a broadband internet provider

Related Articles
EU approves SAP, Vodafone acquisitions	27 November 2007
The European Commission has signed off on two big technology mergers, approving SAP's acquisition of Business Objects and Vodafone's purchase of the Spanish and Italian subsidiaries of the Swedish telecom group Tele2.The Commission said it approved SAP's takeover of the BI software vendor Business Objects after concluding that the combined entity would not unfairly dominate the market."The combined SAP/Business Object entity would continue to face several strong competitors, and customers would find sufficient alternative suppliers of such software products," the Commission said.SAP sells primarily middleware and ERP applications and has just started getting into the BI market, while Business Objects is known for its business analytics software.The Commission said its investigation found no significant risk that the merged entity would be able to close off competitors from the market because SAP's middleware product, Netweaver, is an "open" platform that can work with BI products from multiple vendors.The Commission also gave the green light to Vodafone's expansion plans for the Spanish and Italian broadband Internet access markets, by approving its planned €775 million ($1.1 billion) acquisition of the Spanish and Italian subsidiaries of Tele2."The combined entity's share would be below 10 percent in those markets, and the incremental increase in the share of Vodafone would be small," the Commission said.In Italy and Spain, Vodafone is mainly active as a provider of mobile communications services and is the second largest mobile operator in both countries. Tele2 Italy and Tele2 Spain offer fixed-line telephony services and Internet access, including broadband."The parties' activities only overlap in the retail market for fixed broadband internet access and in the retail market for telephony services at a fixed location, both in Italy and in Spain," the Commission concluded.

Video distributor to FCC: Stop ISP traffic 'throttling'	15 November 2007
A distributor of online video content has filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, asking the agency to stop broadband providers from blocking or slowing p-to-p (peer-to-peer) traffic.The petition filed by Vuze, which uses the BitTorrent p-to-p protocol to distribute Web content, asks the FCC to set rules for network management by ISPs. Vuze's filing late Wednesday follows reports last month that cable broadband provider Comcast slows some p-to-p traffic, including BitTorrent.Broadband providers often promote their services as being necessary for watching video online, but then they slow access to a service such as Vuze's, said John Fernandes, Vuze's vice president of marketing. "They say that they're engaging in reasonable network management, but what they're doing is slowing down some traffic," he said.Vuze, which has partnerships with several movie studios, television networks, and PC game makers, wants to start a dialog with ISPs about what kind of network management is allowed, added Gilles BianRosa, the company's CEO. But the FCC needs to prohibit large-scale content blocking, what he called traffic "throttling," he said."The ISPs cannot decide unilaterally what to do with third-party Internet services such as us," BianRosa said. "We need to work with them to design a solution that works and is fair."By blocking or slowing video and other Web content, ISPs are fighting against customer demand for more multimedia services, BianRosa added. "We think that ISPs are spitting into the wind with that kind of approach," he said. "This kind of blocking has to stop."Representatives of two large broadband providers, Comcast and Verizon, didn't immediately respond to a request for comments on Vuze's FCC filing. Comcast has denied blocking Web content, but some broadband providers have opposed other attempts to create rules against blocking some types of traffic, saying they need to be able to ensure quality of service by managing their networks.The FCC has all the authority it needs to "address claims of unreasonable conduct," an AT&T spokesman said. "Broadband providers must have the ability to manage traffic to provide all consumers with high-quality service," he added. "Additional rules or legislation are totally unnecessary."Vuze's FCC petition is similar in some ways to calls by consumer groups and Internet-based firms for the FCC or the U.S. Congress to pass network neutrality rules, which would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors. The FCC has had an open inquiry into net neutrality rules since April, and a push to pass rules in Congress has stalled.But the Vuze proposal is more focused than net neutrality, BianRosa said. Net neutrality often includes other issues in addition to content blocking, including requirements for broadband and wireless providers to allow all legal devices to connect to their networks. Vuze is asking the FCC to "dig deeper" than the net neutrality debate, he said.Public Knowledge, a group promoting consumer rights on the Internet, praised the Vuze filing. Vuze is a good example of the harm caused by content blocking, said Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge's president."Comcast's actions frustrate Vuze's business and force the company to devote resources to play a 'cat and mouse' game with Comcast in order to maintain superior service for its customers," Sohn said in an e-mail. "We hope the FCC acts promptly before even more harm is done to more consumers and to more companies."Earlier this week, a Comcast customer in California filed a lawsuit against the company, saying the provider has caused several Web-based programs to suffer performance problems. In late October, Public Knowledge and other members of the Open Internet Coalition filed a complaint about the alleged Comcast blocking with the FCC.Vuze, based in Palo Alto, Calif., distributes video in partnership with movie studios and television networks including the BBC, Showtime, and PBS. It also distributes PC games, music videos, and audio files. Company officials say the Vuze client has been installed by customers more than 12 million times since the company, formerly called Azureus, rebranded itself in January.

