Academia Teaching Feed

Windows Azure Online Training for Students

edunhill — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:28:47 GMT

This will probably be particularly interesting for those of you who read my previous post on free student access to Azure. ICS, our partner on this offer are running a series of online training sessions later this week specifically for students.

Each session will cover the following:

- Overview and demonstration of Windows Azure
- How you can benefit from your free trial
- Understanding Windows Azure and the Azure platform
- Azure pricing and Proof of Concept offerings
- Next steps in your Azure adoption
- Azure resources available to you
- Q&A session

You can find out more and register for free here.

Technorati Tags: Azure,.NET,Students

Try Microsoft’s Cloud Platform for Free!

edunhill — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:02:25 GMT

Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform allowing you to build and deploy scalable .NET applications online.

Cloud Computing is a hot topic and likely to be a key part of of many organisations IT strategy moving forward. As a student now is the time to learn more!

We are making a limited number of developer accounts available to students for free - all you have to do is register here being sure to select ‘Student’ in the audience category drop down and using the promo code ‘blog’.

Once you sign up you will receive an email with your login details and links to help you get started.

This offer is strictly limited so if you want to get ahead in the field of cloud computing you should register now!

Technorati Tags: Cloud Computing,Windows Azure,.NET,Student

Kodu is Here!

edunhill — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:56:44 GMT

Have you ever wanted to create your own game but don’t want to get your hands dirty with code? We now have the answer… Kodu!

Kodu allows you to build games using traditional programming paradigms such as conditional statements and loops but without having to fire up Visual Studio. Basically you start with a blank world which you can customise, add characters and set up interactions. Multiplayer is supported as is sharing created games online using Xbox Live Community Games.

Its great if you’re just looking for a bit of fun and its also a neat way to introduce children to programming.

Kodu is available for purchase (or demo) on Xbox Live Community Games. You can find out more here or watch a demo from GDC below:

Technorati Tags: Kodu,Xbox Live,Community Games,Games,Microsoft

Getting Started with Azure #1

edunhill — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:06:27 GMT

Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform allowing deployment of .NET applications with flexible scaling. My colleague Paolo recently wrote a great introductory article for our Faculty Connection newsletter which outlines the fundamentals.

Over the coming months I will be writing a series of posts focussed on getting you started developing with Azure. In this first post I will walk you through setting up the development environment.

The development environment for Azure consists of Visual Studio and the Azure SDK. You can user either the free Visual Studio 2008 Web Developer Express Edition or a full version of Visual Studio 2008 (such as those available through MSDNAA and DreamSpark). For this article I will be using Windows 7 as my operating system but you can also use Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008.

Once you have installed Visual Studio please update it to download SP1 which includes .NET 3.5 SP1 both of which are requirements for the Azure SDK. Finally, before installing the SDK you need to enable ASP.NET and WCF HTTP Activation. To do this on Windows Vista or 7 follow these steps:

1. From the Start menu, choose Control Panel | Programs | Programs and Features.

2. Click Turn Windows Features On or Off.

3. Under Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.1, select Windows Communication Foundation HTTP Activation.

4. Under Internet Information Services, expand World Wide Web Services.

5. Under Application Development Features, select ASP.NET.

6. Under Common HTTP Features, choose Static Content.

7. Click OK to install the selected features.

You can now download and install the Azure SDK and the Azure Tools for Visual Studio. The Azure SDK provides a simulation of the cloud on your desktop so you can test applications locally and the Tools for Visual Studio include the Windows Azure project types.

We’re now set to develop our Azure web application, for this example we will build a simple ‘Hello World’ application but using the twist is that rather than running it as a single instance as you traditionally would we will fire it up with 5 instances.

First open Visual Studio, select ‘File>New>Project...’ From the ‘Project types’ box select Cloud Service and from the ‘Templates’ box select ‘Web Cloud Service’, enter a name for the project and click OK.

