This is now at a price-point that is very competitive with discount hosting providers, but even better when you consider the Platform as a Service capabilities, SLA and scalability offered when you start putting things together…

This is a platform I am now recommending for ISVs and using myself.

For example, for $35 a month (plus $0.12 per GB of outbound data in US) you can get (setup in minutes):

• Two load-balanced web application server instances capable of running multiple ASP.NET or PHP sites
• A SQL Server database with built-in redundancy
• No physical or OS administration
• A 99.95% connectivity guarantee
• A 99.99% faulty instance correction guarantee
• A 99.9% database availability guarantee
• Free starter development tools
• Ability to scale in minutes through mature portal

See SLA details.  

Note: the Windows Azure Extra Small compute instance runs on shared CPU cores with 768MB of memory, 20GB of local disk and 5Mbps of bandwidth. The starter database is up to 100MB.

To see what you can get with different feature/power combinations, check out the pricing calculator.

Other great offers include:

Free Trial Period

A great trial package that includes up to 6 extra small instances, 1GB database, 20GB outbound data, 500,000 caching network transactions, 20GB of high-availability storage with 1M transactions!

Member offers

MSDN subscribers, Microsoft Partner Network members and BizSpark members all get a quantity of free Azure resources.

6 Month deals

Package offers with up to 33% off

There are also zero spending limit options that can prevent charged over-usage when using packages with free resources.

The image above makes me wonder if Microsoft will release new versions of hardware with the new Windows Logo.  Just like Star Wars fans get new releases of the episodes, will serious Microsoft fans buy the same keyboard again to get the new logo?

Note that having only a keyboard and no Windows key can be quite problematic.  It’s possible to use Ctrl-Esc to simulate it, but things get sticky from there.

This list is not intended to be a fuller list of Windows Key(board) shortcuts, many of which apply to the the Windows desktop.

Action	Only Touch	Only Keyboard	Only Mouse
Go to text/data entry field	Tap  it	Tab and arrow-key to it	Click it
Activate button	Tap it	Tab to it, press Enter	Click it
Enter text	Select entry field (above), type with on-screen keyboard (which comes up automatically with Metro apps; tap keyboard tray icon on desktop).	Use it.	Use on-screen keyboard.  Bring it up using: right-click empty start-menu, click All Apps, mouse-wheel or scroll bar over to On-screen keyboard (under Windows Ease of Access), click it.
Unlock computer (with regular password)	Swipe up, tap password field, enter password, tap Enter	Press any key, type password, press Enter	Drag picture up, click “Ease of access” button in lower left, click “On-screen keyboard”, click password keys, click Enter.
Go to Start Screen	Swipe in over right-edge and tap Windows icon OR swipe in over left edge (about an inch) and then back out again immediately, then tap Start screen thumbnail at bottom left.	Windows key OR Ctrl-Esc	Place pointer in bottom left of screen and click Start screen thumbnail.
Lock Computer	Go to Start Screen, tap user details at top-right, tap Lock	Windows key + L OR Windows key to Start Screen, Tab, Enter, Down arrow to Lock, Enter.	Go to Start Screen, click user details at top-right, click Lock
Move left/right on start screen	Swipe left or right	Tab and arrow-key	Use scrollbar at bottom or mouse wheel.
Launch app on start screen	Tap it	Tab and arrow-key to it and press Enter	Click it
Close app	For Metro apps, Swipe in over top end and drag off bottom edge. For desktop apps, tap close icon at top-right.	ALT-F4	For Metro apps, drag down from top edge and drag off bottom edge. For desktop apps, click close icon at top-right.
Zoom start screen	Pinch or stretch with two fingers	Windows Key + minus/plus (use CTRL if no separate numeric pad)	CTRL + mouse wheel
Bring up app bar	Swipe in over top or bottom edge	Windows key + Z	Right-click on empty app area
Cancel app bar	Tap empty app area	Windows key + Z	Click on empty app area
Select start screen item	Small down-ward flick	Move to it with Tab and arrow-keys then Menu key (or Shift F10)	Right-click
Show all apps (on start screen)	Bring up app bar, tap All apps	Windows key + Z, enter	Right-click on empty areas, click all Apps
Show Charms (Start/Search/Share/Settings/Devices)	Swipe in over right edge	Windows key + C	Place pointer in top/bottom right edge, wait for overlay, then move down/up
Search for an app (on start screen)	Show Charms, tap Search, tap search box, tap in query	Windows key + Q	Show Charms, click Search, Click search box, enter query
Go to Search (in app context)	Same as above	Same as above	Same as above
Go to Share	Show Charms, tap Share	Windows key + H	Show Charms, click Share.
Go to Settings	Show Charms, tap Settings.	Windows key + I	Show Charms, click Settings
Go to Devices	Show Charms, tap Devices	Windows key + K	Show Charms, click Devices
Go to file search	Go to Search, then tap on Files	Windows key + F	Go to Search, then click on Files
Switch/toggle main app between current and previous app	Swipe in just over left edge.  Wait approx. 2seconds before repeating.	ALT+TAB	Place pointer in top-left corner, click thumbnail, move pointer aware.
Go back to previous apps (as main app)	Swipe in just over left edge, repeating at needed with less than approx. 2 seconds between swipes.	Hold ALT, keep pressing TAB.  Press Esc before releasing ALT to cancel.	Place point in top-left corner, click thumbnail repeatedly.
Go to recent app (as main app)	Swipe in just over left edge (about an inch) and then back out again immediately, then tap desired thumbnail.	Hold Windows Key, keep pressing TAB.  Do Windows Key + CTRL + TAB to be able to use arrow keys.	Place pointer in top/bottom-left corner and move down/up, click thumbnail.
Snap previous app to edge	Swipe in just over left edge, pause and release (or over to other edge).	Switch to previous app, then Windows key + . (or SHIFT . for right edge).	Place pointer in top-left corner, drag thumbnail down and about an inch in from left (or right).
Snap specific app to edge	Swipe in/out just over left edge.  Drag thumbnail to one inch from left or right right.	Go to other apps, then Windows key + . (or SHIFT . for right edge) to snap to edge.	Place pointer in top/bottom-left corner, move down/up, drag thumbnail to one inch from left (or right).
Remove snapped app	Drag divider line to closest edge	Windows key + . (when snapped on right). Windows key + SHIFT (when snapped on left)	Drag divider line to closest edge
Switch which app is side app vs. main app	Drag divider line	Windows key + . (when snapped on left). Windows key + SHIFT (when snapped on right)	Drag divider line
Switch focus between main and snapped app	Tap in other app	Windows key + J	Click in other app
Go to Windows desktop	Locate on start menu and tap	Windows key + D	Locate on start menu and click
Show advanced tools menu		Windows key + X	Place point in bottom-left corner, right-click.

