August, 2010

I was a teenager in the 1980s, which meant that along with watching Knight Rider , going to Depeche Mode concerts and playing blocky games on an Atari 2600 , I had a Rubik’s cube . These puzzle toys were such a big craze at the time that toy and game stores couldn’t keep them on the shelves. I’m told that even decades later, it’s still considered to be the number one-selling toy of all time. It’s nice...

Update: Please note the changes to the Toronto-area deployment clinic locations! The "Windows Phone Canada" LinkedIn Group If you’re not a member of LinkedIn , the social networking site for professionals, you should join it now! It’s a great place to keep in touch with your network of working peers, post and maintain your resume, find people in your industry and be found yourself, and take...

We’ll be at WordCamp Montreal this Saturday! (In fact, for the second year in a row, Microsoft is a gold sponsor for the event.) WordCamp Montreal takes place this Saturday and Sunday, August 28th and 29th in the Agora Hydro-Quebec in the UQAM Coeur-des-Sciences complex ( 200 Sherbrooke West ). My fellow Developer Evangelist Christian Beauclair will be presenting Microsoft’s new web development environment...

If you’re on LinkedIn (and really, you should be) and are interested in developing for Windows Phone 7, you should join the Windows Phone Canada LinkedIn group! It’s a place for Canadian WP7 developers, enthusiasts and users to connect, share news, links to articles, exchange ideas, look for work and projects and get to know each other. You’ll also be able to start your own discussions, ask questions...

Want to get started developing sites and web applications that run on all modern browsers, including the upcoming Internet Explorer 9 ? You’ll need HTML 5 (along with CSS 3 and JavaScript) and a handy guide like Mark Pilgrim’s new book, HTML5 Up and Running . If Mark’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s written all sorts of great guides, from Dive Into Python to Dive Into Accessibility to Dive...

In case you hadn't yet seen Windows Phone 7 in action, here's a video that was shot recently: I get a lot of questions about Windows Phone 7 development, and of these, the most often-asked one is “How do I get started building apps for Windows Phone?” My answer is always the same: take a guide or tutorial that suits you, learn how the example program works, and then start experimenting! If you really...

Today, August 19th, is WhyDay , a day held in honour of the Ruby world’s most enigmatic character, a guy known to most only by a nickname, why the lucky stiff . _why (as he’s often called) is probably best known for his quirky programming book, why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby , quite possibly the most weird and whimsical tutorial written since Carlton Egremont III’s books Mr. Bunny’s Big Cup O’ Java...

The Week-Long Discussion Andrew Stellman , co-author of O’Reilly’s excellent and easy-to-read C# intro, Head First C# , is holding a week-long “Inner Circle” discussion on C# and .NET 4.0 in the forums for O’Reilly’s “Head First” book series. In this discussion, he plans to cover a wide range of topics, including: Why use C# instead of any other language? C# best practices Becoming a better C# developer...

(Well, it's two English guys surrounded by tech gear and a psychedelic background. The interior of the TARDIS came to mind.) The Windows Phone 7 Jump Start is the first of a number of free online courses on WP7 programming led by Microsoft MVPs , and you can jump in right now! Presented by Andy Wigley and Rob Miles , the Jump Start is made up of 12 50-minute videos for a total of ten hours’ worth of...

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...

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...

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. 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: Creating High Performance Silverlight Applications for Windows Phone: A white paper covering how to get the...

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...

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...

Who is 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...

As 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...

Want to learn C# or brush up on it? From Wednesday, August 18th through Tuesday, August 24th, you can join Head First C# co-author Andrew Stellman and other techies in a week-long exchange about C# in an O’Reilly “Inner Circle” discussion, where he’ll talk about C#, .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 . (If you’re a new programmer just getting started, Head First C# is a great book that will keep you engaged...

Manning Publications’ deal of the day for today, Wednesday, August 11th, is 50% off the electronic and dead-tree versions of their Silverlight books: Silverlight 4 in Action Hello! Silverlight Silverlight 2 in Action Silverlight 4 in Action and Hello! Silverlight are “MEAP” books: that’s “Manning Early Access Program”, which gives you early access to preliminary versions of a book as it’s being written...

Interested in finding out more about Windows Phone 7 development and the opportunities that come with it? Want to see both the Samsung and LG Windows Phone 7 prototypes up close and personal? Want to take a break and have coffee with us? I’m holding a Coffee and Code with mobile developer Mark Arteaga and mobile expert Anthony Bartolo in downtown Toronto at the Starbucks at King and Yonge this Thursday...

Don't have Silverlight? You can download it here or download the video in MP4 , MP3 , WMA , WMV , WMV (High) and Zune formats. Here’s a Channel 9 video shot at Emerging Languages Camp 2010 , the first conference on up-and-coming programming languages held in Portland on July 21 – 22. It’s a casual conversation with: Rich Hickey, creator of the Clojure (pronounced “closure”) programming language. It...

If you haven’t tried the latest Platform Preview of Internet Explorer 9, get your hands on it now! This one’s got new goodies like a new SVG engine, the “Chakra” JavaScript engine now integrated into the browser instead of a separate object called via COM, better Acid3 (95/100) and WebKit SunSpider scores. Channel 9 has posted some videos on this newest version of IE9, and I thought I’d share them...

If you’re interested in the knowing what phase the moon will be in on a given day – whether you’re into astronomy, astrology or just trying to figure out if more fights and arrests happen during a full moon – the upcoming Windows Phone 7 app Deluxe Moon by Lifeware Solutions looks like a gorgeous way to find out. This article also appears in Global Nerdy .

They sure do love their comics in France , where they’re called BD ( bandes dessinees , meaning “drawn strips”). I grew up reading translated versions of Asterix and Tintin , and later enjoyed Jean “Moebius” Giraud’s works, which took comics to wild new places (which as you might have guessed, included Metal Hurlant , which came to North America as Heavy Metal ). Hence it shouldn’t come as a surprise...

I’ve been busy with all sorts of stuff, so I ‘m a little late with an announcement you might have seen elsewhere online: IE9 Platform Preview 4 has been released! If you want the full story, check out IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch’s blog entry over at IEBlog , where he goes over the latest platform preview of our browser in detail. I’m just going to give you the major points, such as IE9 PP4...

Today (Thursday, August 5) and today only, Manning’s offering their SharePoint books, in both electronic and dead-tree form, at half price: SharePoint 2007 Developer's Guide to Business Data Catalog SharePoint 2010 Site Owner's Manual SharePoint 2010 Web Parts in Action SharePoint 2010 Workflows in Action Just enter the promo code in the Promotional Code box when you check out at manning.com . I got...