Microsoft UK have just launched the AppRewards programme. This programme is hopefully going to encourage developers to create and publish new apps into the Windows Store and the Windows Phone Store.
There has been quite a bit of debate going on around the programme and the quality vs. quantity debate, i.e. does this programme encourage developers to produce shoddy apps that are not useful to anyone and how can this be overcome?
Here is my two cents. Read more
A couple of years ago I founded The Stack, a .NET User Group in Liverpool. Since then we have had many great sessions and speakers from around the world.
Last year saw the next stage of the groups growth with us holding our first full day conference, based around Windows 8, here in Liverpool. We were lucky enough to have speakers from Microsoft and Microsoft MVPs speak on the day and played host to around 100 developers from across the UK. On that day I knew I wanted to get another full day conference organised and I am happy to say that it is happening on April 9th 2013.
This years conference is all about Windows Azure, a platform that has seen enormous growth in the last couple of years, with some really fantastic features like Windows Azure Mobile Services (if you haven’t seen them yet check out my new blog series). Read more
A one day Azure Bootcamp, happening simultaneously across the world is happening on April 27th and it promises to be awesome!
The Global Windows Azure Bootcamp will feature a range of topics and will have content for people just starting out with Azure or for those who already have a lot of experience.
There are a few locations here in the UK and Ireland;
Full details and registration can be found over at http://globalwindowsazure.azurewebsites.net/
Today sees the launch by Microsoft UK of an App Builders Rewards Programme!
The programme, open to registered UK developers, allows you to gain points everytime you publish an app to the Windows Store (Windows 8) or to the Windows Phone Store. Any points you obtain by publishing your apps can then be converted into awesome rewards, such as Windows 8 tablets and Nokia Windows Phone devices! Read more
This post is the 1st in a series of posts around Windows Azure Mobile Services. You can find an overview of this series, along with links to the other posts, here.
To get started with Mobile Services you will need an Azure account, which if you don’t have one is easy to get by signing up for a free trial here, and then also ensuring that you have access to the Mobile Services Preview by visiting the Preview Features page.
Once you have an Azure account and have signed up for the Mobile Services preview, you are all set to create your first Mobile Service. To begin, login to your Windows Azure Portal at http://www.windowsazure.com. Once logged in you can add a new item by clicking on the ‘New’ link at the bottom left of your dashboard. When you click this you should be able to choose to create a new Mobile Service as shown below.
Once you have signed up to the Preview you can create your first Mobile Service from the Windows Azure Portal
When you choose to create a new service you will first need to enter the name you want to give to your new service, which needs to be unique, so you may get prompted to enter another name if it has already been taken. You will also need to configure the database that will support your service, which gives you a few simple options. Firstly, you can choose to either create a new SQL Azure instance or use an existing one. You also need to choose the region in which your service will be deployed to, I have chosen Northern Europe, but you can choose whichever region you feel is best suited to your needs. Read more
I have been working with Azure a lot over the last few months, from organising Stacked, the free full day Azure conference in the UK, to my work at Mando Group creating some awesome experiences with the platform.
One feature I have been using recently is Windows Azure Mobile Services, which are truly awesome feature, but that still not enough people know about them and how easy they are to use. Therefore, I thought a few posts providing an overview of Mobile Services and how you can use them with platforms, like Windows 8 and Windows Phone, would be useful.
For those of you who have never heard of them, Mobile Services allow you to create powerful back-ends for your mobile applications, by accomplishing a number of tasks, such as easily storing structured data within Azure, accessing this data within your apps, authenticating users against popular 3rd party services such as Facebook and sending push notifications to your end users. Best of all, you can implement everything I have just mentioned in just a couple of minutes!
Currently Mobile Services is in preview and has support for Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and IOS, with Android support to follow at a later stage within the preview.
The series of posts will cover the following topics and I will update the list below to link to each post as it is published.
If there is something that isn’t covered above that you would like to see covered then please feel free to drop me a line on Twitter.
Welcome to the new location for my blog, previously located at http://blog.garypretty.co.uk, but now relocated to here.
It has been sometime since I posted regularly on the old blog, due to lack of time and also because when I did get time, I was writing articles for other channels like MSDN / TechNet.
This new site has been created with the plan of me posting much more regularly again. The previous blog also focused on .NET as a whole, including areas such as ASP.NET MVC and Entity Framework, whereas the plan right now is for the new blog to focus around a few key platforms;
However, undoubtedly, I will end up talking about more general news from Microsoft that I think is of interest as well.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by and keep an eye out for my new articles.