GSM group backs LTE for mobile broadband	15 November 2007
The board of the GSM Association voted to back LTE (Long-Term Evolution) as the mobile broadband standard to succeed HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access), the CEO of the group said Tuesday.The vote is an indication that GSM operators are unified in their support for LTE, and gives them a united front as LTE competes with Qualcomm's UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband) and with WiMax, backed by the computer industry, to become the next mobile broadband technology.LTE is several times faster than HSPA and could help spur demand for more downloading over cellular networks. Japan's NTT DoCoMo may become the first operator to widely deploy the new technology, which is expected to be ready by the end of this decade.LTE is now part of the GSMA push to promote the use of mobile broadband on cellular networks.Rob Conway, CEO of GSMA, announced the association's backing of LTE during a speech at the GSM Association's Mobile Asia Congress in Macau, China, and called on the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the leading United Nations agency for communication technologies, to ensure the industry wins the spectrum needed to offer mobile broadband.GSMA said it will work with other companies and organizations developing LTE technology, and start working with the NGMN (Next Generation Mobile Networks) initiative.NTT DoCoMo is pushing aggressively ahead with plans to speed up its mobile broadband services in Japan, and is looking to LTE to take care of the job. The company counts over half of Japan's mobile subscribers as its customers and has already started running tests on LTE technology to become its "Super 3G" offering. One advantage to LTE is that it can be used on existing 3G networks.Download speeds on Super 3G could reach up to 300Mbps (megabits per second), Masao Nakamura, the CEO of NTT DoCoMo, said in a speech, a huge improvement over HSDPA. A 500-page magazine, for example, takes 3 minutes to download on HSDPA. On Super 3G it takes only three seconds, he said.That means people will be able to download larger file sizes, including videos, music, and more over their mobile phones.A problem for NTT could ultimately be government allocation of the radio spectrum that operators need to deliver wireless broadband. There may not be enough bandwidth available on some of the spectrum the Japanese government is considering for mobile network operators, said K. Jay Miyahara, corporate chief engineer of the mobile network operations unit at NEC."What technology [DoCoMo] ultimately uses depends on the spectrum they get," he said. Certain technologies, including HSPA and LTE, can be used only in certain spectrum. The 800MHz spectrum would be ideal, but most Japanese companies expect to be allocated 700MHz, Miyahara said.DoCoMo hopes to attract users by allowing them to pay a flat rate for speedy downloads. "We want people to use their mobile phone for everything, but we think that if they worry too much about their bill then they won't use this download feature," Miyahara said. "So the answer is to offer a flat rate service, and then people won't worry about their phone bill."NTT DoCoMo is Japan's largest mobile phone service provider, with 53.7 percent of the nation's 99 million mobile users subscribing to the company. Nearly 80 percent of DoCoMo subscribers have already switched to 3G (third generation mobile telecommunications) service from 2G, Nakamura said. The nation is considered a world leader in 3G and mobile phone services.DoCoMo is also researching 4G (fourth generation) mobile technology. When it's commercialized, 4G will promise 1Gbps download speeds, said Nakamura, but in testing DoCoMo has achieved speeds as high as 5Gbps.Testing on LTE is expected to be finished by 2009, said Matthias Reis, head of the LTE business program at Nokia Siemens Networks. Operators are currently using HSPA, and starting to roll out HSPA+ and IHSPA (Internet-HSPA). By 2009, testing will be done and operators will be able to start rolling out the technology, he said.Meanwhile the GSMA continues to back current generation wireless technologies. Separately Tuesday, in partnership with Microsoft, it announced a contest to design laptop PCs with HSPA-enabled chipsets to make it easier for the average user to access the Internet via a mobile network. The hope is that users will begin to use mobile phone networks to download information to more devices other than just handsets, such as laptops, digital cameras, digital music players, and more.

