Channel 9

Episode 108 - What's New With Windows Azure Virtual Networking | Windows Azure Cloud Cover Show

Haishi Bai, Nathan Totten, Nick Harris — Fri, 24 May 2013 21:49:23 GMT

In this episode our special guest host, Haishi Bai, is joined by Yu-Shun Wang – Program Manager of Windows Azure Networking – who discusses the latest developments of Windows Azure Virtual Networks. Yu-Shun shows us the improved Site-to-Site connection and the new Point-to-Site connections.

News and Links

Windows Azure's expansion in Australia
Visual Studio Live! event page
Haishi's Blog - Get a discount code for Visual Studio Live!

Like Cloud Cover on Facebook!

Follow @CloudCoverShow
Follow @cloudnick
Follow @ntotten
Follow @HaishiBai2010

TWC9: C9 Events App, Unity, OData, NuGet, a cool Watch and more! | This Week On Channel 9

Clint Rutkas, Dan Fernandez, Greg Duncan, Mark DeFalco — Fri, 24 May 2013 18:38:59 GMT

This week on Channel 9, Clint and Mark discuss the week's top developer news, including;

[00:38] Microsoft unveils Xbox One: the ultimate all-in-one home entertainment system
[02:10] Stay Connected with the Ch9 Events App
[03:25] Putting the power of Unity in the hands of every mobile developer (David Helgason)
[04:32] Channel 9 Highlight: Creating the Virtual Experiment Laboratory app with the Visual Studio 3D Starter Kit (Roberto Sonnino, Gokhan Sengun)
[05:40] Step-by-Step – Making Windows 8 Pong for a complete beginner (Susan Ibach)
[06:13] OData Apps in Update 2–Querying data from Stack Overflow (Matt Sampson)
[07:34] Where else is NuGet used in Visual Studio? (Luan Nguyen)
[09:04] Play with [NuGet] Packages, programmatically! (Ranjini Mathrubootham)

Picks of the Week!

Mark's Pick of the Week:[09:50] Voice Commands (Mads Kristensen)
Clint's Pick of the Week:[10:52] AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch (Secret Labs, House of Horology)

Stay Connected with the Ch9 Events App

Mark DeFalco — Tue, 21 May 2013 19:14:27 GMT

No matter what device you're bringing to TechEd this year, be sure to bring the Ch9 Events app with you!

Browse all the content of the conference, follow your schedule, and stay connected throughout the event.

Download Ch9 Events for Windows 8 | Windows Phone | iOS | Android

After creating your account in the app, link it to your Channel 9 account to enable synchronization of your personalized schedule.

For additional support you can reach out to: support@eventboardmobile.com

Practical MVVM For Windows Phone | Inside Windows Phone

Matthias Shapiro — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:49:28 GMT

In the world of Windows Phone development, the cornerstone app architecture is called MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel). In this video, I talk through some of the structure of an MVVM application to talk about how we build MVVM apps for the phone to take advantage of benefits like data binding, commanding and ViewModel portability.

MVVM is an enormous topic. In addition to this video, you should take a look at the following articles, videos and blog posts to learn more about the why and the how of MVVM.

These two posts are targeted at Windows Phone Mango (7.5) but all the code carries across to Windows Phone 8 as well.

Getting Started with MVVM in 10 minutes

Building a Reusable ICommand implementation for Windows Phone MVVM apps

Laurent Bugnion, who leads the fantastic MVVM Light Toolkit project, has a 4-article MSDN series on MVVM

IOC Containers and MVVM

Messenger and View Services in MVVM

Maximizing the Visual Designer's Usage with Design-Time Data

Commands, RelayCommands and EventToCommand

And finally, more videos:

Designing Awesome XAML apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 (Build 2012)

Create Cross-Platform Apps using Portable Class Libraries (Build 2012)

Understanding the Model-View-ViewModel pattern (MIX10)

Deep Dive MVVM (MIX 11)

Announcing the General Availability of AMQP 1.0 in Windows Azure Service Bus!

