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        Social app taps Microsoft's cloud

        Jonathan Angel | Date: Oct 29, 2008 | Comments: 1


        Sentient Limited announced a social networking application for Windows Mobile that's said to be the first third-party use of Microsoft's "Azure" cloud computing platform. "Bluehoo" uses a phone's Bluetooth radio to locate other "hoos" (pictured), display their profiles, and "helps you start conversations,"...

        according to Sentient.

        (Click here for a larger view of Bluehoo)
        Bluehoo was presented this week at Microsoft's         PDC (professional developers conference) in Los Angeles. The social networking application has been described by both Sentient and Microsoft as the first third-party use of Azure, the latter's newly announced "open cloud computing platform."


        The Azure cloud operating system
        Source: Microsoft
        (Click to enlarge)

        According to Microsoft, Azure (above) is "a cloud operating system and collection of services that can deliver web, mobile, or hybrid software-plus-services applications to users." Existing software will be able to use the services to add cloud capabilities, and developers can "easily write applications for the cloud to be used by end users, or write services that can be consumed within other applications," the company claims.

        Azure, which Microsoft says will go live in the U.S. next year, will deliver its applications and infrastructure software as SAAS (software as a service) from within the company's own data centers, and is said to include versions of Windows Server 2008, Live Services, .NET Services, SQL Services, Microsoft SharePoint Services and Dynamics CRM. The software giant adds that "using Azure's services won't be a problem," thanks to the cloud's support for Visual Studio, plus industry standards such as SOAP (simple object access protocol), REST (representational state transfer), and XML (extensible markup language). (For more details about Azure, see the links at the end of this story.)

        Sentient's Bluehoo runs on Bluetooth-equipped Windows Mobile devices, and is also supported on laptops with Bluetooth via a Windows Vista sidebar gadget. According to the company, when the application is run, it automatically turns Bluetooth on and uses it to search for other users.

        If others are found, the Bluehoo application apparently queries Microsoft's Azure servers to retrieve whatever profile information the users had asked to have displayed. In a touch that may seen too cutesy for some, users are represented by icons known as "hoos," which apparently display in pink to represent female users and blue to represent males.

        Further information

        To download Bluehoo for Windows Mobile phones, Java phones, or Windows PCs, see the Sentient website, here.

        For further information on Microsoft's Azure platform, see the company's website, here. Additional coverage of Azure can also be found on our sister site, eWEEK.com, here, here, here.


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