When the template loads you will notice in the ‘Solution Explorer’ we have a solution with two projects. The first project contains the cloud service which features two XML files containing the service configuration (.cscfg) and the service definition (.csdef). The second project is the web application itself where you will find a blank default.aspx file which is familiar in traditional ASP.NET development. For the purposes of this tutorial we will make a small change to the default.aspx file so double click it and in the left hand pane add the text ‘Hello World’ between the ‘<div>’ tags. You can now press F5 to setup the development fabric and deploy your application for local test.

Your application should then launch in your web browser and display ‘Hello World’. If you look in your system tray you should notice an icon displaying two gears, this represents the Azure Development Fabric. Right click the icon and select ‘Show Development Fabric UI’. In the interface you can expand the application we have just built and you will see that there is one instance running. A single instance is the default configuration for a cloud application but if we want to scale our application and run multiple instances it is a simple matter of changing the XML configuration file I mentioned earlier. To do this go back to Visual Studio, stop debugging and open the .cscfg file. In the left hand pane you should be able to see a tag containing ‘Instances count="1"’, change the 1 to 5 and press F5 to rebuild your application. If you reopen the Development Fabric UI you will now see that there are 5 instances of our application running.

As you can see it is very easy to run up multiple instances of our application and this works exactly the same when you deploy your application to the cloud which I will cover in my next post on Azure.

Technorati Tags: Windows Azure,Visual Studio,Cloud Computing,.NET

Free MCTS Certification Through DreamSpark

edunhill — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:08:28 GMT

For a limited time Microsoft is offering free vouchers to sit an MCTS exam through the DreamSpark programme. The MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist) stream is aimed at developers and IT professionals and is available in multiple flavours relevant to a raft of developer and infrastructure technologies. Full list of MCTS certs.

DreamSpark is available to all HE students through direct verification as well as schools through an onsite admin. If you are a school pupil and would like access please direct a member of staff at your school to the sign up page so they can register the school for free.

As well as free exams DreamSpark provides a range of Microsoft products for free:

Find out more about the free MCTS offer.

Technorati Tags: MCTS,MCP,Microsoft,Student,DreamSpark

Student Celebration Day Slides

edunhill — Fri, 01 May 2009 10:31:00 GMT

To follow on from yesterday’s post I wanted to share the slides from the MSR talks:

MSR Overview - Andrew Herbert
Getting from A to B: fast route-finding using slow computers - Simon Peyton-Jones
Curing Cancer, Halting global Disease Outbreaks and averting Dangerous Climate Change - Drew Purves
Proving that programs eventually do something good - Byron Cook

Videos will follow next week.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Research,Imagine Cup,MSP

Silverlight Insight event for UK Academics

ukacademia — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:16:05 GMT

As Paolo blogged we (the Microsoft Academic Team in the UK) are arranging an event targeted to Academics in Universities and Design Schools in the UK.

Silverlight Insight is a one-day event designed to give attendees a solid understanding of the Silverlight 2 platform and of the Microsoft Expression Studio toolset. It is relevant to both developers and designers alike, and comprises tutor-led sessions and hands-on exercises.

Participants will also receive a copy of the Silverlight 2 curriculum which can be customised and adapted to individual teaching needs, as well as a copy of Silverlight 2 Bible by Brad Dayley.

The three days are:

Monday, March 23rd 2009
Central Saint Martins, College of Art & Design, University of the Arts
London
Thursday, March 26th 2009
Bristol City College
Bristol
Tuesday, March 31st 2009
University of Birmingham
Birmingham

If you want to join one of the three dates, please get in touch with Paolo directly via email: pbarone [at] microsoft.com

PS: We are trying to arrange an additional date in Scotland, probably in May… while this is not confirmed yet, if you are interested in this, please let us know as well!!

IT Academy Student Pass - Free eLearning

edunhill — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:31:54 GMT

A little while back I posted about a great new programme we launched which gives students free access to official Microsoft eLearning courses.

