and get the full version of Visual Studio 2008!
If you aren’t a student, the Visual Studio Express versions are cut down (but free) versions of Visual Studio. Works great with XNA too..
- SQL Server Express
A cut down version of SQL Server, SQL Server Express still remains a powerful SQL database. There are three versions (all free), Express, Express with Tools and Express with Advanced Services, thankfully the SqlExpress team has a great table showing the differences between them.
- SQL Server Compact Edition
SQL Server Compact Edition (SQLCE) is a free, tiny, redistributable database. If you want your app to use a database, but don’t want the users to need to install and configure SQL Server Express, SQLCE just requires installing.
Some of the top features are…
-
Free to use and distribute
-
Supports desktops and mobile devices
-
Small footprint for easy deployment
-
Fully embeddable architecture
-
No administration required
-
Single file, code-free database format
-
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 integration
-
Supports ADO.NET, LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Entities, and the ADO.NET Entity Framework
- XML Notepad 2007
If Notepad doesn’t cut it for editing your XML files, XML Notepad might be for you. If you wish to navigate via the XML Tree, or see what is causing a parsing error, its definitely for you!
- Terminals
This is one that I use, so it had to make the list. Terminals is a more powerful version of the Remote Desktop Client, allowing tabbed connections, history, and enhanced protocol support (RDP, VNC, RAS, Telnet for example)
Technically not from Microsoft, but from a Microsoft MVP and .NET enthusiasts.
- Virtual PC
Virtual PC lets you create a virtualised computer, so you can run Windows (or Linux) inside Windows!
Next week, part two of this post will be about the free services and learning from Microsoft.
Crysis Wars is now “free to play”…. from yesterday through to the 17th of April (what time zone, I’m not sure). Crysis Wars is the multiplayer component to Crysis Warhead, the standalone expansion to Crysis. It adds several new game play modes which make the game have a Battlefield 2142 or Quake Wars feel to them.
Go to www.mycrysis.com and sign up for a forum account, then hit the key generator to get your key (which you enter inside the game, no during installer).
You’ll need to grab the client download – which weighs in at about 5.5gb – as well as the Crysis Wars 1.4 patch – another 500mb or so. Since I’m Australian, here’s a list of Australian mirrors to download the rather hefty 6gb client – hopefully this will be ‘quota free’ for some of you – I’m with iiNet so I grabbed it from 3FL.
Installer mirrors
3FL
Part 1, 2, 3, 4
Internode
Part 1, 2, 3, 4
Ausgamers
Part 1, 2, 3, 4
Bigpond
Part 1, 2, 3, 4
v1.4 Patch Mirrors
Internode
3FL
Bigpond
Ausgamers
Microsoft’s It’s Not Cheating promotion, which sells software cheap to uni and TAFE students and staff, has been updated to bring it more inline with what other countries were offering. Apart from the website being updated, the products on offer has increased. You can now get
Don’t forget Microsoft also offers free software via the Dreamspark (“Dream Today, Create Tomorrow”) program. Dreamspark currently includes
- Visual Studio 2008 Professional
- Visual Studio 2005 Professional
- Expression Studio 2
- SQL Server 2008
- Windows Server 2008 Standard
- Windows Server 2003
The “saddest” news is the termination of Roger as the creepy-guy-who-watches-you-buy-software.
Visit www.itsnotcheating.com.au and www.dreamspark.com to get your cheap or free software!
Tried the panoramic photo stitching in Live Photo Gallery, but found it a bit basic? Try Microsoft Image Composition Engine (ICE).
ICE is a project out of Microsoft Research; outputs to TIFF, JPEG, PNG, Layered PSDs, HD View Tileset (another MSR project), Silverlight/Deep Zoom Tileset, BMP or HDI.
update: Going from the HDView blog, this builds on the stitching technology already released in Live Photo Gallery and Deep Zoom Composer, by adding multiple output formats, GPU acceleration, 360° blending and more. It wouldn’t be too suprising to see this make its way into Live Photo Gallery in the future.
Windows only, requires .NET 2.0, and has x86 and x64 variants, oh and totally free.
