I was presenting at the Lincoln .NET User Group last night and about midway through, my Azure project failed.  I was getting an error that said the Account Name was not specified when my app tried to work with Azure Storage. It was bizarre because the first demo had gone great and the same error was showing up even when I went into my “completed and I know this will work” project.  It was very weird. 

I started to bang on it today, and discovered that somehow the Startup Project in the solution (in both solutions actually which made it doubly weird) had switched from the Azure Service project to the WebRole project.  That meant that my app was being run as a normal ASP.NET app and not being packaged and deployed into the Azure Development Fabric.  Without being in the Fabric, the StorageClient code could not access the Config Settings from the Azure Service project – BAM! No account name to be found!

Sorry to my Lincoln folks for that stumbling block. I’ve never had that happen before and not sure how it switched in mid-demo.  But now we know… ;-)

I’ll be presenting on Developing and Deploying Your First Windows Azure Application next week at the Twin Cities .NET User Group.  I’ll also do a quick overview of all the various services that can be found under the Azure umbrella and hopefully help clear up what is what when it comes to Azure.  Lots of time spent in the IDE writing code.  Come on out and say Hi.

Spaghetti Code interviews Mike Hodnick to talk about his experience learning how to develop on Silverlight 2 by creating a game.  Mike talks about the various things he did to create the game, lessons learned, and covers some interesting things like using a physics engine, rendering, performance, and more.

The next installment of the Building Composite WPF app series is now available.  In this installment, I introduce Modules by providing an overview of what they are and an example of the steps involved in creating one.  The demo illustrates a simple view from a Module being displayed in our Northwind Business Center application.

Download video here

Download source code here

MIX 09 will be held March 18-20, 2009 in Las Vegas at the ever posh Venetian Resort, Hotel and Casino.  MIX is a great conference and shows off the cool stuff that can be done on the web using Microsoft technologies, or just web technologies in general.  Some of the cool things on tap for this year’s conference include:

• What’s New in Silverlight 3.  Learn about the new experience-oriented Silverlight 3 features, and see how to build Silverlight 3 applications using Expression Blend and Visual Studio.
• What's New in Silverlight 3 Media.  Learn about the latest media features available with Silverilght 3.
• Deep Dive into Silverlight Graphics.  Hear about the Silverlight 3 rendering pipeline, and learn how to enhance your application experience with the latest additions to the Silverlight graphics APIs.

You can also check out the latest MIX09 sessions, including more new sessions on Silverlight, Live Mesh/Live Framework and RIA.  More sessions will be published in coming weeks so check often.  There are also some neat tech projects being highlighted on the MIX web site as well, including:

• Oomph: A Microformats Toolkit is for web developers, designers and users, making it easier to create, consume, and style Microformats
• Oxite: An open source, standards compliant, and extensible content management sample that can run anything from blogs to big web sites. We know this because it runs MIX Online.  It has had a “colorful” reception already. ;-)
• Coming Soon - Descry: Exploring Data and Information Visualization

One thing to keep in mind if you are thinking about attending but worried about the cost is you don’t have to stay at the Venetian.  I haven’t check the prices, but the Venetian is usually pricier than the other nearby hotels.  The Mirage and the TI are just across the street and usually offer much better rates.  You can go down the strip and find great rates at Harrah’s if you don’t mind a bit further walk (I’m not a bit fan of the Imperial Palace which is in between Harrah’s and the Venetian, but you are welcome to stay there <grin/>)  Or go totally out of the box and stay off the Strip at a hotel like the Westin – it’s a longer walk but you will save a lot of money.  Of course, once you are that far away places like Caesar’s (my favorite) and Paris become options as well.

Make sure to register by February 13th to save on the registration fee.  And let me know if you are going – I’m still trying to weasel my way to the conference but hopefully I will see you there – and maybe if I can say I know a lot of people that are going I can get someone to take pity on me!

I am heading back to my old stomping grounds next week and will be presenting some good stuff on Windows Azure at the Lincoln and Omaha user groups.  My schedule looks like this right now:

• Drive down on Tuesday, 1/27, to Des Moines.  I’m hoping to get in an afternoon customer meeting in DSM and will stay over that night before heading to Omaha the next morning.
• Roll into Omaha on 1/28 and also hope to get a customer meeting in as well during the day. Drive to Lincoln to present at the Lincoln .NET UG.
• Definite customer meeting Thursday morning followed by presenting at the Omaha .NET UG that evening.
• Start the long drive back in MN on Friday morning.

