WintellectNOW Author Blog Round Up: June

The WintellectNOW “Best Beach Reads 2014” list is here! Check out what our authors have been writing for you over the past 30 days and add them to your summer reading list. 

• This month, Dwight Goins published a cool Kinect for Windows Version Feature Comparison Chart. If you’re interested in developing for the platform, you’ll definitely want to check it out.

   

• The prolific Jeremy Likness was busy this month. In May, Jeremy was a featured presenter at the LinkedIn .NET User Group where he talked about how to use TypeScript to solve common problems in the enterprise. Check out the slide deck and recorded session in his aptly named blog post – Enterprise Typescript. Jeremy also wrote about Microsoft’s announcement that it open sourced its Windows Library for JavaScript (WinJS) in  An Introduction to Cross-Platform, Cross-Browser WinJS. In the post, he shares a sample application he created and talks about how to scaffold a basic WinJS app; he shows data-binding via templates; how to use the WinJS-provided style sheets; plus page entrance animations, tap animations, and the ListView control. If you want to Convert a Windows Store App to the Web in Under 10 Minutes. Jeremy will walk you through how to do it in his blog post where he not only shares his process but he also demonstrates it in video. And finally, the long awaited book, Programming the Windows Runtime by Example, by Jeremy and John Garland, has been released. His post Programming the Windows Runtime (WinRT) by Example describes the book in more detail and provides links to sample chapters.

   

• Wintellect co-founder and WintellectNOW author John Robbins was recently interviewed by Shawn Wildermuth in the Hello World Podcast. Among other interesting tidbits, you’ll learn what being a Green Beret can do for your career in software development. You can find the podcast in John’s recent post – Interviewed on the Hello World Podcast.

   

• This month, Noel Stieglitz shares his experience as a software consultant and highlights the 10 rules he follows for successful engagement in his post, 10 Rules Every Software Consultant Should Follow..

   

• Recently, Rob Tiffany participated in the STLTechTaclk CodeCast Episode 12 with JJ Hammond and Gus Emery where they talked about the past and future of Microsoft enterprise mobility. It’s a lively and entertaining conversation – check it out in its entirety at Enterprise Mobility on STL Tech Talk Code Cast. Also, if you didn’t make it to TechEd, you can still catch Rob’s Empower Your Demanding Mobile Line of Business Apps with SQLite and Offline Data Sync on Windows 8.1talk. Learn about .NET developers can build structured data storage into their apps with Windows 8.1 and MSOpenTech’s Portable Class Library for SQLite.

   

• Tony Sneed recently created a sample application using Simple MVVM Toolkit together with Trackable Entities. He built a real-world N-Tier solution with a WPF client and portable POCO entries that are automatically change-tracked and sent to an ASP.NET Web API service that uses Entity Framework to perform asynchronous CRUD operations. You can download the complete end-to-end solution sample app and read about the process in Real World MVVM with Entity Framework and ASP.NET Web API.

   

• In a recent post, Andrew Duthie explores the frustrating, yet common, problem that impacts all developers at some point in their programming career. You are working on a project and everything looks good in Visual Studio – but when you deploy to the web server, it doesn’t render correctly. His post – ASP.NET MVC, Bootstrap, and Internet Explorer Compatibility View – provides useful tips for troubleshooting these problems.. In another post, former Microsoft evangelist recently released back into the wild as an independent consultant, Duthie shares his latest lesson learned as he sets up a VPN inside a VM. Check out Cisco AnyConnect and Hyper-V-Connect to a VPN Session from Inside a VM Session.

   

• One of our newest authors, Donovan Brown, is a Technical Solutions Professional at Microsoft focusing on developer tools including Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server. Check out his latest Problem/Solution posts:

  • Getting Test Case Import Utilities for Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2010 to work with TFS 2013.

  • Microsoft Test Manager is not Creating IntelliTrace Files for My Web Applications.

  • Validate Code Automatically During a Team Foundation Build.

  • Increase the Reach of Code Lens and Code Map.

• Another new author, Bruce Dawson, recently wrote about the problems with undefined behavior in C/C++ and leaving it to chance that the compiler will save you. Check out his post entitled Undefined Behavior *Can* Format Your Drive.