]]> http://colinizer.com/2012/03/11/navigating-windows-8-beta-with-only-touch-mouse-or-keyboard/feed/ 2 colinizer image http://colinizer.com/2011/08/10/test-drive-html5-development-for-windows-phone-desktop/ http://colinizer.com/2011/08/10/test-drive-html5-development-for-windows-phone-desktop/#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2011 23:42:00 +0000 colinizer https://colinizer.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/test-drive-html5-development-for-windows-phone-desktop/ ]]> It seems to be increasing said these days, that software solutions are moving away from the desktop and to the cloud and mobile space.  There’s more to be said about this which I’ll blog about soon, but let’s just agree that this leads to at one possible conclusion – we need to be able to develop sufficiently rich client-based solutions that run on both desktops and a wide variety of mobile devices that all connect to the cloud.  If we add the requirement that we want to reach as many users and devices as possible on the client-side, with a single ‘base’ of code (and we aren’t too fussy about immersive UI, richness of experience, deep access to local resources and to varying extents, and very high development productivity/maintainability), then we are often lead to the door of HTML.  With ‘HTML5’, we can even be fussy about a few things too.

Microsoft is making its platforms capable of running those HTML5 solutions.  Currently this means IE9 on the Windows desktop and now also IE9 on Windows Phone 7.5 (now RTM’d and due on phones this fall).  We’ll likely see more native platform support for HTML5 solutions in Windows 8 with IE10.  Given the right use of HTML of course, a solution for Windows desktop and phone, should also work on a large range of HTML5-compatible desktop browsers and mobile devices.

Here’s the same hardware-accelerated HTML5 content running on IE9 and Windows Phone Mango.

