Jerry Nixon @work

Drupal and Microsoft? Yes!

2012-02-24T10:19:00.001-07:00

In March, DrupalCon is coming to Denver. I am excited to attend. The speaker and session list is rich, and I am happy Microsoft continues its dedication to part of this community.

Web Matrix

Microsoft WebMatrix makes it easy for anyone to create a Drupal site. Acquia Drupal or Drupal 7 available from the Web Application Gallery is fully tested to run on WebMatrix and includes our URL Rewrite module for “Clean URL's”. Customize your site easily and then publish it on the internet from a wide choice of hosting service providers.

The Windows Phone App Hub “Invalid Credit Card” Solution

2012-02-23T09:58:00.001-07:00

We are aware that many of you have run into the issue of getting an "Invalid Credit Card" message when trying to register. We apologize for this erroneous message and inconvenience. While we work toward a solution, we do have a workaround that you may use. Here are the steps:

Go to https://account.microsoft.com/PaymentHub/
Sign in with your Windows Live ID (the one used to register with App Hub)
In the upper-right hand corner, make sure your "Personal Account" is selected (NOT the "Business Account").
Go to Payment Options, where you will see "add payment option" near the bottom of the screen on the left side.
Add your credit card.
Return to App Hub and continue your registration. If you are already logged into your App Hub account, click your name in the upper-right corner to walk through the registration steps to complete the process.

Also please be mindful that your country information must be aligned between your Windows Live ID (including any other services, such as XBox, associated to it), the information entered into App Hub and the Credit Card. Any inconsistencies may cause an issue with the process.

Read the full post here.

#MVA: Finally something Free! from Microsoft

2012-02-22T12:53:00.001-07:00

What’s Microsoft Virtual Academy?

MVA is a fully cloud-based learning experience focusing on Microsoft Cloud Technologies. You can access a variety of training content online and become one of the renowned experts in the IT Pro community around the world. MVA provides its users with a virtual university experience: the student can select a track and study the material and then do the self-assessment. By doing so, he will collect points that will promote him to a Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum Level. Students on MVA can get access to all the information, statistics and advancements of their training career, allowing them to maintain a long-term relationship with Microsoft. Learning through MVA is free of charge, and you can study the contents at any time and at your own pace.

The MVA platform is hosted on the latest Microsoft Azure technology, which guarantees that your learning experience will flow uninterruptedly for the best online learning experience ever!

Who is Eligible?

Anybody interested in growing professionally and to follow along in a training environment completely free of charge can take part in the MVA. The only thing the interested user needs to do to participate is to register on the platform with a Windows Live ID to get access to the training resources. There is no minimum level of technical expertise required.

What are Bonus Points?

Bonus points are awarded every time you successfully complete all requirements for a course. This means you will have to have viewed all content and passed all self-assessments related to that course. We implemented the bonus point system a few weeks after the launch of MVA. Therefore, all users who had successfully completed a course prior to the Bonus Point System being implemented will receive these automatically on May 31 in line with a bigger change in the point scaling logic.

Is it free?

Yes, there is no cost for this service. Students can use any of the resources available on the cloud without restrictions.

Learn even more here.

Oh, no you didn’t! Office 365 at Home?

2012-02-22T12:43:00.001-07:00

In an article by Richard Hay:

I recently transitioned our household to hosted email accounts with Office 365. My wife and I are both Outlook users and like the benefits of working in that interface locally on our desktop and laptops.

The option we are now using, hosted Microsoft Exchange e-mail accounts under Office 365, gives us max flexibility and allows us to pick up our email on either machine without having to think about them being synched or copying the files back and forth. It will work whether we are on the road visiting somewhere with our laptops or accessing the account using Outlook Web Access. Everything stays perfectly in sync on all systems without any thought on our part and that is probably the nicest aspect of it all.

The accounts do cost $60 per year each but give us all these features:

Cloud-based email using your own domain name
Shared calendars
Configurable anti-spam filtering
Active Directory synchronization
Live 24 x 7 IT customer phone support

Many will ask why not just do this with the Microsoft Office Outlook Hotmail Connector, a free Hotmail account and accessing our current POP3 accounts through Hotmail to consolidate everything…

Read the whole article here.

Open Call: Submit your Pictures for the official Windows Wallpaper Gallery

2012-02-22T12:37:00.001-07:00

Millions of people a month come to the Windows Personalization Gallery to download themes and wallpapers for their desktops. Send us your art or photography, and we might use it in the gallery, either as a wallpaper (a standalone desktop image) or a full theme (a set of desktop images and colors).