To sign up you need a unique code which authenticates you as a student, the great news is these codes are now available (along with a bunch of free software) from DreamSpark. For more information about DreamSpark take a look at my posts here and here and to see exactly what's included in IT Academy Student Pass take a look at the official site.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft eLearning,DreamSpark,IT Academy,Certification,Student Pass

DreamSpark

ukacademia — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 18:33:17 GMT

DreamSpark is a Microsoft program for placing key tools into the hands of students. It includes:

Visual Studio 2008
Expression Studio 2
Windows Server 2008
XNA Creators Club memberships
…and more

These tools are available to provide students with the equipment they need to build the next generation applications whether they are games, rich internet applications, desktop or server based applications.

To help you spread the word about DreamSpark we have put together a promotional kit for you to place in communal areas on campus:

The kit includes:

Banners for email and web
Posters
Postcards
Laptop stickers

To request a promotional kit, please email ukacinfo@microsoft.com with the following information:

Name
Institution Name
Address
Telephone
Email Address

(This offer is only open to UK universities and colleges. We will not use the details provided for any other activity unless you ask us to).

Free eLearning for Microsoft Certification

edunhill — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:13:00 GMT

Ever fancied getting some more letters after you name and improving your job prospects when you leave uni? Then Microsoft certification is for you!

We're making a whole bunch of official eLearning content available to students for free through the IT Academy Student Pass programme. These courses will give you everything you need to learn to take a MCP exams and get ready for industry!

~~To sign up you need a unique code to authenticate yourself as a student, if you want one~~ ~~click here to email me~~.

*** UPDATE - You can now get your code directly from DreamSpark (see this post) ***

Once you've got your code you can register here.

For all the details check out the official website.

Technorati Tags: MCP,Microsoft eLearning,IT Academy,Student Pass,Certification

Windows Embedded Seminars

ukacademia — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:58:02 GMT

Last week I posted news about the Windows XP Professional for Embedded Systems Event at TVP on 21st October.

Following on from that post, I’d also like to tell you about a series of online seminars relating to specific aspects of Windows Embedded technology. While not perhaps for those of you already teaching embedded technologies, the seminars may prove useful if you are considering future curriculum developments.

Windows Embedded and Gaming
16th September 2008
9:00 - 10:00

Windows Embedded and Kiosk Solutions
13th November 2008
9:00 - 10:00

Windows Embedded and Industrial Automation
19th February 2009
9:00 - 10:00

Windows Embedded and Medical Solutions
30th April 2009
9:00 - 10:00

If any of the above are of interest, you can get further information by clicking here.

Best,

Allison

Microsoft Research Asia - 10th Anniversary Innovation Forum

ukacademia — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:29:56 GMT

On August 12, Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft^®, joined visionary technologists from Microsoft Research (MSR) Asia, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, and the University of Hong Kong, to celebrate a decade of ground-breaking collaboration during the Microsoft Research Asia's 10th Anniversary Innovation Forum.

Gates, who delivered the keynote speech, said that Microsoft’s relationship to academia in the Asia Pacific region remains vital and that cultivating the next generation of researchers should continue to be a focal point of MSR Asia’s work. “For the last 10 years, great collaborative work between Microsoft Research Asia and the region’s world-leading academic researchers has resulted in a wide range of exciting technology innovations,” Gates said. “As Asia becomes more and more of a global centre for innovation, I have no doubt that Microsoft Research Asia and its academic partners will have an even bigger impact on the world of technology.”

At the MSR Asia Innovation Forum, Bill Gates said that the success of Microsoft depends on its ability to attract and retain the best talent from around the world—something he believes MSR Asia is doing well.

To learn more about this collaboration and to hear Bill’s speech, click Innovation.

Best wishes,

Allison

News from the Faculty Summit

ukacademia — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:03:08 GMT

Lee Dirks, the Director for Education and Scholarly Research, announced five new ‘lifecycle’ tools for academics and researchers. The tools are as follows:

Research Information Centre
Creative Commons (an add-in to Microsoft Office)
Article Authoring (an add-in to Microsoft Word)
E-Journal Hosting Service
Research Output Repository Platform

To hear more about these tools from Lee, please visit Channel 8.