Getting started with HTML5 development on Windows

So what do you need?  On the desktop you can get IE9 and start ‘coding’ in something as simple as Notepad(!).  Use the free included F12 developer tools to explore and even debug your solution.  For something a little more productive, you can go for the free Visual Studio Web Developer 2010 Express SP1 largely for the HTML editor support and test web-server, plus you’ll want the community-based Web Standards Update for Microsoft Visual Studio SP1 for IntelliSense support.  For testing on Windows Phone, go to http://create.msdn.com to get the latest Windows Phone Tools/SDK (currently Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Beta 2) to be able to run the emulator on your machine which includes the mobile browser.  If you are not connecting to any web-based data services, or you are connecting to existing services, you may not need any other tools, but you’ll probably want the jQuery library to be more productive with your JavaScript.  Want some great slides on jQuery (from a Microsoft guy)?  Download Joe Marini’s Mix 2011 jQuery bootcamp slide deck.

Doing rich HTML5 stuff

The easiest way to learn about new HTML5 is to see some in action and check behind the scenes.  To demonstrate the great HTML5 and hardware-accelerated capabilities of IE9 on the Windows desktop and Windows Phone, Microsoft created two ‘testdrive’ sites.  They include some great and diverse examples as well as links to useful resources.

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive for IE9 on the desktop

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/mobile (which works on the phone and the desktop)

Detecting desktop vs. mobile browsers

One of the key issues to tackle when creating an HTML5 application that will work on the desktop and on mobile, is getting the right layout experience for the screen size, ideally using the same markup.  CSS3 Media Queries are a great solution here.  The test site includes an example of this (see entry in screenshot above).  In addition I’d suggest watching this video from Mix 2011 as well as this blog entry from the Windows Phone team (by the same Joe Marini that did the jQuery bootcamp at Mix).

Dealing with down-level browsers/capabilities

Of course a good solution should deal gracefully with down-level browsers and missing HTML5 capabilities, especially given that the specification is still in flux.  On many existing websites, this is still handled on the server side by looking at the User Agent string provided by the browser application, and delivering browser-specific content.  In the new client-side world, it’s often better to detect the browser capabilities in the client code and enact progressive enhancements to the user experience based on what specific features the browser has.  If the browser cannot do some of the new HTML5 goodness, you may want to consider a ‘Polyfill’.  To help detect browser capabilities, there’s a library called Modernizr, and a number of Polyfills available to handle missing capabilities that Modernizr can detect.

I hope this has given you an idea of how you can start to test drive HTML5 experiences and development on the Windows desktop, upcoming Windows Phone 7.5/Mango phones and beyond on to other ‘HTML5-ready’ browses and devices.

This first came up 3 years ago and I blogged about it asking Will That New Electricity Meter Make you Poor and Fat?  It’s going to effect more and more people over time.  Let’s explore if I and perhaps you too, will end up paying more, or doing things to avoid paying more (like eating later at time) or working at home in more humid conditions during the summer…

That electricity meter was installed, has been feeding data to the electricity company – more on that in a moment – and they are ready to start complicating my bill.

Below is a chart showing the current rates (same all-day all-year, increasing after a level of consumption) vs. the new rates (changing over the day and the year).  It also shows how the rates and time-slicing has changed from the original proposals in 2008 to the rate that will go into effect in 2011.

For the visually inclined – here’s how the new 2011 rates work in a pie-chart as published by the electricity company.

I few things to note:

• Rates have obviously gone up a bit in 3 years – 36% on regular rates – as horrible as that is, let’s ignore that.
• The break point for higher rates has come down from 2000kWh to 600kWh – so paying the higher rate more quickly – let’s ignore that too.
• The average rate for a summer day on the new rates is 7.85c/kWh assuming constant rate of usage through the day.  This is higher than the current starting 6.8 rate and as high as the 7.9c/kWh rate.  Whether the real average rate is higher or lower for you, really depends therefore on your weekday daily-usage patterns.

The flyer includes the annoying statement: "In a 168-hour week, only 30 hours are at on-peak times.  There are three-times as many hours at off-peak periods."  This is annoying because, it’s of now benefit unless one can pick when the on-peak times are – the rates are most expensive at in-opportune moments for many – and it doesn’t mention that for 50% of week days (or 36% of the whole week), rates are now higher.

