Categories
Uncategorized

TechDays 2010 & TechNet Subscriptions – Helping You to Continue Your Learning

And now a special TechDays announcement from Damir, the Big Kahuna of our upcoming cross-Canada conference…

image TechDays 2010 is getting closer with Vancouver conference just a few weeks away. As such the team has been hard to make this an impactful event that will allow you to grow your skills and support you in areas important to your job and career. 

I am happy to announce that the hard work has paid off and we have been able to work with Microsoft corporate and each TechDays 2010 attendee will get a TechNet Plus subscription!

This benefit is added to the over 50 Sessions of technical content, networking opportunities, great offers from our Partners, like Telerik, Pluralsight, Xceed, and access to 50 virtual labs to get hands-on without requiring you to provide the necessary hardware and software to support adoption. 

Now, to be clear, I did announce just a couple of weeks ago that we would not be providing TechDays 2010 attendees with TechNet Plus subscriptions, but understanding that now, more than ever, you need all the tools in your arsenal to help you deploy Windows 7 and Office 2010, implement Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, SharePoint 2010, and other technologies, we were able to work with our colleagues at Microsoft Corporate to make a one-time exception.

Here are some details on how the TechNet subscription will work for TechDays 2010 attendees:

  • All subscriptions will be new subscriptions.  We will not be able to extend your existing subscription, if any.
  • All subscriptions will be for one year and do not include any support incidents. Subscriptions are a Special TechDays 2010 NFR edition and are not the same as you would be able to purchase directly.
  • All subscriptions provide you download-only access to over 80 software products as well as all of the TechNet virtual labs, beta products, forums, TechCenters, and other TechNet resources.  There is no option to order physical media with the Special TechDays 2010 NFR edition subscription.
  • All subscriptions will be processed about 15-20 days after you attend TechDays 2010 in the city where you are registered.  This means that if you attend TechDays 2010 in Vancouver, you will get your subscription 3-4 weeks after the Vancouver event; if you attend Toronto, it will be 3-4 weeks after the Toronto event, and so on.

Finally, there is one more thing I need to be completely clear about.  The provision of a one-year TechNet subscription to TechDays 2010 attendees is a one-time only occurrence and will not be continued in future years.  I’ll be up-front right now – we do not expect to provide TechDays 2011, and future year, attendees with TechNet subscriptions.  We are delighted that we can do it this year but want you to be aware that you should not expect to receive a TechNet subscription in 2011 and further into the future.

If you have not yet registered, please go to www.techdays.ca to get the limited-time Early Bird pricing at $349.99 + taxes, a 50% saving from the regular conference fee.  If you plan on going to TechDays Vancouver, Early Bird pricing expires on August 20th so act now!  Early Bird pricing for TechDays 2010 events in other cities expires 6 weeks before the event.

Thanks for your continued support of TechDays. We look forward to welcoming you!

Damir

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Categories
Uncategorized

Get Your Game on with Windows Phone 7

It’s On!

When Windows Phone 7 was first shown to the public in March, we got a taste of the Games hub and were told that Microsoft was working with a number of big game developers to bring games to the new phone platform. Late yesterday, we got the announcement of the first games coming to WP7:

It’s one thing to see a slickly-produced ad showing the games, but it’s an entirely different thing to see actual games being played on an actual phone. Here’s Engadget’s video of the game experience on one of the prototype phones – the Samsung “Taylor”, which I have and which you might have seen at the last “Coffee and Code” event in Toronto:

Here’s what Engadget had to say about the experience:

We’ll preface this by saying that both the hardware and software we demoed was still unfinished (the latter being the Samsung Taylor dev phone and the LG QWERTY model we broke news of on the Engadget Show). Regardless, the gameplay for the arcade titles seemed excellent, with frame rates holding fast even during graphically intensive 3D sequences (such as the chaotic, scattered-pixel play of Rocket Riot). The Harvest, while a bit familiar to our eyes, still showed the graphic promise of the platform. Gameplay was definitely well suited to a touchscreen device, though Microsoft’s Kevin Unangst told us that developers could target controls for both touch and QWERTY-equipped phones (provided that a touch version was always present). The screen response seemed accurate and sensitive, reacting quickly to our input. Particularly in the Crackdown title — a tower defense game "set in the Crackdown universe" — pinch zooming, rotation, and finger tracking was excellent.

The New New Xbox Experience

The “New Xbox Experience” or “NXE” – the revamped Xbox user interface that introduced avatars – comes along for the ride on Windows Phone. You can access your Xbox Live account on WP7, check out your gamerscore and achievements, and like Xbox-based games, your avatar can also be used within WP7 games and apps.

