Colinizer: taking up residence in your tech brain

Thursday November 25 2010

Upcoming Ottawa Windows 7, Windows Phone 7 & Silverlight Events

Filed under: Ottawa, Silverlight, Silverlight 4, Windows 7, Windows Phone 7, WP7, WP7Dev — colinizer @ 19:07

Tue Nov 30^th 2010 at 5:00pm	Windows Phone 7 Developer Briefing
Thu Dec 2^nd 2010 at 11:45am	Silverlight Firestarter (with roadmap announcement)
Thu Dec 2^nd 2010 at 8:30am or 5:00pm	Building Awesome Apps for Windows 7! Community Tour

You can stay for the Windows 7 and Silverlight events on Dec 2^nd at the same venue!!

Details below…

Tue Nov 30^th 2010 – Windows Phone 7 Developer Briefing

Get Your App in Gear – Register today and join us at the Windows Phone 7 Developer Briefing

Join us for an informative Windows Phone 7 Briefing to learn more about developing on Microsoft’s latest mobile platform. The briefing will cover the two application frameworks available for Windows Phone 7, where to find developer resources, how to submit apps into Marketplace, and much more!

Ottawa, On – November 30, 2010 at 5pm

AGENDA
Registration
5:00pm

Start
6:00pm

Introduction
Apps with Silverlight
Break/Q&A
Games with XNA
Next Steps/Q&A

End

9:00pm

Apps with Silverlight
Silverlight provides standard user controls and an event-driven model suited to building apps that bring information to the user. In this session, you’ll see an app or two built right in front of you, and learn about many aspects of Silverlight development for Windows Phone, including controls, laying them out, the model-view-viewmodel pattern, resources, themes, data binding and data templates, making asynchronous web requests, LINQ to XML and more.

Games with XNA
XNA is a game loop-based framework that makes it easier to build 2-D and 3-D games where gameplay, graphics and sound are key. You’ll watch the construction of a 2-D game and in the process learn about XNA’s game loop, resources, screen management, sprites, getting input from the accelerometer and touchscreen, collision detection, making use of game code libraries and other aspects of game development with XNA.

Next Steps
You’ve now had a taste of developing for Windows Phone with both Silverlight and XNA. What now? At this session we’ll cover where to get the tools and hardware, where to find additional developer resources such as tutorials, books and communities, how to register with the App Hub, how to submit an app to Marketplace and even talk about ideas for new apps.

Thu Dec 2^nd 2010 at 12pm – Silverlight Firestarter (with roadmap announcement)

Come to the Microsoft Ottawa office on Dec 2nd 2010 @ 11:45 am ET sharp to watch the future of Silverlight unfold.

On Dec 2nd 2010, Microsoft is running the all-day Firestarter event about Silverlight. It opens with a keynote from Scott Guthrie (Corporate VP of the Developer Division) on the Future of Silverlight and features various sessions from renowned speakers. It’s like another day of PDC just for Silverlight.

We’ll be watching and discussing the morning portion of the live event as a group. Colin Melia (Microsoft MVP for Silverlight), will be there along with Microsoft’s Christian Beauclair to discuss the event and answer questions.

Silverlight is THE developer platform for rapidly building and deploying UI- and media-rich data-connected business and consumer applications for the web, the desktop and the phone. It’s available today. Microsoft has invested and will continue to invest in Silverlight, and in products that use it including LightSwitch, Lync, Windows InTune, the new Azure Portal, etc.

No registration is required.

100 Queen Street (the World Exchange Plaza – with underground parking)

Suite 500 (5th floor)

Ottawa, ON

K1P 1J9

AGENDA
Welcome
11:45am

Live Broadcast start
12:00pm

End – continue watching at home

4:45pm

What is the Silverlight Firestarter?

· An Event. A one day, global, live streamed and on demand event keynoted by Scott Guthrie.

· Training. New self-paced labs and walk through videos.

· Interactive. Watch live and ask the Silverlight product team and local experts questions during the event.

· Why Silverlight? Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web, desktop, and mobile applications when online or offline.

Full streaming event details – http://www.silverlight.net/news/events/firestarter/

Thu Dec 2^nd 2010 – Building Awesome Apps for Windows 7! Community Tour

Windows® 7 represents an amazing opportunity for application developers. Since shipping just one year ago, more than 240 million licenses of Windows 7 have been sold. (That’s roughly seven copies of Windows 7 sold every second!). Windows 7 is also an amazing platform. Through integrated capabilities through the Windows Taskbar, sensors, text, and speech, it blends the best technology, innovation, and creativity to empower developers to create awesome apps.

Join Kate Gregory or Richard Campbell in five cities in Canada for the Building Awesome Apps for Windows 7 tour. Come hear how you can start taking advantage of the capabilities of Windows 7 in your new/existing applications TODAY. (Registration is free).

Ottawa, On – Dec 2^nd 2010 at 8:30am.

Ottawa, On – Dec 2^nd 2010 at 5:00pm.

