@ScottCate: Scott Cate: Technology

WinPhoneUnleashed Event–Tempe AZ May 5th

Scott Cate — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:37:48 GMT

Last year, several community leaders held a Windows Phone Unleashed event. This year we hosted it again with @DanWahlin taking the presentation lead (and speaker manager role) while I stayed behind and ran logistics.

Last year we focused on Applications, where this event focused on XNA Games. we had a great turn out, and we snapped a few pictures of the applications that were built.

We also had a WinPhone Celeb: Jonathan Isabelle who has written “Jack of all Tools” for Windows Phone, which now has (to date) 140k downloads. We sat down with Jonathan for a few minutes and recorded a small social cast.

Scott Cate and Jonathan Isabelle

Below are some screen shots of some of the Applications that were created.

Great Job Everyone.

And throughout the day there were fun and games on stage, and even a quick game of Paper-Rock-Scissors to determine a tie breaker:

We had a great time, and I would like to thank the Speakers for their efforts, the community for their support, and Microsoft for the content.

@AZGroups For The Win

Trying to Link-Unlink a YouTube account

Scott Cate — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:42:43 GMT

YouTube has a feature that for really old (prior to 2009 accounts) you can unlink, and then later re-link the YouTube account to a Google Account. After 2009, the actually YouTube account was a Google Account, so there is no linking / unlinking involved.

So I’m stuck in this loop … and I have a question into Google help (forums). But over there, you can’t include pictures, so with some luck, someone will stumble upon these and find them helpful.

Step 1. After clicking a link in the reset pwd for my original old school YouTube account)

Step 2.

Step 3. (Rinse and Repeat Steps 1-3, like nothing ever happened)

Thank you to anyone out there that can offer a helping hand :) When this is resolved, I’ll post an update.

Microsoft Field Evangelist: Egan, Palermo, Terkaly, Villalobos

Scott Cate — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:34:31 GMT

Most of you know I’m ~~pretty~~ very well connected into Microsoft. Mostly because it’s been my playground for the last few decades. I’ve been an MVP since 2003, and Regional Directory since 2011, and my company is an Approved Vendor with Microsoft that gives me corpnet access. I’m on email list after list, and have access to too much NDA information. I’m grateful to be considered a trusted resource from Corporate Vice Presidents, to Product Managers, to Regional Offices etc.

Ya, ya, so what’s the point?

Well, I was thinking …. with all the access I have into Microsoft, who are the most helpful people (to me)? It turns out the same group of folks that are out in the field working with you (named “The Audience”) are the same group of folks that I find most helpful. Their official title is Evangelist, but you can think of them as the kick ass Concierge you met at the last 5 star resort you saw on TV. You know the staff member that knows everyone, and will stop at no end to find you that special over night dry cleaner? That role … is the role that Evangelist play at Microsoft as the inward facing representatives to Microsoft.

So with all the over 100,000 people employed at Microsoft, if you don’t know your Developer Evangelist for Microsoft that serves your area and expertise, you should. Ask someone, find them, hunt them down, email them, Tweet them, Facebook friend them, and get to know them on a first name basis.

In no particular order, these are the four most helpful people I know in Microsoft. If you ask me a (Microsoft) question that I don’t know, 90% of the time, one of these folks is going to be my go-to email.

Call it smoke, call it gratitude, call it whatever you want. I call it public thank you.

So …

Daniel Egan ( Daniel.Egan@microsoft.com )
Michael Palermo ( mpalermo@microsoft.com )
Bruno Terkaly ( bterkaly@microsoft.com )
Ricardo Villalobos ( Ricardo.Villalobos@microsoft.com )

Thank you! You all make my life easier, and are always willing to research, help, introduce, correct, and guide me towards the solutions I’m looking for.

What if you lose your Kindle?

Scott Cate — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:28:00 GMT

I was on a plane yesterday reading my Kindle, and the guy next to me says something like “I used to have a Kindle, but I left it on a plane”, while he was pointing to the Seat-Back Pocket. And another time this week, I saw something on TV about the volunteer staff that work at airports, that have thousands and thousands of found items, that they simply can’t return. Not that they don’t want to, there is just no way to, because there is no Personally Identifiable Information ( also known as P.I.I. ) on them.

Then I started thinking, what if I left my Kindle behind, how would someone return it, assuming that they wanted to? Sharpie? Maybe. Here is a better option. Shown below is the Amazon “Manage Your Devices” screen shot, where you’re allowed to name your Kindle Device. As you can see on the right, I have named Jamie and My Kindles, with both our name, and our Cell phone number, so if someone turns it on, they’ll see the P.I.I. where hopefully they’ll return it.

I thought this was a good enough idea to write about, and hopefully let others know!

Deactivate the Power Button on your Laptop

Scott Cate — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:24:00 GMT

As you see pictured here, the MacBook Air power button is just above the Delete (which really is backspace) button on the MacBook Air keyboard. If you’ve ever seen me type, you know I use the backspace key a lot! Once I accidentally pressed the power button, which wasn’t too painful as it put my machine into Sleep mode. I just closed the lid, opened it again, logged in, and it came back to life.

But then I thought …. What if I was on stage? …. and I had a moment of silence. how bad would that be, and how awkward would it be to explain to the audience what just happened?

So I jumped into power settings, and set the Power button to do nothing. If you’re a presenter, using MacBook hardware, you might consider doing the same? This may be a good idea, no matter what laptop you’re using. To be honest, I 99.9999% of the time, just close the lid, and when I do need to shut down, I do it from the Start Menu anyway. So the button is only representing danger to me.

#Disable #Disable #Disable

A good book gets borrowed: Version Control By Example

Scott Cate — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:35:00 GMT

Eric Sink (@eric_sink on twitter) has written a great book on Version Control Software, titled Version Control By Example. It showed up on my desk again this morning. I say again, because I keep letting people borrow it, and they keep returning it :) I figured with it's popularity, I could record a quick video book review, and post it. So here it is. Great job Eric, it's a great book. Easy ready, very informative, and sometimes funny (if you can be funny in a DVCS book?).

AZ Entrepreneurship Conference 2011

Scott Cate — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:26:00 GMT

2010 was a great building year for EventDay.com. One of our great moments came when we donated services to help the Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference. Here is a quick video post, talking about 2010, and trying the help push registration for the 2011 event.

AZEC11.com

Windows 8 Fast Application Switching

Scott Cate — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 20:09:00 GMT

If you don't have a keyboard available on your Windows 8 machine (like my Samgsung Slate when it's not docked) you will benefit from this trick. If you have several (or lots of) applications open, a fast way to switch between them is to swipe in from the left, one-by-one until the application on your back stack surfaces. You can also press the START button and from the start screen, launch the application again. If it's already in the back stack, the application will start with the same state (or at least it should if it's programmed correctly). Or you can .... Control the swipe from left action, and control the specific application you want to bring forward. The video/screen cast was done holding my Samsung Focus running Windows Phone 7, so it's a little shaky, but you'll get the point. Enjoy!

Windows 8 Samsung Slate: Shortcut to Task Manager

Scott Cate — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 23:11:30 GMT

At http://BuildWindows.com we received a really Nice Samsung Slate with Windows 8 developer preview loaded. Playing around with the hard button combinations, I found that holding the Windows Home key, along with pressing the Power Button brings up a quick menu, with access to the Task Manager.

Desktop IE10 vs. Metro IE10 Demo

Scott Cate — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 22:05:10 GMT

There will be some confusion around this, and Video is worth 10,000 words so here it is. IE10 comes in two (or more) flavors. Desktop IE10, and Metro IE10. This quick screencast will show the differences ...