In this Engadget video, we see avatars being used to give a little twist to some standard smartphone apps such as “flashlight”, “spirit level” and “coin flip”:

Here’s another video showing more avatar action as well as some of the social networking features of Xbox Live, as done on WP7:

The Games

The games that have been announced for Windows Phone 7 so far:

  • 3D Brick Breaker Revolution (Digital Chocolate)
  • Age of Zombies (Halfbrick)
  • Armor Valley (Protégé Games)
  • Asphalt 5 (Gameloft)
  • Assassins Creed (Gameloft)
  • Bejeweled™ LIVE (PopCap)
  • Bloons TD (Digital Goldfish)
  • Brain Challenge (Gameloft)
  • Bubble Town 2 (i-Play)
  • Butterfly (Press Start Studio)
  • CarneyVale Showtime (MGS)
  • Castlevania (Konami Digital Entertainment)
  • Crackdown 2: Project Sunburst (MGS)
  • De Blob Revolution (THQ)
  • Deal or No Deal 2010 (i-Play)
  • Earthworm Jim (Gameloft)
  • Fast & Furious 7 (i-Play)
  • Fight Game Rivals (Rough Cookie)
  • Finger Physics (Mobliss Inc.)
  • Flight Control (Namco Bandai)
  • Flowerz (Carbonated Games)
  • Frogger (Konami Digital Entertainment)
  • Fruit Ninja (Halfbrick)
  • Game Chest-Board (MGS)
  • Game Chest-Card (MGS)
  • Game Chest-Logic (MGS)
  • Game Chest-Solitaire (MGS)
  • GeoDefense (Critical Thought)
  • Ghostscape (Psionic)
  • Glow Artisan (Powerhead Games)
  • Glyder 2 (Glu Mobile)
  • Guitar Hero 5 (Glu Mobile)
  • Halo Waypoint (MGS)
  • Hexic Rush (Carbonated Games)
  • I Dig It (InMotion)
  • iBlast Moki (Godzilab)
  • ilomilo (MGS)
  • Implode XL (IUGO)
  • Iquarium (Infinite Dreams)
  • Jet Car Stunts (True Axis)
  • Let’s Golf 2 (Gameloft)
  • Little Wheel (One click dog)
  • Loondon (Flip N Tale)
  • Max and the Magic Marker (PressPlay)
  • Mini Squadron (Supermono Limited)
  • More Brain Exercise (Namco Bandai)
  • O.M.G. (Arkedo)
  • Puzzle Quest 2 (Namco Bandai)
  • Real Soccer 2 (Gameloft)
  • The Revenants (Chaotic Moon)
  • Rise of Glory (Revo Solutions)
  • Rocket Riot (Codeglue)
  • Splinter Cell Conviction (Gameloft)
  • Star Wars: Battle for Hoth (THQ)
  • Star Wars: Cantina (THQ)
  • The Harvest (MGS)
  • The Oregon Trail (Gameloft)
  • Tower Bloxx NY (Digital Chocolate)
  • Twin Blades (Press Start Studio)
  • UNO (Gameloft)
  • Women’s Murder Club: Death in Scarlet (i-Play)
  • Zombie Attack! (IUGO)
  • Zombies!!!! (Babaroga)

…with more on the way, as big game dev companies sign up and Microsoft’s Mobile Games Studio kicks into high gear.

How Do You Get in on Some of That Action?

windows phone 7 If you want to just play Windows Phone 7 games, it’s easy – the phone comes out in the fall, in time for the holiday shopping season.

If you want to build Windows Phone 7 games, it takes a little more work, but it’s worth it. You’ll need to:

  1. Get your hands on the development tools. They’re free-as-in-beer and you’ll get:
    • The IDE, Visual Studio for Windows Phone Express (and if you have Visual Studio 2010, the necessary parts to do WP7 development)
    • Windows Phone emulator
    • Silverlight for Windows Phone (app-building framework)
    • XNA 4.0 for Windows Phone (game-building framework)
    • Expression Blend for Windows Phone (UI-building tool)
  2. Learn XNA development. There are a number of good tutorials out there, including:
  3. And finally, keep an eye on this blog. As a Windows Phone 7 Champ, I’ve got a direct line to the WP7 team, I always point you to the good stuff, and I’ve got some surprises in store!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Categories
Uncategorized

TWC9: Lots of Windows Phone 7 Stuff, SQL Cop, WCF for Large Data

Get Microsoft Silverlight

Can’t see the video? You can download and install Silverlight or download the video in iPod (MP4), MP3, WMA, WMV, WMV (High) or Zune formats.