This is your chance to get your work and your name in front of a global audience while retaining full rights to all your images.

Read the whole article here.

Why Google Docs Suck!

2012-02-22T12:30:00.001-07:00

To get your point across, style matters. Making your point takes flair and sometimes some swagger, and you always need substance. So, your message needs to be complete and your document’s format needs to be what you intended. Of course, you want to have all of the pieces in your message, including your charts and your images. And you want to have the right look and feel. I like to call this the “fidelity” of the document.

Don’t lose your mojo by using Google Docs to share documents. Share your information and ideas with Office Web Apps.

I've shared Office documents with Google Docs, and here’s what can happen:

Critical information in Excel spreadsheet cells disappear. My budget formulas display "ERROR!", and I look like I find second-grade math challenging.
The newsletter I’m pulling together loses its charts, so I’m only updating people with half of the information that parents in the school district care about.
Images are lost on invitations, leaving friends feeling ‘flat’ about the party that we know will be the best Daytona 500 event we’ve ever had!
Turning to my work at the office on a document, tracked changes disappear and the ‘Comments’ are not tied to the sources. The message doesn’t flow, to say the least. My focus and influence are questionable… Uggh.
I’m updating my bio, getting ready to present at an event. Formatting including tabs, paragraph spacing and page margins move around and some drop off. I look ridiculously unprofessional, and I’ve lost the emphasis and style I’ve just labored over.
Next, I finalize the presentation. My PowerPoint fonts are changed, and animations and transitions are missing. At the event, I lose the attention of customers in delivering it.

In short, the people you communicate with can get the wrong message, because Google Docs often doesn’t deliver your Office documents the way you created them on the desktop –They can get lost in translation, become incomplete, and certainly lack the sizzle.

Read the article here

Also: take a look at the differences between using Office Web Apps and Google Docs.

Visual Studio 11: New Features Preview

2012-02-21T13:19:00.001-07:00

Tim Huckaby and Cameron Skinner, General Manager – Visual Studio Ultimate at Microsoft, discuss the Visual Studio 11 Dev Preview. Cameron talks about the exciting new features coming that developers can expect, especially in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) toolset like: requirements storyboarding tool, managing product backlog through web portal, feature to keep devs in the zone and more!

Some Highlights

Storyboarding Tab inside PowerPoint: make sure requirements flow through the system. Nail down the requirements before you start development. More info
Web Portal: Manipulate Backlog in TFS through a rich reworked web front-end that enables rich features for developers and project teams. More info
My Work: a feature to help the developer to stay “in the zone” but when they do have to change context we can get them back to speed when they return, quickly. More info

C++ for C# Developers

2012-02-20T15:12:00.001-07:00

C++ is an uncontested tool for delivering innovation outside the box (augmented reality, natural user interfaces, compelling games, and more). But how to reconnect with C++ using our C# background as starting point?

This is a somewhat short guide to the important things to know if you are a C# programmer and find yourself needing or wanting to work in C++, for example to create Metro style games for Windows 8 using C++ and DirectX. In fact, this guide is written with that goal in mind so it's not necessarily a universal guide for all platforms and purposes.

This guide is also going to be fairly utilitarian and pithy, with code standing in place of elaborate commentary. I'm expecting that you know how to program already and have a good understanding of C# (or of some sort of imperative, object-oriented language at any rate).

Read the whole article here.

It’s a Window… not a Flag

2012-02-20T14:53:00.001-07:00

The Windows 8 team has released the new Windows logo. This logo will be the trademark for Windows 8 and serves to illustrate the Metro interface introduced by the forthcoming Operating System.

In some ways you can trace the evolution of the Windows logo in parallel with the advancements of the technology used to create logos. From the simple two color version in Windows 1.0 to the intricate and detailed renderings in Windows Vista and Windows 7, each change makes sense in the context in which it was created. As computing capabilities increased, so did the use of that horse power to render more colors, better fonts, and more detailed and life-like 3D visual effects like depth, shadows, and materiality. We have evolved from a world of rudimentary low resolution graphics to today’s rich high-resolution systems. And what started as a simple “window” to compliment the product name became a flying or waving flag.
But if you look back to the origins of the logo you see that it really was meant to be a window. "Windows" really is a beautiful metaphor for computing and with the new logo we wanted to celebrate the idea of a window, in perspective. Microsoft and Windows are all about putting technology in people's hands to empower them to find their own perspectives. And that is what the new logo was meant to be. We did less of a re-design and more to return it to its original meaning and bringing Windows back to its roots – reimagining the Windows logo as just that – a window.

