Azure Mobile Services: For Those Who Just Want to Code

If you follow Azure news on the web you might have noticed a new Azure service being offered in preview form called Mobile Services.

In this blog post we’ll be doing a high level overview of what Azure Mobile Services is and what it gives you. In subsequent posts we’ll dive deeper into how to get your hands dirty and actually use the thing.

With this initial preview the Windows 8 app development scenario has been enabled. We’re likely to see other platforms such as iOS and Windows Phone (my personal favorite) come on board as the Azure mobile team develops the new service.

Read More

How I Built an “Awesome Chat” application for Windows 8 with Windows Azure Mobile Service

In this blog post, I’m going to talk about how I built a Windows 8 application using Windows Azure Mobile Service. Windows Azure Mobile Service is the newest Windows Azure Services that you can use to provide backend services for your mobile applications (currently Windows 8, more coming soon). You can learn more and sign up for a preview of this service here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/scenarios/mobile-services/. More information about this service can be found on Scott Guthrie’s blog post here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2012/08/28/announcing-windows-azure-mobile-services.aspx. The service looked really promising and I thought I should give it a try and trust me, you’re not going to be disappointed. All-in-all it took me about 4 hours to build the application (and that included installing Windows 8, VS 2012, signing up for a marketplace account etc.). Since I’m quite excited about this service and the work I was able to accomplish in such a short amount of time, I’m going to dramatize this blog post a bit! I am big fan of TV series 24 so I will use that for dramatization  . Without further ado, let me start!

Read More...

What Windows 8 Developers Should Know About The Cloud

Successful Application = Windows 8 + Cloud

 

 

1. Client-side developers do need to embrace the cloud. The increasing popularity of connected devices like tablet computers and smartphones is having a direct effect on the adoption rate of personal cloud services. You can expect both connected devices and cloud services to grow together.
2. This trend has been accelerating over the past couple of years. Mobile and portable devices have limited internal storage and rely heavily on cloud services.
3. Windows 8 apps are generally Connected apps.
4. You can pull data to them or you can receive push notifications

Read full article here