If you have any questions, do contact me and I’ll see if I can get them answered for you.

Best,

Allison

Live Mesh Now Available to UK Users

edunhill — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:58:46 GMT

You've probably all heard something in the IT press about Live Mesh over the last couple of months well now you have a chance to go try the tech preview yourselves! Sign up is now open to UK users and if you already have a Live ID then all you need to do is go to mesh.com and log in.

To find out more about the tech preview take a look at the official site and the team blog.

Before you get too excited it is worth noting that currently the tech preview only includes access to the end user application, things will get really interesting when the SDK is released for developers. To find out more about the developer technologies and get on the waiting list for the SDK tech preview check out this page.

Technorati Tags: Live Mesh,Live ID,Tech Preview,Mesh SDK

Invitation to Convergence 2008 Copenhagen - Microsoft Dynamics Academic Alliance MDAA:00071306

ukacademia — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:26:00 GMT

Hi,

I thought you'd like to receive your invitation to an interesting event in Denmark.

Microsoft Dynamics Academic Alliance invites you to attend:

Microsoft Academic Preconference and Convergence 2008 Copenhagen, Denmark from 17 to 20 November, 2008.

Last year we hosted about 60 educators and researchers from 17 countries from around the world. We would like to see you this year!

The Academic Preconference will be held 17-18 November 2008.

· Includes two tracks (Educators and Researchers Track) with several special sessions, workshops and network opportunities for educators and researchers working with Microsoft Dynamics software. You will be able to network, exchange experiences and enhance your knowledge with like-minded educators and researchers.

· Location: Copenhagen Business School (CBS) – Kilevej 14a, 2000 Frederiksberg.

· Registration fee: no registration fee is associated with these two days.

· Please consider the following call for papers and presentations.

Call for Papers – Researchers Track - due by 1st September 2008:

Academic Preconference 2008 - Research Agenda

17 - 18 November 2008
Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Frederiksberg

Submit to: workshop@3gERP.org - Please write "Submission to 3gERP workshop"

See instructions attached.

Call for Presentation – Educators Track - due by 1st September 2008:

Academic Preconference 2008 - Educators Agenda
17 - 18 November 2008

Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Frederiksberg

Submit to: dynaa@microsoft.com – Please write “Academic Preconference - Convergence 2008 Presentation”

See instructions attached.

Convergence will be held 19-20 November 2008.

· Here you will enhance your knowledge through Dynamics conference sessions and interactions with Microsoft customers, partners, Microsoft Dynamics specialist and industry experts and establish a true community that can be leveraged in your work.

· Location: Bella Center A/S, Center Boulevard, 2300 Copenhagen S

· Registration fee - Academic Alliance team will fund a main part of your registration fee at Convergence. Your costs will include €250.00 for your share of registration fee.

· Please request special registration codes from us to have the special academic fee.

Registration:

To register please fill in attached registration form and send to dynaa@microsoft.com.

Registration includes entrance at the registered event, the meals served as part of the agenda as well as a special educator evening gathering.

The number of participants is limited due to space restrictions and will be determined on a first come basis.

Customer Excellence Award - Excellence in Academics:

· The Convergence Customer Excellence Awards recognize, honor and celebrate customers/members that have achieved outstanding success with their Microsoft solutions as well as Microsoft partners’ solutions. Start to consider if that is your educational institution.

· Please submit your own nomination via the online form which will be available 1 July 2008. Find more details here: http://www.microsoft.com/Dynamics/convergence/copenhagen/2008/customer_excellence.aspx

To make sure to receive all details please write to dynaa@microsoft.com to be included on the mailing list.

We look forward to seeing you in Copenhagen!

MICROSOFT DYNAMICS ACADEMIC ALLIANCE

The Microsoft Dynamics Academic Alliance is a global program that enables educators to incorporate Microsoft Dynamics technology into the classroom. Currently, over 1,000 institutions around the world use Microsoft Dynamics products to provide students with an exceptional hands-on learning experience. If you would like to learn more about the Academic Alliance you are welcome to visit our website: http://www.microsoft.com/education/academic_alliance.mspx.