thisweekonchannel9 Here’s what’s up on the latest edition of This Week on Channel 9, the summary of the most interesting videos and news on Microsoft’s Channel 9 site:

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Categories
Uncategorized

THIS is How You Do It: The USGA Golf Score App for Windows Phone 7

intro slide[3]

One of the tricky things about helping developers build for a platform that has yet to be released is that it’s a tabula rasa. There’s no history, which is both blessing and curse: we developers get to make that history, but at the same time, we’re working in the dark. There are no examples to emulate and no best practices to follow – it’s just us and whatever user interface guidelines there happen to be (which, in the case of Windows Phone 7, is the Windows Phone UI Design and Interaction Guide).

That’s why I’m glad that Microsoft is building WP7 apps like USGA Shot Tracker, a gorgeous golf scorekeeping app that practically announces to developers: “This is how you do it. This is how you write a usable, beautiful, truly Windows Phone 7 app.” Here’s a video of USGA Shot Tracker in action:

Give the app a look, and also make sure you check out the article on Long Zheng’s blog, istartedsomething, which includes images of USGA Shot Tracker’s screens.

Keep an eye on this blog, because I’m a couple of days away from starting an ongoing series on well-designed WP7 apps and how you implement them. I’ll take a closer look at USGA Shot Tracker and other apps, going through them with a fine-toothed comb in attempt to learn as much as possible from them, and share that knowledge with you.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Categories
Uncategorized

“C# in Depth” and “Azure in Action” for the Price of One Book–Today Only (August 15th)!

csharp in depth azure in action

For today only (that’s Sunday, August 15th), Manning is offering the pair of their books, C# in Depth, Second Edition and Azure in Action for the price of one! Just use the discount code dotd0815 in the Promotional Code box when you check out. You can order the final book in either dead-tree or PDF format.

Both these books are MEAP books – that’s short for Manning Early Access Program, a chance for you to get in-progress and final editions of books currently being written.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Categories
Uncategorized

David Crow Answers 5 Questions and Visits Vancouver

Who is David Crow?

David Crow

David Crow is probably the most recognizable face in the Toronto startup tech scene, and rightfully so. Without the effort he’s put into events like DemoCamp and other gatherings where techies, entrepreneurs, social media types and anyone else who wants to build “World 2.0”, we wouldn’t have anywhere near as active or as interesting a tech scene as we do (and not just in Toronto, but across Canada as well).

Collage of DemoCamp photos: "Without David, none of this would've happened."

My current job at Microsoft, as well as the previous two, grew out of opportunities created by David’s hard work, either directly or indirectly. I suppose I owe him a couple of drinks!

5 Questions

TechVibes logoDavid is my coworker at Microsoft Canada’s Developer and Platform Evangelism team and also one of the Windows Phone 7 Champs. Karim Kanji caught up with him and did a quick “5 Questions” interview, featuring these questions:

  1. What motivates you to do what you do on a daily basis?
  2. Do you have any success start-up tips for people wanting to create a name for themselves in your industry?
  3. In your opinion why is Toronto a hotbed for cool tech start-ups?
  4. What’s your favourite tech toy and social media site and why?
  5. Who would you say are Toronto’s social media/tech stars and why?

Check out the article at TechVibes!

David’s in Vancouver This Coming Week

Vancouver: Downtown Vancouver as seen from the Granville Street Bridge

grow2010-logoDavid’s going to be in Vancouver from Monday, August 16th, through Friday, August 20th to attend the Grow Conference on Thursday and Friday, which is aimed at startup techies, entrepreneurs, idea people and investors. “If you’re a startup, an investor or a service provider in Canada,” wrote David, “you should be at this event.”

bootup labsHe’s going to be in the downtown area and available to meet up in the earlier part of the week. If you want to find out more about BizSpark, pick his brain about startups and product/market fit, you can catch up with him at Bootup Labs (where he’ll be working from). To find out more his trip to Vancouver and how to catch up with him, check out this blog entry.

Vancouver photo taken by JamesZ_Flickr and licenced under Creative Commons.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Categories
Uncategorized

Windows Phone Coffee and Code

Logo: Windows Phone Coffee and CodeAs I write this, my Toronto Windows Phone “Coffee and Code” event is drawing to a close. Held at the big communal table in the back corner of the Starbucks at Toronto’s busy Yonge/King intersection, I announced it a mere two days prior, first on Twitter, and then on the Canadian Developer Connection and Global Nerdy blogs, so I was prepared for only a handful of people to show up. I was pleased by the outcome: in the end, we got about three dozen people to show, with twenty people crowding around our table at peak, and not counting the half-dozen people who wandered over saying “Did I hear you had a new Windows Phone?”

coffee and code 1

What is Coffee and Code?

