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Why join, other than it being free? The Microsoft Virtual Academy helps you to improve your IT skill set and advance your career with a free, easy to access training portal that allows you to learn at your own pace, focusing on Microsoft technologies. What do I get for signing up? Free training to make you become the Cloud-Hero in your Organization Help mastering your custom Training Path and get the recognition Connect with other IT Pros and discuss The Cloud Where do I sign up? http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com ...

Back by popular demand, we’re having our first BizSpark Startup Night for 2011 this time focusing on Cloud Computing. There have been so many misconceptions about the cloud and it’s different forms. Our goal is to give you a practical view point on what Microsoft’s cloud is, it’s components and how you can take advantage of it. Our speaker is Chris Ismael, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft Singapore. This session will give you a technical foundation in understanding how your applications behave in Windows Azure, as well as how your application can interact from inside and outside the platform. The session is targeted towards developers who are curious to find out whether Windows Azure (or the “cloud” in general) is a platform they can benefit from. It will touch on topics such as configuring, packaging, and deploying .NET and CGI-based apps for the cloud, managing your apps, and your storage options. Who: Open to all entrepreneurs, developers, business owner looking to connect Where: Microsoft Office 21st Floor Auditorium When: March 29, 2011 Tuesday 630 - 900 PM *light refreshments will be served Add a +1 on our comments and I’ll count you in. See you there!

SharePoint is popular and widespread today. To help you understand how to deploy, configure and manager SharePoint 2010, we are having two SharePoint 2010 Administration Hands-on labs. It is completely free and only 21 seats per session. Register today to secure a seat! Registration link: 7th April: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032481003&Culture=en-SG 21st April: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032481010&Culture=en-SG Location: Avantus Training Pte Ltd, 79 Robinson Road CPF Building Agenda: Deploy SharePoint 2010 Understanding Server Roles Software Requirements The install process Configure SharePoint 2010 ...

There’s something about cloud computing, it is all around us. In fact most of what we do day in and day out is only possible because of cloud computing. It has open up many new opportunities to developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale and manages web applications on the internet. The Windows Azure platform was made with developers in mind and seeks for ways to make it easy to get started. Here’s an opportunity for developers who have not experience what it’s like to build and deploy applications on the Windows Azure platform. First 200 to Sign-up now will get free access to the following Windows Azure platform resources; ...

To mark the global launch of Microsoft’s latest browser, Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) poll was conducted across Asia Pacific and Europe. Result shows Asian women tend to put web browsing safety first while the men chose speed above everything else. Asians are more likely to take risks online compared to their European counterparts and majority of them want to watch online movies in high definitions – speed is imperative to pave way for future content. With these fresh insights on web surfing habits in Asia, IE9 has placed speed as the key proposition. In fact, IE9 is 11 times faster than its predecessor, IE8. An online martial arts game (http://www.masterofthewebgame.com) has been specially designed by Asian firm, The Upper Storey, allowing users to experience first-hand the remarkable speed and performance of IE9. ...

I just downloaded 4th & Mayor this new Windows Phone 7 application. As a fan of Foursquare, I am very happy to see this great application. It supports the following features: Check-in to places Comment on check-ins Supports new “explore” features Create and view photos at places Create and view photos within tips New, fun leaderboard experiences Fun, fast, responsive

This is a continuous example from Part I tutorials. If you want to skip Part 1, you could download the project here. And if you want source code and code snippet for the whole project, you could download it here. - How to pass data between pages – isolated storage - How to use CameraTask in your application In Part 2, I will introduce two things: Isolated storage and Camera Task. Before started, I want to introduce why. If you want to pass data from one page to the other, you have to store data somewhere since its stateless between pages. And you could use Isolated Storage. What’s Isolated Storage? Very simple. It is just storage inside your phone but “Isolated” to only your phone. If you lost your phone, you lost data inside your isolated storage in your phone. 1.You could open app.xaml and add in the following code. App.xaml is a file running before running Mainpage.xaml. [cc lang=‘c’] //IsolatedStroage Manager public static class IsolatedStorageCacheManager { //Store information into file public static void Store(string filename, T obj) { //create filestream for writing into Isolated Stroage IsolatedStorageFile appStore = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication(); using (IsolatedStorageFileStream fileStream = appStore.OpenFile(filename, FileMode.Create)) { //Use DataContractSerializer to serialize data and write to the filestream DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T)); serializer.WriteObject(fileStream, obj); } } //Method for retriving object from file in Isolated Stroage public static T Retrieve(string filename) { T obj = default(T); IsolatedStorageFile appStore = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication(); //Open file if filename exists in Isolated Stroage if (appStore.FileExists(filename)) { using (IsolatedStorageFileStream fileStream = appStore.OpenFile(filename, FileMode.Open)) { //Use Serializer to read filestream and retrieve object DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T)); obj = (T)serializer.ReadObject(fileStream); } } return obj; } } [/cc] 2. Methods in App.xaml could be used directly by other file in the project. You could just type “App.” to access all the method inside. We need to serialize data object into a file format that could be stored. There are mainly two ways to do that. Firstly, you could use Build-in DataContractSerialize. It will serialize object based on [DataContract] and [DataMember] these two attributes. The second method is using Linq to XML API from System.XML.Linq namespace. High level speaking. This IsolatedStroageCacheManager has two methods. One is to store your object into file on Isolated storage. And the other method is to retrieve object from file in Isolated Stroage, with a particular filename you used to save the object. 3. We need to add a reference into the project. Right click on References folder in your project file explorer. Choose System.Xml.Serialization. ...

This is an End-to-End example for building Windows Phone 7 from Start to finish. And I will cover several features inside this example. I put this technical blog into three pages , so it is easier for you to follow up. You could download the code here, with code snippet. The second part of the tutorial is at https://www.weshipcode.com/2011/03/windows-phone-7-2/. You could follow my twitter: @mingfeiy for my windows phone development news. Part 1: ...

I’ve been promising my wife that I’d build her a WP7 app that pulls feeds from her favorite fashion sites, but have never gotten around to doing it. So when this app creator popped up, I jumped on the opportunity… to tell her that she can now create her own app! So after dinner, I asked her to browse to http://followmyfeed.net/ so we can start building. Here’s a transcript of what happened: ...

Push your limits and show the world (and our judges) what you’re capable of in a modern browser without the use of any plug-ins. Create and submit web apps built with HTML5 to one of two categories – Gaming or Music. To make things more fun and exciting, Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy has opened up a treasure of content for you to use to create your game! You are also entitled to use music by AWOLNATION and Ra Ra Riot to invent your new music experience on the web. Now, what’s a contest without some awesome prizes? All contestants will stand a chance to win up to $40,000 worth of prizes including an all-expense paid trip to the Future of Web Apps Las Vegas with “golden ticket” VIP access. ...