Geekswithblogs.net

Silverlight makes creating compelling Rich Internet Applications fairly easy. That said the cut down version of .Net means some things that you would do within an application have to be relegated to Web Services which can benefit from the full .Net library. One of these is of course Azure, after all that is the whole point - an online store of Business Logic and data. The application I'm working on uses Silverlight on the front end, and Azure will provide the bulk of the backend. There are reasons ...

The “Yull” vacation has finally given be the chance to start digging into Windows Azure. There’s quite a few services in the Azure platform and as I’ve already spent some time looking at “BizTalk Services” before it was re-branded to .net Services I thought I’d take a look at SQL Data Services (SDS). SDS is very easy to work with if you know a bit about WCF and choose to take the SOAP road. I labbed a bit with the REST stuff and found it more complex than SOAP, so I stuck with the SOAP client. I’ve ...

A bittersweet emotion came over me when I heard that some of the most renowned of industry experts, even those heavily invested into the SOA movement, have now declared that SOA officially died on 1 Jan 2009. {a moment of silence, please} It will not come as a great loss for me, as I have had a difficult time explaining SOA to technologists and making the business case to financial stakeholders. But since I firmly believe in the scalability benefit of loosely coupled, autonomous systems as proscribed ...

I've got the paperwork now, so I guess this is official. I submitted a talk on writing concurrent applications for VS Live in San Francisco in February. I'll be speaking on Thursday Feb 26th -- if you happen to be making the conference, look me up! I'm looking forward to this; there's lots of great content being presented, including a full day post-con on Azure ...

Just read a great post from Doug Ware on how to use Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) on Amazon EC2. This is a very compelling and cost effective solution. Once SharePoint Services are publically available in the Windows Azure Platform, I’m guessing Doug will consider a move. Awesome how-to Doug! Here’s the link to Doug’s original post: Windows SharePoint Services on Amazon EC2 Windows SharePoint Services on Amazon EC2 - eLumenotion Blog Thanks for checking out this post! Cheers, Murray Gordon ISV ...

Honestly, my eyes lit up like it was Christmas all over again when I read the updated MSDN Events RSS on my google reader. Some Louisiana love is finally on its way this month, here is the low down: MSDN EVENTS - AZURE, DEBUGGING AND MOBILITY SESSIONS INCLUDE - Demystifying Azure: An Overview of the Azure Services Platform for Developers - Deepen your Debugging: Tips and Tricks for the Visual Studio 2008 Debugger - Developing for Windows Mobile Devices FREE ADMITTANCE Enhance your coding capabilities ...

I have been playing around with Microsoft Azure. I was interested because one of my current development projects has a shoestring budget (read no budget). MS Azure will allow for the hosting costs to increase with the site's success. So it was time to have a go at using Azure's storage functionality to store the data for the site. To this end I downloaded a couple of storage demonstrations to see how it works. With Azure being a beta and a fair new technology looking at demos is often the best way ...

I am humbled and honored to be awarded a Most Valuable Professional award by Microsoft for 2009. This will be my 3rd year as a MVP. I got my first award in 2007 for ASP.NET, and then due to my increased activities in the fields of Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight, in 2008 and now 2009 in Client Application Development. This expertise gathers specialists of these two disciplines and provides a fantastic way to exchange and discuss amongst professionals. Without a doubt, one highlight ...

In this issue: Al Pascual, Damon Payne, Laurent Bugnion, Shawn Wildermuth, Jesse Liberty, and Jobi Joy. Shoutout: Shawn Wildermuth has announced that Silverlight Tour Now includes Coverage of the Silverlight Toolkit. From SilverlightCream.com: Vote NO on the crossdomain.xml file, use the cloud to bypass errors. Al Pascual opens up a way to cause himself and everyone else some problems with Cross-Domain issues, but I looked at his post of combining his Azure proxy with Silverlight as being more interesting ...

