Random .NET Ramblings

I can’t say how excited I am about the impending release of the Windows Marketplace for Mobile! I am soooo tired of hearing from my family and friends (yes I have a few) about how awesome the iPhone is. Yes there was a time when people could not believe what a PocketPC or a Windows Smart Phone could do but what is going to make Windows Mobile cool again? Developers! Developers! Developers! As this blog post To Partner or Not To Partner points out Windows Mobile greatest strength and biggest weakness is it’s partners.

I think that once we have some cool rude sound making apps on the Windows mobile platform like iFart (my sons favorite application). To help this I will start covering some topics about development on the Windows mobile platform using the Compact Framework, I have been working with the CF since before it’s 1.0 release and while I have not delivered a solution with it for many years I am always playing with some type of application.

A great place to start is with Rajen Kishna’s blog posting Creating your first Windows Phone (WM 6.5) application once you have this setup you will be all set to start creating some kick a@@ apps!

And just for some fun, this is out dated but I still love this entry iPhone vs Windows Mobile, Email Smackdown and I have to admit I like the new text messaging display of the iPhone, that and the apps are the only thing I like about it. Now with the Marketplace and better class of devices to hit soon I think even my family and friends will have less dig at me about. ;)

Yesterday the PHP Toolkit for ADO .NET Data Services was released! Ok so what the heck is that? The .NET Data Services was called Project Astoria and it makes a lot of data sources available via a RESTful service interface. This new toolkit makes it easy for PHP developers by creating PHP proxy classes to ADO.NET Data  Services.

I love how much Microsoft has been making recently to make the .NET & Windows platform accessible with it’s continued commitment to openness and interoperability as well as of its embrace of Web standards in its technologies!

If you put this tool kit to use please let me know I would like to see how we can highlight your success.

Go get it at download.live.com. If you have not been keeping up Microsoft has moved Movie Maker out of the Ultimate product line and in to Live so now if your computer has the horsepower to edit video go for it!

For full details see the product groups announcement on there blog post The new Windows Live Movie Maker – available today! - Windows Live. Have fun!

now go build it!

This last weekend myself, Mark Brown & Rob Bagby presented at Drupal Camp LA 2009. Daniel Eagan also was there on Saturday showing off Windows 7 on a big a@@ HP TouchSmart and Jason Campell helped on Saturday with the installfest.

Mark did a great session on the IIS SEO toolkit titled “Boost Your Drupal Site’s SEO with the IIS SEO Toolkit” it motivated me to check the tool out and see how much help I need on this site.

Rob did another great session titled “PHP, Drupal and Microsoft Interop Demothon” where he showed several cool things including the Web Platform Installer, URL Rewriter Module for IIS 7.0, Embedding Silverlight in a Drupal site and more…

I did a session titled “How Microsoft is working with PHP & Drupal” where I talked and demoed some of the investments Microsoft has made around PHP and how PHP developers can get more out of the Windows platform. If you want you can download my deck but note the survey link will not be active much longer. I also got to do the key note where I was introduced as “Microsoft’s Woody” :).

It was a great weekend and I hope the organizers Chris Charlton and Mike Stewart do another Drupal Camp i know I will be there and as always props go to Crystal Williams for getting Drupal Camp going!