Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 global launch

Thursday, January 20th, 2011 at 9am PST

Attend this FREE global virtual launch event and watch Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduce Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Learn how it is designed to help you boost sales, improve marketing, enrich customer service interactions, and accelerate line of business application development through xRM.

Hear keynote presentations by Kirill Tatarinov (Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Business Solutions), Michael Park (Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Business Solutions), and Brad Wilson (General Manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM). Read More. Register Here. See what’s in store for CRM 2011.

SSRS Maps!

SQL Server 2008 introduced new spatial data types including a geography type that can be used to store latitude and longitude coordinates.  The new map feature in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2 works with the geography type as well as with state abbreviations, state names, or state numbers. 

The built-in map feature allows you to add a map to a report and show the states in the US or the counties within a state.  You can use the map to render one or more data points, providing a slick visualization of your data by state or county within a state. Read More.

 

Denali has come!

Microsoft just announced the release of the next version of SQL Server, code named Denali, at the PASS Summit in Seattle.  The Community Technology Preview (CTP) version, somewhat like an early alpha or beta release, is available for download now to MSDN members.

Microsoft SQL Server 2011, code-named “Denali” empowers organizations to be more agile in today’s competitive market. Customers can efficiently deliver mission-critical solutions through a highly scalable and available platform. Industry-leading tools help developers quickly build innovative applications while data integration and management tools help deliver credible data reliably to the right users and new user experiences expand the reach of BI to enable meaningful insights. Read More. Download the CTP. Release Notes.

Sri Lanka Eye Bank, World’s Biggest Human Eyes Donor

Sri Lanka’s International Eye Bank (Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society) is one of the world’s biggest, human eyes donor, restoring vision to people in as many as 57 countries, including Japan, Thailand, Egypt and China. [Read More].

According to the Manager of the International Eye Bank, there is a huge potential to collect donor eyes in this country, over 10 times what could be used here, owing to a worldwide shortage of donor eyes. The Buddhist supreme concept of “daana“, or almsgiving, was the root of their success. They believe that it is an act of great merit to gift their eyes after death to someone living who would have the gift of sight. Over 870,000 people have signed consent forms asking us to take their eyes after they are dead, he explained.

Those who wish to donate their precious eyes after the death, can register with the Bank by visiting personally to the below address or by sending them a letter requesting for the consent forms.

Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society,

Wijerama Mawatha,
Colombo 07,

Sri Lanka.

Tel. +94 11 2698040

A senior consultant of the Bank, explained that corneal graft surgery today involves taking the whole eye ball, not just the cornea, as was done in earlier years. “Even if an eye is not suitable, we take it because it satisfies the families of the donors“, he said. “It is not wasted. It can always be used for research.”

An eye must be removed from the body within 24 hours of death, packed in ice and received at the laboratory within 4 hours. There are three types of preservation fluids that allow a cornea to be preserved for 5, 14, and 21 days, respectively, at a temperature of 4 degrees. The 21-day fluid is the most expensive one, he further explained.

Mobile & Telecommunications Centre of Excellence

SLASSCOM, the Sri Lankan IT and business process outsourcing chamber, had launched the SLASSCOM Mobile & Telecommunications Centre of Excellence (CoE) couple of days ago.

The centre has been established to bring together leading service providers and educational organisations in order to advance the fast growing Mobile & Telco IT/BPO Industry in Sri Lanka and provide innovative new services to domestic, UK and other international companies.

Leading mobile telecommunications providers including Dinota IT, Eurocentre, hSenid, Informatics, Mortorola, Sabre, Virtusa and Wavenet have already come forward to collaborate within the CoE. SLASSCOM invites all Sri Lankan mobile solution providers to join the CoE to take advantage of the collaborative force. Read More.

 

Google Transliteration

Google Transliteration allows you to type phonetically using Roman characters. Simply type a word the way it sounds in English and Google Transliteration will convert it to its local script. 

This currently supports 22 languages: Amharic, Arabic, Bengali, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Sinhalese, Tamil, Telugu, Tigrinya and Urdu. Try it out here.

Transliteration is the process of phonetically converting a word written in one script into another. Transliteration should not be confused with translation, which involves a change in language while preserving meaning. With transliteration, it is the sound of the words that are converted from one alphabet to the other.

With the Google’s AJAX Language API for Transliteration, you can enable transliteration on any editable element on your web page. This helps your users type in any language using an English keyboard. Thanks Indika for updating me on this.

 

CRM 5.0 CTP

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) announced the Community Technical Preview 3 (CTP 3) for the next generation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, code-named “CRM 5”.

This CTP is primarily aimed at software developers within the broad partner base of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, including Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Global System Integrators (GSIs), Hosting Partners, and Value Added Resellers (VARs), giving them an opportunity to start early development and testing of their solutions for this new release.

The next generation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM will support more than 40 languages, and will be offered as an online service, as on-premises software and via partner-hosted offerings. Availability of the new product will begin in the second half of 2010. Read More.

 

BI Conference 2010

Discover the true power of Business Intelligence at the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference at Tech·Ed North America.

Come and see how Microsoft can help you design, build and deploy robust Business Intelligence applications for everyone in your organization while controlling costs. It is the single best place to get the latest business strategy, product information, implementation best practices, customer insights and expert guidance relating to Microsoft Business Intelligence products.

 

Oracle Database 11g Release 2

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 delivers industry leading performance, scalability, security and reliability. It provides comprehensive features to easily manage the most demanding transaction processing, business intelligence, and content management applications.

Register here for one of the upcoming Webcasts to learn how you can transform your business, budgets, and service levels with Oracle Database 11g Release 2.

 

Business Intelligence Development Studio

Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) is the IDE from Microsoft used for developing data analysis and Business Intelligence solutions utilizing the Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, Reporting Services and Integration Services.

It is based on the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment but customizes with the SQL Server services-specific extensions and project types, including tools, controls and projects for reports, ETL dataflows, OLAP cubes and data mining structures.