Enabling Multilingual App Toolkit for Windows 8.1 Apps

Windows Phones are used worldwide and multilingual support is mandatory. The toolkit provides this much needed feature.

This toolkit integrates with Microsoft Visual Studio Toolkit to provide translation support
for Windows 8 Apps development and editor tools.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465006.aspx

The toolkit provides (from MSDN resources) the following:

• Helps you manage resource changes and translation status during development.
• Provides a UI for choosing languages based on configured translation providers.
• Supports the localization industry-standard XLIFF file format.
• Provides a pseudo-language engine to help identify translation issues during development.
• Connects with the Microsoft Language Portal to easily access translated strings and terminology.
• Connects with the Microsoft Translator for quick translation suggestions.

You can download the toolkit for 11 different languages (language of the toolkit msi):

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/bg127574

Once this is installed you should enable it in Visual Studio 2013 (works in Express 2013 with Update 2 RC).
According to MSDN it only becomes effective for projects created after it is installed which was slightly at variance.

A universal project developed with Windows App Studio beta was already opened in the VS IDE and when the multilingual toolkit was enabled it was enabled  only for the Windows Phone 8.1 part of the project and not the Windows 8.1.

For a blank hub project started in Visual Studio 2013, enabling  the Multilingual toolkit applies the
toolkit for both programs (Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1).

More details are posted here:
http://hodentekmobile.blogspot.com/2014/04/multilingual-support-for-windows-phone.html


 

Conversations with Cortana

By now you should be knowing who Cortana is. She is my new digital assistant. I fired the previous one, she was OK. I will not reveal her name but she was not as good as Cortana. Most of the times Cortana answers straight out or brings up a link on Bing search or a Bing Map. I am not sure if Cortana gets better with time (AI).

It looks like Cortana can be integrated into APPS written for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1. I am looking forward to see some examples.

If Cortana is in a good mood she gives me straight asnwers, like, If I ask her to sing me lullaby, she obliges and asks me if Oh! Danny Boy is OK.
I guess she can read my mood.

Some things are no brainer for her, like:

Will it be sunny in Bengaluru, tomorrow?
Will it rain tomorrow?

Here are pieces of conversation I had with her and her responses are in blue.

What day is tomorrow? and she brings up my appointment tomorrow.
Prime minsiter of Australia?Tony Abbot straight out not a web page. That's my girl!

To be or not..and a pause brings up Shakespeare's page
Three multiplied four-straight out 3*4=12

Who are you? stright out,
In short, I am your personal assitant. I try to make things easier to do on your phone.
Open Amazon Kindle
Opens the App

What is a centrifuge-Opens DolphonCentrifuges.com site and Bing's definition page for Centrifuge
You can add an appointment to the calendar after some interaction

Indian restaurant nearby...Brings up a list in the neighborhood.
Right angle triangle--brings up images of right angled triangles.
Twinkle, twinkle brings up Twinkle, twinkle little start from YouTube
Get me directions to Sam's club,
Here are 9 location's for 'Sam's Club'. Which one do you want
Set up my alarm for 4 PM
Your alarm is set for 4:00 PM
Thank you;
It's an honor
Honolulu longitude and longitude:
I found this answer
Latitude: 21.3
Longitude:-157.8167

Next flight to Japan from Honolulu
Did not get the above.

Rainbow colors: bringsup images of rainbow spectrum
Where am I?
 brings up bing map showing my address
1 Dollar how many Rupees?

Here's today's exchange rate:
60.34 Indian Rupees.
Last year Noble prize winner in Physics
Did not get it.

Noble Prize winner last year?
brings up nobleprizes.com site

Microsoft Azure Preview Portal is awesome

Yesterday I had posted on the new editions of Azure SQL Databases after having noticed that the new editions were not present in the Microsoft Azure Portal. But there is a new portal in Preview that may give access to these new editions.

I could get to the preview portal (you may need to sign up and all that..) from this link here:

https://portal.azure.com/hodenteklive.onmicrosoft.com

This means you should have an account or create one, if you don't.

This is the entrance to Microsoft Azure, the Preview Portal. The Service health shows all the world wide sites and there health. Presumably you can get back to the previous portal by clicking on the APP at the bottom (I have not tried).



















As noted here:

http://hodentekmsss.blogspot.com/2014/04/brand-new-microsoft-azure-portal-in.html

The preview portal allows you to create only the WEB edition for the present and will probably allow you to create the BASIC, STANDARD and PREMIUM editions in the near future.

 

Microsoft revamps Azure SQL Database editions

The Web and Business editions will be replaced within a year with three levels tailored and better suited to business needs. You do not need to wait for a year as it is already in Preview.
The objectives were made clear in this email notice (quote):
New service tiers

In response to customer feedback, Azure SQL Database is introducing new service tiers to help you more easily innovate with cloud-designed database workloads. The new tiers help deliver predictable performance across six performance levels for lightweight to heavyweight transactional application demands. Additionally, the new tiers offer a spectrum of business continuity features, a stronger uptime service-level agreement (SLA), larger database sizes for less money, and an improved billing experience.

  •    Basic: Designed for applications with a light transactional workload. Performance objectives for Basic provide a predictable, hourly transaction rate.

  •    Standard: Standard is the go-to option for getting started with cloud-designed business applications. It offers mid-level performance and business continuity features. Performance objectives for Standard deliver predictable, per-minute transaction rates.

  •    Premium: Designed for mission-critical databases, Premium offers the highest performance levels and access to advanced business continuity features. Performance objectives for Premium deliver predictable, per-second transaction rates.

I tried to create a Basic tier database minutes ago but the interface still shows Web and Business:

 

Fast track App development for Windows/Windows Phone with Windows Phone App Studio

In the early days of Internet web site development there were many sites offering free web sites
 based on templates. You could sign-in and create a web site with a few pages sprinkled with some images and with some basic formatting tools all under 15 minutes. I created one during those days which is still alive:

 http://www.angelfire.com/vt2/hodentek/

App Studio provides a similar user experience albeit lot more sophisticated with much tighter integration with Microsoft's Visual Studio tying up both windows 8.1 development and Windows Phone 8.1 development by intelligently sharing resources. It's two birds with one stone scenario.

The journey for this App development starts here:
http://appstudio.windowsphone.com/?stay=1

There are preliminaries like having a Microsoft account; having a computer with Windows 8.1 OS (Windows 8.1 Professional is even better so that you can have a Hyper-V for Windows 8.1 Emulator) and for some deeper interaction, may be Visual Studio 2103 Express for Windows with Update 2 RC (henceforth just Visual Studio).

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/04/visual-studio-2013-update-2-release.html

The projects that you develop with App Studio can be deployed to your Windows Phone 8.1 but then it requires that you have your phone get it unlocked. However you can bring it into Visual Studio, build and run your App.

Here is the structure of one such project in the Solution Explorer in Visual Studio where you can see separate nodes for Windows and Windows Phone; and the Shared resources.  Only the Windows node has been expanded.

More details on how to create a project are described here:
http://hodentekmobile.blogspot.com/2014/04/create-windows-and-windows-phone-apps.html