AGENDA
Registration *
8:30am/5:00pm

Start
9:00am/5:30pm

A Lap Around the Windows® API Code Pack

Building Touch-First Applications with Windows® 7

Q&A

End

11:30am/8:00pm

A Lap around the Windows® API Code Pack

The Windows API Code Pack for the .NET Framework is a managed library for building applications that light up on Windows 7. It provides access to new user interface features (taskbar jump lists, libraries, sensor platform and more) as well as "behind the scenes" features that make your applications more aware and responsive (restart and recovery, power management and more). This is a must-have library for developers targeting Windows 7 with managed code. In this session, you’ll learn how to quickly incorporate the Windows API Code Pack into your applications to take advantage of features in Windows 7.

Building Touch-First Applications for Windows® 7

In Windows 7, innovative touch and gesture support enable a rich and natural interaction with applications. Are your applications ready to support this new wave of PC form factors? Are they finger-friendly to support interactions and gestures on Windows 7? This session highlights the new multi-touch gesture APIs and explains how you can leverage them in your applications.

Got questions about this event? Email John Bristowe (Sr. Developer Evangelist, Microsoft Canada) – john.bristowe@microsoft.com / @jbristowe / blogs.msdn.com/cdndevs

*Light refreshments and snacks will be available

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Monday November 15 2010

Discover The Future of Silverlight at the Ottawa Silverlight Firestarter Event

Filed under: Cloud Applications, Desktop Application, Microsoft, Mobile Application, RIA, Silverlight, Silverlight 4, Web Application, Windows Phone 7, WP7Dev — colinizer @ 17:44

Come to the Microsoft Ottawa office on Dec 2nd 2010 @ 11:45 am ET sharp to watch the the future of Silverlight unfold.

We’ll be watching and discussing the morning portion of the live event as a group. As a Microsoft MVP for Silverlight I’ll be there along with Microsoft’s Christian Beauclair to discuss the event and answer questions.

SLFirestarter_150X240

No registration is required.

Dec 2nd 2010

11:45 ET (event started at noon)

100 Queen Street (the World Exchange Plaza – with underground parking)
Suite 500 (5th floor)
Ottawa, ON
K1P 1J9

Comments (3)

Discover The Future of Silverlight at Another PDC-Like Day just for Silverlight

Filed under: Cloud Applications, Desktop Application, Microsoft, Mobile Application, PDC10, RIA, Silverlight, Silverlight 4, Windows Phone 7, WP7Dev — colinizer @ 17:34

On Dec 2nd 2010, Microsoft is running the all-day live streaming Firestarter event about Silverlight. It opens with a keynote from Scott Guthrie (Corporate VP of the Developer Division) on the Future of Silverlight and features various sessions from renowned speakers. It’s like another day of PDC just for Silverlight running from 9:00 am PT to 5:15 pm PT.

SLFirestarter_300X250 (2)

This Firestarter event was announced before PDC and with the recently announced keynote on the future of Silverlight, it emphasizes Microsoft’s commitment to Silverlight.

Want more commitment? Read or see what Microsoft executives have had to say:

The State of Silverlight with Scott Guthrie and John Papa (Oct 21 2010)

PDC and Silverlight – by Bob Muglia, President, Server & Tool Business (Nov 1 2010)

Silverlight Questions – by Scott Guthrie, Corporate VP, Developer Division (Nov 4 2010)

Also, here’s a great post on the subject:

Silverlight’s Bright Future – by Ward Bell (Nov 10 2010)

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Friday November 5 2010

Waiting for Windows Phone 7

Filed under: Microsoft, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WP7, WP7Dev, XNA — colinizer @ 18:00

Windows Phone 7 phones are set for release next Monday, Nov 8 2010 in North America (though my local store seems very uninformed) and are already available in various other parts of the world. Luckily I’ve had developer device access since September, so I’ve been able to share information with you along the way in various articles (see below) and publish a few basic applications.

If you are in North America and waiting for Windows Phone 7, particularly if you are a developer, here are a few things for you to consider doing while you wait:

Get an App Hub subscription to publish software for the phone.
Prepare your social and ID accounts
Pick a phone
Build applications
Submit application to the marketplace via App Hub

Get an App Hub subscription to publish software for the phone

It’s US$99 (with specific local currency variations) a year to get an App Hub subscription which now allows you to submit and sell both Windows Phone 7 and Xbox 360 Arcade applications for sale. That includes the ability to publish up to 5 free applications on WP7 (US$20 for additional ones). If you are a student you may be able to sign up for DreamSpark and get a free subscription. Set up takes a few days including identity (personal or business) verification.

There’s an App Hub Developer Registration Walkthrough available on the process for registering for a subscription.

Prepare your social and ID accounts

WP7 brings data down automatically from various services that are associated with a single Live ID that you can optionally register on the phone. This includes services from any associated Zune and Xbox LIVE accounts (as well as Hotmail and associated social networking site accounts). You can also add feeds, email, calendar and contacts from optional additional accounts from various providers. You’ll want to get your primary Live ID and service associations in a row before you get a phone. This may take some careful planning and account configuration.

For the details on how this works, I’d suggest Paul Thurrott’s article – Getting Ready for Windows Phone 7

Pick a phone

There are a decent number of phone available at launch though there are spread over various wireless service providers.