TD-SCDMA makes Beijing Olympic Games roster	12 November 2007
China's largest mobile phone network operator will have a 3G network based on TD-SCDMA technology up and running in eight cities by the end of this year, in preparation for testing ahead of the Summer Olympic Games slated to start next August in Beijing, industry leaders say.Network equipment maker ZTE has already started delivering systems to service provider China Mobile Communications, a ZTE manager said at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress, which started Monday in Macau, China.Earlier this year, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), had said it did not expect TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) to be part of the technology offerings on hand at the Games because it wasn't ready yet. But the group has changed its tune.News reporters, athletes, and attendees will all be able to take advantage of 3G telecommunications at the Olympics, said Susan Li, deputy division chief in the technology department's telecommunication division at BOCOG."This is no easy task," she said, "considering the Olympic Games are spread through 31 venues, including several outside of Beijing."BOCOG had already partnered with China Mobile to provide GSM and WLAN services at Olympic buildings and venues. But now China Mobile has committed to providing 3G services at the Games, she said."We are very happy with the development of TD-SCDMA and that it will be showcased at the Olympic Games," Li added.TD-SCDMA has been a question mark for a while. The main knock against the 3G standard is that it's a latecomer, rushed to market by government officials in China and perhaps not yet ready to handle the huge crowds and spotlight of the Olympics. China could have chosen the existing 3G standard used in many other countries, WCDMA (Wideband Code-Division Multiple Access), instead of spending money on its own 3G mobile standard, but the nation wants to promote home grown technologies.When China might issue 3G mobile telecommunications licenses remains unknown; 3G licensing has been a question mark in China for a while, and executives at the show blamed the rush to finish readying TD-SCDMA technology and careful testing of the new standard for the delay.Hua Yang, secretary-general of the TD-SCDMA Industry Alliance, said 100 pieces of networking equipment are already ready for commercial TD-SCDMA use, and that handsets armed with HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) mobile broadband Internet capability will be ready in the first quarter of next year.Aside from Beijing, 3G trials will also be held in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Shanghai, Qingdao, and Baodin, he said.Networking equipment maker Datang Mobile has been troubleshooting certain Olympic venues. In Qingdao, where all Olympic sailing events will be held, the company is trying out TD-SCDMA systems able to provide 3G service coverage over the sea, said Xu Tiezhu, general manager of Datang's Beijing R&D Center. The company is also running tests on Shanghai's Maglev Train and in subways in some cities, to ensure 3G coverage."All corporations will work together to ensure the Olympic Games are a success," said Yang.Executives at the meeting said trials will continue from now through the first half of 2008, with commercial runs of the TD-SCDMA-based 3G networks taking place in 10 cities in a run-up to the Olympic Games. The Opening ceremony of the Games takes place on Aug. 8, 2008, and events run through Aug. 24, according to BOCOG's Web site.

D2 Technologies and Ikanos Unveil Integrated Design for VoIP-Enabled Quadruple Play Devices	30 October 2007
Ikanos Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: IKAN), a leading developer and provider of Fiber Fast? broadband solutions, and D2 Technologies, the market leader in embedded software platforms that power IP communications, today unveiled a quadruple play residential gateway with D2's voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) software.

Ofcom receiving complaints about Broadband providers	30 October 2007
Many consumers are finding that switching their broadband connection is resulting in severe delays in getting connected and industry regulator Ofcom receives an average of 180 complaints a week about this matter. Over half of all homes now use this high-speed access to the internet and with both O2, the mobile phone provider and the Post [...]

