Happy Diwali

Here's wishing all my friends a very happy and joyous Diwali and a prosperous New Year..

Using Fiddler for debugging Windows Phone Apps

Nice article on using Fiddler on Windows Phone 8 ...

http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Windows-Store-Developer-Solutions/Using-Fiddler-to-troubleshoot-HTTP-protocol-issues-on-Windows-Phone

Xamarin and Calatrava

While there have been scores of tools in the market in the space of cross monile development platforms, i have always liked Xamarin due to its obvious affinity with c#...read an interesting take on cons of Xamarin at
http://www.whitneyland.com/2013/05/why-i-dont-recommend-xamarin-for-mobile-development.html

Also one of the tools the folks mention is Calatrava, a good tool built with support from Thoughtworks.

http://calatrava.github.io

Windows 8.1 Enterprise Edition Release

The enterprise version of Windows 8.1 is finally out. Following is a link explaining what to expect from that upgrade:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/17/windows_81_update_what_to_know/

Pebble

With the advent of recent  Pebble based applications, checked out the cloud version of the development environment http://www.cloudpebble.com.
It gives a nice way to compile the application based on templates. The pbw that gets generated after the build can be downloaded and deployed.

Wearable tech applications

Wearable technologies have taken the tech world by storm and are promising some revolutionary applications in the years to come.Some ideas around where these could be used.

1. The agent at the boarding gate has a head up display just above eye level, which provides them with status information on the scanner and information on the passports and boarding passes that are being scanned.
2. They could be used by roving agents who currently carry iPads, or by agents at the entrance to airport lounges to remove the need to physically scan boarding passes and frequent flyer cards.
3. Airlines or airports offering wearable technology to passengers in the near future, but he does think that “flight attendants, maintenance personnel, flight crew and ground operations staff could benefit” from head-mounted wearable technology.
4. Locating pallets and boxes in a warehouse. 
5. Location based or interest based notifications. Offers that are meant for targetted customers. Compare and contrast based on past demand.

MariaDB VS MySQL

Concerns over what Oracle could do with the MySQL licensing and also the DBs limitations when dealing with a highly available/ high performant website seems to have given birth to a new DB ..MariaDB..From the initial creators of MySQL, this is a very good alternative to  MySQL ..

http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/mariadb-vs-mysql-a-comparison/

IOS Nahs and Wows

As the world goes viral about the new IOS release and a record 9 million iPhone 5S get sold over a weekend, I thought it would be a nice idea to summarize the good and not so great things about these. IMHO, a resounding number of opinions point towards not upgrading to the IOS 7 and rightly so..Some issues..

http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml

http://www.imore.com/heres-why-you-shouldnt-upgrade-ios-7-yet

A balanced view:

http://www.knowyourmobile.com/apple/20445/ios-7-good-bad-and-ugly

The developer viewpoint:

http://www.fastcolabs.com/3016423/open-company/developing-for-ios-7-the-good-the-bad-the-flat-and-the-ugly

Chromecast and Google Tv difference

Interesting the way Google thinks..hadn't even thought of the different streaming scenarios..

http://allthingsd.com/20130724/sundar-pichai-on-the-difference-between-chromecast-and-google-tv-interview/

Mobile App development

While doing Mobile App development, folks often come up with the question whether to use Sencha or JQuery mobile or in fact the latest Titanium from Appcelerator. Here is a nice comparison:

http://www.slideshare.net/stevedrucker/mobile-platforms-19979061

Sideloading Windows 8 App

While testing the Windows 8 App, there are some things to consider, unlike iOS and Android there is no Over the air (OTA) or Ad Hoc testing that is available currently in the Windows 8 World. The only way to do this is via Sideloading:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/jj874388.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/jj721669.aspx

These were some of the links that helped me understand and implement the side loading strategy.

Windows 8.1 preview

Pretty interesting Windows 8.1 review comments :
http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/30/microsoft-windows-8-1-unveiled/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

Tumblr acquistion

Afterthe recent spate of acquistions andnews pertaining to takeovers, some articles revisited

http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/18/tumblr-is-not-what-you-think/

Tumblr acquistion

Afterthe recent spate of acquistions andnews pertaining to takeovers, some articles revisited

http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/18/tumblr-is-not-what-you-think/

Tumblr acquistion

Afterthe recent spate of acquistions andnews pertaining to takeovers, some articles revisited

http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/18/tumblr-is-not-what-you-think/

Yahoo takes up Flickr?

The eMedia is full of posts talking about how Yahoo has bought Flickr for 1.1 B and unveiled the takeover through a 1 TB free space campaign. This will no doubt, help Yahoo get the young and hip cloud to some extent back into its fold but will it help Yahoo at least make a dent in the ever expanding reach of Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest family?

Only time will tell... 

70 k apps on the Windows Store and 10 K per week?

http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-now-has-70000-apps-in-its-windows-8-store-2013-5

E-Book Gallery for Microsoft Technologies

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11608.e-book-gallery-for-microsoft-technologies.aspx?WT.mc_id=CIC_TWITTER_Azure%20Blogs_20130402_20130402063727_37166_WindowsAzure#UsingWindowsAzureMobileServicestoCloudEnableYourWindowsPhone8Apps

Azure Mobile services

With some new releases slated for Windows Azure, what caught my attention was support extended for Mobile service that can be quickly created through Azure Management Portal.

One of the latest blogs also talks about using multiple clients to communicate with the same mobile service.

http://chrisrisner.com/Connecting-Multiple-Clients-to-the-Same-Mobile-Service?WT.mc_id=CIC_TWITTER_Community%20Blogs%20_20130328_20130329053954_37107_WindowsAzure

TechEd 2013 in Pune

Was a great experience attending the TechEd 2013 in Pune. The two tracks I was particularly interested was  the Windows 8 / Phone track and the Azure Track. After attending some of the hands on labs and deep dives, I came out concluding that if not a 100% Microoft has at least started their march against the "Fruit" company and the Droid makers in the field of Mobility and Cloud at least.

Interesting to see how this war shapes up.