Today, I spent some time hooking up EventBoard to EventPoint, and the solution turned out to be so compact I felt a blog coming on…

EventPoint has a nice REST API that can return JSON or XML. I wanted JSON. I had a demo conference set up, and also an API Key. First, I set about exploring the API, using the Chrome HTTP Dev Client, which is my new best friend. It is kind of like Fiddler in a browser, and allows you do do GET, PUT, POST etc, set HTTP headers, see the return values in JSON, ...

I was teaching a class today at HP, and demonstrating how to implement Search suggestions for in app search. The pattern is easy: you hook an event, and in the event, return any matches. Here is an example:

  var sp = SearchPane.GetForCurrentView();
  sp.SuggestionsRequested += OnSearchPaneSuggestionsRequested;

// ...  



void OnSearchPaneSuggestionsRequested(object sender, SearchPaneSuggestionsRequestedEventArgs args)
   {
     args.Request.SearchSuggestionCollection.AppendQuerySuggestions(
       (from t  in App.ViewModel.ConferenceInfos
         where t.Name.StartsWith(args.QueryText, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)
        select t.Name).Take(5));  
   }

See announcement by Scott Guthrie here. In a nutshell, Mobile Services allows you to add an Azure cloud backend to your mobile solution in minutes. Initially, support is for Windows 8, but will be expanded to Windows Phone, iOS and Android. There is built in support for structured storage (SQL), Push Notifications, Authentication (Windows Live ID initially, more to come, read Facebook etc., maybe ACS). The goal is to make it easy for non enterprise developers (i.e. primarily mobile developers) to create a robust cloud back end. I am very excited to dig deeper, expect talks and blogs on ...

On Saturday June 16, John Waters will be teaching the Window Phone Unleashed event in Mountain View, CA. This is an all day, bring your own laptop, instructor led hand on programming day, culminating in a contest with chances of winning a $500 gift card. The event will be at the Hacker Dojo.

Update!

Slides can be found here: Power_Point_Slides


Congratulations Anushree, proud winner of the event with her UV index app. The app does a reverse lookup of your current location to get the ZIP code, then retrieves the UV index from another web service. That service was ...

Here is a little cross platform gotcha that might save you some time, it certainly has bitten my colleagues a few times….

If you have a .NET WCF REST service, then it will by default use the DataContractSerializer. Now, imagine you have an iOS, Android or maybe a HTML client, calling that API with a JSON payload (or an XML payload), and hand constructing the HTTP payload. On the server (receiving) side, you see that some of your object properties are NULL, even though you can clearly see them being sent in Fiddler. You double check the spelling and capitalization ...

I recently spoke at the Windows TechConference in Baden, Switzerland, on moving Windows Mango applications to Metro. You can see my slides here.

With some very nice new features!

Instead of deleting and reconfiguring a whole new instance when you upload a new version of your service, now it is upgraded in place!

Even better, the deployment ID of the app (which is used in the DNS entry) doesn’t change, so no more having to update our DNS records every time I deploy a new version.

And best of all, if you have more than 1 instance of a role running, it takes turn upgrading them so your service is never down!

There are some nice new additions to the Visual Studio deployment ...

I have been using the new Http programming stack from Microsoft, WCF Web API, see http://wcf.codeplex.com/releases/view/73399. Very cool stuff! It works really well with their new HttpClient, JsonObject, and the dynamic keyword.

Here, I am calling a REST API to download a JSON object:

See how the string is the JSON string for the object?

Well, next I use the dynamic keyword and JsonValue.Parse to parse this into a dynamic Json object:

Note how it has keys for the two properties…

And notice how because I am using dynamic, I can reference these by property name!...

Right now, the DEMOgala event is running in the Sheraton Downtown Denver, and it is powered by EventBoard.

DEMOgala describes itself as follows: “Colorado is home to a vibrant technology industry and DEMOgala provides a peek into what makes our industry continue to thrive and excel. Industry leaders from across the nation will converge to relay expert insight on the influence of technology and how today's forward-thinking companies are reshaping our perspectives on business, science, entertainment and community”.

Our very own Mike Dugan is on site representing Falafel Software.

This is shaping up to be a very busy ...

If you read my previous blog post Two Good Ways to Work With Excel Files in C#, you will be excited to learn that there is now an even better way! Check out the EPPlus project on CodePlex. It is based off the original ExcelPackage, but is faster and adds in tons of new features, including support for formulas, cell styling, charts, pictures, shapes and much more, a huge leap in functionality. Also, it is actively being developed, where ExcelPackage kind of died. I was able to upgrade my code with hardly any change, all I needed to ...

Capitola, CA: Falafel Software cements its position as the Premier Platinum Sitefinity Partner by announcing the following two key contributions:

First, Falafel Software has partnered with Telerik in designing, authoring and delivering the entire on-demand developer training program, a set of in depth videos covering every aspect of the award winning Sitefinity 4 product. The training was built in collaboration with the same set of engineers that has gained industry recognition for their dedication to high quality Sitefinity Training and a host of Sitefinity Modules.

“We have been working tightly with the Telerik Sitefinity team since long before Sitefinity ...

Read more about it here. Among other things we will have live tiles, front and back, background processing via agents, Silverlight 4, mixed XNA and Silverlight, profiling tools, improved emulator, more sensors and sensor APIs, fast application switching, local SQL, IE9 and access to the calendar. Very exciting!

The actual download is here. You cannot install it side by side with the WP7 tools, but the new 7.1 can target both the new and old versions.

EventBoard is now loaded with the data for Microsoft TechEd 2011 in Atlanta, Georgia. You can use it on your Windows Phone 7, iPhone or Android device for free! Come visit our booth at TechEd, #1347.