ADO.NET Data Services enable applications to expose data as a data service to be consumable via web clients. The data service which can be easily accessible via regular HTTP requests. CRUD operations are performed using HTTP verbs - GET, POST, PUT and DELETE. The data service responses open formats such as JSON and Aop/APP which are idal back-ead for AJAX-style applications, Rick Interactive Applications and other web clients. ADO.NET client libraries and developer tools works with both on premises ...

In this issue: Pete Brown, Tim Greenfield, Boyan Nikolov, Jesse Liberty, Mike Ormond, David Justice, Tim Heuer, Chris Szurgot, Matthias Shapiro, Budi Kurniawan, Mike Snow, Martin Grayson, and Azret Botash Busy folks... I've still got a backlog and I was only slow a couple days :) From SilverlightCream.com: Pie Chart Styling in the Silverlight Toolkit - Cross-Slice Gradients Pete Brown gives us the benefit of his excursions in the chart control plus his conversation with team members, and he ends ...

*Moved to: Live FrameworkI have been getting very interested in the new Azure Services Platform and how I can use it to facilitate WPF development. Read more...Follow my new blog on http://blog.hinshelwood.com ...

Last week I attended a couple of events. On Wednesday Microsoft held a SOA/BPM day at the offices in Reading and a number of speakers talked about SOA, the Microsoft platform now and in the future and how to deliver the SOA promise using those technologies. It was a mix of stuff I already new or had seen before and some other perspectives. Darren Jefford gave a good demo on the new wave of cloud technologies. One interesting comment relayed something Don Box had said – that we are only 15 years into ...

Though some of you that were on the fence or have not year head about the MSDN Dev Con, are now more interested in coming out. It’s a tiny price compared to PDC and is coming to a city near you! A good group of local celebrities will be presenting along side proven Microsoft experts at the Orlando event. I will be in the attendance and around any community areas. And any social after event :) Bayer White (Jacksonville), Joe Homnick (Boca Raton), Christopher Bennage (Tallahassee), Rob Eisenberg (Tallahassee) ...

Just wanted to write a bit about the upcoming Day of .NET conference coming soon to St. Louis. We are putting the final pieces together this week and currently have nearly 200 people registered. The conference will be on December 13th, 2008 and, if you want more information or just want to register, please check out the site at www.StLouisDayOfDotNet.com. If you are waiting to register, please be aware that our registration closes on Monday, December 8th and we cannot accept on-site registrations. ...

In this issue: Hannes Preishuber, David Justice, Dan Wahlin, Terence Tsang, and Chris Carper. From SilverlightCream.com: Input Validation with Silverlight Hannes Preishuber posted this entry about Input Validation... that seems to be coming up more lately... and yikes I must have lost Hannes' blog address somewhere... I'm watching now and will catch up! Silverlight 2 XAML Binding and Custom / Core Dependency Properties David Justice blogs about responding to a spanking from Justin Angel and discusses ...

I love it when someone else writes up my blog postings for me! Microsoft BizSpark is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage startups. By joining BizSpark, Startups get: o Software: fast and easy access to Microsoft’s current full-featured development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions with no upfront costs and minimal requirements. Startups ...

In this issue: Andrew Myhre, Silverlight Girl, webgui, Tim Greenfield, Shawn Wildermuth, Manish Dalal, Arturo Toledo, Ruurd Boeke, Joel Neubeck, Ning Zhang, and Chris Hay. Yikes... another 12 today! From SilverlightCream.com: Digital Wall - redux Andrew Myhre sent me an email about this app this morning, and I have to admit I didn't 'get it' at first ... but after some reading on his site, this is pretty darn cool.. you log in, and draw on top of whatever is there already, and you're seeing a display ...

I'll admit it. At first I didn't get it. Microsoft's cloud computer platform Azure levels the playing field in an incredible way. Think about it: You have a great idea for a company but getting it it up and running is going to require a huge financial investment in server hardware to get the thing to a reasonable scale. You can't afford that, so maybe you try to get venture capital (how's that going to work out in this economy?) With Azure you can build your app and deploy it on Microsoft's infrastructure. ...