Read the article here.

Windows Phone: Go Underground

2012-02-16T17:31:00.001-07:00

It’s more than once I get asked the question “Where should I start to learn C#?” So often I start my blog posts from the point of view that we all know the .Net framework and we are rushing forward from that point. Indeed that does describe 99% of my audience.

If you are new to software development. Even if you are not – here’s a resource for you, the technology student:

Join thousands of student developers. Start building awesome apps for Windows Phone. Find code, support, fun surprises, and more. Download a Getting Started Guide (Basic or Advanced) to learn how.

Go to the site.

Lasers can be Magnetized: Faster Hard Drives

2012-02-16T14:08:00.001-07:00

One of my local, community leaders, Dennis Martin, specialized in Storage technologies. In a recent article of his, he discusses the use of lasers in magnetic media to improve the performance of hard drives.

The disk industry has been experimenting with bit patterned media/shingled writes (see our post on Sequential Only Disk) and thermally or heat assisted magnetic recording (TAR or HAMR) heads for some time now. The TAR/HAMR heads use both magnetization and heat to quickly change magnetic moments in ferro-magnetic material (see our post on When will disks become extinct).

The new study seems to be able to do away with the magnetic recording mechanism and is able to change the magnetic value with a short focused laser burst alone. But what does this mean for the future of disk drives.

Read the whole article here.

Utah’s Code Camp Announced!

2012-02-15T13:34:00.001-07:00

UTAH’S PREMIER
DEVELOPER EVENT

Neumont University
10701 S Jordan River Parkway | South, Jordan, Utah

Saturday, March 10, 2012 | 9:00AM – 5:00PM

FREE | Lunch Included

Registration: utahgeekevents.com

Meet your peers and learn about the latest technologies and best practices from some of Utah’s best developers. Utah Code Camp is a free event for developers.

Past Utah Code Camps have covered such topics as web development, version control, continuous integration, Android and iOS programming, Microsoft .Net development, Oracle, SQL Server, best practices, Agile, software craftsmanship, intellectual property law, professional development, Java, and more!

Windows 8 avoids “Bill Shock” with Mobility Overhaul

2012-02-15T12:28:00.001-07:00

In a recent article, the Windows 8 team introduces a set of mobility features in Windows 8 that can reduce unexpected bandwidth charges.

People want similar mobility on their PCs as they get on their smartphones.

It is unlikely that your end goal is just to get connected to the Internet. Instead, connecting to the Internet is a step (or a hurdle) towards what you really want to do, like surf, socialize, or explore, and you would prefer that your PC is connected and ready for you to use whenever you want and wherever you are.

We looked at the fundamentals of wireless connectivity and re-engineered Windows 8 for a mobile and wireless future, going beyond incremental improvements. This is a good example of work that requires new hardware to work in concert with new software in order to realize its full potential.

Read the article here.

WP7 Sample: A GPS-enabled Phone App in 5 minutes!

2012-02-15T11:51:00.001-07:00

One of the best parts of Windows Phone application development is how fast you can add sophisticated functionality to your solution.

In fact, I was teaching a weekend crash course on Windows Phone at Brigham Young University a few weeks back. Here’s a room of 100 smart, young developers following along with their laptops and Visual Studio. In a matter of hours (literally) – they had 5 sample Windows Phone applications running in their environments. Presto!

How many apps can other platforms build in a single day? Aw, snap! How many apps can other platforms build in 5 minutes? I am not kidding when I say Windows Phone development is rapid. Windows Phone developers are happy developers. Not only do they get to use Visual Studio (game changer), but the framework, Silverlight, and the OS provide them many of the tools other platforms make them jump hoops for.

In this article we will show how to use the GeoCoordinateWatcher. To be clear, I do not discuss how to use the native Bing Map control, but I do discuss it in detail in this article.

Hey .Net, Happy Valentine’s Day!

2012-02-14T17:22:00.001-07:00

My colleague Developer Evangelist in Arizona, Michael Palermo, has found his true love – sort of. Read his left-brain poetry as he pines for, you guessed it, Microsoft .Net Framework. And, frankly, who can blame him?