If you are in the area, sign up and come on out.  And if you could say a little prayer for good driving weather, that would be nice too. ;-)

I have no idea what to make of this commercial for SongSmith from Microsoft Research.  I am hoping, as in down on my knees hoping, that some how, some way, this turns out to be a fake.  This is bad, I mean really, really, really, REALLY bad.  I hate to knock on my boys from MSResearch, but whoever approved this should be fired.  Horribly casting – the ‘Dad’????  Wow! If he was my dad growing up I think I would asked for a retroactive vasectomy.  The “my band needs a new song” dude?  What kind of band has a dork like that in it?  The boss lady?  Ugghhhh, don’t even get me started. 

Microsoft seriously needs to get a new marketing firm.

Spaghetti Code hit the road and went the Minneapolis MSDN Dev Con on January 13th.  I was able to sit down with the event’s speakers and spend a few minutes talking about what they presented on at the conference.  Despite snow covered roads and drive-time temperatures hovering at –14 degrees, more than 325 people showed up to listen to the guys talk about the latest and greatest technologies on the Microsoft platform.

Speaker Time Markers
- Robert Boedigheimer #1 - 00:49
- Mike Benkovich - 06:53
- Jason Bock - 12:19
- Todd Van Nurden - 18:56
- Phillip Wolfe - 26:45
- Bill Maurer - 32:12
- Rocky Lhotka - 38:53
- Shannon Braun - 48:22
- Robert Boedigheimer #2 - 54:42

Yesterday was the Minneapolis MDC, and it turned out to be a great event.  With a winter storm passing through the Twin Cities and temperatures hovering at -14 during the morning commute, I was a little nervous about what kind of turnout we were going to get.  The event ended up being oversold, but with typical drop-off we had been expecting a full house.  As the traffic reports of roll-over accidents and school delays became the topic of morning conversation, it was not looking grim, and as we approached the 8:30am start time, we were not even at 50% capacity.  After delaying the start of the keynote by 30 minutes, we got the show on the road, and by the end of the session, we had almost 325 people out of a max capacity 350!!!  To their credit, folks braved the weather and the traffic to make it to the event and see what was new and exciting in the world of Microsoft development. 

It was a great day.  The speakers were accommodating and the attendees understanding as we had to adjust the schedule to account for the late start.  With a little bit of hard work, we were able to end the event on time and get everyone started on their way home (or to sit in traffic as was more likely... sorry!).  We had a great line up of speakers: Rocky Lhotka, Robert Boedigheimer, Jason Bock, Chris Williams, Phillip Wolfe, Bill Maurer, Matt Mliner, Shannon Braun, Mike Benkovich, Todd van Nurden, and myself.  Jason Olson was in town from Redmond and even jumped on on stage with Chris Williams.  Kirstin Juhl helped in the Community Courtyard, as well. Thanks to everyone for helping out!!!!!!

I have known about Microsoft Tag for a little while, and am really excited now that it is officially in beta since I think it is such a cool piece of technology.  What is it?  Well, it has two pieces. 

The first is the Tag itself, which is really just a funky next generation barcode.  You can see a couple of Tags I created for SlickThought.NET in this post. Anybody can create a Tag and, at least during the beta, you can create Tags for free (and keep using them free for up to two years after RTM!).  When you create a Tag, you associate it with a Web URL, a phone number, a vCard, or just a piece of text.  You do that online at the Tag site once you have registered.  You can get a deeper understanding of the image technology here.

Now the really cool second part!  Tag also has a mobile phone application that runs on a range of mobile phones including Windows Mobile, J2ME, Blackberry, Symbian S60, and yes, even iPhone (Microsoft's second iPhone app!) - because the app needs to talk to the Tag service, you do need Internet access enabled on your phone.  When you run the app, it activates your cell phone's camera, and all you have to do is point the camera at the tag and "bam" - the Tag is recognized and whatever data that is associated with that tag is retrieved and acted upon.  For the first Tag image (left side) on this page, the Tag app will automatically launch your phone's browser and take you to SlickThought.NET - certainly a Tag my four readers will want to print and leave all over town!  The second Tag image (right side) is actually a vCard and will prompt you to add my Slickthought vCard to your phone's contact list.

I was impressed with how I barely had to get the Tag image in the camera's field of the view for the Tag application to recognize it.  In several tests, it was as easy as just waving the camera in in front of the image.  I can also share Tag information I have scanned from the Tag application and save them for later use.  Very cool stuff.  For product placement things, business cards, etc. - there are a ton of possibilities.  You can even put them on billboards! The Tag web site will also generate reports on how often your Tag has been scanned.