Let’s dig in to see what the consequences may be:

Some possible bill differences moving to the new rates for various power usage:

• To cook dinner, now costs more during weekdays: 8.9c/kWh compared to 6.8c/kWh (if you haven’t used up the 600kWh), that is unless, you are prepared to cook after 7pm and eat even later (and potentially get fatter) or pre-cook much of your food during off-peak. However, realistically across the week and year that’s (say 2kW for 0.5 hour in an oven = 1kWh) 2.1c per day more x 125 days (summer) + 3.9c per day more x 125 days (winter) – 0.9c per day less x 100 days = $6.60 per annum more. That’s not so bad, but what else do I have running that will now cost more…
• At one extreme – to operate air-conditioning at home (if you are at home during the day) now costs considerably more: 10.7c/kWh compared to 6.8c/kWh.  If the A/C is on 50% of the time (wild guess) from 7am to 7pm for 2 months at 3kW, that’s 3kWh hours at 2.1c more + 3kWh at 3.9c more x 5 days x 8 weeks = $7.20 more for the summer.  This doesn’t include the fan motor.
• In middle may be things like using the dryer which could be more or less going forward depending on your schedule.
• Anything that is a constant all-day, e.g. stuff-plugged in on standby, or the fridge, etc. is going to cost you more on average.  I use between 35kWh (winter) and 66kWh (summer) per day.

Real data check:

The new networked meter has been collecting data for a while and as a customer, I can go to the company’s website and check out my actual house usage.  So, we can actually see where the majority of my usage is, and therefore if my bill will be going up as a result of these new time-of-use rate on my existing household pattern…

They provide pie charts and bar graphs with numbers, but also exports to PDF & Excel. 

So for July so far, my average is: 7.4c/kWh which is higher than the current 6.8 (and a bit lower than the 7.9 for over 400kWh).

Off-Peak – 63%; Mid-Peak – 16%; On-Peak 21%

Extrapolating my online consumption of kWh the 21 days of July to 31 days and comparing the cost using my real average 7.4c rate to the cost with the current 6.8c (and 7.9c over 600kWh), I’d be paying $5 more in July under the new scheme.  My estimate of $7.20 more for 2 summer months of A/C didn’t look too shabby.. 

Conclusions:

• So, with no change in usage, the new plan does costs me more ($5+ more a month in the summer), but considering that a gas-powered furnace fan doesn’t do much more work in the winter and there’s no A/C requirement, it’s not looking like like it’s going to be a huge amount more for the whole year – perhaps $50 a year more – well see.
• Have A/C during the day?  You have to pay more to keep it the way you like it or turn down the thermostat to not pay more.
• Cooking dinner? The cost of doing this before 7pm goes up so you have to eat later (potentially less healthy) or pre-cook cook during off-peak or pay a little more over the year.  
• You will pay more over the year for all those 24-hours-a-day constant drain things you have plugged in.
• You could end up going either way for things like using an electric clothes dryer, depending on when you end up doing those things.  If you already do a lot of this over night or on the weekend, and you don’t have A/C (or other major power draws) on much during the day, you may see your bill stay the same or go down.
• Psychologically, I think some people may temporarily change their habits to avoid larger bills initially, but end up going back to their previous routine and paying a little more.

Next week will be an awesome week in Montreal.  DevTeach, the premier level-300/400 developer conference in Canada is on from Tuesday 31st to Thursday June 2nd.  This includes a complete additional MobileTeach track around Android, iPhone & Windows Phone. 

Not only that, but I’ll be running the 1-day post-conference training session on Friday dedicated to Windows Phone. 

This week Microsoft announced news about the upcoming Windows Phone ‘Mango’ release that really seals the deal on possibly the greatest smartphone user experience to date and enhances arguably the best mobile developer experience even further.

In this comprehensive 1-day post-conference for the agile mind, I’ll start by showing attendees (familiar with .NET), how to create a Silverlight application from scratch using the MVVM pattern (including advanced features like a templated items control and a custom panel), making design decisions for the phone and how to get an application published.  We’ll then dive into the platform features, figure out data access, sensors, location and notifications, conquer storage and tombstoning and wrap up with other new major Mango features.  Attendees will get access to samples.

Introduction

From 0 to published WP7 MVVM Silverlight app including:

• Development Tools
• Silverlight Development
• MVVM
• Data Binding
• Timers
• ItemsControl
• Custom Layout Panel
• DataTemplates
• Phone UI Design
• Marketplace policies

Accessing device features including:

• Input
• Shell Integration
• Sensors
• Location

Getting data and notifications from the cloud including:

• Data Access
• Building Phone-compatible Services
• Notification Services

Application Lifecycle & Tomb-stoning

Local Data Storage (including isolated storage, 3rd party and Mango options)

Other new major ‘Mango’ features

You can add on that extra bumper day to the 3-day main conference price at a discount or purchase direct 1-day access for $399.

As if that’s not enough, I’ll also be doing a demo in the conference keynote and a session on Silverlight 5 features in the conference Silverlight track (which I also lead).

Hope to see you there!