I have a managed heap of memories regarding you - none of which are IDisposable. Therefore I am compiling my references, and persisting them to you in this file, which is ISerializable and will last for generations (at most 3).

Read the whole article here.

Proven Marketing Strategies to Promote your Windows Phone App

2012-02-14T17:08:00.001-07:00

Creating a Windows Phone Application is straight-forward. The rich and robust Silverlight environment gives developers the tools a controls they need to create compelling user experiences.

But what do you do once you have your application? What draws people to discover your new creation? What pays you back for the investment of development? Telerik has created a guide to application owners to market their application. No strings attached.

The “Learn how to promote your WP7 app” paper offers practical tips and tricks from both the developer and marketing perspective for which you don’t need any marketing background and hopefully should not take too much of your time. The topics discussed are: presentation of your app and tracking your statistics, ideas about how to build your most loyal users’ core, how to increase downloads through in-app tricks, in-apps ads, external promotion and links to currently running Windows Phone competitions.

Read the White Paper here

WP7 Sample: An Accelerator-based App in 5 Minutes

2012-02-14T17:01:00.001-07:00

As I have discussed in previous posts, there are lots of great sensors at the disposal of the Windows Phone application developer. One of them is the Accelerometer. The accelerometer measures the tilt of the device in both the X axis and Y axis.

You can read my previous article about the Accelerometer in more detail.

This can be quite useful for game scenarios. It can also be useful in productivity applications where the developer is using additional forms of user interaction to offer greater usability or innovation.

Customize the WP Emulator’s Skin!

2012-02-13T23:48:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I’ll say it. This is awesome.

On CodePlex, there’s a new project, the Windows Phone 7 Enulator Skin Switcher.

The Windows Phone 7 emulator skin switcher is an application that gives you multiple skins to use on your Windows Phone 7 emulator. Start the application, select one of the 25 available skins and you're done!

Who doesn’t want the pink Nokia? I mean seriously?!

Find the project site here.

WP7 REST without Sleeping

2012-02-13T15:38:00.001-07:00

My colleague Developer Evangelist for Windows Phone in California, Daniel Egan, has posted a helpful article on the step-by-step implementation for consuming REST data in a Windows Phone application.

Over and over again, I see developers that have this great idea for an application that pulls cool data from a great services BUT get tied up in the implementation of “Getting It Done”. So I thought I would show you a quick and easy way to get REST data from a service, transfer the JSON data to a POCO list and Bind it to a ListBox. (In under 3 minutes)

Read the article here.

WP7 Sample: A Microphone-enabled Phone App in 5 Minutes!

2012-02-13T15:31:00.001-07:00

There are a lot of sensors on the Windows Phone. We’ve got:

Microphone
GPS Location
Camera (front & back)
Gyroscope / Accelerometer
Magnetometer / Compass

I suppose we could also say the touch panel is a sensor, but it is so ubiquitous that we just assume it’s there anymore – yes, it’s that world we live in now, the “of course it’s touch enabled” world. Wonderful.

But how do you use the Microphone?

Registration is required to continue using Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone?

2012-02-13T10:59:00.001-07:00

Did you try to run Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone and were promoted to register it?

Like this:

Did you think Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone was free?

WP7 Sample: Use Location Services and get Certified!

2012-02-10T16:15:00.001-07:00

Allow me to draw your attention to this Windows Phone application Certification Requirement:

Requirement 2.7.2 The privacy policy of your application must inform users about how location data from the Location Service API is used and disclosed and the controls that users have over the use and sharing of location data. This can be hosted within or directly linked from the application.

Should you submit an application that uses Location Service API and do not provide a privacy policy you will get a friendly response from the certification something like this:

Fail: It appears the application uses location services but does not include a privacy policy describing how the application uses the Location Service API and what control users have over the usage and sharing of information obtained through that usage.

Did you know Microsoft employs more Attorneys than Developers? That’s totally not true! We have a platoon of attorneys and a battalion of developers. We’re a software company. But don’t screw with us! Just kidding – sort of.

Why do you need a Privacy Policy?

A Privacy Policy is necessary when you deal with personal information. A person’s current location (from the Location Services API) is considered personal information. And, of course, because the marketplace certification requirements say so.

