Andrew Coates ::: MSFT

FranklySpeaking’s Back

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 05:26:00 GMT

Michael Kordahi and I started the FranklySpeaking podcast back in November 2009. We recorded about 75 episodes up to the middle of 2011 and then went quiet with the exception of 2 or 3 false starts (there was other shiny stuff to play with). A couple of months ago we restarted and we’re having a great time.

The new (hosted on Windows Azure Web Sites) site is at http://franklyspeakingpodcast.com, and there are links from there to subscribe with your favourite podcast client.

By the way, we’ve also shared the audio files from the entire back catalogue on our SkyDrive.

My Ignite Sydney Talk

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:06:49 GMT

I had a great time doing a talk at Ignite Sydney this year. My title was “Statistics - Learn it or Lose”

Andrew Coates: Statistics–learn it or lose.

Some other great talks from the night (not all safe for work):

Andrew Walker’s quirky The Binary Taxi Driver
Ben Grill’s strangely compelling Secrets of drag revealed
Joanne Chan’s mouth-watering How to be awesome at yum cha and
Mark Cohen’s entertaining and thought-provoking How to not hate your job, from which came, in my opinion, the quote of the night:

“You’re probably not an outlier”

Which I liked so much that I had a T-shirt made of it.

Windows Phone Game Developer Workshop in Sydney 24/25 May

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:00:22 GMT

Thinking about writing a game for Windows Phone? Come along and learn from some of the best in the business. Featuring three strands from casual games you can write and publish in a couple of hours up to hard-core 3D games with the unity framework, this DevCamp has something for everyone. Get your game face on.

The three strands will be:

Developing high-performance 3D games on Windows Phone using the Unity Framework,
Developing Games for Windows Phone with XAML, and
Using TouchDevelop to quickly create and publish games for Windows Phone

The sessions will probably be held at Microsoft HQ in North Ryde, and will run from 9am to 5pm each day.

Places are limited for this free event so Register Now!

Windows Phone 8 Training Kit Updated

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 02:21:15 GMT

The updated Windows Phone 8 Training Kit is live!

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38782

This kit contains 20 Hands-On Labs and a set of 6 presentations that can be used to drive code camps or for general training purposes.

These are great for getting yourself up to speed with some comprehensive training, and they’re also excellent if you’re looking to give a presentation on Windows Phone.

Don’t forget that there are nearly 100 Training Kits on all kinds of technologies available for free from the Microsoft Download Centre

http://www.microsoft.com/en-au/download/search.aspx?q=training%20kit&p=0&r=10&t=&s=availabledate~Descending

Grab some today!

IISExpress - Configuration file is not well-formed XML

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:32:00 GMT

[UPDATE 2013-04-26]

After consulting with my brains trust (thanks Damo), I tried one last thing. I manually copied the folders IISExpress had created in the c:\temp\IISExpress folder back into my MyDocuments\IISExpress folder, and VS seems happy. I’m calling this one closed for now.

[UPDATE 2013-04-23]

This is only half solved. It looks like VS still insists on launching IISExpress with a specific command line switch pointing at the old config location.

I installed a new machine the other day and on loading a VS project that uses IISExpress, I got the following error:

Filename: \\?\UNC\[our My Docs Server]\MyDocs1\acoat\My Documents\IISExpress\config\applicationHost.config 
Line number: 1 
Error: Configuration file is not well-formed XML

Turns out that IISExpress is writing config information to my My Documents folder, but because I’ve got folder redirection turned on, this is a UNC path, not a local path. It looks like an applicationHost.config file is created, but it’s 0 bytes and the IISExpress process doesn’t have permission to write to it.

Fortunately, from IISExpress 8 onwards, there’s a registry key you can setr to point IISExpress at another home folder.

Thanks to this post on StackOverflow, I was pointed to the IIS 8.0 Express Readme FIle, which, in the New Features section says:

Changing the User Home Directory
IIS 8.0 Express supports changing the user's home directory, which is mapped to the %IIS_USER_HOME% variable in configuration. By default this path is located at %UserProfile%\Documents\IISExpress, but users can change this by setting a CustomUserHome registry property in HKCU\Software\Microsoft\IISExpress, or by specifying the "/userhome" parameter when launching iisexpress.exe.