Conference on 3rd Generation Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (3gERP)

The 3gERP project aims to develop the academic foundations for a ‘standard’ flexible and highly configurable global ERP-system for Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs), which can be implemented and maintained at a fraction of the costs of current systems. The ambition of the project is to tackle some of the fundamental challenges and trade-offs existing systems have, for instance with regard to customizability vs. total cost including upgrades. If you would like to learn more about 3gERP please visit this website: http://www.3gerp.org

All the best,

Allison, your new Academic Information Manager

Introduction to Web Development; Popfly Input Blocks

edunhill — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:59:15 GMT

In this the last in a series of five articles on Microsoft Web Development we look at creating an input block to allow your web service to be used in Popfly.

Building our block

For the purpose of this tutorial we will implement a block that will take XML data (in the form of an RSS feed), process and display that data. This will demonstrate the principles of building an input block in Popfly using JavaScript. In this tutorial we will build out put functionality into our block so we can display our data formatted with html, it is very easy to tweak the output so it can be transformed and displayed using further blocks.

Firstly, head over to http://www.popfly.com and login with your Windows Live ID. Then using the toolbar at the top, select Create Stuff > Block. Now we can start building our data input block...

When you first view the ‘create block’ screen, you’ll see a bunch of XML – this is the definition of the block so that you can provide customisation through Popfly’s user interface. Seeing as we’re creating an RSS-reader block, we’ll call ours “RSSFeed”.

1. Where it says class=“HelloWorldClass”, change it to read class=“RSSFeed”.

2. You’ll notice below there is a group tagged ‘operations’. This is where you can build different behaviours for your block to have. For this block, we’ll implement one operation: getItems. This will simply return all the titles from our RSS feed.

3. Rename the default operation from “hello” to “getItems”.

4. Inside the description tags, change the description, to something such as “Gets the titles from the RSS feed.”

5. Above the <outputs> group of tags, create another group called inputs.

6. Create an input tag with the name=“url”, required=“true” and type=“feedURL”.

7. Give this new input tag a new description, such as “The URL of the RSS feed.”

8. If you like, you can give this a <defaultValue> property, I’ve set mine to my blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/edunhill/rss.xml.

9. Under the <outputs> group, change the isArray property to “true”, change the type to “custom” and add object=“RSSItem” – this will show we’re outputting a list of RSSItems.

10. After the <operations> group, add a new group called <objects>, so we can quickly define what an RSSItem is.

11. Create a new <object> tag, with name=“RSSItem”, then give it another tag called <field> with the properties name=“title”, type=“title” and isArray=“false”.

12. That’s it! The block is now defined so Popfly can understand it. Hopefully you should have something that looks like the below:

Now, we have to head on over to the “Block Code” tab, to write the code that will actually make the block do it’s thing.

1. Change the HelloWorldClass text to read RSSFeed.

2. Rename the first “hello” function to “getItems”, and add url in the brackets after the word “function”.

3. Then inside the function, type the following:

var returnResponse = environment.getXml(url);

return this.__formatResponseDataRSSItem(returnResponse);

These lines download the RSS feed into a readable format for use with our block.

4. Create another RSSFeed.prototype. called “__formatResponseDataRSSItem” – this will return the article titles as an array of strings (lines of text) for use with our block.

5. Inside the new function, add the following code:

     var resultArray  = new Array();

    var itemNodeList = resultXML.getElementsByTagName('item');

    var resultNodeCount = itemNodeList.length;            

    var resultArray  = new Array(resultNodeCount);

    for(var i = 0; i < resultNodeCount; i++)

    {   

        var itemNode = itemNodeList[i];

        if(itemNode)

        {                

            var title =         itemNode.getElementsByTagName("title").length >= 1 ?        itemNode.getElementsByTagName("title")[0].text : "";

                resultArray[i] = new RSSItem(title);

        }

    }

    return resultArray;

This code iterates through each of the titles in the RSS XML document and adds them to our resultArray, which is in turn, returned to the block for output.

