The Knowledge Chamber (MP4) - Channel 9

Window Azure provides a quick, easy, and—more importantly—powerful way for companies of any size to take advantage of cloud based services. While lots of companies are already moving their applications and services to Windows Azure, others still aren't quite sure how the cloud can help them and their business.I invited Steve Fox back to my show to help provide some insights on the broad features and capabilities of Windows Azure, and how its core services can play an important role in application development for many types of businesses.Some of the other resources we talk about are:Office 365Windows Azure Starting PointMeet Windows Azure (June 7th, San Francisco)TechEd North America (June 11-14, Orlando) - SOLD OUTTechEd North America Sessions on Windows Azure TechEd North America Sessions by Steve Fox TechEd Europe (June 26-29, Amsterdam)TechEd Europe Sessions by Steve Fox TechEd Europe Sessions on Windows Azure Windows Azure Content on Channel 9 

With every new version of Windows, there is a huge effort to make sure that applications that worked on the previous version continue to work as expected. For this episode, I've invited Chris Jackson (also known as the "App Compat Guy") to join me and share some details on not only what Microsoft is doing to ensure the highest level of compatibility from one version to the next, but also how developers, IT administrators, and even users can work through compatibility issues.In addition to talking about how application compatibility issues affect Windows applications, we touch on similar issues that befall web applications. Hopefully, the details discussed in this show will help you make sure that your applications continue to work on future versions of Windows and IE.Here are also some additional resources you might find useful:Application Compatibility Cookbooks:As Chris noted during the show, we regularly provide Application Compatibility Cookbooks to aid developers in understanding how to make sure both their existing and planned applications work properly on the next version of Windows. Here are links to the beta cookbook for Windows 8 as well as the ones we published for Windows 7 and Windows Vista:For Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Windows server 8 Beta For Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 RC2 For Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.6The Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) version 5.6 contains the necessary tools and documentation to evaluate and mitigate application compatibility issues before deploying Windows 7®, Windows Vista®, a Windows Update, or a new version of Windows Internet Explorer® in your environment.Testing Application Compatibility for IE9 at MicrosoftThis downloadable document discusses the various issues that should be considered when preparing your web applications to run on IE9.Prepare Your Site for Web StandardsMSDN has prepared a set of documents and guidelines for helping developers get their web applications ready for IE10 and the new HTML5 standards.Windows 8 Consumer PreviewOf course, one of the key steps to making sure your applications are compatible on a particular version of Windows is to actually try it. If you haven't done so, it's a good idea to download the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and try your application there to see what issues it might have. 

C++ has been around for what seems like forever. It might seem like it's taken a back seat to languages that provide better application isolation and better development throughput, but in truth it remains one of the most widely used languages in the world. In order to gain some better insights on how C++ measures up in a "managed" world, I've invited Herb Sutter, Program Manager for Visual Studio, to explain how C++ has evolved and how it remains a great choice for many modern day development tasks.And here are a few additional links to more information about C++ that will help you learn how to use it in your projects:TechEd PreConference Seminar: "C++ In Visual Studio 11: Modern Readable, Safe, Fast"Kate Gregory will be doing a day long intensive seminar at both TechEd North America (June 10th in Orlando) and TechEd Europe (June 25th in Amsterdam).You can register for TechEd North America here: http://northamerica.msteched.com/registrationAnd TechEd Europe here: https://register.europe.msteched.com GoingNative 2012This event was held back in February, and was streamed live throughout the world. It featured industry experts discussing the importance of C++ and its proper use in modern application development. All of the sessions are available for "on demand" viewing over on Channel 9.You can access all of the videos here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/GoingNative-2012 Sutter's MillIf you want to catch more of Herb Sutter and his thoughts on C++, you should check out his blog.You can find Herb's blog here: http://herbsutter.com/And specifically the "Elements of Modern C++ Style" reference that Herb refered to can be found here: http://herbsutter.com/elements-of-modern-c-style/ Welcome Back to C++ (Modern C++)For Visual Studio 11, MSDN has prepared details on the advancement and use of C++ which includes examples, reference material, and information on the currently supported features. It is definitely worth checking out to get up to speed.The MSDN C++ content starts here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh279654(v=vs.110).aspx

