Azure Mobile Services .NET Backend Tips

I've been working with Azure Mobile Services since it was released and until recently only the JavaScript backend was available, built using node.js. Although it is very mature with many options, the community was pressuring for a .NET option and now it is available. Modeled much like a standard Web API / MVC project at first glance, there may be a few things that you like to take advantage of in these types of projects that throw you for a loop when using the new .NET option. These include Dependency Injection, Entity Framework (Migrations and Relationships),...

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ASP.NET Presentations at DEVIntersection

Had a great time presenting Async Application Development and the Social Authentication options available in ASP.NET this week at DevIntersection. Building Async Applications in ASP.NET Async has become much easier over time to code and maintain with the async/await keywords and adding the capabilities in WebForms applications can improve overall page response times if done correctly. Here are the additional links and the slides from the session. Presentation Slides Hanselminutes Podcast – Everything .NET programmers know about Asynchronous Programming is wrong. Using Asynchronous Methods...

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DEVIntersection: 3 Days of ASP.NET, Azure, SQL & More!

Come out to DEVIntersection April 13-16 at the JW Marriott in Orlando to get a chance to interact with a number of community experts such as Scott Guthrie, Scott Hanselman, Douglas Crockford and many more. I'll be giving two talks in the ASP.NET track: AS12: Building Asynchronous ASP.NET Applications Learn how to take advantage of the new async/await operations to keep your applications responsive and avoid the performance bottlenecks. In comparison to how async code has been written with callbacks, the new way allows for cleaner more readable debug-able code. In this presentation topics...

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Town Hall Style, Windows 8 Development Shoot or Aim?

Had the first meeting of the year last night for the Orlando Windows Phone / Windows 8 Group and instead of going down the planned presenter lead meeting format it turned more into a "Town Hall" style with some good topics I thought I'd share. Where does everyone go to learn how to build or develop for Windows 8.1? As anyone who can use the web, you w ill find a number of popular blogs that have articles written on how to get started using this or that, including my own, but how relevant are they considering how fast Windows 8 development is moving and changing for that matter.  One attendee...

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Custom URIs added to I'm Here App

I took a few moments to add custom URI launchers for my I'm Here app on Windows Phone so it could be used in Rob Irving's Car Dash app.  It was a really quick add to the app, however the one are I found to be a pain was testing it.  I actually had to write another phone app to test it. Not that it was a chore, just didn't consider that when I started, I made an assumption I could've just typed i the URI in Internet Explorer or mocked an SMS message like you can in iOS. If you have a Windows Phone App that offers functionality that other apps can use there is no reason not to offer custom...

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