Fon's shared Wi-Fi network goes mainstream with BT	04 October 2007
(InfoWorld) - BT Group is turning to its own broadband subscribers to help crack a nut that many governments and service providers have struggled with: Widespread Wi-Fi access. The U.K.'s biggest broadband provider will equip about 2 million subscribers' broadband routers with software from Fon Technology that lets them share part of their Internet bandwidth with the other Fon "members" nearby. BT hopes subscribers will take advantage of the free offer and make Wi-Fi available in many suburban areas, complementing the hotspots and central-city hot zones BT has built around the country. Fon provides special Wi-Fi routers and software that let people create two separate networks: a secure one for their own use and an open one for anyone within range. Anyone who does this becomes a member of the Fon "community" and can access the Internet on any other member's public connection. The company already has deals with carriers in its native Spain as well as France, the U.S. and other countries in which subscribers can share their connections. The arrangement with BT offers Fon's biggest potential customer base yet. Any subscriber with BT's Home Hub premium router, currently about half the carrier's customers, can opt in to the service at no cost. Users can sign up and get a firmware download immediately, and next week, BT will roll out the firmware to all the Home Hubs and users will just have to opt in, said Jon Hurry, director of Internet services at BT Retail. Service providers and municipalities have searched for ways to provide widespread outdoor Wi-Fi access, in many cases for free. The hopes of municipalities such as San Francisco and Chicago faded considerably after EarthLink came to the same conclusion some other municipal wireless providers had reached and demanded cities become "anchor tenants" to help pay for its networks. Meanwhile, lower profile vendors like Meraki Networks have enlisted consumers in efforts to proliferate Wi-Fi. BT has covered the central districts of 12 U.K. cities with paid Wi-Fi and provided about 2,000 hotspots in places such as hotels and restaurants. Its broadband subscribers have free access to those. The carrier chose Fon because it was the quickest way to get public Wi-Fi up and running in other locations, complementing the existing deployments, and at no cost, Hurry said. The carrier's ambition is to have hundreds of thousands of BT subscribers opt in to the service, he said. BT made an undisclosed investment in Fon earlier this year and has a seat on its board, according to Hurry. The piece of a customer's broadband connection that will become available to other Fon members is relatively small at 512Kbps out of a BT broadband connection that can be as fast as 8Mbps, but it outpaces the minimum 300Kbps free service Google wanted to offer on EarthLink's San Francisco network. People should be able to use those connections for Internet access, gaming, VoIP, and other applications on any Wi-Fi device, according to Fon.

Far EasTone may promote WiMax handsets, but not Skype	28 September 2007
(InfoWorld) - Far EasTone Telecommunications doesn't plan to shy away from WiMax handsets once its high-speed wireless network is up and running in southern Taiwan, but the company certainly won't welcome Skype's popular Internet telephony software. The Taiwanese company is the only major mobile phone service provider on the island to win a license to build a WiMax network and offer high-speed wireless Internet access to people in the southern half of the island. The conundrum it faces is the development of handsets designed to run over WiMax networks using VoIP, which bypass traditional mobile phone and landline networks to give users low-cost and sometimes no-cost calls. Such devices could cut into mobile phone service revenue for all companies. Far EasTone will support WiMax phones on the network, but if it decides to distribute a WiMax handset of its own, it will not put Skype on it, said Jan Nilsson, president of Far EasTone, during a news conference in Taipei. Earlier this year, he blamed VoIP phone calls for the first ever revenue decline in Taiwan's telecommunications industry in 2006, lamenting the fact that people on the island have turned to using free or low-cost long-distance calls over the Internet in place of traditional phone calls. Skype is the favorite VoIP software of Taiwan, due in large part to an agreement Skype inked with popular Internet portal operator PCHome Online to market and distribute its software in Taiwan. Nearly 20.5 million copies of Skype's software have been downloaded from PCHome's Skype site so far, a huge number considering Taiwan's population is only around 23 million people. Far EasTone plans to have its WiMax network up and running by the end of next year or early in 2009, said Nilsson. The company plans to seek a partner in northern Taiwan in order to offer full-island service. Taiwan awarded WiMax licenses to six companies earlier this year, three each for the north and south of the island. Far EasTone won the right to build a WiMax network in southern Taiwan. It was the only one of the island's major phone service providers to win a license, edging out rivals Chunghwa Telecom, the biggest phone company in Taiwan, and Taiwan Mobile. WiMax base stations can send wireless broadband Internet signals far greater distances than the Wi-Fi technology used to deliver wireless Internet access in coffee shops and airports today. Although estimates vary on how far WiMax signals can go, in a densely populated place such as Taiwan, the distance should be between 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) and 4 km.

