Microsoft Australia to host the first Australian DigiGirlz Event

Minister Jodi McKay MP keynoted a recent Females in Telecommunications & Technology luncheon to celebrate International Women’s Day. During the event, she highlighted one of the biggest challenges facing Women in Technology: One in five Australians studying to work in ICT was female, and the number is currently in decline.

Measuring ASP.NET Performance Using Counters

Following is a list of performance counters I am usually taking to spot low hanging fruits when measuring ASP.NET performance: Resource utilization .Processor%Processor Time .NET CLR Memory(*)Allocated Bytes/sec .NET CLR Memory(*)% Time in GC .NET CLR Exceptions(*)# of Exceps Thrown / sec .NET CLR Loading(*)Current Assemblies Throughput .NET CLR LocksAndThreads(*)Contention Rate / sec .NET CLR LocksAndThreads(*)Current Queue Length ASP.NETRequests Queued ASP.NETRequest Wait Time ASP.NETRequests Current ASP.NET ApplicationsRequests In Application Queue ASP.NET ApplicationsPipeline Instance Count ASP.NET ApplicationsRequests Executing ASP.NET ApplicationsRequests/Sec Web ServiceCurrent ISAPI Extension Requests Response time ASP.NETRequest Execution Time SQL Server SQL Server: General StatisticsLogins/sec SQL Server: General StatisticsLogouts/sec SQL Server: General StatisticsUser Connections Detailed explanation about each counter and its significance can be found here: Chapter 15 — Measuring .NET Application Performance I particularly love the following diagram from the guide. The diagram helps brainstorming while identifying root cause of the performance issues identified using the counters: Related Book Ultra-Fast ASP.NET: Build Ultra-Fast and Ultra-Scalable web sites using ASP.NET and SQL Server My Related Posts Use Performance Counters Templates To Streamline Performance Analysis Performance Testing Objectives Document Template

XNA Game Studio 4.0 and Windows Phone Series 7 FTW!

Almost 3 years ago , I had the privilege of working on a demo to provide a sneak peek of Silverlight running on Windows Mobile.  It was a blast to put that together and see it on stage.  But while I love sneak peeks and such, the really rewarding work for me is not so much on tech demos, but moving those efforts into production – shipping code.  I’ve been pretty quiet since then on this front, and changes in circumstance and good blessing have landed me as the Development Manager for the XNA Game Studio team.  Today, we’re super excited to announce Game Studio 4.0 with support for Windows Phone Series 7, Xbox 360, and Windows.  Rather than repeat the details, check out the blog entries from my teammates… Kluch announces GS4 Shawn announces GS4 Features Feature List on XNA Creators Club Both Kluch and Shawn will be talking about GS4 at the GDC summit tomorrow with sessions repeated subsequent days for the rest of the GDC attendees. Kudos to the Windows Phone, Silverlight and XNA teams for pulling this all together. Even more to come next week at MIX!

Overview of Adaptive Brightness in Windows 7

So you just got yourself a new laptop. Congratulations! Did you notice that it has an Ambient Light Sensor (ALS)?

XNA Game Studio 4.0の新機能

  最近、私の忙しさの尺度はこのブログの更新頻度に反比例しているということに気づきました。去年の秋あたりから忙しくなり、今年に入ってGamefest、GDC、そしてMIXへ向けての作業に追われる毎日でした。で、ちょっとだけひと段落したので、またいろいろと記事を書いていこう思っています。 まず最初のニュースはXNA Game Studio 4.0についてです。XNA Game StudioはWindows、Xbox 360、そしてZuneと対応プラットフォームを増やしてきましたが、4.0では Windows Phone 7シリーズ への対応が決まりました。 Windows Phone 7シリーズでは要望の多かった3D APIが追加されています。ただし、Xbox 360やWindowsなどと比べると非力な携帯デバイスなので、複数のプラットフォームでゲームを作る場合にはプラットフォーム間のパフォーマンス差を考慮する必要があります。 この労力を軽減するために4.0では、”Reach(リーチ)”と”HiDef(ハイデフ)”の二つのCapsを設けました。ReachはWindows Phone 7シリーズを含めたどのプラットフォームでも動作させることのできるAPI群からなり、HiDefはXbox 360やハイエンドWindowsマシン上で動作することを前提にしたAPI群からなります。HiDefではReachの全APIが使えるようになっています。 以下はXNA Game Studio 4.0の主な新機能です。 XNA Game Studio 4.0の新機能 Visual Studio 2010に対応 グラフィクスAPIを機能的に”Reach(リーチ)”と”HiDef(ハイデフ)”にカテゴリ分け ダイナミックオーディオ マイク BasicEffectに加えて以下の基本的エフェクトクラスの追加 SkinnedEffect (スキンモデル用のエフェクト) EnvironmentMapEffect (環境マップ用のエフェクト) DualTextureEffect (デュアルテクスチャ用のエフェクト) AlphaTestEffect (アルファテスト用のエフェクト) これらの詳細は今週開催されているGDC、そして来週開催される MIX で公開される予定です。 http://blogs.technet.com/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/03/09/game-developers-have-a-great-opportunity-with-windows-phone-7-series.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnhar/archive/2010/03/09/in-which-hints-become-facts-xna-game-studio-4-0.aspx#comments http://klucher.com/blog/achievement-unlocked-xna-game-studio-4-0-for-windows-phone/