Here's the complete list of sessions from PDC and my personal favorites. You can find all the recordings of these sessions at www.microsoftpdc.com. Here's my personal favorites: Windows Azure (Hosted ASP, Workflow, Silverlight, RAW / Azure Storage) A Lap Around Windows Azure (ES16) - 0:46 Slides | WMV-HQ | WMV | Zune A Lap Around the Azure Services Platform (BB01) - 1:12 Slides | WMV-HQ | WMV | Zune Live and Mesh (Sync, Feeds, Resources, Contacts, etc.) A Lap around the Live Framework and Mesh Services ...

We’re bringing the PDC to you! For just $99 you’ll get the best of the PDC in your own backyard and hear all of the exciting announcements around the Azure Services Platform and Windows 7. Other sessions include the latest developments in .NET, Silverlight, Surface, Parallel Programming, Live Mesh, and more. Register today to stay current in an ever-competitive job market, enhance your skills and gain access to the next generation of tools and technology. Speakers include: Shannon Braun, Scott Colestock, ...

In this issue: Justin Angel, Shemesh, Albert Eyal, Steve, Ruurd Boeke, Mike Snow, Mehdi Slaoui Andaloussi, Gerard Leblanc, and Jesse Liberty. Also: Steve Smith has opened up a couple new 'feeds' sites that are of note: Azure Feeds and Silverlight Feeds. He has others that you can find info about on these sites but the main idea is to go to Silverlight Feeds and submit your material. I'm mentioning this in good faith that you will also submit to Silverlight Cream of course :) ... yet another source ...

Very simple answer:

The Name: Azure… no one at Microsoft can agree as to how to say Azure!!!

Just before I add lots of files and folders to my PDC attendee's freebie 160GB USB disk I thought I'd list out the contents as sort of like an audit. PDC 2008 160GB USB Disk file directory listing Autorun.inf starthere.cmd StartHere.html Developer\BluePrints\Inside... Developer\BluePrints\Introd... Developer\dotNetFramework\d... Developer\dotNetFramework\d... Developer\dotNetFramework\d... Developer\dotNetFramework\d... ...

I finally decided to write a post about attending PDC. There are so many great posts out there about PDC that do a great job of describing the overall experience. Bill Wagner has a great post on his blog, and so does Rick Strahl. The overall experience was really great and the quality of the sessions were very professional and the presenters did an excellent job in delivering the most information in the alloted time.There are still a bunch of sessions that I wish I could have personally attended ...

Did you miss PDC this year? Don’t want to watch the recorded sessions? Then register today for an MSDN Developer Conference near you! The MSDN Developer Conference (MDC) brings you the best content of the PDC presented by your local field evangelists and community influentials (mostly Microsoft MVPs). The conference is broken down in to 3 tracks: Azure Services Platform Client and Presentation Tools, Languages, and Framework The MDC is a one-day “best of” conference that costs $99.00. If you didn’t ...

I can hear your screaming from here (on the plane at who knows how many thousands of feet overhead): "final thoughts, what happened to Days 2, 3, and 4?" Well, in answer to that, I bring you this bit of collected wisdom culled from the last few days: Welcome to Concurrency. Sometimes, other functions just finish first, and in this new multi-core world, the application must move on with or without the rest of the threads. So, that said, expect some other thoughts later...they just won't follow in ...

So, I opened this up to write about it (even thought it's Day 2 and you've already heard all the good stuff), and I just realized that I left my notes back in the hotel. I had to go old school with the notes (pen and paper) because I forgot to get an extended life battery. The good news is that I just got "The Goods," and, regardless of what you think is on it, the 160Gb Western Digital USB powered external HDD is well worth it alone. Attendee party at Universal Studios is tonight, so I don't expect ...