6. The two final things to do are define (in code) an RSSItem, and then define how our block will pass it’s data to another block (or optionally, how it will output the data).

7. Define another function called “RSSItem” with “title” as a parameter, then insert the code: this.title = title;

This code defines RSSItem as ‘having a title’.

8. Finally, we need to output some sort of data. Create another RSSItem.prototype. called “toString” and insert the following code:

    var html = ""; 

    html += "<strong>" + this.title + "</strong><br />"; 

    return html;

This code simply outputs all the titles in bold as html to be read either by the user, or another block.

And that’s it! Now our block is totally built and configured, hopefully you’ll be looking at something like this:

Now we can quickly test the block, by clicking the “Save and Run” option to the top-right of your screen. Give the block a name, like RSSFeed, and Popfly will create a new Mashup with your block. If you want to see what it looks like, you can hit preview and should be able to see a list of article titles.

You can change the code in step 8 above to output variables instead of html so you can hook this block up with a display or transform block.

I hope you've enjoyed the series, if you have any questions about any aspect of Microsoft Web Dev don't hesitate to drop me a line.

Technorati Tags: Popfly,JavaScript,Silverlight,Studentzine

Introduction to Web Development; Silverlight and SQL

edunhill — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:06:00 GMT

In the fourth in a series of five articles exploring Microsoft Web technologies we'll look at implementing a Silverlight front end for our SQL database/WCF Web Service.

Prerequisites

For this tutorial you will need Visual Studio 2008 Standard or above and the Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Tools for Visual Studio 2008. Both items are available for free for students (see links).

Getting started

Last month we looked at building a simple ASP.NET Web App that connected to a SQL database to add and retrieve data. This month we will build on that example and create a Silverlight frontend for the database. Because Silverlight is a client side technology and we want to retrieve data from the server side we need to implement a Web Service that will retrieve the data on the server side and then provide that data to our Silverlight application.

The Web Service

We will start by building a WCF web service that will retrieve data from our database (using the principles demonstrated last month) and allow us to access this data in our Silverlight application.

Open Visual Studio and select 'File'>'New'>'Project...'>'Web'>'WCF Service Application'
Firstly we need to reset the default binding in the Web.config file to Basic HttpBinging:
- Open the Web.config file
- Find <System.serviceModel> <service> <endpoint>
- Set the 'binding' property to 'basicHttpBinding'

Now lets implement our database and dataset - follow the instructions in last months article.

If you get stuck take a look at the below code which implements retrieval of data using our dataset and returns an int specifying the number of rows in our table:

public int CountUsers()        {            DataSet1TableAdapters.addressesTableAdapter addressAdapter = new CustomerService.DataSet1TableAdapters.addressesTableAdapter();            DataSet1.addressesDataTable addresses = addressAdapter.GetData();            ArrayList addressList = new ArrayList();            foreach (DataSet1.addressesRow addressRow in addresses)            {                addressList.Add(addressRow.Name + " - " + addressRow.Phone);            }            int rows = addressList.Count;            return rows;        }

That's our service implemented!

The Silverlight Frontend

Once you have your WCF Web Service up and running you can move onto implementing your Silverlight frontend. I will now show you how to consume data from your service using Silverlight.

First we need to add a Silverlight Project to our solution:
- Right click the solution in the Solution Explorer and select 'Add'>'New Project...'>'Silverlight'>'Silverlight Application'
- In the following dialog box leave the default settings intact and click OK.
Now you should see your page.xaml file in design/code view
Add '<TextBox Height="50" Width="200" x:Name="userCountResult"/>' within the '<Grid>' tags to create a TextBox we can manipulate in code.
Now we need to create a reference to the service we created in the previous section:
- In the Solution Explorer right click the references folder under the Silverlight project and select 'Add service reference...'>'Discover'
- You should now see the Web service you created so just click OK to create the reference.

