Nigel Parker's Outside Line : Live

Sneak Peak of the Windows 7 MSDN Flash Newsletter.

nparker — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:12:00 GMT

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If you have disconnected yourself over the holiday period you may not have caught up with the news that we have released the first beta of Windows 7.

I recommend that you join the Windows 7 Beta Customer Preview Program to get on the inside track. Brian Keller shows how to virtualize the Windows 7 Beta if you are that way inclined. Once you have Windows 7 up and running Tim Sneath has published a Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets.

The Windows 7 Beta was announced by Steve Ballmer at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas on the 8^th of Jan. You can watch the keynote on-demand.

Another interesting point is that some applications that have been included with prior releases of Windows (Mail, Calendar, Movie Maker and Photo Gallery) are no longer included and are instead offered separately (free of charge) as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite for Windows XP, Vista and 7. I personally love the updated Windows Live Photo Gallery application that ties in well with the new Silverlight 2 based photo slideshow.

Along with Windows 7 the first beta of Windows Server 2008 R2 is also available for download. Read how the new server is improving the Web Application Platform. Of note you not get a subset of .NET 3.5 with a server core installation. Check out the Developing with Microsoft .NET and ASP.NET for Server Core session from PDC.

As always the best way to get Microsoft news as it breaks is to subscribe to the Microsoft Press Pass RSS feed.

So what are you waiting for go get it!

Editor’s picks

The source code for the Silverlight 2 controls has been released under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL). With the release of this source code as well as having access to the source for the Silverlight Toolkit, you should have some great base implementations to extend and learn from!

PhotoSuru is a new sample from the WPF team that provides a unique way to browse photos. The application takes advantage of some of the richer WPF features such as pixel shaders, adaptive layout, custom themes and offline storage. The sample is based on the SCE Starter Kit which is available for download and includes the full source.

Live Services Jumpstart – Day 1 Morning Session

nparker — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:48:00 GMT

As mentioned previously I am over at the Live Services Jumpstart Training in Sydney this week along with a few other kiwis.

Day 0 for me was a chance to do a photo walk in Sydney.

It has been a while since I’ve been in Sydney and it was great to get reacquainted with an old friend.

Day 1 has kicked off with Dr Neil doing an all up technical overview of existing Live Services.

This is a bit of a refresher for me as I’m quite familiar with what services are available at http://dev.live.com but it is interesting to see these existing services beginning to migrate to the Azure Services Platform.

Tomorrow is all about the Live Framework (Mesh Services) and how we bring all these services together through a common SDK (the left box of the second tier of the picture below).

After Dr Neil’s session the morning was a dive into identity delivered by James McCutcheon my summary is below:

Identity - “LiveID is the submit button”

Web developers - Windows Live ID Web Authentication SDK 1.2 describes a platform-independent interface for implementing Windows Live ID sign-in on Web sites of all kinds. This release includes a sample application for each of seven different programming languages: ASP.NET (C# and VB), Java, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby.
Client application developers can use Windows Live ID for authentication as well - Windows Live ID Client 1.0 SDK
Visual Studio ASP.NET developers - Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio November 2008 CTP
Delivering Data Portability – Delegated Authentication SDK v1.0

Important if you are trying this stuff you need to get your Application ID and secret for Web Authentication. Without it you will get an “Windows Live ApplicationID and Secret not provided” error.

During the setup here I chose “mydemo.com” for the domain and the return URL. Problem with this is that I don’t own this domain so I updated the mapping in my host file to get this to work. You may need to think about this when you are setting up your project.

Your application ID and secret should now be saved. To confirm that they are saved, open the web.config file and find the configuration section near the top of the file. This should contain an appSettings section. This section should look something like the following…

<appSettings>
   <add key="wll_appid" value="APPLICATION_ID"/>
   <add key="wll_secret" value="SECRET"/>
</appSettings>

There is also a community preview of using LiveID as an OpenID provider.
Microsoft Federation Gateway Service as a single sign-on provider for LiveID – check out the Identity: Live Identity Services Drilldown session from PDC.

Live Platform Jumpstart 2009 in Sydney 8th-9th of December 2008

nparker — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:58:11 GMT

At PDC 2008 this week, we announced a new way to program Live Services, the Live Framework (in CTP). Check out the overview of Microsoft’s Live Platform Services.

Today we are making available the first preview release of the Azure Services Training Kit. The Azure Services Training Kit will include hands-on labs, presentations, and samples to help you understand how to build applications that utilize the Azure Services Platform. This PDC preview release of the training kit includes 11 hands-on labs that cover the broad set of services including Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services. These are the same hands-on labs that have already been used by hundreds of customers at the PDC.

You can download the Azure Services Training Kit from the Microsoft Download Center here.

Over the next few weeks we will also be releasing several samples and scenario-based demos that can be used to both demonstrate the value proposition of these services and understand how to use the SDKs, Tools, and Services themselves.

Please note: The Windows Azure hands-on labs can be used locally with the Windows Azure developer fabric that is included with the Windows Azure SDK. However, the .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services labs require a registered service account. You can apply for a services account here.

PDC sessions on this topic so far:

A Lap Around Windows Azure

Windows Azure: Essential Cloud Storage Services

Live Services: Making your Application More Social

Live Services: A Lap around the Live Framework and Mesh Services

A Lap Around the Azure Services Platform

On the 8th/9th Dec in Sydney we are holding a 2 day Live Services Jumpstart provides in-depth technical training sessions (level 300-400) on Microsoft’s cutting edge consumer web platform technologies that help developers / partner organizations build rich web applications, sync and share them across devices and more importantly, build audience for the web applications.

The Jumpstart event contains several in-depth sessions, hands-on code labs and informal Q&A.

You can learn more about the event at http://lpjumpstart.com

The 2 day agenda is at http://bit.ly/agenda

Capacity is limited to maintain a setting that fosters dialogue among all participants. However, we’re eager to accommodate you if we can, so please register at http://bit.ly/Register and we will contact you shortly to let you know if your registration has been accepted.

If you are accepted into the training there will be no cost associated but T&E will be your responsibility.

Next Thursday in Sydney is also Liberation Day in Australia.

SteveB will be talking about our developer vision (especially around S+S) – this is not to be missed. Following Steve, we’re going to be joined by Gianpaolo Carraro and Tim Sneath.

Gianpaolo will go into more depth around the services component. He is an expert on the topic and will be hot off PDC announcements.

Tim is the windows client (WPF, Vista, Silverlight etc) evangelism lead at Microsoft. He’ll be going into more depth around the software component.

The event will be streamed live on Thursday 6th Nov 5:30pm NZ Time over at http://www.microsoft.com/australia/powertodevelopers/