Global Nerdy

Some people didn’t take fytojs.com in the spirit that was intended, so the site owner changed it.

If you want to see what the site looked like before, see my earlier entry, Really, You Should Just Turn It On.

Today only – that’s Monday, March 28th – Manning is making the print edition of SharePoint 2010 Workflows in Action available for USD$25 (CAD$24.38 as of this writing). To cash in on this deal, order the book from Manning.com and enter dotd0328 in the Promotional Code box when you check out.

Here’s a quick description of what’s in SharePoint 2010 Workflows in Action:

You can use SharePoint 2010 workflows to transform a set of business processes into working SharePoint applications. For that task, a power user gets prepackaged workflows, wizards, and design tools, and a programmer benefits from Visual Studio to handle advanced workflow requirements.

SharePoint 2010 Workflows in Action is a hands-on guide for workflow application development in SharePoint. Power users are introduced to the simplicity of building and integrating workflows using SharePoint Designer, Visio, InfoPath, and Office. Developers will learn to build custom processes and use external data sources. They will learn about state machine workflows, ASP.NET forms, event handlers, and much more. This book requires no previous experience with workflow app development.

• Out-of-the-box and custom workflows
• How to integrate external data
• Advanced forms with InfoPath and ASP.NET
• External events with pluggable workflow services
• Custom workflow actions and conditions
• Model your business process in Visio

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Pictured above is a screenshot of the single-page site fytojs.com. The language may be a bit salty, but the advice is sound.

There is no way in hell I can post this to Canadian Developer Connection.

ame

While at the South by Southwest Interactive conference, I ran into Justin Peck, who’s working on QONQR (pronounced “conquer”), which he describes as “the geosocial game of world domination”. I interviewed him, asking about the game (imagine the board g “Risk”, but played online and in the real world), the technology on which it’s built (.NET, baby!), how the game got started and Windows Phone 7 and Internet Explorer 9.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Don’t forget, we’ve got IE9/WP7 boot camps taking place this weekend in Mississauga and Vancouver! Here’s what’s on tap, and remember, these events are free-as-in-beer to attend! Registration links are below.

Internet Explorer 9

A Lap Around Internet Explorer 9 and HTML5
A look at IE9’s support for the troika that collectively goes by the name “HTML5”: HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. You’ll see how standards compliance and the resulting “same markup” will make life good for both developers and users and how that same markup runs faster on IE9 thanks to the newer, faster JavaScript engine and hardware acceleration.

Enhancing Pinned Sites with Internet Explorer 9
IE9’s “pinned sites” feature makes web apps feel more like desktop apps by letting users add website to the taskbar and start menu and let developers add custom context menus to pinned site icons, provide visual notifications on the task bar with icon overlays and even add custom buttons on the default thumbnail preview. This session will show you how to best use this feature and also cover IE9’s developer tools.

Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone 7 Silverlight Recipes
You’ve read the introductory material and written “Hello World” on the Phone, and you’re now thinking of starting a bigger project. You’re now asking this question: “How do I do X on Windows Phone?”. This session is the answer. You’ll learn all the recipes for building blocks of applications, which you can use, modify and combine in your own Windows Phone 7 apps.

Windows Phone 7 XNA Kickstart
Haven’t you always wanted to write a videogame, but could never get started? This is your chance. This session will show you the basics of XNA, the game development framework for Windows Phone (and the Xbox 360 and Windows too!). You’ll get your feet wet writing 2D videogames, learn some game coding techniques and get you need to start you on your journey as a game developer.

When and Where?

Here’s where these boot camps are taking place:

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection

I never thought I’d see Ze Frank do a promo for IE9, but there he was at South by Southwest Interactive, doing just that!

Ze (pronounced “Zay”, a shortening of his real name, Hosea) is probably best know for The Show with Ze Frank, a series of videocasts that ran the gamut from comedy bits to Daily Show-esque commentaries, all with Ze’s trademark oddball sense of humour. He’s been invited to do keynotes at a number of tech conferences; I particularly enjoyed the very memorable one he gave at RailsConf in 2007 that had people both thinking and rolling in the aisles with laughter.

Ze’s a Mac guy, so the fact that he was demoing his new web application, Star.Me, for the IE9 launch is quite stunning. He describes it as “a social game meets a social network, where you’re kind of in kidergarten but just had a lot of espresso”. That’s just his way of saying that it’s a way to give your friends Xbox-style achievements for their real-life doings. It’s in closed beta right now, but you can request a username in advance and you’ll be notified when it’s ready to launch. It’s a cool-looking HTML5 app, and I can hardly wait to give my coworker Ruth Morton a “Mom Jeans” star.

You have downloaded the release version of IE9, haven’t you?

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.