I’d seen the Firestarter demo, but I recently learnt about another aspect of this solution.  It would be reason enough to mention Dayforce because they use Silverlight for a rich client-powered experience.  Another reason to mention it, is that it also uses Windows Azure, a technology for which I have created and delivered training at Microsoft’s request.  The Windows Azure Platform is both an awesome platform and service for high availability and scalability and easy provisioning in the cloud or in a hybrid combination with on-premise system.

Dayforce epitomizes the kind of offering that is well suited to the platform.  They wanted to provide solutions that demanded zero IT maintenance for their customers and a scalable path as their customer base grew – they now have around 40 customers with some 150,000+ users.  Using Azure, adding more customers or users now involves merely deploying more Windows Azure instances with a few mouse clicks, rather than buying/licensing, racking/provisioning and adminstering servers.  Hosting the application on Windows Azure hosted services means running the services in an IIS environment that is great for hosting WCF-based services to which their rich Silverlight client can connect.  It’s a SaaS solution with a rich-client plus! 

This kind of Silverlight-Azure combo is the kind of thing I expect to see in droves with other successful offerings in the future.  Since Scott Guthrie is moving over to be a VP for the Azure platform, this awesome-sauce (hi John!) combination will no doubt get even better.

Want to know more about Dayforce?

About Dayforce – Dayforce offers a complete workforce management solution with functionality that includes time and attendance, labor scheduling, labor forecasting, labor budgeting, task management and employee self-service. The company has made waves in workforce management with a vastly superior user experience, a much faster application, and significantly greater business value.
In addition to being named one of Deloitte’s Companies-to-Watch, Dayforce has been named the winner of the Top HR Product of the Year by Human Resource Executive® magazine, the winner of the Microsoft BlueSky Award for Innovation Excellence, and one of the CIX Top 20 Innovative Companies. For more information, please visit www.dayforce.com.

Let’s do the FAQ thing…

So you’ve been hired by Microsoft? No.

You’re an MVP.  So this is another award like that? No.

Is it something like a Microsoft Certification? No.

Teasing pause.  Being a Regional Director is a role, external to Microsoft, but working closely with Microsoft, that Microsoft invites select external people to undertake under contract.

How much does the role pay? Nothing.

Do you get any specific benefits? "… working closely [very closely] with Microsoft… " at many levels,  a presence on http://theregion.com, various other invitations, offers and program awards, and working with fellow program members.

How many RDs are there in the world? Right now, a little over 125 (see http://theregion.com) and the program has been around for many years.

Can I apply to be one? No.  You have to be invited.  Start by getting to know your local Microsoft Evangelist/Advisors.

What are the attributes of someone invited to become an RD.

From http://theregion.com (the official site for RDs)

Regional Directors are members of an elite, worldwide group of technology thought-leaders known for their national and international speaking tours, their authorship of books, articles and blogs, and their business acumen. Regional Directors are well-versed on the totality of the software industry. They are recognized for their achievements in communicating the benefits of emerging technologies.

and further qualification…

RDs are seldom specialized around a single [can be multiple] technology, but rather are well-versed on the totality of the software industry. Regional Directors have a strong affinity for emerging technology and are known to be early adopters of Microsoft products and technologies. Around the globe, RDs provide strategic technical direction for their business community.

So what tasks does the ‘role’ entail?

RDs start by working their regular day to day careers with employers or customers.  On top of that, or in the course of doing that, they evangelize Microsoft technologies and products through various channels, either of their own volition or sometimes at Microsoft’s request.  This may involving blogging (duh!) or other communication mediums, tweeting, meeting with customers, speaking at events, attending conferences, meeting with Microsoft teams and executives , and advising companies or other institutions, etc.  RDs also bring valuable and trusted community and industry insight back to Microsoft.

In the last couple of monthly, I’ve been extremely busy lately with work and RD/MVP stuff.  I have a few blog series coming up around WP7, HTML5 & Silverlight, onto which you may want to keep an RSS reader tuned…

On day 2 of Microsoft’s Mix 11 conference, they explain how they will (in May) be “Delivering happiness” to Windows Phone developers. New Windows Phone end-user features will be announced at a later date.