ClemensV — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:59:41 GMT

As just announced by Scott Guthrie, we're releasing the AMQP 1.0 support for Windows Azure Service Bus today, with commercial support and full SLA. That's more than reason enough for me to sit down with David Ingham, co-editor of the AMQP 1.0 specification and my peer in the Service Bus Program Management team, and talk about the strategic relevance that AMQP has for Service Bus going forward, and how it will enable better and more heterogenous cloud solutions.

More resources:

Windows Store Weekly: Star Trek App, Box, Fling Theory, StumbleUpon, wordBrush | Windows Store Weekly

Laura Foy — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:08:57 GMT

Windows Store Weekly highlights 5 of the coolest apps in the Windows Store each week. In just 5 minutes you'll get to know what's new, what's hot and what you should be checking out in every app category out there.

Please add your suggestions for awesome Windows 8 apps in the comments section. This week we take a look at:

Star Trek App - ENTERTAINMENT

Box - PRODUCTIVITY

Fling Theory - GAMES

StumbleUpon - SOCIAL

wordBrush- ENTERTAINMENT

Defrag: Cloning to SSD, Extracting Wifi PW, UAC Triggers | The Defrag Show

Larry Larsen, Rhymes With Orange — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:35:44 GMT

Microsoft tech troubleshooter extraordinaire Gov Maharaj and I help walk you through troubleshooting solutions to your tech support problems. If you have a problem you want to send us, you can use the Problem Step Recorder in Windows 7 (see this for details on how) and send us the zip file to DefragShow@microsoft.com. We will also be checking comments for problems, but the email address will let us contact you if needed.

[00:58] - Beam Me Up on Bing.
[01:47] - Way to clone original HDD to SSD with recovery partition.
[03:35] - How to deactivate a Windows license to reinstall with new drive. [link] [link]
[05:28] - How to extract wifi passwords to put on new laptop.
[06:35] - Tiles on Start Screen looks incorrect after changing fonts. Yes, I pronounced Segoe wrong.
[10:00] - Request to go through power config from previous show.
[11:00] - What is the difference between Bitlocker on Windows 7 and Windows 8. [link]
[12:29] - What specifically triggers UAC prompts.
[16:50] - Domain policy won't allow writing to external drive.
[19:07] - Methods to send sound from one PC to another.
[20:46] - Pick of the Week: Transparent gadgets [link]

The Katana Project - OWIN for ASP.NET | Web Camps TV

Cory Fowler, Brady Gaster — Fri, 24 May 2013 08:00:35 GMT

Join your guides Brady Gaster and Cory Fowler as they talk to the product teams in Redmond as well as the web community.

In this episode, Brady and Cory talk to Howard Dierking about the Katana Project. Katana, as Howard explains, is how developers can do OWIN hosting within ASP.NET. Already used by Web API and SignalR, OWIN is a new hosting framework that provides developers the ability to customize the entire pipeline and middleware in their ASP.NET applications. Howard explains OWIN, and how Katana provides the hosting functionality, and also demonstrates a few use cases to get you up and running with OWIN now. If you've been thinking of trying out OWIN, heard about Katana but were too afraid to ask about it, or you've already tried some stuff and want more guidance, don't miss this show.

Show Links

Follow Howard Dierking

Follow Brady Gaster

Follow Cory Fowler

Countdown to TechEd: All about the Tech Expo a.k.a. Partner Pavilion | The Countdown Show

RicksterCDN, Joey Snow — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:04:46 GMT

Episode #9 of the 2013 countdown season has Joey and Rick giving you a walk about the North American TechExpo. Great tips about how to systematically approach this massive area get the most of this multifaceted conference resource. You'll find some great gems on how to connect with partners, get your questions answered by technical experts and recharge your energy levels.

Big thanks to all of our exhibitors (complete list HERE with booth numbers!)
Extra big thanks to ALL of our sponsors (complete list HERE with booth numbers!)
Special Shout Out to our friends at Splunk (booth 228) and Thycotic (booth 1903)

Get out there and interact Online:

C9 TechEd Forums (NorthAmerica and Europe)
Twitter: use the #msteched hashtag for NA, #TEE13 for Europe.
Facebook: NorthAmerica and Europe

Get out there and REGISTER if you haven't already!

