Be a part of one of the most anticipated releases from Microsoft since Windows 7! Over the course of the next two months, Microsoft will be conducting a series of Windows Phone 7 Bootcamps around the country, many of which will be held in cities here in the mid-west.

These bootcamps will get you on an inside track on how to be part of the step of Microsoft’s mobile strategy and get hands-on training for building Silverlight-based applications. These free, live learning sessions explore the latest tools, discuss tips and technologies and provide access to Windows Phone 7 experts. Specifically, you’ll learn about:

• The Windows Phone 7 platform
• Building Silverlight applications for Windows Phone 7
• Submitting your application to the Windows Phone 7 marketplace

The best news: There are still seats available for these events. Click on the registration link below for the city closest to you and register today!

Last week I talked about a cool web slice Hallmark Cards developed to let you track important events in your Facebook friends’ lives. Well, this week I have another cool web slice, one developed by Winchester Ammunition (a division of Olin Corporation) out of East Alton, Illinois. This web slice is significant because it uses Silverlight to deliver a rich experience while leveraging SharePoint Server to host and manage the content of the web slice.

You see, late last year, Winchester launched the new version of their public web site on top of SharePoint Server. They’re leveraging primarily the content management and search capabilities on winchester.com. When they looked at how to deliver content to their IE8 web slice, they wanted to reuse as much as they could. So, working with Aspect Software (formerly Quilogy of St. Charles, Missouri), the hooked their Silverlight client for the web slice, which was custom built for the 320x240 web slice pane, and hooked it into the RSS feed, product catalog and streaming media areas of the winchester.com web site.

The result is a rich, intuitive application that allows Winchester’s customers to connect to important industry news and product information whenever they like without interrupting what they’re currently doing in the browser. This is a win for the customer, but a win for Winchester as well. By the user installing the web slice, Winchester wins much sought-after real estate in the browser and has a place to connect with their customers as often as they like.

Check out the Winchester web slice on the IE Add-ons Gallery. Even if you’re not a hunter or shoot for sport, it’s a good way to look at an new and innovative way to leverage rich content delivery to connect with your customers.

Computer screens in laptops, desktops and phones are now the targets for application developers yet they represent challenges as the resolution, size, among other factors.

In this episode, Director of User Experience at Infragistics Dr. Komischke  describes how using Fluid UI allows organizations and developers design in the new era of user experience.

Hallmark Cards released a new web slice for Internet Explorer 8 to the IE Add-ons Gallery last week that will make it extremely simple to remember the birthdays, anniversaries and other raisons de célèbre in your life. This slick little slice integrates with your Facebook friends list and provides you with a list of the next ten special events coming up. From the web slice, you can write on your friend’s Facebook wall, send them a Hallmark E-Card or even order them a “print-on-demand” card that you can design and that Hallmark will print and mail for you.

From the technological perspective, web slices are not difficult to develop. They are built just like any other web application, but they are tagged in a web page by a specific set of HTML that tells IE8 that this content is “sliceable.”  In this case, the web slice is obviously integrated with the Facebook API, but another interesting feature is that the slice will also call out major holidays and integrate them into the list. This is provided by a secondary service, showing you how you can build really useful mash-up style applications leveraging multiple background services. Rather than dive into the details of how to develop add-ons for IE8, I’ll refer you instead to my colleague, Jon Box’s, blog. Jon has written several extremely useful posts over the past twelve months showing how to not only build web slices, but accelerators and visual search providers as well.

From a business and marketing standpoint, IE add-ons make all the sense in the world. I mean, the Hallmark web slice is a great example of providing not only a cool and useful application for customers, but it also lives in the link bar inside the browser, allowing their customers to check on their special events at any time, regardless of the web site they are currently on. It provides a very non-obtrusive way to provide your company’s specific products and services to customers while maintaining brand ubiquity in a piece of software in which users spend the good majority of their time each day: The web browser.

The best way to get the web slice is to visit the IE Add-ons Gallery. Since you need to connect the slice with Facebook, there is a two-step installation process, but it’s pretty easy and intuitive. I’ve been using it since it was released last week and I find myself checking it every day. See what you think.

In the spirit of the season, I thought I would share this very cool Silverlight 3 application developed by Archetype. It’s an application that lets you virtually carve a pumpkin and then share it with your friends. The cool technical part is that it is built in Silverlight 3 and is hosted on Windows Azure!

Try it out here.

Have a fun and safe Halloween, everybody!

What’s that? Couldn’t make it to one of the regional launch events for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010? Never fear. Your second chance is on its way.