Consider: Yes this may seem like a pain! But consider the user. They don’t know what mysteries you are tinkering with behind the scenes. You are their friend. You are their advocate. And, frankly, if you aren’t – who is? The user isn’t bashful to click that UNINSTALL button on apps they don’t trust. At the same time a policy is also for you, the developer. You need to help the user – but you also need to establish the rules you are playing by. This makes the user happy and far less shocked or angry when they realize you are doing something (anything!) with their personal data. The certification requirement is for the user; hopefully, you can see why it is also for you.

Mango Sample: Give your app the Finger!

2012-02-07T16:09:00.001-07:00

My colleague Developer Evangelist, Sam Stokes, in California has written a compelling article on dragging items in Windows Phone.

But I have a problem with Sam’s approach

Maybe it’s because I have a problem with Sam – but probably not; he’s actually one of my top 90,000 people @ Microsoft. So, let’s talk about moving things in XAML!

Sam moves objects around by incrementing and decrementing an item’s top/left dependency property inside a Canvas.

Like this:

In the code above, Sam is using the ManipuationDelta event. This awesome event allows an individual UI element to track the movement of finger gestures on it. It simplifies the typical events that have to handle and track.

A Phone App on every Platform?

2012-02-07T14:56:00.001-07:00

My colleague Windows Phone Developer Evangelist, Daniel Egan, has set out to do the impossible. Only kidding. He has set out to measure the real differences between building an app on Windows Phone, the IPhone, and Android. I am excited to see his conclusions.

I certainly have my opinions on operating systems, and ease of development, and best IDEs etc… but I thought I would put this to the test with a multi platform development approach. Starting next week, I will be doing the same application on all three platforms (or possibly 6 if I include IPad, Android Tablet and Win 8 later). The application is called Uncorked, and it is a way to log and rate your wine collection.

Read the article here.

Mango Sample: A Cloud-based Phone App in 5 Minutes

2012-02-07T14:49:00.001-07:00

When you create a Windows Phone application you might have some data to store. Where do you store it?

Well, there’s always Isolated Storage. I discuss that here.
There’s always a local SQL Database. I discuss that here.

But, what if on-the-phone isn’t good enough? …to the cloud! I discuss that here [there’s no link because this is the article! :)].

Why the cloud?

There are lots of great reasons. Here are a few:

Your data needs to be updated or refreshed, call the cloud
Your data needs to be saved for roaming users, call the cloud
Your data is huge and phones only need a bit, call the cloud

Jerry Nixon @work

Drupal and Microsoft? Yes!

Web Matrix

The Windows Phone App Hub “Invalid Credit Card” Solution

Read the full post here.

#MVA: Finally something Free! from Microsoft

What’s Microsoft Virtual Academy?

Who is Eligible?

What are Bonus Points?

Is it free?

Learn even more here.

Oh, no you didn’t! Office 365 at Home?

In an article by Richard Hay:

Read the whole article here.

Open Call: Submit your Pictures for the official Windows Wallpaper Gallery

Read the whole article here.

Why Google Docs Suck!

Read the article here

Visual Studio 11: New Features Preview

Some Highlights

C++ for C# Developers

Read the whole article here.

It’s a Window… not a Flag

Windows Phone: Go Underground

Go to the site.

Lasers can be Magnetized: Faster Hard Drives

Read the whole article here.

Utah’s Code Camp Announced!

UTAH’S PREMIERDEVELOPER EVENT

Windows 8 avoids “Bill Shock” with Mobility Overhaul

Read the article here.

WP7 Sample: A GPS-enabled Phone App in 5 minutes!

Hey .Net, Happy Valentine’s Day!

Read the whole article here.

Proven Marketing Strategies to Promote your Windows Phone App

Read the White Paper here

WP7 Sample: An Accelerator-based App in 5 Minutes

Customize the WP Emulator’s Skin!

Find the project site here.

WP7 REST without Sleeping

Read the article here.

WP7 Sample: A Microphone-enabled Phone App in 5 Minutes!

Registration is required to continue using Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone?

WP7 Sample: Use Location Services *and* get Certified!

Why do you need a Privacy Policy?

Mango Sample: Give your app the Finger!

But I have a problem with Sam’s approach

Like this:

A Phone App on every Platform?

Read the article here.

Mango Sample: A Cloud-based Phone App in 5 Minutes

Why the cloud?

UTAH’S PREMIER
DEVELOPER EVENT

WP7 Sample: Use Location Services and get Certified!