GoingNative 16: Garrett Serack - Inside NuGet for C++ | C9::GoingNative

Charles — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:51:16 GMT

NuGet support for C++ projects in Visual Studio has arrived in NuGet version 2.5! This has been an elusive feature for VC++ developers so we are thrilled it's here. It's been around for about a month now so we figured we'd go talk to one of the developers who helped make it happen, Microsoft's Garrett Serack.

Huge thanks to Garrett and the awesome NuGet team for bringing NuGet goodness to C++!

Download NuGet 2.5
Download the tools to build C++ packages

[00:00] GoingNative();// Charles and Ale construct the show. Sorry about missing last month! Milan update. NuGet.
[02:25] Charles interviews Garrett Serack about NuGet for C++
[39:04] ~GoingNative(); // Please send any and all feedback about NuGet for C++ to us!

More information:

NuGet Team blog post on NuGet for C++
VC++ Team blog post on NuGet for C++
Building Native Libraries for NuGet with CoApp's Powershell Tools (video)
Consuming Native NuGet Packages in Visual Studio (video)

We really want to hear from you, so please tweet feedback to @C9GoingNative (follow us!) and send your requests, ideas, complaints, praises, hate mail, and love letters to C9GoingNative@hotmail.com. We will read and respond to all messages! That's how we roll, brothers and sisters. If you are a Facebook user (who isn't these days?), then please join our C9::GoingNative Facebook group.

Ludus Windows 8 Game Starter Kit - Pleasing the Platformer in you...

Greg Duncan — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Todays' project by Christer Kaitila is a kit that will help you quickly and easily build Windows 8 Platform games. Almost painfully easy to create games... If you've ever wanted to create your own platform game, and you've got a weekend, this kit is just for you...

Windows 8 Platformer Game Starter Kit

Platformer Game Starter Kit(includes 2 HTML5-based examples)
Don't start from scratch. Our Platformer Game Starter Kit for Windows 8 will get you going with full code & free game art.
How
Feel free to take the examples, mix them up and build your own great game for the Windows Store following these steps:
Download your free Visual Studio for Windows 8 for all the tools you will need.
Download the Platformer Game Starter Kit.
Mix it up and build your own epic game.
Open a Windows Store Developer Account.
Let us know about it and we can even give you free advice on making it great and help pass store certification.
Publish it to the Windows Store.
We know everyone is not a game artist, so we have provided you with some free game art and other places you can find royalty-free art for your game.

Ludus Game Starter Kit

An HTML5 Platformer Game Starter Kit for Windows8 Store
by Christer (McFunkypants) Kaitila http://mcfunkypants.com
Source: https://github.com/mcfunkypants/ludus
Demos: http://www.mcfunkypants.com/ludus
Welcome to Ludus, brave adventurer!
Ludus is a dirt-simple game engine that uses html5 canvas. It was designed specifically for mario/sonic style platformer games but could be used for any genre with minimal changes. It boasts great performance, and requires only free tools.
The word Ludus means PLAY/GAME/TRAINING in latin. The Ludus engine is designed to be a great way to learn to make games.
Sure, there are bigger and more complex game engines.
This one is designed to be easy to play around with.
Why? It was created to run real-world games that have a beginning, middle, and end. It was optimized to run on less powerful systems and touch-screen tablets. It is simple, but goes beyond the level of a "tech demo" to encapsulate all the required functionality you might need to make a polished game, such as GUI and sound.
...
IT'S POSSIBLE TO MAKE A GAME USING LUDUS IN A WEEKEND.
You could make your own game just by changing the artwork: it is possible to make a new game without ever touching a line of code. All you would need to do is modify the .png and .mp3 art assets as well as the level#.js level data files.
The best tool to create in-game worlds is TILED (http://www.mapeditor.org) which exports data in .json format.
Check out the example .tmx source files and see if you can make your own game! Once you've made a level, export as .json and then run the _buildlevels.bat file to convert JSON to JSONP data to a new level#.js file.
The one important thing to remember is that each layer is important. The order matters. The bottom-most layer is for regular world tiles that the player will collide with. The rest are for pickups, bouncy platforms, dangerous spikes, and so on.
Additionally, you should modify the game settings in the MAP MENU -> MAP PROPERTIES dialog. Gravity, speed and the player's starting position are all stored there.
HACKING THE SOURCE CODE
The only source code file you will want to modify, if you choose to start coding, is ludus.js. Inside, you'll notice all sorts of variables at the top which you can modify to your heart's content. Note that some of these variables are overwritten by whatever is defined inside the level data.
With regard to the structure of the code, the most important thing to know is that the game is controlled by STATE objects.
Each state (title screen, in-game, and between level transitions) is a class object that has a .setup(), .update() and .draw() function. You could add new states for things like boss battles, inventory screens or a high score table.
See these class constructors: function TitleScreenState() function LevelTransitionScreenState() function PlayState()
HAVE FUN!
...