Windows Azure was announced on PDC 2008 (Oct 27) and will hopefully be released mid next year. You probably already know about Azure by this time. If no, I would like to quote some from www.azure.com as intro: The Azure Services Platform is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers. The Azure Services Platform provides a range of functionality to build applications that span from consumer web to enterprise scenarios and includes a cloud operating system ...

Planning to move to the Azure Cloud, but already tied to the Membership API? I have recently written an article on Windows Azure which guides you to build a complete Membership provider library which can be leveraged by existing application to link to Microsoft’s cloud platform Windows Azure with no friction. Goals of this project were to be able to use regular ASP.NET Login controls, existing Membership code e.g. Membersip.UpadateUser(), MembershipUser.ChangePasswo... Last, but not least one of ...

Windows Azure is Microsofts Operating System, in the cloud. Thats a mouthfull, isnt it? Basically, Windows Azure is a Microsoft DataCenter somewhere in the US (for now), where you can host applications you build. You have API (HTTP && REST) access to databases, queues, blob stores that you can use to put your application together. And if you a .NET developer, you can leverage your current skills to build applications in the cloud. The best anology I have seen for cloud computing and the 'traditional' ...

I’ve just published version 1.0 of “Bloggers Guide to Connected Systems”, which will be covering the Oslo, WCF/WF 4.0, Dublin and Azure technologies. The first version has 24 articles from some of the leading developers working with Connected Systems technologies, including members of the “Oslo” team. It is expected that the guide will grow on a monthly basis as more people start working and blogging about the new technologies, and should be a valuable resource for newbies and experienced developers. ...

Welcome to the very first post of Under The Influence (of code). I am Software Design Engineer based in SF Bay area. I have a deep and keen interest in Computer Science and Software Engineering. I've been wanting to start blogging for a long time now, but haven't been able to do so either due to schedule pressures an/or personal commitments and/or the lack of motivation thereof. I tend to do a lot of code prototyping and recently I was in need to some stuff I had proptotyped a while back, I searched ...

In this issue: Joseph Ghassan, Boyan Nikolov, James Bacom, David Justice, Jesse Liberty, Shawn Wildermuth, and Michael Sync. Tim Heuer has an update you should pay attention to: Flickr4Writer Service Pack update. Joel Neubeck updated his RatingControl with Theme support>... it was cool seeing that in action Wednesday night, so great to see him update it so fast... thanks Joel! A couple loyal subjects, Scott Hanselman and Scott Stanfield put together a DeepZoom of Obama Headlines... it seems to ...

If you should happen to create a new cloud services project in VS2008 with VB settings, you may well find that you are unable to save the project/solution. The message is, in typical fashion, singularly useless: Luke H's blog pointed me in the right direction. The solution is to enable saving projects on creation. Under Tools >> Options, select Projects and Solutions. Make sure "Save new projects when created" is checked. Restart Visual Studio, and you'll be good to go ...

Windows Azure is an upcoming operating system for the cloud from Microsoft, announced on October 27 at PDC. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data centers. Azure goes beyond what other providers, such as Rackspace's Mosso or Amazon's EC2, offer. First, it will be available with a complete suite of tools and technologies for building your next big cloud application. Second, the Azure platform's ...

If you weren’t able to make PDC a few weeks ago, we are now taking some of the show on the road! These day long events are great for keeping your skills sharp and also you get a chance to take a look at Windows 7 and Windows Azure! You will need to use an RSVP code when you register. So choose one of the following: Audience RSVP Code Developers MDCDEV Architects MDCARC Designers MDCDES Students MDCSTU User Groups MDCCUG The event is $99 and includes lunch and some cooool giveaways. Happy Coding ...

This could be a common problem who are not using SQL Express. If you run an Azure application you may find it seeks for SQL Express instance in your machine if you do not have already. You may also find "An error occurred while processing this request." error due to this reason while you try creating tables from your models by StorageClient.TableStorage.... All you need to do is fire up Visual Studio and open the config file for DevelopmentStorage at C:\Program Files\Windows Azure ...