Opportunity

Ecosystem

· Nokia will be bringing mobile billing expertise

Countries

· 16 more languages

· Developers in 38 (up from 30) countries can register to publish applications

· Phone users in 35 (up from 16) countries will be able to purchase apps

Discoverability

· New Program list – has the ‘long list’ initial letter jump buttons, a search button (inc. access to marketplace search in the results)

· Marketplace – Separates Apps, music, & Podcasts (US this fall)) and shows more details in list with publisher/price/rating

· Marketplace App page has a pivot: details, reviews, screenshots, related

· One-click install for free apps

· Auto-nav to apps list after install

· Search Extras – A Bing Search result can have extras deep linking into an app

Capability

Browser

· Browser uses same IE9 code-base for HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3

· Address bar at the bottom

· Background audio for HTML5 in browser (use phone controls too)

· H.264 video in video tag in full screen with controls

Phone integration

· Sockets

· SQL CE Database with ORM and Linq to SQL

· More launchers & choosers (inc. deep link to directions)

· Better access to contacts and calendar

· Pin to start of application deep links

· Raw camera access

· Access to compass

· Access to gyro (new optional hardware coming this year)

· Motion Sensor API (for ease of using compass and gyro)

· Ringtone API

Multi-tasking:

· Fast app switching – apps are suspending, and only terminated if necessary

· Background audio from apps (leveraging the standard phone media controls)

· Background downloads

· Setup alarms

· Live tile updating including animations

· “Live agents” occasionally run by a battery friendly scheduler (with user control of which ones can run this way) – gets events and can get location

Dev Experience:

New emulator features for Accelerometer (with 3D model of position) and location (with Bing maps input)

Performance improvement (for list)

· Scrolling and input

· Image decode

· Garbage collector (no pausing)

· Memory usage

Built on Silverlight 4 including RichTextBox

Local Database using SQL CE with ORM and LINQ to SQL

Can compose UI with Silverlight and XNA

Profiler (still free)

This year’s Microsoft Mix 11 conference is taking place from April 12th to 14th in Las Vegas.

I have 4 sessions proposals that have been selected for voting by the Mix panel, and with your help, I can present them at the conference for you to see in person or for free on-demand shortly afterwards.

As well as from commercial projects and published articles/shows, these sessions are based on my expertise as a Microsoft MVP for Silveright, a workshop trainer for Microsoft on the Windows Azure Platform & the developer of the first WP7 training bootcamp delivered across North America.

To vote for sessions by Feb 4th…

For each of the web links below, click on each one and then vote by first clicking on all of the animal pictures of the indicated type (usually cats awww) and then clicking “vote for this session”.  Repeat for each of the 4 links.  The picture clicking thing is to make sure you are human and not a cheating robot of course.  If you select the wrong animation by mistake, you can click it again to unselect it.

Thank you for your interest and support!

0 to Phone App in 60 Minutes (based on a popular TechDays session)

Windows Phone 7 devices are out there. Will you have an application in the marketplace this year? The tools are free to download but it helps to get a jump-start to get moving. Do you understand the MVVM design pattern and how it applies to Windows Phone? Would you like to see how it’s done from scratch? Come along and see Microsoft MVP for Silverlight and leading WP7 trainer, Colin Melia, show you how to build an application step-by-step and answer questions along the way.

Getting to grips with MVVM on Windows Phone

You’ve downloaded the phone tools and created your first project. Now you’re venturing into the other project templates and have found all kinds of extra xaml files, bindings and classes. You’re in the world of MVVM architecture and you feel like you’ve fallen down the rabbit whole. The MVVM patterns in the templates are there to leveraged, but you need to know how to work with it. In this session Microsoft MVP for Silverlight and leading WP7 trainer, Colin Melia, will cover the MVVM concepts, the templates and go beyond viewing data to using commands and explaining key choices.

Windows Azure Platform as the backend for Windows Phone experiences

The launch of Windows Phone has been a source of much interest and developer enthusiam. There are 1,000s of appplications in the Windows Phone Marketplace. However, not many of those applications interact with a service created by the same developer. In this session, Microsoft MVP for Silverlight and leading WP7 trainer, Colin Melia, will show you how the Windows Azure Platform is a natural backend for Windows Phone experiences and how to use the various components.

On-Premise Data to Cloud to Phone – Connecting with Odata

You have corporate data to disseminate into the field, or service records that need to be updated in the field. How can you quickly make that data accessible from your on-premise system to Windows Phone users? Come take a look at OData with Microsoft MVP for Silverlight and leading WP7 trainer, Colin Melia, and see how you can expose data and services into the cloud and quickly connect to it from the phone, from scratch

These are 4 of just 14 sessions by Canadian-based developers highlighted by Microsoft Canada.  You can vote for all to 10 in total.