Let's take a peek at the two included example games (In Visual Studio of course!)...

Both games ran for me the first time with no issues and were fun (in a platformer kind of way). Sure there's only 3 levels, but hey, if there was too much done it would take all the coding fun away!

So either start from scratch or copy off of these, this kit and the provided free artwork, framework and code will have you building your next great Windows 8 game...

Keynote: Scott Guthrie | Windows AzureConf 2013

Scott Guthrie — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:22:00 GMT

Scott Guthrie kicks off the Windows Azure Conf by presenting an overview of Windows Azure. Scott will demonstrate how to build a wide variety of applications ranging from web sites, mobile applications, and multi-tier cloud services.

Deep dive: Tips & tricks for porting games from other platforms to Windows 8 | Building Windows Games with Unity

Randy Spong — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 17:58:00 GMT

Go deep under the hood of Unity for Windows Store apps. After this session you will understand how the engine works, and the changes you will need to make to port a Unity game to run on the Windows Store app model.

Introduction to building games with Unity | Building Windows Games with Unity

Carl Callewaert — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:18:00 GMT

In this session, Carl Callewaert demos how to build a game using Unity Editor.

Cloud Optimize Your Business with Microsoft Management Solutions | MMS 2013

Brad Anderson — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 05:28:00 GMT

With a set of breakthrough new products and growing industry momentum, Microsoft is transforming IT management. The new capabilities of Windows Server 2012 with System Center 2012 SP1 enable customers to build and manage elastic infrastructures while reducing complexity, improving deployment of critical applications, and advancing the consumerization of IT. In this keynote session, Brad Anderson will demonstrate how Microsoft technologies deliver new cloud capabilities, and he will showcase how customers are already realizing gains in productivity, growth, and innovation through Microsoft solutions.

Fluid Code in the Real World | ALM Summit 3

Arlo Belshee — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 22:20:00 GMT

In the end, you get rated on your software's ability to meet your customers' goals. All the Agile practices wrap around one core, inner loop: writing the software. In this hands-on session, we explore that inner loop. How do you write fluid software? How do you test first and design last? How do you get a good design to emerge, every time, even when your first ideas are guaranteed to be wrong? We will explore the engine that makes Agile go: TDD and Refactoring. You will do these in both basic and advanced cases. And we'll do it in the real world, indebted code and all.

Staying in the Groove | ALM Summit 3

Peter Provost — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 06:09:00 GMT

Getting in the groove, achieving flow, being focused... these are all different ways of talking about that magical place that agile teams strive to find. Getting there is hard, staying there is harder. How do you get yourself and your teams motivated, engaged and focused on their work so they can achieve this state? Peter Provost is a robe-and-sandals agilista with 10+ years of experience leading agile teams inside and outside of Microsoft. He has been on teams that have succeeded in finding the groove and teams that did not. In this session Peter will bring his perspective on what it takes to get your teams to gel, collaborate and find this magic place from which we can deliver great software and products, and of course, have fun!