Introduction to WinRT app development – http://sdrv.ms/RTp3SL

Building WinRT apps using C#/XAML – http://sdrv.ms/RTpc8X

Building WinRT apps using JS/HTML – Part 1 – http://sdrv.ms/Pj2SD8

Building WinRT apps using JS/HTML – Part 2 (Contracts / Tiles / Notifications) – ttp://sdrv.ms/RToXL5

Windows 8 Process lifecycle Management – http://sdrv.ms/Pj2JiQ

<cross posted> http://ramaprasanna.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/video-tutorials-on-winrt-app-development/

A quick comparison on getting started on Android and WP7.

Android	WP7
1. Download Eclipse	1. Install Visual Studio express 2010
2. Download ADT for Eclipse. Adding the ADT to Eclipse was little painful because there was very little help in choosing the right Eclipse for Android development. I chose the basic Eclipse version and I ran into a whole lot of reference issues when I was installing the ADT.	2. Install WP7 developer tools There you are. You can now start writing your “Hello World” app.
3. Install SDK for Android Development
4. Add Android platforms and other components to your SDK.
5. (If you are testing your program on a device) Install the USB driver for Windows. Very little information available on the USB Driver support for Windows 7. I hope the Vista driver works on Windows 7.

After preparing the development environment coding the ‘Hello World’ was relatively easier in Windows Phone 7.

All you need to do to code the ‘Hello World’ in WP7 was

1. Create a new WP7 project

and that takes you to the screen with lot of pre-populated XAML code to make the developer’s life easier. Also the VS 2010 with WP7 dev tools lets you design the front end directly on a WP7 GUI. That’s converted into the respective XAML with formatting automatically.

Edit the ‘page name’ in the XAML code and there you go. Our first ‘Hello World’ program is all done.

Please note that all the above are my personal views (especially from the Development perspective).

< Merry Christmas!! >

What’s Azure Management Cmdlets:

Azure Management Cmdlets is a set of Windows PowerShell Cmdlets for complete Azure management. It consists of 80 cmdlets to manage your Azure Storage (Tables, Blobs and Queues), Hosted Services (Deployment, Storage Services, Affinity Groups and Guest OS), and Diagnostics. It also includes cmdlets to back up your storage account data (tables & blobs) on your local computer and restore storage account data from the backups. It supports full, partial and incremental backups.

Following is the list of cmdlets available in the current version:

Tables & Entities	Blob Containers & Blobs	Service Management
Add-Entity Clear-Table Download-Table Get-Entities Get-Entity Get-Tables Merge-Entity New-Table Remove-AllTables Remove-Entity Remove-Table Update-Entity	Copy-Blob Download-Blob Download-BlobContainer Get-BlobContainerAccessPolicies Get-BlobContainerInformation Get-BlobContainerMetadata Get-BlobContainers Get-BlobContainerSize Get-BlobProperties Get-Blobs Get-BlobSnapshots Get-BlobStorageSize Lease-Blob Move-Blob New-BlobContainer New-RootBlobContainer Remove-AllBlobContainers Remove-Blob Remove-BlobContainer Remove-RootBlobContainer Rename-Blob Set-BlobContainerAccessPolicies Set-BlobContainerMetadata Set-BlobProperties Snapshot-Blob Upload-Blob Upload-Folder	Get-AffinityGroups Get-HostedServices Get-OperationStatus Get-OSVersions Get-StorageServices Get-Deployment Move-Deployment New-Deployment Remove-Deployment Set-DeploymentConfiguration Set-DeploymentStatus Set-WalkUpgradeDomain Upgrade-Deployment Get-Certificates Get-HostedServiceProperties Get-StorageKeys Get-StorageServiceProperties New-StorageKeys Get-AffinityGroup Add-Certificate Get-Certificate Remove-Certificate
Queues & Messages	Diagnostics Management	Backup & Restore
Clear-Messages Clear-QueueMetadata Get-ApproximateMessagesCount Get-Messages Get-QueueProperties Get-Queues New-Message New-Queue Peek-Messages Remove-AllQueues Remove-Message Remove-Queue Set-QueueMetadata	Clear-AzureEventLogs Clear-AzureInfrastructureLogs Clear-AzurePerfCounters Clear-AzureTraceLogs	Backup-StorageAccount Restore-StorageAccount

More cmdlets will be added in subsequent versions.

Why you should use Azure Management Cmdlets:

There are many reasons for you to use Azure Management Cmdlets. You could use these cmdlets to automate certain tasks of managing Windows Azure (like service deployments etc.). You could also use these cmdlets to access your storage with ease. As mentioned above, it includes functionality for backing up and restoring your Azure Storage account. You can also use it to backup contents of your local disk (files & folders) in Windows Azure Blob storage.