Next we're going to write the code to connect to the Web service, download the data and when the data is fully downloaded fire an event that will update out TextBox:

You need to insert the below code into your Page() class (NB: you may have to change some of the reference names depending on the naming conventions you have used)

public Page()        {            InitializeComponent();            Binding binding = new BasicHttpBinding();            EndpointAddress address = new EndpointAddress("http://localhost:54580/service1.svc");            ServiceReference.Service1Client proxy = new ServiceReference.Service1Client(binding, address);              proxy.CountUsersCompleted += new EventHandler<CustomerClient.ServiceReference.CountUsersCompletedEventArgs>(proxy_CountUsersCompleted);            proxy.CountUsersAsync();        }

This code will connect with the service running on the same domain, set up a proxy, initiate data retrieval and create an event that will be fired when data retrieval is complete.
So now we need to handle the event:

void proxy_CountUsersCompleted(object sender, CustomerClient.ServiceReference.CountUsersCompletedEventArgs e)        {            userCountResult.Text = "Number of users: " + e.Result;        }

Hit F5 and it should all work. If you find it throws an unhandled exception related to http error codes the chances are that the dev server provided by VS2008 is not using port 54580 as in the above example. The port used is dynamic and you just need to check in your IE address bar and update the code accordingly. If you come up against any other problems take a look at the zip file below - it contains my working sln file which you can download and play with.

Also why not check out these excellent tutorials on MSDN:

Next Month

Next month will be the final article in this series and will investigate implementing our Web Service as a Block in Popfly to allow us to rapidly build Web Apps and share our data in new ways.

Technorati Tags: Silverlight,SQL,Visual Studio 2008,Popfly,Web Service,Web Application,ASP.NET

XNA Creators Club codes in MSDN AA now

markjo — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:31:49 GMT

Andy has posted about XNA CC codes going into MSDN AA - great news if you are teaching games programming (or want to) and want to get your students building games on Windows and Xbox 360.

XNA Creators Club Codes are now in MSDN AA!

Robochamps Robotics League - Win Real Robots!

edunhill — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:35:34 GMT

Today saw the launch of a new website which allows users to compete in a series of challenges to program virtual robots using Microsoft Robotics Studio (a plugin for Visual Studio - C# Express and above).

Historically robotics has had many barriers to entry for the casual users wanting to get started such as the cost of hardware. The cool thing about Robochamps is it uses 3D simulation technology built into Robotics Studio to allow users to program virtual robots at no cost. Even cooler you can actually win real robots by competing!

It's really easy to get started; just set up the IDE (you can get a Visual Studio 2008 from DreamSpark if you're a student), pick a challenge and start coding, if you get stuck there's even a learning zone on the site.

Technorati Tags: Robotics,Visual Studio,Robochamps,Robots

Imagine Cup Day on 5th June 2008 - Celebrating the best in UK student talent

markjo — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:49:42 GMT

It's been a busy couple of months for the Imagine Cup and we have a good 200-odd students fighting it out for great prizes and the opportunity to travel to Paris (in style) to compete at the worldwide finals.

And to celebrate the best year for the Imagine Cup in the UK we are going to run an event tentatively called Imagine Cup Day (I'll update with a better name shortly!). It will be an event exclusively for Imagine Cup finalists in various categories to come to London to hear from Microsoft, leading industry speakers on the future of Software and to network with future employers looking for talented students. That's right, you could get a job at this event....

Credit to PSD

We will have several VIPs, employers and our sponsor Windows Live Search there on the day to talk to the students.

Outline agenda looks like:

Keynote presentation on the future of software innovation
Technology sessions
Showcase of Imagine Cup entries
Career networking session
Award ceremony (think the Oscars without the crying luvvies)

And then we throw a party! Got some fun stuff lined up - Guitar Hero III, Universally Challenged (a NxtGen production) and music/food/beer/drinks :-)

I bet you are wondering how to attend this extremely cool event - Well, if you are a talented student competing in the Imagine Cup then expect an invite very shortly. Same goes for our sponors, mentors and the student academics. If you are a London blogger - and want to attend, then we want you there - email me at markjo@microsoft.com and we'll get you a press pass (although these are very limited).