Windows Azure provides scalable data and processing resources for businesses of almost any size. Steve Fox and Paul Stubbs are going to be presenting a PreCon seminar at TechEd ("Windows Azure University Bootcamp: Advanced and Real-World"), so I invited them onto the show to discuss Windows Azure and provide some quick details on why you might want to pay attention to this technology.If you're planning on coming to TechEd in either North America or Europe, you might want to look into their PreCon seminar, as well as provide details in the discussion area below as to what you'd like to learn about Windows Azure.Here are some links to additional information you might find useful:TechEd North America PreCon Seminars (http://northamerica.msteched.com/preconferenceseminars) TechEd Europe PreCon Seminars (http://europe.msteched.com/PreCons#PRC10) Windowsazure.com (http://www.WindowsAzure.com)This is the Windows Azure portal, you can sign up and access your Windows Azure account here, as well as locate training material and informational resources. Cloud Cover show on Channel 9 (http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Cloud+Cover)Steve Marx and Wad Wegner provide in depth information about how to utilize Windows Azure and details about various features, capabilities, as well as tips and tricks. Windows Azure Training Kit (http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=8396)The Windows Azure Training Kit is a comprehensive set of technical content to aid you in learning how to use Windows Azure for your projects. Learn Windows Azure (http://channel9.msdn.com/events/windowsazure/learn)Last December, Microsoft held a special one-day Windows Azure event for developers. You can watch the recorded sessions to catch up on what you missed. In our show, Steve highlighted the keynote presentation with Scott Guthrie which would definitely be worth watching. Windows Azure on Channel 9 (http://channel9.msdn.com/Tags/azure)Here is a link to all of the content on Channel 9 which is tagged with "Azure".

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 adds several new and exciting features which will radically change how software can be deployed to users in businesses of various sizes.Johan Arwidmark and Kent Agerlund will be presenting a day-long PreConference seminar at TechEd (both in North America and Europe) which will take users through a very detailed examination of how to leverage the capabilities of Configuration Manager. I was able to meet up with them recently to discuss Configuration Manager and learn about why it is an important technology to help businesses manage software deployment on their network.Here are some additional links which you might find useful:TechEd North America PreCon Seminars - June 10th (http://northamerica.msteched.com/preconferenceseminars) TechEd Europe PreCon Seminars - June 25th (http://europe.msteched.com/PreCons#PRC04) Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/configuration-manager-2012.aspx)You can find more details and information about the upcoming release of Configuration Manager here, as well as download a Release Candidate version of the software. TechNet Coverage of System Center Configuration Manager (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg682129.aspx)Here you will find technical documentation and information about how to use Configuration Manager Deployment Research (http://www.deploymentresearch.com/)Johan Arwidmark's site where he shares insights and details about deployment and migration technologies. CoreTech (http://blog.coretech.dk/author/kea/)This is Kent Agerlund's blog that he mentioned on the show, and where he focuses on how to use Configuration Manager.

Windows Phone "Mango" includes a lot of cool, exciting new features that users will be showing to all of their friends. Of course, there are some features so behind the scenes that users will never really be aware of them—but developers will. One such new feature is the addition of "SQL Compact" to the Windows Phone Platform.In this episode of The Knowledge Chamber, my guest is Sean McKenna from the Windows Phone Platform team. Sean shows us SQL Compact in action on the phone and discusses how it provides a better way for data driven applications to access their information stores.Here are some links to additional information:Local Database for Windows PhoneThis is the starting point in the MSDN Developer Library for the various topics that cover database development on Windows Phone "Mango." Local Database Overview for Windows PhoneA quick introduction to the architecture and usage of SQL Compact and Linq To SQL for Windows Phone "Mango" application developers. LINQ to SQL Support for Windows PhoneA quick overview of the features that LINQ to SQL on Windows Phone supports. How to: Create a Local Database Application for Windows PhoneThis coding demo shows how to create a single-page to-do list application using SQL Compact. How to: Create a Local Database Application with MVVM for Windows PhoneThis coding demo shows how to create a multi-page to-do list application that relies on SQL Compact for a local database using the "Model-View-ViewModel" pattern.  