ASP.NET MVC Preview 4 Release (Part 1)	14 July 2008
The ASP.NET MVC team is in the final stages of finishing up a new "Preview 4" release that they hope to ship later this week. The Preview 3 release focused on finishing up a lot of the underlying core APIs and extensibility points in ASP.NET MVC. Starting with Preview 4 this week you'll start to see more and more higher level features begin to appear that build on top of the core foundation and add nice productivity. There are a bunch of new features and capabilities in this new build - so much in fact that I decided I needed two posts to cover them all. This first post will cover the new Caching, Error Handling and Security features in Preview 4, as well as some testing improvements it brings. My next post will cover the new AJAX features being added with this release as well. Understanding Filter Interceptors Action Filter Attributes are a useful extensibility capability in ASP.NET MVC that was first added with the "Preview 2" release. These enable you to inject code interceptors into the request of a MVC controller that can execute before and after a Controller or its Action methods execute. This enables some nice encapsulation scenarios where you can easily package-up and re-use functionality in a clean declarative way. Below is an example of a super simple "ScottGuLog" filter that I could use to log details about exceptions raised during the execution of a request. Implementing a custom filter class is easy - just subclass the "ActionFilterAttribute" type and override the appropriate methods to run code before or after an Action method on the Controller is invoked, and/or before or after an ActionResult is processed into a response. Using a filter within a ASP.NET MVC Controller is easy - just declare it as an attribute on an Action method, or alternatively on the Controller class itself (in which case it will apply to all Action methods within the Controller): Above you can see an example of two filters being applied. I've indicated that I want my "ScottGuLog" to be applied to the "About" action method, and that I want the "HandleError" filter to be applied to all Action methods on the HomeController. Previous preview releases of ASP.NET MVC enabled this filter extensibility, but didn't ship with pre-built filters. ASP.NET Preview 4 now includes several useful filters for handling output caching, error handling and security scenarios. OutputCache Filter The [OutputCache] filter provides an easy way to integrate ASP.NET MVC with the output caching features of ASP.NET (with ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 you had to write code to achieve this). To try this out, modify the "Message" value set within the "Index" action method of the HomeController (created by the VS ASP.NET MVC project template) to display the current time: When you run your application you'll see that a timestamp updates each time you refresh the page: We can enable output caching for this URL by adding the [OutputCache] attribute to the our Action method. We'll configure it to cache the response for a 10 second duration using the declaration below: Now when you hit refresh on the page you'll see that the timestamp only updates every 10 seconds. This is because the action method is only being called once every 10 seconds - all requests between those time intervals are served out of the ASP.NET output cache (meaning no code needs to run - which makes it super fast). In addition to supporting time duration, the OutputCache attribute also supports the standard ASP.NET output cache vary options (vary by params, headers, content encoding, and custom logic). For example, the sample below would save different cached versions of the page depending on the value of an optional "PageIndex" QueryString parameter, and automatically render the correct version depending on the incoming URL's querystring value: You can also integrate with the ASP.NET Database Cache Invalidation feature - which allows you to automatically invalidate the cache when a database the URL depends on is modified (tip: the best way to-do this is to setup a CacheProfile section in your web.config and then point to it in the OutputCache attribute). HandleError Filter The [HandleError] filter provides a way to declaratively indicate on a Controller or Action method that a friendly error response should be displayed if an error occurs during the processing of a ASP.NET MVC request. To try this out, add a new "TestController" to a project and implement an action method that raise an exception like below: By default when you point your browser at this URL, it will display a default ASP.NET error page to remote users (unless you've gone in and configured a <customErrors> section in your web.config file): We can change the HTML error displayed to be a more friendly end-user message by adding a [HandleError] attribute to either our Controller or to an Action method on our Controller: The HandleError filter will catch all exceptions (including errors raised when processing View templates), and display a custom Error view response when they occur. By default it attempts to resolve a View template in your project called "Error" to generate the response. You can place the "Error" view either in the