Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Microsoft Certified Professional

Longer than I thought I passed some Microsoft Developer Exams and just received an email to login to keep them valid.

So I thought i would share my qualifications with friends, strangers and colleagues. 

I need to provide my Transcript ID (670391) and the Access Code (microsoftmcp), and direct you to https://mcp.microsoft.com/Anonymous//Transcript/Validate





Monday, July 21, 2014

apple-developer-program-renewal

Apple Developer Program Renewal

So ive just renewed my Xamarin Indie subscription so it was time to do the same with my Apple Developer Program as well.
Not a cheap month software wise but both are for a year and this will be the year I publish a few apps to the store both Mac and iOS.
Renewal

Friday, July 18, 2014

xamarin-upgrade

Hooked on Xamarin Studio / Monodevelop / ServiceStack

So one year later my indie subscription to the Xamarin Indie product was expiring . An ide to rival Microsoft Visual Studio, uses my language of choice c# and allows me to build web, console, services and apps all cross platform.

It hurts paying for software sure but I am now more comfortable on a Mac in Xamarin building all sorts or cross platform goodness with .NET and just testing on a windows virtual machines.

Add in the well thought out ServiceStack framework and various open source peojects and when my subscription reminder came round it was an easy decision to make.

Compare to an MSDN license for example..

The other thing of note was chatting to a WPF dev the other day and while we both loved MVVM and the language and various other Microsoft tooling, when i explained i was using the same language to deliver cross platform apps from a Mac and still getting a blank stare shows how much more Xamarin can offer.

Big fan. you have my cash again this year as does ServiceStack

amazon-zocalo

Amazon Zocalo

While busy coding away on some API endpoints and refactoring some code and making some schema changes, I realised I had not opened my email client all day and after a quick scan for anything requiring my immediate attention I noticed that Amazon had given me early access to the new Zocalo product.

First thoughts

Initially I thought this is Dropbox with Sharepoint and that with web, mobile apps, Windows and Mac clients with promises of browser plugins this could be pretty cool.
“Amazon Zocalo is a fully managed, secure enterprise storage and sharing service with strong administrative controls and feedback capabilities that improve user productivity.”
Intro Video

Benefits

  • typical amazon storage in the cloud
  • low cost initially if you are a start up for example
  • easy to get started
  • most importantly active directory support

Active Directory

Amazon Zocalo can integrate with your existing Active Directory. This means that your users can easily access Amazon Zocalo using their existing Active Directory credentials. This is a big win for the enterprise.

Amazon Workspaces

Not 100 percent sure but when linked to Amazon Workspaces you could have a team all working on a Windows 7 experience with office apps and Zocola.

More later when not as busy!

In the meantime have a read of the docs and look at some screenshots of the iPad app. Ok break over back to the code!
Documentation
Screenshots
iPad Screenshot 1 iPad Screenshot 2 iPad Screenshot 3 iPad Screenshot 4