The Windows Phone interface has been designed to make it as easy as possible for users to get to the information they need in the applications they use. In the upcoming release of Windows Phone, codenamed "Mango," there are improvements that will allow developers to provide a richer integration in the home-screen experience.In today's episode of The Knowledge Chamber, my guest is Thomas Fennel, who is responsible for Push Notifications as well as the Live Tile support that developers will be using on Windows Phone Mango. He provides a quick demo of some of the features that application developers can now access, as well as discussing some of the details that developers need to consider when they set up their apps to use these features.Here are some links to additional information on the topics discussed in this episode:Windows Phone Development DocumentationThe overall developer documentation on MSDN has been updated to include details on developing applications for "Mango." Push NotificationsThis is a direct link to the section of the documentation that provides details on Push Notification functionality and how to use it in your applications. Tiles for Windows PhoneThis is the section of the online documentation that will help you better understand what Live Tiles are as well as the API that lets your application utilize them. MIX11: Enhanced Phone Notifications and Tiles for Windows PhoneLast April, Thomas did a presentation at MIX where he talked about Push Notifications and Tiles. You can get more technical details in this nearly hour-long presentation than we could get into our short episode.

"Mango" is the code name for the upcoming release of the Windows Phone application platform. As you've no doubt read in countless other locations, there are lots of new features and capabilities being added in "Mango" which will benefit both users as well as application developers.In this episode, I meet with Peter Torr, from the Windows Phone Application Platform Team to specifically focus on the new multi-tasking support that "Mango" will enable. Peter also shares a few details on his favorite feature of "Mango"—its ability to organize your contacts together in "groups," which makes it easier for you to keep track of, and interact with, the people important to you.You can find more information about Multi-Tasking on Windows Phone "Mango" here:Peter Torr's BlogPeter focuses on a few different things on his blog, but has recently posted a few entries specifically dealing with supporting background agents, alarms, and notifications that "Mango" makes available.  Windows Phone "Mango" Training CourseMSDN has published a training kit for Windows Phone developers that will help them get up to speed with some of the new features in Windows Phone "Mango." Multi-Tasking and Application Switching for Windows PhoneEarlier this year, Peter had a presentation at TechEd North America where he also talked about the new multi-tasking capabilities of Windows Phone "Mango." Multi-Tasking in "Mango": Part II Using Background AgentsAt MIX11, Peter also presented on how developers can make use of background agents in their applications, and why. Multi-Tasking in "Mango": Part IPeter's MIX11 presentation was "Part II" of multi-tasking, here is "Part I," by Darin Miller, which covers multi-tasking in general. Windows Phone Team BlogWhile not specifically focused on developer issues in general, or multi-tasking specifically, the Windows Phone Team has it's own blog, which can provide you with some news and details on what may be upcoming. Resources for Windows Phone "Mango" DevelopersAnd for "Mango" development issues and insights in general, you can check this out for links to documentation and code samples as well as general discussions amongst your fellow developers.

