Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Windows Phone 7 Intro video

Get Microsoft Silverlight

Windows Phone 7 Development links

I just followed a great TechDays Belgium session about Windows Phone 7 and I must say this definitely rocks …. and it is really easy to get started as all the necessary Windows Phone 7 developer tools can be downloaded from http://developer.windowsphone.com. There are basically 2 models for building applications for Windows Phone 7 – either using the XNA model or using the Silverlight model.

If you download the developer tools you will notice that they can be added to an existing Visual Studio 2010 installation or if you don’t have Visual Studio installed it will add Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone. The download also contains the Windows Phone Emulator as well as XNA Game Studio 4.0 – check out the Windows Phone 7 Training Kit on MSDN and the Windows Phone 7 Training Kit direct download.

Some interesting tidbits:

  • Currently C# is the only supported programming language
  • Windows Phone is cloud-ready – you might for example want to integrate XBox Live
  • Windows Phone will only support 2 resolutions – 480x800 and 320x480
  • Your windows phone is orientation aware - in Silverlight you will have explicit orientation events which you can use to manipulate the UI in your apps.
  • Since the Windows Phone has a built-in accelerometer you will be able to program against it – using a standard API
  • Windows Phone 7 supports multi-touch, again a new way to handle input both in XNA as well as Silverlight.
  • Navigation uses pages

Related links:

Expect more info to come in the next days ….

Sunday, March 28, 2010

SharePoint Saturday Belgium – 8th of may 2010

BIWUG is organizing the first ever SharePoint Saturday in Belgium.

When: Saturday 8th May 2010

Where: Hof Ter Helst, Kattenbroek 1, 2650 Edegem

We will welcome you as of 9 o'clock for a coffee and sessions will start at 9:30.

9:30-9:45 Welcome and Introduction

9:45 - 10:30 Visual Studio 2010 Tools for SharePoint (Karine Bosch)

10:40 - 11:30 LINQ to SharePoint (Serge Luca)

11:40 - 12:30 Client Object Model (TBD)

12:30 - 13:40 Lunch break  with sandwiches and drinks

13:40 - 14:30 Sandboxed solutions (Steven Van De Craen) 

14:40 - 15:30 MetaData in SharePoint 2010 (Joris Poelmans)

15:40 - 16:30 SharePoint, WCF Services en REST (Stéphane Eyskens)

16:30 - Closing drink

Don't hesitate to register now as registrations are limitted to 100 participants.

We really hope to welcome you!

Don't forget to also take a look at the SharePoint Saturday Belgium event site...

 

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Using MailServer for SharePoint 2010 development box

As you probably know SharePoint 2010 development is only possible on Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 (all 64 bit versions). I still prefer using Windows Server 2008 so I need POP3 mail server functionality to test e-mail integration and so on…  I have used the POP3 extender from Visendo in the past for this but it did not work quite as fluent as expected.

I just finished installing a new SPS 2010 dev box so I decided to use SmarterMail – for a walkthrough about how to configure SmarterMail check out Reza’s blog.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Folksonomy and Taxonomy – do you have to choose?

With the introduction of SharePoint 2010 and the way that it supports free tagging (folksonomy) as well as a centrally managed controlled vocabulary (taxonomy) using the managed metadata column – the debate about taxonomy versus folksonomy will probably light up again. In my personal opinion – there is no need to choose between one of both. The way that SharePoint 2010 supports the notion of promoting free tags into a managed taxonomy demonstrates that a folksonomy can be used as a source to define a taxonomy as well.

Related links:

Saturday, March 06, 2010

SharePoint 2010 – launch May 12th, RTM in April

Just picked this up from the SharePoint team blog – SharePoint 2010 & Office 2010 Launch:

Today, we officially announced that May 12th, 2010, is the launch date for SharePoint 2010 & Office 2010. In addition, we announced our intent to RTM (Release to Manufacturing) this April 2010. 

It’s an exciting time for us! We hope you can virtually join us on May 12th at 11am EST to listen to Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, announce the launch. You can register for the event @ http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/businessproductivity/proof/pages/2010-launch-events.aspx

Arpan Shah
Director, SharePoint

Friday, March 05, 2010

BIWUG on SharePoint 2010 revisited

I have just upload the presentations and the code sample from Stephane on SPLinq to the BIWUG site – if you want to see the sessions again – don’t forget to take a look at the BIWUG on SPS2010 recordings