December, 2010

The following blog post was co-authored by John Bristowe and Cory Fowler . Important! Check out the Windows Azure Introductory Special . It is the easiest way to get started with Windows Azure. To make it even easier, Barry Gervin and Cory Fowler have created some step-by-step videos on how to register for Windows Azure using the Introductory Special. If you’re...

Some great news for folks looking to kick off the new year with a bang! Next month, we’re kicking off a free, six-part webinar series, covering Visual Studio 2010, Team Foundation Server 2010 and quality assurance ! These webinars will run on a monthly basis (from January to June) and will bring you up-to-date on what you need to know about building software with these developer tools. Building Quality...

Want to know what Windows Phone 7 devices are being offered by Canadian telcos? I’ve got the list below: Telus Telus offers two Windows Phones: HTC 7 Surround. This is the one with the slide-out Dolby Surround speakers and a little kickstand so you can use it as a mini video player. The speakers are surprisingly loud and clear and our coworker Anthony “The Mobile Situation” Bartolo used them to great...

The Azure Community Promotion was launched in mid Dec and allows the user group (UG) community members to grow their skills while giving back to their UG.  It is open to all user groups and user group members in Canada.  At the center of this promotion is skills growth, giving back and trying something new.   If any UG member takes the initiative to trial azure through the introductory...

From all of us at the Developer and Platform Evangelism team here and the rest of us at Microsoft Canada, we’d like to wish you and your families happy holidays! Enjoy the downtime, have fun, be safe, and take a peek here every now and again because you never know what I might sneak in here over the break.

If things get a little too quiet and boring during the holiday downtime and you’re looking for a game, try Pirates Love Daisies . It’s a “tower defense” style game with cute graphics, great sound and very addictive gameplay, and you can play it in a browser that supports the HTML5/CSS/JavaScript troika (often just referred to as the catch-all “HTML5”), which includes the current beta of Internet Explorer...

Comic Sans is probably one of the most misused fonts out there. Originally intended for the comic book-style speech bubbles for “Clippy” and other assistants in Microsoft Office , it got used first for “fun”, “childlike” documents and signs, and then found its way into far less appropriate venues, including those shown in the photos below: The Comic Sans Criminal site does a great job telling the story...

This book’s so new that I’m not sure the dead-tree version is available yet: it’s Windows Phone 7 Game Development , published by Apress and written by Adam Dawes . I’ve just purchased the ebook version (which you can download right away for USD$34.99), so I’ve only had a chance to do a quick skim. According to Apress’ site, here’s what you’ll learn from Windows Phone 7 Game Development: How to get...

Creative Commons photo by Christopher Sessums . Click to see the original. There’s no time like holiday downtime to go noodle with technologies you’ve been meaning to try out. Sometimes it’s nice to have a break from all the parties, family gatherings and the madness and crowds of Boxing-Day-and-beyond shopping. At the same time, I’m not a fan of completely vegging out in front of the TV. My own downtime...

Kenny Kerr is a software developer and entrepreneur. He is passionate about software and getting it done right. His new company recently launched Window Clippings 3 , a screen capture tool designed to produce the highest quality screenshots. You can follow Kenny on Twitter at @kennykerr . This is the second article in a new series about C++ for Windows . Last time I defined the approach for dealing...

I’ve been flipping through Apress’ new book, Beginning Windows Phone 7 Development , and I’ve been impressed so far. As with most books on developing for any given platform, the first couple of chapters are introductory and have the mandatory “Get the Tools” and “Let’s Write a Hello World Program” sections, but the book veers from the standard trajectory in chapter 3 by diving right into the use of...

There’s a Coffee and Code in Calgary on Thursday, December 16th! We’ll be at the Second Cup at 607 8th Avenue SW from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.: Join us and talk about Windows Phone 7, Windows Azure, the industry in general or anything else you like! This article also appears in Global Nerdy .

The Humble Indie Bundle 2 is the second edition of a collection of indie games that run on Windows, Mac and Linux. Last year, the Humble Indie Bundle features World of Goo and other games; this year, the Humble Indie Bundle contains these DRM-free games: Braid Cortex Command Machinarium Osmos Revenge of the Titans (a new title, launching exclusively inside the bundle) Purchased separately, these games...