Andrew Clinick, Lead Program Manager for Windows Phone Developer Platform joins us today to discuss some of the features and capabilities that get him excited about helping developers build great applications for Windows Phone. He also takes a little time to share with us one of the apps that he regularly uses on his own phone – “TuneIn Radio”.Here are a few links you might find handy that were touched upon during this interview:TuneIn Radio for Windows Phone 7OneBusAway for Widows Phone 7OneBusAway on Codeplex Andto help you develop your own applications for Windows Phone 7:Windows Phone Developer Hub MIX11 Conference (April 12-14 2011, Las Vegas) 

When talking about developing applications for the new Windows Phone platform, we usually focus on Silverlight. There is, however, another programming model for developing Windows Phone applications, and that’s XNA—a special programming model based on .NET that is specifically designed for developing games, or other applications that need pixel level access to the screen. Like Silverlight, you can use XNA to develop either phone or desktop applications; unlike Silverlight, however, XNA can also be used for developing games for Xbox360.At the recent PDC10, Shawn Hargreaves held a seminar on “Things You Need to Know Before Building XNA Games for Windows Phone 7.” In this episode, Shawn give us an introduction about XNA development for the Phone, and hopefully helps you see how you might be able to develop the next blockbuster game on Windows Phone 7.You can see Shawn’s full PDC10 presentation here:Things You Need to Know Before Building XNA Games for Windows Phone 7Shawn also has a blog, which you can access here:Game Programming with the XNA FrameworkAnd you can get more news and details about XNA development here:XNA App Hub  

PDC10 is fast approaching, and if you’ve been paying attention, you know that things are different this year. While you might know that for the first time we will be holding it at our own conference facility on the Microsoft Campus, and you might also know that we sold out early due to the smaller size of the venue. What you may not realize however, is that we’ve been working hard to make the online experience as exciting as possible.For this episode, I’ve invited Eric Schmidt to talk to us about the brand new “viewer” he’s been working on for PDC10 which is being specifically designed to make sure those developers who couldn’t attend in person, will still be able to get a lot of value from the material being presented. Like always, we’ll be streaming the Keynote live, but we will also be streaming all of the in-person seminars live as well! We will also be preparing a great collection of pre-recorded seminars specifically for the PDC, and all of those sessions will be available online as soon as the PDC starts. Our media player is being built with the specific needs of our online audience in mind, with some very exciting features and capabilities.Oh, and don't be concerned about Eric's mention of the PDC starting on Oct 29th near the end of this episode... he hadn't had his morning coffee yet, and really intended to say "Oct 28th".Here are some additional links you may find useful:http://www.MicrosoftPDC.comFor the latest details and information on the PDC. http://www.MicrosoftPDC.com/localFor information on special viewing events in your area.

One of the thorns in the sides of all Internet users is the plethora of accounts they need to keep track of for the various websites they use throughout the day. Most of the folks running these sites don’t particularly want to create an account management system, but they need to just so they can provide their users with a personalized experience. On the other end of the spectrum, there are enterprise developers who need to constantly keep up with new protocols and credential types for securing their applications. Windows Identity Foundation might just be a solution to both of these problems, removing the need for applications to host their own authentication system, as well as reducing the number of logins a user needs to remember.In this episode of The Knowledge Chamber, I meet with Vittorio Bertocci (who just finished a new book, Programming Windows Identity Foundation) to learn more about the basic features and capabilities of Windows Identity Foundation and see how easy it is for websites and applications to get out of the credential management game and “outsource” their authentication to another provider. When used in conjunction with services such as the Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service, Windows Identity Foundation makes it possible to log in via LiveID, Yahoo, Google, and existing Active Directory instances equipped with ADFS2, as well as by using a variety of other providers, while maintaining the exact same codebase.If you’d like to order a copy of Vittorio’s book, you can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735627185To find out more about Windows Identity Foundation, you should start here: http://www.Microsoft.com/WIFYou can find Vittorio’s blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vbertocci/And you can find more videos on Channel 9 about Windows Identity Foundation here: http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/Windows+Identity+Foundation/

