The set of samples consists of 4 feature-based samples showing Mobile Services features like notification, authentication and scheduled jobs, and 6 scenario-based samples demonstrating how to use Mobile Services as a backend for your Windows Store apps in order to achieve things like calculating a game’s leaderboard, uploading album pictures to Windows Azure Storage and communicating ordering apps using Windows Azure Service Bus queues.

The source code of the samples are available at MSDN Code Gallery.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2013/01/09/new-windows-azure-mobile-services-getting-started-content.aspx ]]> 0 http://blogs.southworks.net/communication/2012/12/22/windows-azure-training-kit-december-2012-refresh/ http://blogs.southworks.net/communication/2012/12/22/windows-azure-training-kit-december-2012-refresh/#comments Sat, 22 Dec 2012 21:55:00 +0000 Southworks Communication http://blogs.southworks.net/communication/?p=123 read more]]> Watched the //build 2012 keynote sessions and loved the new features in the Windows Azure Platform? Want to put your hands on the geekily-awesome demo apps shown during the keynote?

The December 2012 Refresh of the Windows Azure Training Kit includes two new demos from the BUILD 2012 conference – Event Buddy Demo and BUILD Clips Demo – that demonstrate how to use Windows Azure Mobile Services, Windows Azure Media Services, Web Sites, and Cloud Services.

One of the nicest things about the Windows Azure Training Kit is that it is open source and available on GitHub. Besides browsing the content through the various GitHub repositories, you can also download the Training Kit using the “Web Installer” or the full “Offline Package”. Go get it!

It’s been a busy month preparing for //build/ , Microsoft’s annual developer conference. With the recent launches of Windows 8, Surface RT and Windows Phone 8, there’s a lot of cool stuff Microsoft is showing off at the conference. We’ve had the privilege of helping some awesome people create cool demos for the keynotes and breakout sessions. If you missed them live, you can visit Channel 9 to catch up on all the action.

Over the course of the today’s keynote by Satya Nadella, Scott Hanselman and Scott Guthrie showed several new technologies/features by updating the BuildClips Web application that lets users browse, play and upload personal videos.

1. Building and Extending Web Apps to Windows 8

Technology highlights: DotNetOpenAuth, Entity Framework 6, Windows Azure Tooling in Visual Studio, Web API and Windows Azure Web Sites

Using DotNetOpenAuth this ASP.NET application for handling videos supports Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft account authentication. While a SQL database is used for metadata, the videos are uploaded into blob storage, which easily scales to support required capacity. With the Azure Portal and Visual Studio it’s straightforward to publish the ASP.NET application to Windows Azure Websites. Once deployed you can scale the app through the portal by changing the mode to shared or reserved, and increasing the number of instances. By using Web API the application exposes an HTTP service that returns all videos. The Web API enables easy access to a broad range of clients, including Windows 8.

2. Using Windows Azure Media Services

Technology highlights: Windows Azure Media Services with Visual Studio and Windows 8

Consistent with other Azure services, you can easily manage Windows Azure Media Services right from the portal. With the latest update, you can even begin using Media Services to upload and encode videos without writing any code. But of course, you likely want to, and the demo shows how to consume the Windows Azure Media Services SDK in Visual Studio to create a Web application that ingests and encodes a video. Uploading the video into Media Services is a snap with the Windows 8 application.

3. Building N-Tier Cloud Services with Real-Time Communications

Technology highlights: Windows Azure Worker role and Windows 8 apps using SignalR

Using SignalR, the demo incorporates real-time, asynchronous messages from the video Web app to the Windows 8 client. With the Visual Studio project templates, it’s a breeze to add a Worker Role and update it to query the status of each video being encoding, and use SignalR to send it as tracing information to the Windows 8 client.

4. Deploying and Managing Windows Azure apps

Technology highlights: Windows Azure Management portal, Windows Azure Store, New Relic

This demo shows how to monitor and manage the Windows Azure Cloud Services that power the Windows 8 application. It also shows how to provision a partner services (e.g. New Relic) from the new Windows Azure Store.

Tune in and see what’s happening at //build/ – it’s a great time to be a developer with the new releases from Microsoft!

The October 2012 update of the Windows Azure Training Kit includes 47 hands-on labs, 24 demos and 38 presentations designed to help you learn how to build applications that use Windows Azure services. This technical content covers several of the new Windows Azure features including Windows Azure Web Sites, Virtual Machines, the new Management Portal, and new SDK and tools. The October update includes updated hands-on labs to use the latest version of Visual Studio 2012 and Windows 8, new demos and presentations which are available in Foundation, DevCamps, and ITPro.

The Windows Azure Training Kit is a first class citizen of the Windows Azure Portal – http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/other-resources/training-kit/.

Blending our significant experience with both Microsoft Windows Azure and IIS Media Services, we have been working hard for the past 6+ months contributing Windows Azure Media-Services solutions for deltatre who has integrated them for the broadcasters. These solutions are described below (for a related post highlighting the use of Window Azure Media Services, see ScottGu’s write-up here).

Asset Replication and Management Console

Windows Azure is a cloud platform that exists across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. Southworks created a tool that allows users to replicate video assets between data centers, providing redundancy in the unlikely event of data center down time.