In case you missed Saturday’s AzureFest – ObjectSharp’s Windows Azure deployment clinic held at Microsoft Canada HQ – you’re in luck. ObjectSharp’s Barry Gervin and Cory Fowler have put together a set of videos that go through what they covered on Saturday, so you too can have all that AzureFesty goodness in the comfort of your own office, home or café. In the current set of videos, they cover: Signing...

Yaroslav Pentsarskyy is a busy guy. He’s a Technical Specialist with Habanero , Systems Architect at Bluekarbon , SharePoint MVP , author , and a TechDays presenter. He’ll be doing the IE9 Turbo Talk on Tuesday and the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for Developers of Microsoft ASP.NET presentation on Wednesday. If you can’t catch him at TechDays Calgary (taking place this Tuesday and Wednesday),...

Creative Commons photo by Angela MacIsaac . Click to see the original. Seven cities down, one to go. This year has been our biggest TechDays tour, spanning the cities of Vancouver , Edmonton , Toronto , Halifax , Ottawa , Montreal , Winnipeg and this week, Calgary . Among other things, it’s the city that Developer Evangelist John Bristowe calls home. All of us are looking forward to seeing everyone...

A couple of weekends ago, I had the good fortune to being able to stop in and help out at not one but two “hackathons” – programming marathons – where the people taking part were writing software for the common good and which made use of open data . They took place on the same day and were still well-attended, a good sign that the geeks here in Toronto aren’t like the self-absorbed self-interested...

AzureFest , the get-together where developers and aspiring developers learn how to use and deploy applications and databases to Azure , took place at Microsoft Canada headquarters in Mississauga on Saturday. The event was held by our partners ObjectSharp and led by Cory Fowler , an Azure MVP . There was a morning sessions and an afternoon session, and my rough estimation of both events put the attendance...

Kenny Kerr is a software developer and entrepreneur. He is passionate about software and getting it done right. His new company recently launched Window Clippings 3 , a screen capture tool designed to produce the highest quality screenshots. You can follow Kenny on Twitter at @kennykerr . 1. Who are you? I am a husband and father of five. We live in Ontario , Canada . I’ve been developing software...

I’m still trying to keep it funny and light hearted for a Friday post. I found about about a special 7 day series of Blog posts happening on TechNet on the “Hey Scripting Guy” blog - it’s a little spin on Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” called “A Powershell Carol”.   It’s going to run from December the 19th to December the 25th inclusive. It’s a fun Holiday series about a Grumpy Network...

What is AzureFest? AzureFest is an event where you’ll see how quick and easy it is to develop and deploy cloud applications with Windows Azure . We’ll show you how to set up an Azure account and then take a traditional ASP.NET application and turn it into an Azure application. AzureFest is run by ObjectSharp with the assistance of Microsoft Canada. ObjectSharp is a Toronto-based company that specializes...

For most people, TechDays ends after the last speaker has finished his or her presentation, the requisite goodbyes have been said, the last of the cookies has been taken from the snack tables and everyone has shuffled out the door and back into reality. For us, TechDays stretches on a little longer. Even though we’ve got support staff like Starshot , our event planning team, and AVW-TELAV , our A/V...

Kenny Kerr is a software developer and entrepreneur. He is passionate about software and getting it done right. His new company recently launched Window Clippings 3 , a screen capture tool designed to produce the highest quality screenshots. This is the first article in a new series about C++ for Windows . I would have liked to start this series with a somewhat more fun topic but it needs to be said...

As one of the people behind TechDays , I have become a machine that turns caffeine into conferences: Here are Dana Epp and John Bristowe chilling out in the speaker lounge: At TechDays, we have a little post-mortem meeting at the end of each day to assess how the day went, what needs fixing, and to make notes for the next city. TechDays Winnipeg wouldn’t been possible without our friends at Imaginet...

Since I’m in town for TechDays Winnipeg , I thought I’d stay an extra day and host a Coffee and Code there. I’ll be at the Second Cup at 100 Osborne Street from 11:00 a.m. until at least 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 9th, the day after TechDays. Come drop by, talk about Windows Phone 7 or any other topic that comes to mind! Creative Commons photo (coffee cup) by Ballistik Coffee Boy . This article...