With just a short time to go before Windows Phone 7 hits the market, there is no time like the present to start developing your applications. Mike Harsh recently presented a session at MIX10 on developing Windows Phone applications in Silverlight, and so I asked him to join me in the studio to discuss Windows Phone 7 and share some insights for any budding phone developers out there.Your shortcut to all developer details regarding Windows Phone is here: http://developer.WindowsPhone.com/ You can download the Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta (published July 26, 2010) here: Windows Phone Tools Beta You can see Mike’s MIX10 presentation here: Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight (Part 1) Part 2, by Peter Torr, is here: Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight (Part 2) And you can get a listing of all of the Windows Phone sessions from MIX10 here: MIX10 Windows Phone Sessions You can get information about the new book on Windows Phone programming by Charles Petzold here: Programming Windows Phone 7 And for an idea about some of the applications that others are already working on, you can see a lot of videos on YouTube under searches similar to: WP7 Silverlight WP7 XNA WP7 Application WP7 Game Also, you may be interested in finding out more information about PDC10, which is October 28th and 29th, in Redmond WA, and will be streamed LIVE.

Visual Studio 2010 is a fairly important release of the developer tool of choice for writing Windows applications. One of the important advancements in the new update is how it enables developers and architects to better visualize the assets and dependencies through UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagrams.In this episode, Cameron Skinner gives us a quick overview of how Visual Studio 2010’s new UML visualization tool's design might help you with better understanding the overall structure of your applications.You may also find the following links useful: PDC09: Code Visualization, UML, and DSLs Cameron’s Blog

If you are developing multi-threaded applications, there is a possibility that you may be having concurrency problems, and these problems can be difficult to reproduce and identify.At PDC09, Madan Musuvathi and Sebastian Burckhardt showed off some tools (“Cuzz” and “FeatherLite”) that Microsoft Research is currently working on that may one day assist developers in addressing concurrency issues they may be having in their application. I’ve invited them to join me today to talk with us about some of the issues involved with tracking down concurrency problems, as well as how each tool works.If you’d like more information about the tools they are working on, you may want to check out their PDC09 session, which is available here: PDC09 Seminar:Concurrency Fuzzing & Data Races You can also find more details about what Madan and Sebastian are doing in Microsoft Research on the Microsoft Research Website: Cuzz FeatherLite Madan Musuvathi Sebastian Burckhardt

In case you haven’t realized it, the new trend in computer chip technology is multi-core. This is where most of the speed improvements moving forward will come from on our computers. To take full advantage of this however it is necessary to design your applications using Parallel Programming practices, also known as "parallelism".In today’s episode, we will meet with Stephen Toub, who will share with us some of the overarching concepts associated with parallelism, and some of the ways we are trying to empower developers to develop applications to take advantage of it.You may also want to check out Stephen’s presentation from PDC09 on this topic here: Manycore and .NET 4: A Match Made in Visual Studio 2010 And here is the full set of PDC09 sessions related to parallel programming practices:Overview: The State of Parallel Programming Managed code in Visual Studio 2010: Manycore and .NET 4: A Match Made in Visual Studio 2010 PLINQ: LINQ, but Faster! F# for Parallel and Asynchronous Programming Native code in Visual Studio 2010: C++ Forever: Interactive Applications in the Age of Manycore Lighting up Windows Server 2008 R2 Using the ConcRT on UMS Developing Applications for Scale-Up Servers Running Windows Server 2008 R2 HPC Server: Accelerating Applications Using Windows HPC Server 2008 Research and Incubation: Axum: A .NET Language for Safe and Scalable Concurrency Concurrency Fuzzing & Data Races Data-Intensive Computing on Windows HPC Server with DryadLINQ Rx: Reactive Extensions for .NET Future of Garbage Collection Future Directions for C# and Visual Basic  

The upcoming release of Sharepoint 2010 will provide features and capabilities which will allow it to directly support Silverlight development and controls. At PDC09, Paul Stubbs held a session where he showed off many of these features, and walked the audience through the process of how to utilize Silverlight from a Sharepoint website.In this episode, I meet with Paul, and he briefly shows us how easy it is to do Silverlight development on a Sharepoint 2010 website.If you'd like more details on this, you can view the entire session from PDC09 here: Developer Patterns to Integrate Microsoft Silverlight 3.0 with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 You can find out more details about Sharepoint 2010, and the current beta here:     Sharepoint 2010 Website