same directory as your other Controller specific views (for example: \Views\Test for the TestController above), or within the \Views\Shared folder (it will look first for a controller specific error view, and then if it doesn't find one it will look in the shared folder - which contains views that are shared across all controllers). Visual Studio now automatically adds a default "Error" view template for you inside the \Views\Shared folder when you create new ASP.NET MVC Projects starting with Preview 4: When we add a [HandleError] attribute to our TestController, this will by default show remote users an html error page like below (note that it picks up the master page template from the project so that the error message is integrated into the site). You can obviously go in and customize the Error view template to display whatever HTML and/or friendlier customer error message you want - below is simply what you get out of the box: To help developers, the default Error view template provided by the new project template in Visual Studio is written to display additional error stack trace information when you are browsing the application locally: You can turn this off either by deleting the code from the Error view template, or by setting <customErrors> to "off" inside your web.config file. By default the [HandleError] filter will catch and handle all exceptions that get raised during the request. You can alternatively specify specific exception types you are interested in catching, and specify custom error views for them by specifying the "ExceptionType" and "View" properties on [HandleError] attributes: In the code above I'm choosing to display custom error views for SqlExceptions and NullReferenceExceptions. All other exceptions will then use the default "Error" view template. Authorize Filter The [Authorize] filter provides a way to declaratively control security access on a Controller or Action method. It allows you to indicate that a user must be logged in, and optionally require that they are a specific user or in a specific security role in order to gain access. The filter works with all types of authentication (including Windows as well as Forms based authentication), and provides support for automatically redirecting anonymous users to a login form as needed. To try this out, add an [Authorize] filter to the "About" action in the HomeController created by default with Visual Studio: Declaring an [Authorize] attribute like above indicates that a user must be logged into the site in order for them to request the "About" action. When non-logged-in users attempt to hit the /Home/About URL, they will be blocked from gaining access. If the web application is configured to use Windows based authentication, ASP.NET will automatically authenticate the user using their Windows login identity, and if successful allow them to proceed. If the web application is configured to use Forms based authentication, the [Authorize] attribute will automatically redirect the user to a login page in order to authenticate (after which they'll have access): The [Authorize] attribute optionally allows you to grant access only to specific users and/or roles. For example, if I wanted to limit access to the "About" action to just myself and Bill Gates I could write: Typically for all but trivial applications you don't want to hard-code user names within your code. Instead you usually want to use a higher-level concept like "roles" to define permissions, and then map users into roles separately (for example: using active directory or a database to store the mappings). The [Authorize] attribute makes it easy to control access to Controllers and Actions using a "Roles" property: The [Authorize] attribute does not have a dependency on any specific user identity or role management mechanism. Instead it works against the ASP.NET "User" object - which is extensible and allows any identity system to be used. AccountController Class I mentioned above that the [Authorize] attribute can be used with any authentication or user identity management system. You can write or use any custom login UI and/or username/password management system you want with it. To help you get started, though, the ASP.NET MVC Project Template in Visual Studio now includes a pre-built "AccountController" and associated login views that implement a forms-authentication membership system with support for logging in, logging out, registering new users, and changing passwords. All of the views templates and UI can be easily customized independent of the AccountController class or implementation: The Site.master template also now includes UI at the top-right that provides login/logout functionality. When using forms-based authentication it will prompt you to login if you are not currently authenticated: And it displays a welcome message along with a logout link if you are authenticated on the site: Clicking the Login link above takes users to a Login screen like below that they can use to authenticate: New users can click the register link to create new accounts: Error handing and error display is also built-in: The AccountController class that is added to new projects uses the built-in ASP.NET Membership API to store and manage user credentials (the