[13/11] Update - added Agenda below

Last week I sent a Save the Date to the Australian Windows Phone Community List where I foreshadowed training in Windows Phone in conjunction with Nokia this month. Well, with the release of the new Windows Phone SDK yesterday, I can now announce it will be Windows Phone 8 training and Hands On Labs.

Come and learn about developing for the new Windows Phone 8. In each city, Day 1 (Friday) is dedicated to presentations introducing you to the concepts and techniques you’ll need to create successful Windows Phone applications. Day 2 (Saturday) is a full day of hands-on labs to get you up and running. With experts from Nokia and Microsoft at hand, you’ll quickly grasp the fundamentals of creating and publishing apps for this exciting platform. Nokia also have some great prizes up for grabs.

Dates and Locations

To register, sign in or create an account on the Australian Windows Phone Community site, and then go to the Events Page.

Agenda

The agenda for each of the days is still being finalised, but it will all be Windows Phone 8.

Day 1 will be presentation-style while day 2 will be hands-on.

Agenda for Day 1

Agenda for Day 2

The format for Day 2 is a hands-on lab day. We'll start with a quick lap around the environment to get everyone up to speed with the tools and the lab content available and then  the group will choose two of the labs to go through together in group lab time.

The eight labs available are as follows:

Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8

• differences
• porting steps
• reusable components

App-to-App Communication

• uri scheme names
• app file types

Lock Screen

Voice Commands

• starting an app
• advanced functionality

Live Tiles

• adding tiles to an app
• understanding the three tile types

Purchases

• in-app purchasing
• full-app purchasing

Wallet

• supporting wallet
• coupons
• membership registration

Running Tracker - sample app with

• map control
• maps api
• background execution

You can choose to come to either or both of the days.

Cost

This is a free event.

Registration

Registration links will be available here soon.

Presenters

At this stage, presenters will be Vaughan Knight from Nokia, Nick Randolph from BuiltToRoam, Dave Glover and myself from Microsoft (I'm pretty sure Frank Arrigo will be at the Melbourne events too). Not every one of us will be at all of the events, but you get the idea.

Folding@Home is a Stanford University research project into Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and many forms of cancer. Essentially it’s a distributed computing project (it probably could be classified as a useful SETI) where small units of work are farmed out to available computing resources.

This kind of problem is one that’s ideally suited to Windows Azure (and other cloud platforms), so if you’d like to learn about the new Windows Azure Portal and potentially contribute to some life-saving research here’s all you need to do:

1. Sign up for a 90-day trial at http://aka.ms/AuAzTrial (you’ll need a credit card to prove who you are, but we won’t charge it unless you specifically give us permission to)
2. Download the package from http://aka.ms/AuAzAtHome - extract the two files somewhere on your machine
3. Create a storage account in the new portal called something unique
4. Quick-Create a cloud service account in the new portal
5. Add a new production deployment, call it something useful (for later reference) and upload the cspkg and cscfg files you extracted in (2) above
6. Go to storage in the portal and click on your new storage account. Click the manage keys button in the app bar at the bottom and copy one of the keys to the clipboard
7. Go to cloud services in the portal and click on your new cloud service. Click on the configure tab
8. Scroll down to the athomewebrole settings. Update the dataconnectionstring setting, replace {name} with your storage account name (from (3)) and {key} with the key you copied in (6). Save.
9. Wait a couple of minutes (probably about 120 sec)
10. Go to cloud services in the portal and click on your cloud service’s url
11. You should see something like this:
    
12. Click start folding and you’re away.
13. After about 10 minutes check back at your folding url and you should see some progress:
    

Look at you - saving the world.

The June 2012 update of the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit is now available for download.

From the download page:

The June 2012 update of the Windows Azure Training Kit includes over 42 hands-on labs and 18 presentations. Some of the updates in this version include:

• 12 new hands-on labs for Windows Azure Virtual Machines
• 11 new hands-on labs for Windows Azure Web Sites
• 2 new hands-on labs demonstrating Windows Azure with Windows 8 Metro-style applications
• Several new hands-on labs for Node.js and PHP using Mac OS X
• Updated content for the latest Windows Azure SDKs, tools, and new Windows Azure Management Portal
• New and updated presentations designed to support individual sessions to a full 3 day training workshops

Grab it now!

At this week’s Azure Dev Camp in Sydney, I showed a slide with suggestions as to when you’d use Windows Azure Web Sites, when you’d use Windows Azure Cloud Services, and when you’d use Windows Azure Virtual Machines. I pinched the slide from Yochay Kiriaty and Craig Kitterman’s TechEd US Session “Windows Azure Websites: Under The Hood (AZR305)”, which is well worth a watch by the way.

I’ve had a few questions and a couple of requests to post the slide, so here it is (reformatted for the blog format)

Windows Azure Web Sites are ideal for

• Modern web apps
  Perfect if your app consists of client side markup and scripting, server side scripting and a database. Powerful capability to scale out and up as needed.
• Continuous development
  Deploy directly from your source code repository, using Git or Team Foundation Service.
• Popular open source apps
  Launch a professional looking site with a few clicks using apps like WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, DotNetNuke and Umbraco

Windows Azure Cloud Services (Web Role) are ideal for

• Multi-tier applications
  Cloud-based applications that separate application logic into multiple tiers (i.e. caching middle tier, asynchronous background processes like order processing) using both Web and Worker Roles  
• Apps that require advanced administration
  Cloud-based applications that require admin access, remote desktop access or elevated permissions
• Apps that require advanced networking
  Cloud-based applications that require network isolation for use with Windows Azure Connect or Windows Azure Virtual Network

Windows Azure Virtual Machines are ideal for

• Enterprise server applications
  Run your existing enterprise applications in the cloud, such as SQL Server, SharePoint Server or Active Directory.
• Porting existing line of business apps
  Choose an image from the library or upload your own VHD.
• Windows or Linux operating system
  Support for Windows Server, along with community and commercial versions of Linux. Connect virtual machines with cloud services to take full advantage of PaaS services.

DDD Melbourne 2012 has been announced and the call for speakers has opened. If you’re a developer in Melbourne (or are happy to travel for an excellent event), check it out.

The Azure marketing folk here in Australia have produced this cool infographic talking about how the cloud is changing the job market and how to take advantage of the opportunities the cloud provides with Windows Azure.

Check out the graphic below, and sign up for a trial of Windows Azure. Of course, if you want to have a project to work towards as well, you could try the Windows Azure Challenges (and, if you’re an Australian resident, go in the running to win one of four Nokia 710 Windows Phones).

I just stumbled across some excellent introductory videos which Steve Marx did while he was at Microsoft. They provide a short explanation behind some of the Azure concepts including:

What is Windows Azure?

What is SQL Azure?

What are the Access Control and Service Bus?

What is the Windows Azure Platform?

Check them out.

In addition to the Windows Azure Meetups in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth this month, the folk at Lifehacker are running a competition in which you can win one of four Nokia 710 Windows Phones between now and June 26, and you get to dip your toe in the Azure water as well. Of course, if you're already a gun Azure developer, then the challenges will be even easier.

You have to be an Australian resident to enter. Full details here.

The Lifehacker folk are running another series of their meetups, this time focusing on Windows Azure. I'm going to skip around the country with them as well.

The dates are the evenings of

• Tuesday June 5 in Brisbane
• Wednesday June 6 in Sydney
• Tuesday June 12 in Melbourne and
• Wednesday June 13 in Perth

Details and registration on the Lifehacker site.