So, I fired up RegEdit, added a new IISExpress key under HKCU\Software\Microsoft and then added a string key CustomUserHome set to "c:\Temp\IISExpress" (a folder I’d created manually) and IISExpress starts in the expected manner and creates all of its config, logs and tracelogfiles folders (and their accompanying files) there and starts successfully.

Adelaide Windows Phone 8 Training Days May 3 and 4

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 06:20:01 GMT

Dave’s just blogged about some excellent Windows Phone 8 training in Adelaide at the beginning of May. If you’re in the area, you should go.

Joining a Lync Webcast as a Guest

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:55:48 GMT

To attend one of our Lync Webcasts, you'll get a notification (either by email or on a web page) that looks like this;

There are three ways you can join the meeting

Audio alone (dial-in);
Web client for screen casting and dial-in for audio; or
Lync Client

Audio alone

Simply dial one of the numbers shown in your invitation or click the "Find a local number" link to get a list of all of the available dial-in numbers from around the world. When prompted, enter the Conference ID in your invitation (I've scrubbed out the ID above so you're not tempted to enter it, you need the ID from your invitation).

That should be it. Depending on the settings from the meeting organiser, you may be in the "meeting lobby" until you're admitted to the meeting, or you may go straight into the meeting.

Web Client

If you need to see what the presenter is doing as well as hearing the presentation, you'll need to connect to the web client (or using the Lync client below).

Click on the Join Lync Meeting link in your invitation, and one of two things will happen. If you've already got a Lync client installed, it will open and the meeting should start (see the Lync Client section below).

If you don't have a Lync client installed, after a couple of redirects, you should be presented with the following choice:

Click the Join the meeting using your web browser link (we'll talk about the Lync Attendee option later on)

A new browser window will open:

Choose Join as a guest and enter your name (as you'd like to have it appear in the meeting)

then click the Join Meeting button.

Depending on how the meeting organiser has set up the meeting, you may see this message:

and then this message:

Click OK, and you'll be in the meeting:

There are a few things to point out here.

First, the area marked Presso in the image above is where the presentation will happen. In the screenshot, the presenter is conducting a poll, but this is also where you'll see PowerPoint slides, the presenter's screen or whatever else is displayed.

Next, the area marked IM allows you to type questions/comments that will be seen (and potentially responded to) by everyone else in the meeting. This is a great way to ask questions as the presenter (or someone assisting the presenter) and answer them asynchronously, without interrupting the presentation itself.

Finally, clicking the highlighted tab marked Phone pops up the options for getting audio to go along with the meeting:

Option 1 gets the conference to call you - simply enter your phone number and click Call Me.

Option 2 is the same process as the one outlined in the Audio Alone section above.

Building a Windows Phone Transport App for NSW

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 07:23:40 GMT

Dave Glover’s just posted a call to Be Part of the Windows Phone Developer/Designer Virtual Team "NSW Transport App Hot House".

Transport NSW are making a set of data feeds available around real-time bus and train status (vehicle locations, station maintenance, accessibility etc.) and are running a comp to find developers and designers to consume and expose it in interesting and useful ways.

Dave’s putting a team together to do a Windows Phone version.

Check it out.

Windows Phone 8 Development Internals book for only $10 - this week only

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 22:08:23 GMT

Just spotted this over on the Microsoft Press blog. This looks like an awesome book and you can have access to bits of it now for $10. If you wait until next week, the price goes up to $20, and it keeps going up as more of the book's available (although for your $10, you keep getting more of the book for no additional charge).

All of the details are available in the Microsoft Press post.

More useful Windows Phone 8 Resources

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 12:06:43 GMT

Announcing the new Windows Phone 8 Developer Platform by Kevin Gallo

Visual Studio Blog – Introducing Windows Phone SDK 8.0

.Net Framework Blog – Announcing the release of the .NET Framework for Windows Phone 8

Windows Phone Blog – Meet Windows Phone 8

Windows Phone Dev Center Twitter Feed

Windows Phone Twitter Feed