Membership system uses a provider API allowing any back-end storage to be plugged-in, and ASP.NET includes built-in providers for Active Directory and SQL Server). If you don't want to use the built-in Membership system you can keep the same AccountController action method signatures, View templates, and Forms Authentication ticket logic, and just replace the user account logic within the AccountController class. For the next ASP.NET MVC preview release we are planning to encapsulate the interaction logic between the AccountController and the user identity system behind an interface - which will make it easier to plug-in your own user storage system (without having to implement a full membership provider) as well as to easily unit test both it and the AccountController. Our hope is that this provides a nice way for people to quickly get started, and enable them to have a working end to end security system as soon as they create a new project. Testing TempData One last improvement to touch on in this first preview 4 post is some improvements being made on the Controller class that allow you to more easily unit test the TempData collection. The TempData property allows you to store data that you want to persist for a future request from a user. It has the semantic of only lasting one future request (after which it is removed). It is typically used for MVC scenarios where you want to perform a client-side redirect to change the URL in the browser, and want a simple way to store scratch data. With previous ASP.NET MVC Previews you had to mock objects in order to test the TempData collection. With Preview 4 you no longer need to mock or setup anything. You can now add and verify objects within the Controller's TempData collection directly within your unit tests (for example: populate a controller's TempData property before calling its action method, or verify that the action updated the TempData after the action returned). The actual storage semantics of the TempData collection is now encapsulated within a separate TempDataProvider property. Conclusion Hopefully the above post provides a quick look at a number of the new features and changes coming with ASP.NET MVC Preview 4. My next post on ASP.NET MVC Preview 4 will cover the new AJAX functionality that has been added, and demonstrate how to take advantage of it. Hope this helps, Scott

Silverlight 2 Beta2 Released	07 June 2008
Silverlight 2 Beta2 was released today. You can download both Silverlight 2 Beta2 and the Visual Studio and Expression Blend tools support to target it here. Beta2 adds a lot of new features (more details below), but is still a 4.6 MB download that takes less than 10 seconds to install on a machine. It does not require the .NET Framework or any other software to be installed for it to work, and all features work cross-browser on both Mac and Windows machines. These features will also be supported on Linux via the Moonlight 2 release. Silverlight 2 Beta2 supports a go-live license that allows you to start using and deploying Silverlight 2 for commercial applications. There will be some API changes between Beta2 and the final release, so you should expect that applications you write with Beta2 will need to make some updates when the final release comes out. But we think that these changes will be straight-forward and relatively easy, and that you can begin planning and starting commercial projects now. You can build Silverlight Beta2 applications using the VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight and Expression Blend 2.5 June Preview downloads. You can download both of them here. The VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight download works with both VS 2008 and the recent VS 2008 SP1 beta release. UI and Control Improvements Silverlight 2 Beta2 includes a bunch of work in the UI and Control space: More Built-in Controls In Beta 1 only a few controls were included with the core Silverlight setup. Most common controls (including Button, ListBox, Slider, etc) were shipped within separate assemblies that you had to bundle with your applications (which increased the app download size). Beta 2 now installs 30+ of the most common controls as part of the core Silverlight 2 download. This means that you can now build Silverlight 2 applications that use core controls that are as small as 3kb in size - making Silverlight application downloads small and startup time fast. In addition to the core controls included with the base Silverlight 2 setup, we are also this week shipping additional higher-level controls that are implemented in separate assemblies that you can then reference and include with your applications. This includes controls like DataGrid (more details on its new Beta2 features below), Calendar (now with multi-day selection and blackout date support in Beta2), and a TabPanel control (new in Beta2). We ultimately expect to ship over a 100 controls for Silverlight. Control Template Editing Support One of the most powerful features of the WPF and Silverlight programming model is the ability to completely customize the look and feel of controls. This allows developers and designers to sculpt the UI of controls in both subtle and dramatic ways, and enables a tremendous amount of flexibilit