Microsoft recently announced that it will be holding two “best of launch” events in the central region over the next couple of months featuring content from the so-called “New Efficiency” launch events. The content will be for both developers and IT professionals. These events will focus on:

• Windows 7: It simplifies everyday tasks, improves productivity and works the way you want it to work.
• Windows Server 2008 R2: It delivers new functionality and powerful improvements to the core Windows Server operating system to help organizations increase control, availability and flexibility for their changing business needs.
• Exchange Server 2010: Achieves new levels of reliability, reduces cost and drives productivity.

These events will be held in Des Moines, IA and Omaha, NE. To register for these free events, use the links below:

And what launch would be complete without some great giveaways? Register and attend the event for you chance to win:

• Netbook! Dell Mini 10 – US $329.00 ARV
• Zune! Zune HD – US $289.00 ARV
• Games! Halo 3 ODST for Xbox 360 – US $49.99 ARV
• Books!
  • Windows 7 Inside Out – US $49.99 ARV
  • Introducing Windows 7 for Developers – US $39.99 ARV

Everything that you read these days seems to suggest that you should be moving to the cloud. But where do you start? Which applications and services should you be moving? How do you build the bridge between on-premises and the cloud? And more importantly, what should you be looking out for along the way? In this talk, learn architectural patterns and factors for moving to the cloud. Based on real-world projects, the talk explores building block services, patterns for exposing applications, and challenges involving identity, data federation, and management.

In this episode of ARCast.tv, I sit down and talk to Simon Guest about the tools and knowledge required to determine whether cloud computing is right for you, and where to start.

How do you build line-of-business applications in Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) that can be maintained and extended over a period of years? How do you design and code to handle real-world complexity? Composite Application Guidance (a.k.a., "PRISM") from patterns & practices offers guidance, libraries and examples--in small, free-standing, digestible chunks--that you can use to tame the complexity.

In this episode of ARCast.tv, I sit down and chat with Ward Bell to learn how to compose complex UIs from simpler views, integrate loosely coupled components with "EventAggregator" and "Commands", develop independent modules that can be loaded dynamically, and share code between Silverlight and WPF clients.

Passionate about the Cloud? Interested in the Cloud? Never heard of the Cloud? Regardless of where you standing with the trend of cloud computing, you are not going to want to miss these outstanding events coming to the central region of the US later this month.

Microsoft TechNet and MSDN Events are please to offer you an entire day of Windows Azure for IT professionals and developers in a city near you. These events will answer the big questions about Windows Azure, such as:

• What is Windows Azure?
• When should you use Windows Azure?
• How does it apply or impact your day-to-day work?
• As an architect, how will Windows Azure impact my system design?

Here is a summary of the sessions.

TechNet Windows Azure for the IT Professional
Time: 8:30 AM to noon
Session Summary:

• Azure architecture from the IT professional’s point of view
• Why an IT operations team would want to pursue Azure as an extension to the data center
• Configuration, deployment, and scaling Azure-based applications
• The Azure roles (web, web service, and worker)
• Azure storage options
• Azure security and identity options
• How Azure-based applications can be integrated with on-premises applications
• How operations teams can manage and monitor Azure-based applications

MSDN Windows Azure for the Developer and Architect
Time: 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Session Summary:

• Cloud computing architectures in general and the Azure architecture in particular
• Several aspects of Azure from the developer’s and architect’s perspective
• Azure roles (web, web service and worker)
• Azure storage options
• Azure security and identity options
• How Azure-based applications can be integrated with on-premise applications
• Configuration, deployment and scaling Azure-based applications
• How development teams can optimize their applications for better management and monitoring

The ongoing economy unraveling is the defining moment of our time. Many professional developers are fearful for their livelihood, as employers and customers cut and slash development plans, and as economic activity grinds to a halt.

But not everywhere.

In centers of technical excellence and innovation such as the Silicon Valley, the major players, from investors to industry leaders, are aligning themselves with the next boom in software, a field Juval Lowy calls the Energynet. Alternative energy covers a wide range, from new cars, to micro renewal sources energy producers, infrastructure upgrades to charge stations and distribution, new power and transformation grids, and integration of billing systems, let alone commercial building and homes modification. And the key for making all that work is software. We simply cannot make the physics or the chemistry substantially better, but we can profoundly integrate systems, iron out inefficiency, automate and vertically integrate energy trading, production and consumption; and the key to all of that is great software. This massive new software system is the Energynet, and the analogy to the Internet is a good one - instead of packets and request the Energynet transfers watts and usage data, connecting anything and everything in the energy market. In this unique session, Juval Lowy presents the case for the next boom in software, shares personal observation and perspectives, and points out the skills and expertise required of developers that want to not only survive but thrive on the next boom in software.

Be sure to check out this compelling interview conducted by my colleague Bob Familiar.