SoulSolutions - Live Services

Presenting at QLD MSDN User Group 8 December

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:16:47 GMT

To finish up the year we’re presenting at the QLD MSDN Usergroup to show off a bunch of Silverlight 3 features like perspective 3D and Deep Zoom and combine these with Dallas, Pivot, PhotoSynth and Bing Maps.

The official blurb:

Data Visualisation with Silverlight 3

To finish up the year come join Windows Live Platform MVPs Bronwen and John for a festive drink and a look at how you can visualise your data on the web using Silverlight 3. We will explore some of the many controls available including the new Bing Maps control giving you some great ideas for your next project.

Date and Time: 8 December, 2009 17:30 for 18:00

Location: Microsoft Brisbane Office, Level 9, Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane.

RSVP: mike@fitzsimon.com.au

Technorati Tags: Data Visualisation,Silverlight,Bing Maps,QLD MSDN User Group

MVP Certification Award 2009

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:48:03 GMT

Back in February Microsoft had a special promotion that allowed you to get 10% off you Microsoft Certification exam and if you failed, you got a free retake. The MVP’s were given special discount codes that they could give to people to claim the 10%.

Today I received this shiny plaque in the mail: ASIA MVP Certification Hero Award 2009. This was given to the top 3 MVP Australia and New Zealand contributors to the promotion.

I’m not sure who the other 2 were but if you’re one of them, let me know so I can add to to this post.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Certification,Certification Hero Program,MVP

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Girl Geek Dinner 6 with Kay Lam-Beattie

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:25:14 GMT

For our July Girl Geek Dinner we're heading to The Hutch Bistro at New Farm and we're fortunate to have Kay Lam-Beattie as our guest speaker. So gather all of your legal/IT questions to ask Kay on the night!

About Kay:

Kay graduated from QUT in 1992 with a Bachelor of Business (Accountancy) and an honours degree in Law. To obtain more specialised skills, Kay also completed a Masters in Law concentrating on the areas of intellectual property (IP) and IT-related legal issues, as well as a Graduate Certificate in IT.

Kay has been the principal of IDEALAW (and its predecessor Legal Capital Lawyers) since 2005.

Kay’s broadly based academic qualifications places her in an ideal position not only to understand the intricacies of her specialist areas of IT and IP related law, but also technical IT and business issues. Kay also speaks conversational Japanese, having lived and worked in Japan for a number of years.

Who is invited?

If you are a geek and a girl or know of one who is willing to escort you then you are welcome and encouraged to come along. There is a technical focus with the intention of having fun and connecting with other women in IT.

Who pays for dinner?
This month is not sponsored so you will have to pay for your own dinner

Where + When
Date: Thursday 2nd July, 2009
Time: 7:00 pm
Where: The Hutch Bistro

75 Welsby Street, New Farm

http://www.thehutchbistro.com.au/food-wine.html

Technorati Tags: Girl Geek Dinners,Brisbane,Kay Lam-Beattie,WIT

Running the Messenger Samples

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:13:19 GMT

I downloaded the sample app for the Windows Live Messenger bits in preparation for our talk at Remix next week. If you haven’t played with it, the WebToolkit Sample site is a great starting place! There’s a couple of things you have to do to get them running so I thought it’d be a good idea to write these down for others.

Firstly, you’ll need an application id, so make sure you go to the Azure Services Developer Portal: https://lx.azure.microsoft.com/Cloud/Provisioning/Default.aspx and create a new project with a Live Services: Existing APIs type. Make sure you remember the domain name and URL you chose e.g. I picked remixdemo.com.au and return URL of http://remixdemo.com.au/Messenger/Default.aspx and also note down your app_id and secret key as you’ll need them to run the samples.

Make sure you add an entry in your hosts file for the domain you chose so you can run the application locally. To do this open notepad as administrator, and open the hosts file located at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc and create an entry like: 127.0.0.1 remixdemo.com.au

Next, I went to IIS and created a virtual directory called Messenger and pointed it to the SampleSite. To run the application I browsed to http://remixdemo.com.au/messenger/Default.aspx.

Make sure you setup your site in the web.config to use your app_id, secret key and correct urls. The one that caught me out was the app_provisioned_usertoken. I was getting an exception in the User.cs class for consent.IsValid() until I set the value to empty string e.g.

<add key="app_provisioned_usertoken" value="">add>

Make sure you set the app_logo to point to the pulse logo so your login screen has the correct image e.g.

<add key="app_logo" 
     value="http://remixdemo.com.au/messenger/App_Images/PulseLogo.gif">
add>

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Messenger Toolkit,Sample App,Configuration

Speaking at Remix 2009

Sun, 31 May 2009 02:35:54 GMT

We’re fortunate enough to be presenting at this year’s Remix in Sydney 11th June. We’re making an appearance in the Designer Track this year and will be showing off the new Messenger Toolkit bits. The abstract for our talk is:

<3 the New Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit for Social Websites

See how to add IM to a site with the Windows Live Messenger Library and UI Controls, and how to build new relationships around content with Messenger social capabilities. Also hear how top sites and marketers are using the social connections of Windows Live users to grow and build brand loyalty.

What we intend to to cover is:

Put a little piece together to show off the latest features of the platform itself such as custom emotions on avatars, multi-point presence, xbox integration, photo sharing etc.
What is messenger, why would you want to use messenger on your site?
Show current examples
Show the new controls and how they fit together
Skinning
Top Australian sites mix up, thought provoking ideas of how some of the top sites in Australia could use messenger.
Call to action, get started today, links + resources.

There are some great sessions including Silverlight 3, Expression 3 Sketchflow, Blend 3, Virtual Earth Silverlight Control, Surface development just to name a few. Register HERE and secure your Early Bird Ticket for $199!

Don’t forget to enter the IE8 competition: build a Web Slice, Accelerator or Visual Search Provider and you could win an XBOX. Full details HERE.

Technorati Tags: Remix,Australia,Windows Live Messenger Toolkit,2009

MVP status renewed

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:08:59 GMT

The New Year started well when I received the following email:

Dear Bronwen Zande,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2009 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others.

So I’m back for another year as a Live Services Platform MVP

Technorati Tags: MVP,Live Services

2008 in review

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 05:44:51 GMT

Wow! What a year 2008 has been. We had a meeting to reflect on the year and it’s not till you start to write it down that you realise how much happened in 12 Months. We did quite a bit of travelling (all for work) this year including Seattle, Montreal, New Zealand and every capital city bar Darwin. We were fortunate to meet and get to know a bunch of really smart, passionate and just generally amazing people this year.

After such an amazing year I’m feeling a bit drained so my main goal is to take some time off. I’ve got a trip to Egypt planned for March that should help us recharge.

Here’s a summary of our year:

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New Article: Using Admin Centre for Geek Girl Blog Email

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:08:15 GMT

We use Admin Centre for a few sites, one of the main ones is Geek Girl Blogs. I’ve done up an article to show the different membership and branding options it provides here.

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Speaking at Tech Ed NZ 2008

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:20:31 GMT

We decided to be different and go to Tech Ed New Zealand this year. We’re doing a couple of presentations at Tech.Ed NZ if you want to check them out.

WEB217 – The Live Highlights Package – 3/9/2008 – 1:40-2:10pm

GEN101 – Virtually There – Girl Geek Dinner – 1/9/2008 8:00-10:00pm

Abstracts are below:

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Live Search Article Available

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:33:59 GMT

Back in March I had an article on Live Search published in Code-Magazine. I’ve finally gotten around to publishing on our site. You can check it out here.

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