You can go to the official Windows Phone 7 site, select your region in the top right corner and click the Buy link to see which devices are on offer.

Mobile Tech World has published a handy specification table that may help with your selection.

Build applications

So far I have 4 basic utility applications in the marketplace (with other more sophisticated apps on the way) which you are welcome to purchase Winking smile by clicking the links below on a phone or with Zune 4.7 installed.

The first one is free of charge and you can see how it was built step by step from scratch in an article I recently published on DZone.

I’d also suggest you grab the free e-book from Microsoft Press, by Charles Petzold, Programming Windows Phone 7.

I’ve also authored a number of articles on DZone and Mobile Developer Magazine (free subscription required) including:

On Nov 15th 2010, a handy reference card will also be published on DZone for Windows Phone 7 development by .NET developers.

Die Roller	Dice Roller	Stopwatch	Presenter Timer

Submit applications to the marketplace via App Hub

There are important certification requirements you must comply with before submitting your application.

For a step-by-step example of building and submitting an application and submitting it you can see an article I recently published on DZone.

There’s also an official Windows Phone 7 Application Submission Walkthrough

The indicative certification turnaround time is 5 working days, though there are 1000+ applications queued for certification right now, so the timing may vary.

It’s almost time, so take the time to get yourself ready.

Comments (3)

Tuesday October 26 2010

A Step-by-Step Guide to Building and Deploying A Windows Phone 7 Application to Marketplace

Filed under: Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WP7, WP7Dev — colinizer @ 15:51

Do you want to know how to develop a Windows Phone 7 Silverlight application from scratch and submit it to the Marketplace via the new Microsoft App Hub?

My new article of DZone shows you just that with an application (that is live on marketplace for free) and demonstrates a few patterns/elements such as: MVVM, MVVM Light, Phone styles, Grid layout…

screenshot01

Enjoy Smile

Comments (1)

Friday October 22 2010

Use the WPDTPTConnect/WPConnect Tool to Debug WP7 Apps on Devices Without Running Zune

Filed under: Microsoft, Mobile Application, Windows Phone 7, WP7, WP7Dev — colinizer @ 14:25

The Windows Phone Developer Tools October 2010 Update (and breath) has been quietly released.

It includes a major tool for debugging applications on devices, that was mentioned back in the Summer during Microsoft WP7 Jump Start training, but not publically released.

It allows you to debug WP7 applications on a connected device without running the Zune software.

This is a good thing for two reason (personally to me at least):

You don’t have to launch the huge Zune software to do device debugging
It allows debugging of applications using certain features that could not be used when the Zune software was running with a connected device: Media Launchers or Choosers; XNA Framework playback of song objects; Silverlight playback of video or audio content using the MediaElement control

To use it:

Connect your device

Close the Zune software if running – and you can prevent it from launching on device connect by going to Settings->General and uncheck the appropriate box.

Open a command prompt and navigate to:

For 32-bit OS – %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Tools\WPConnect
For 64-bit OS – %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Tools\WPConnect

Run WPConnect.exe

That’s it – now you can debug on the device without the Zune software ‘in the way’.

To go back to using Zune, just launch it again.

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Wednesday October 13 2010

Microsoft MVP Award for Silverlight

Filed under: Announcements, Microsoft, Silverlight — colinizer @ 15:48

On Oct 1 2010, the award of Microsoft MVP was bestowed upon me, for "exceptional contributions to technical communities worldwide" by the Silverlight team.

I would have mentioned it sooner but for the facts that (1) you don’t easily get an award without being busy and (2) I had to wait for permission to use the award logo.

The MVP award process (which involved signing an NDA, signing up for benefits, agreeing to logo usage terms, getting access to the MVP site, receiving a physical package, being invited to the annual MVP summit and having access to product teams) is a well-oiled machine. Naturally the terms of the NDA prevent me from saying anything I learn that is not legitimately public, but of course I will be blogging merrily about those things when they are officially announced.

About that physical package – it included an actual physical award (heavy and made of glass), a pin, a card and a certificate…

20101013 - award

That "2010" is a separate pieces that slides on. It will take a few years to fill up the side of the award – another goal Smile

20101013 - cert

I’d like to thank the Microsoft Canada’s DPE (Developer & Platform Evangelism) team and Simran Chaudhry for their relentless support in nominating me.

Comments (2)

Friday October 1 2010

Hello, Windows Phone 7!

Filed under: Microsoft, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WP7, WP7Dev — colinizer @ 12:36

A new mobile developer web magazine launches today.

From the press release:

Mobile Developer Magazine Launches

CALGARY, Alberta, October 1 — Mobile Developer Magazine (MDM) is a new industry publication by mobile developers, for mobile developers, and is now online at www.mobiledevmag.com.

Mobile applications and architectures are evolving at an incredible speed; in order to grow with direction and success we must collaborate our knowledge. Developers shape the future of technology, and through MDM, seasoned coders to CEOs, and nearly everyone in between involved in the mobile developing world has come together.

Yours truly has a featured article in issue #1.

Want to know more about Windows Phone 7 and see how easy it is to build a application? Check out the article.

Enjoy!