Oslo is a platform of technologies designed to help us create model driven applications. Currently Oslo is composed of 3 components; A language , a tool, and a database.

With the latest release of the SQL Data Services (SDS) we announced a tech preview of the work we did with ADO.NET Data Services (Astoria/adods) team (http://www.microsoft.com/a... As part of this preview we made available a new SDS service head that supports a subset of conventions outlined by ADO.NET Data Services. A number of people stopped at our PDC demo booth and ask for details. Here are some of the answers. Keep in mind that this is just a tech preview and can change in future ...

Windows Azure + XNA == An easy to build MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game)? Perhaps this puts the popular genre into the reach of open source and freeware developers.

PDC has come to an end and I’m sitting here reflecting on what I've experienced over the last few days. The PDC experience has been quite different than the Tech Ed or Dev Teach events I've attended in the past. There's a different vibe to PDC, and a different message that Microsoft is trying to get across. Where Tech Ed is all about teaching, PDC is all about telling. At PDC, Microsoft is describing the direction they're heading in for the next few years. They're giving us a glimpse into where they're ...

Today I am checking out the event to see what all this amazing new stuff is about. I have been stuck in the booth since Saturday with only bathroom privileges so I have not been able to see what is going on. I ran the Azure Build Service HOL with D’Arcy, but after the second machine crash, I gave up and came over to the Open Spaces area. Technorati Tags: PDC08,Geekswithblogs.net,Darcy ...

Microsoft have announced "Dublin" in September, but up until now (PDC) there' has been very little information about how that is going to look now. Over at PDC are finally able to see some sessions as well as visit the various .net booths and get first hand look at the "bits" and ask questions about the new technologies. However, at this time of writing this, I have not yet attended any Dublin sessions, which really means anything I write here currently is stipulating on some stuff I've seen and ...

This has been an action packed week. I promise that I will detail what I've been up to, but for now I'll simply list some cool things to Google. Windows Azure (Windows in "The Cloud") Boku .NET Services DSL and "Oslo" XNA Second Light (or Surface 2.0)

Another email to share with you, “A Platform for the Next Technology Revolution” : During the past decade, a dramatic transformation in the world of information technology has been taking shape. It's a transformation that will change the way we experience the world and share our experiences with others. It's a transformation in which the barriers between technologies will fall away so we can connect to people and information no matter where we are. It's a transformation where new innovations will ...

I got this email from Steve Ballmer. Okay I know if was more than likely a marketing person from Microsoft that came up with this not Steve, but I thought I would share it as it had some good information in it. I basically got this email because of some newsletter I signed up for on Microsoft's site. A Platform for the Next Technology Revolution During the past decade, a dramatic transformation in the world of information technology has been taking shape. It's a transformation that will change the ...

I occasionally receive letters sent out to the Industry Executives from the top dogs at Microsoft. Here’s the one I just received outlining their newest initiative called Windows Azure, which was just announced at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference. During the past decade, a dramatic transformation in the world of information technology has been taking shape. It's a transformation that will change the way we experience the world and share our experiences with others. It's a transformation ...

This keynote is all about Windows 7 (the Vista that shoulda been) and new things from ScottGu's team. While yesterday was about the back-end infrastructure of the new cloud platform Azure from Microsoft, today's keynote focused on the front end of Microsoft. One funny question from Ray Ozzie was wondering what we would do at work all day if we didn't have a computer on our desk. Here are some random notes from the keynote. "The PC will be more relevant in the next era." - Ray Ozzie Today we barely ...

Mind boggling things unvailed at PDC. One big thing to decide is going to be our relation to the cloud. Cloud computing has hit big and the whole idea of SAS making big business invest big. Where do we draw the line? Hoe much of our software, data and service runs local vs. remote? How do we develop good measure for decisionmaking here? At the very least, aspect to be considered: Latency Scale Time to market Security New opportunities not available if you are just "running local" such as ms Live ...