We used the Windows Azure Media Services Client SDK to create a replication tool. The tool has a worker role that determines the difference between content in two data centers. Operators can use a web-based console to monitor the differences and initiate replication, either manually or automatically.

Partner Dashboard

Southworks created an online dashboard for creating, managing and monitoring live channels. The dashboard displays statistics about channels (including their health). Operations include the ability to create, start and stop channels, as well as archive assets.

The dashboard is a Windows Azure MVC application that makes use of the Windows Azure Media Services Live SDK. We used Silverlight, jQuery and Knockout.js to provide an intuitive and responsive user experience.

Microsoft Media Platform Video Editor (formerly Rough Cut Editor)

The Microsoft Media Platform Video Editor (MMP Video Editor) simplifies the editing and publishing process, enabling real-time, browser-based video editing, and providing the ability for publishers to improve collaboration, manage dynamic metadata and deliver exciting content to the Web. In support of deltatre, Southworks customized the Video Editor to integrate it with the deltatre CMS and support the asset publishing process.

The MMP Video Editor was created using Silverlight 5 and the Prism framework. It makes heavy use of IIS Media Services, IIS Smooth Streaming and composite manifests.

Azure Media Services Media Processors and Transcoding Workflows

In Windows Azure Media Services, a Media Processor is a component that handles a specific processing task, such as encoding, format conversion, encrypting, or decrypting media content. We created a set of Media Processors to:

• Translate a MMP Video Editor project to an EDL format compatible with Windows Azure Media Encoder in order to run a conform
• Publish an MP4 to be distributed to syndication networks

In addition, we implemented a variety of workflows to verify the correct functioning of the aforementioned Media Processors.

These components make use of the Windows Azure Media Services Platform SDK, the Windows Azure Media Services Client SDK, Windows Azure Media Encoder and the Media Platform Video Editor.

Whether it’s your penchant for using the command line, or the need to strut your RegEx muscles or your love of efficient administration, admit it – you’re a PowerShell junkie.

And now, with Windows PowerShell® Web Access you can use all your favorite cmdlets and commands without having to use a keyboard tethered to the box you are administering.

Windows PowerShell Web Access is a new feature in Windows Server® 2012 that acts as a Windows PowerShell gateway, providing a web-based Windows PowerShell console that is targeted at a remote computer. It enables IT Pros to run Windows PowerShell commands and scripts from a Windows PowerShell console in a web browser, with no Windows PowerShell, remote management software, or browser plug-in installation necessary on the client device.

All that is required to run the web-based Windows PowerShell console is a properly-configured Windows PowerShell Web Access gateway, and a client device browser that supports JavaScript® and accepts cookies.

For the scenario, we helped Drew Robbins to extend the Tankster Social Game (tankster.net) shown by Jason Zander and built using the Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games. Using new mobile support built-in ASP.NET MVC4 and jQuery Mobile for cross-devices (iPhone/iPod/WP7), Scott demonstrated how to make the Game Ranking “mobile friendly” without writing much code.

The solution also takes advantage of the new Web Sockets support on most modern Web Browsers to enable in-game chat and event notifications that enables users to play the game while also chatting with, or cheering for, their favorite players.

The application was created using Visual Studio 11 Preview and the C# 4.5 Async API, providing screaming performance consuming the Tankster Web Services and enabling up to twice the number of requests per second by using the magic keyword-pair of async/await.

During today’s TechEd keynote Drew Robbins presented Fabrikam Fiber, a solution to the problems of a fictional cable provider. The demo showed how enterprises can take their existing IT systems and extend them to the cloud to handle new demands such as a globally distributed, mobile workforce.

For the scenario, Johnny and JPG worked closely with Drew and his team to extend the Fabrikam Fiber call center system to the cloud by enabling Windows Azure Connect. Using some new tools coming in Mango, they built a Windows Phone application that connects to a service running on Windows Azure to enable Fabrikam Fiber to notify service personnel of new appointments, notify customers of the pending arrival of a service person, and allow central management to respond to increased demand by monitoring status.

The solution also took advantage of the ACS support in the latest release of the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7, announced earlier today (see Vittorio’s post for an excellent overview of ACS support), to handle authentication via ADFS, Windows Live™ ID, Yahoo! and Google.

Check out the video at the TechEd site to see this demo and a host of other cool things presented by Microsoft.

Keeping up to date can be daunting, but by using the Windows Azure Training Kit resources you can stay ahead of the curve.

The April Update contains two new labs. The first is Authenticating Users in a Windows Phone 7 App via ACS, OData Services and Windows Azure, and the second is for the Windows Azure Traffic Manager.

The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit includes hands-on labs, presentations, and samples to help you understand how to build applications that utilize Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and the Windows Azure AppFabric.

Announced last week, the new ACS includes a several new features: single sign on from business and web identity providers, easy integration with Microsoft’s development tools, support for both enterprise-grade and web friendly protocols, out of the box integration with Facebook, Windows Live ID, Google and Yahoo, and more.

What’s the best way to get up to speed on the new features? Download the April update to the Identity Training Kit. It contains a new hands-on lab demonstrating how to use ACS 2.0 to manage authentication in your Windows Phone apps, along with several labs updated for ACS 2.0.

Beyond the set of hands-on labs, you’ll also fine documents and references that will help you to learn how to take advantage of Microsoft’s latest identity and access control developer’s products and services.