What do you need to use Azure Management Cmdlets:

Azure Management Cmdlets are built using .Net 4.0. You would need a computer with .Net 4.0 installed. Since these are PowerShell cmdlets, you would need to have PowerShell installed on your computer as well. Other than that you would need access to Windows Azure Storage (Storage Account Name & Key) and Windows Azure Hosted Services (Subscription Id & API Certificates). If you’re using these cmdlets to access local development storage, then you would need to have Azure SDK installed on the computer.

You can visit cerebrata’s (One of the Microsoft partners) website to learn more about it @ http://www.cerebrata.com/Products/AzureManagementCmdlets.

Happy Azuring !!

buddyHome consists of the following modules.

1. Cooking module

Consists of a robotic arm connected to the buddyHome core system. It has timer inbuilt that will cook for the specific amount of time and alert the user when the cooking is complete.

2. Module to wake me up

We can set the alarm using this module. It uses the eye & face recognition to detect if I am awake or not. If I am not getting up in 10 minutes after the alarm it pours water on my face to wake me up.

3. Module for cleaning my house

This consists of Windows CE and Roomba. Roomba is a famous vacuuming robot in US. But the problem with Roomba is, it is not intelligent. Using Windows CE and some programming I turned Roomba to an intelligent device. Using image recognition on the WinCE device on Roomba, the Roomba can see me, sense obstacles and understand my needs. My Roomba knows that I won’t be comfortable when Roomba cleans my house when I am at home. So it gets into action only when I am away.

4. Module to assist me in reading magazine

http://bit.ly/buddyHome (the magazine reading experience in the video would answer this section better).

5. Module to keep check of my diet.

buddyHome’s Image recognition module recognizes the diet that I am eating and warns me if am eating a high fat diet. It also encourages me when I eat low fat and healthy diet.

6. Module to guard my home

My buddyHome automatically senses if I am awake or asleep and guard the home appropriately. On intrusion, it automatically saves the intruder's pictures on the cloud (Windows Azure).

7. Module to help me do meetings from home

(Microsoft software) Live meeting and automatic active speaker switch feature enables me to take meetings from home. With gesture control life becomes easier.

buddyHome - a self-learning system

buddyHome is a self-learning system (self-evolving system). It takes random pictures throughout the day and uses it for self-learning. It uploads the data onto the cloud and over the night it updates itself. When the system wakes up in the morning, it pulls the fresh knowledge from the cloud.

My buddyHome in action.

This working prototype is implemented at my home in Bangalore. Life is exciting with buddyHome, you bet !!

NASA has hundreds of thousands of images from their missions to Mars. With the Pathfinder Innovation Challenge, they want to enlist your coding skills to help them classify them. This is a unique opportunity where you can help NASA and win some great prizes by utilizing your existing .NET skills.

The Pathfinder Innovation Challenge consists of four different “leagues”.  In the Global Cooperation League, you’ll build casual games that will allow every day citizens to help classify images in a game environment (similar to the counting craters application that can be found online here – http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/maproom) and do so using Silverlight and NASAs Azure-hosted APIs in codename Dallas.  In the Intelligence League, you’ll use the power of the Azure cloud to attempt to solve the same problem by programmatically examining and classifying the images.

Full details for the competition can be found on their website at http://http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/pic  .  Details specific to the Global Cooperation League at http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/pic/coop-league  and details for the Intelligence League can be found at http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/pic/intelligence-league . Also be sure to check out the intelligence league site for a series of “How Do I?”  videos that show how to sign up for an use the Codename Dallas API.

In addition to helping mankind and being able to brag that your code was helping NASA, PIC winners will also win amazing prizes ranging from NASA swag, to ZuneHDs, to trips to see the launch of the next Mars Rover.

Windows Phone in short

1. Better Connectivity (Productivity + entertainment + social networking)

2. Better experience (live tiles)

3. Better organise (One elegant look for my ‘live calendar’ + ‘Office calendar’ in one screen)

Not only the phones are an intimate piece of hardware, it is a reflection of who you are. Experience Windows Phone.

In this article let’s see how one can go about configuring the VMsize in Windows Azure application.

Step 1:

Go to the Role properties

Step 2:

Under the configuration tab, you will find the VMSize option. There are four options to choose from as shown in the figure below.

On saving, this configuration (of what VM size you want for the project) gets saved in the Service definition file in the cloud project.

When we deploy the project onto the Windows Azure cloud, this definition is processed by the fabric controller and the VMs are provisioned as per your need.

“”” The version of the windows azure sdk currently installed is not compatible with this version of Windows Azure tools for Microsoft Visual studio. Please download and install the latest version of both the windows azure sdk and the windows azure tools for Microsoft Visual Studio. “””

TODO : You need to downgrade your SDK and tools to November version. You can find the November version of Azure SDK here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6967FF37-813E-47C7-B987-889124B43ABD&displaylang=en .

Reason : Feb build (which is the latest when I am writing this) of Azure SDK supports Visual studio 2010 RC but not Beta.

http://zeollar.cloudapp.net/