As a mobile worker, I’m not tied down to an office. As a product of late 1980s/early 1990s computer labs, I’m actually quite comfortable working in a noisy, busy environment like a café, and in the late ‘90s, when I ran my own consulting shop, I cranked out VB applications for a mid-sized company in Chicago out of a hip little café on Toronto’s Queen Street West. During that time, I met a number of interesting people, including folks from the local tech scene, which I enjoyed. So when I landed the job with Microsoft and returned to the mobile life, I thought, why not bring a little of that back?

So I started a little event I called “Coffee and Code” back in early 2009. The idea was simple: work out of a café, announce that I’ll be there and will be happy to take visitors, see who shows up. It worked out pretty well, and I hold them whenever my schedule allows. The attendance usually ranges from 6 to two dozen or so, and we talk about all sorts of things, from programming (.NET, open source and everything in between), the local tech scene, the industry in general and just about every other topic – the conversations aren’t always technical. It’s a great way for people to meet up with me, and a great way for me to know what’s on developers’ minds.

The idea has spread beyond Toronto; my coworkers and I have held Coffee and Code events in cities across Canada, Denny Cherry has held a couple in southern California and Cory Fowler holds them regularly in Guelph.

coffee and code 2

Who Was There?

Luckily, I didn’t run this alone. I was backed up by a couple of great people:

  • Developer Mark Arteaga, a Microsoft MVP who’s forgotten more about mobile development with Microsoft tech than I will ever learn. You should catch his Windows Phone 7 sessions at TechDays.
  • Mobile telco expert Anthony Bartolo, who works with me a Microsoft as the phone infrastruicture expert guy with over a decade’s worth of experience in the mobile industry. He’ll also be speaking at TechDays about Windows Phone Marketplace.

coffee and code 3

Among the people in attendance were:

  • Mobile tech bloggers: The guys from Mobile Syrup and The Cellular Guru, there to see a real-life Windows Phone 7 phone. As Anthony noted, they were impressed with the smoothness of the phone (yet more people saying that they love its touch responsiveness) and loved the features. Not bad for a beta OS running on prototype devices!
  • Kate Gregory: She’s one of Canada’s Microsoft Regional Directors, a select group of developers and architects who volunteer their time to share information about Microsoft tools and tech with their communities and give us feedback. She’s my C++ go-to person; I’m glad I have one! In addition to talking about Windows Phone, she told me some very enlightening stories about the industry and where C++ gets used as well as some hilarious tales from tech conferences. She’s creating the content for the TechDays session on the Windows API Code Pack and delivering that session at TechDays Toronto.
  • Developers, developers, developers! Guys from the Ryerson Digital Media zone (including Alexey Adamsky and Alex Yakobovich, who are working on a great 3-D version of Sudoku), local development shops, indie coders, SharePoint guys looking to build business apps, iPhone and Android developers wondering what Windows Phone 7 was like…and they all seemed pretty impressed. They chatted, ate, did some test deployments onto actual hardware and even did some coding. (By the way, if I didn’t mention your company or name and you want it mentioned here, let me know and I’ll update this article!)

coffee and code 5

How About Cross-Country Coffee and Codes?

coffee and code 7

In response to my quick announcements about this Coffee and Code, I got a number of questions via email, Twitter and Facebook asking me if I’m holding Coffee and Codes elsewhere in Canada (particularly from people in Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa). The answer is, I’d love to, and I’m working on ways to make that happen.

Firstly, I’m taking advantage of the fact that I’m already flying across the country to help run TechDays. I’ll be in six of the eight cities:

  • Vancouver
  • Edmonton
  • Toronto
  • Halifax
  • Ottawa
  • Montreal

…and I plan to be in those cities not just for TechDays, but a couple of days before and after the event as well. I’ll hold Coffee and Codes in those cities when I’m there, with a chance for you to see Windows Phone 7 devices up close and personal, try deploying an app to them, and ask questions.

Secondly, I’d like to see if Windows Phone Coffee and Code events can take place all over Canada, whether or not I’m there. I know it’s possible; Cory Fowler has held way more Coffee and Codes than I have in Guelph, and I’m sure that more of you would be interested in holding get-togethers would like to hold similar events in your area. If we made some kind of Coffee and Code “starter kit” to help you start a Coffee and Code in your town, would you do it? Let me know – email me if you’d be up for it!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.