It is very easy to create your first Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 or iOS application with Azure Mobile Services tools. In this post, I will demonstrate how to create a sample “ToDo” application. In fact, it will take you longer to read this post than to execute the steps in it!

Log in to your Windows Azure portal and go to the Mobile Services section. Click on the Create a mobile service link.

The productivity tools for Visual Studio 2012 are now available. In addition to the same features as the 2010 version, the new features of this version are:

• Quick tasks
• Power Commands
• Color printing

All features can be individually disabled in the options. If you have never tried them, don’t hesitate, it could increase your productivity.

Happy coding!

I hope you are having fun with the RC version of Visual Studio 2012!!! The final version will be launched on September 12th, and Microsoft is preparing a virtual event to mark the occasion. Visit VisualStudioLaunch.com.

Happy coding

One of the new features of Visual Studio 11 and the .NET Framework 4.5 are the Caller attributes:

• CallerMemberName: allows you to obtain the method or property name of the caller to the method.
• CallerFilePath: allows you to obtain the full path of the source file that contains the caller. This is the file path at compile time.
• CallerLineNumber: allows you to obtain the line number in the source file at which the method is called.

These attributes help to simplify the code in certain scenarios, such as logging or when using the INotifyPropertyChanged interface (as in MVVM) and you need to pass the name of the calling property.

Here is a second application of my own creation: InterUrbain.

This utility application allows you to determine if calls between two phone numbers are local or long-distance. Simply enter the area code and the first three digits of the number to determine their distances. Simple, effective, and most importantly free!

If you have any suggestions, comments, or need support, do not hesitate to contact me (see the link at the top of this page).

When developing applications, we always want to make our investment profitable and maybe even make a little profit. With Windows Phone 7 (WP7) there are 2 methods to generate revenue: app purchase and ad display. This article focuses on the second method.

Creating a pubCenter account

First, you need to create an account on the Microsoft Advertising pubCenter. pubCenter is the hub for WP7 ads and Windows 8 apps. Very simple and easy to use, so I will omit the account creation details in this article.

After a few months of experimenting with programming for Windows Phone 7, but without really publishing the application, I decided to try to launch an application that would be published: Sports MTL. An application that allows you to know the status of various recreational/sports venues such as ice rinks, slides, and cross-country ski trails.

This application is available in French and English, in trial or paid version. If you have any suggestions or comments about this application, please visit the UserVoice site for Sports MTL.

For some time now, Microsoft use the UserVoice platform for gathering feedbacks from some of their products, which mostly target developers. UserVoice is really good for that task and its looks even better than Connect for feedback, which is still use for bugs and technical issues. But I don’t they are any list detailing theses site. So here’s my short list, and if you found one, let me know!

• ASP.Net
• Expression Encoder
• Expression Super Preview
• Expression Web
• Microsoft Advertising
• Silverlight
• Visual Studio
• WCF RIA Services (Thanks Colin!)
• Windows Phone (Users)
• Windows Phone (Developers) and the WP7 application for this site
• Windows Phone Interoperability

Microsoft has launched the Windows PowerShell Command Builder for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products and Microsoft Office 365 allowing you to create PowerShell commands graphically and more easily than if you had to type them yourself.

It is a simple Silverlight application but it allows you to make queries (SharePoint Server 2010, Foundation 2010, and Office 365) that can be more complex:

The documentation is here!

Happy PowerShell

When you want to make changes to the web.config file of your SharePoint 2010 application, you can use two methods:

• Create a webconfig.<your_name>.xml file that you add to the \CONFIG directory (Source on MSDN)
• Do it programmatically and use the SPWebConfigModification and SPWebApplication.WebConfigApplication objects (Source on MSDN).

However, when you use the second method and remove the changes from the file using Remove(), the changes are not removed. Even if you use .Update() and .ApplyWebConfigModifications(). This may only result in your modification appearing multiple times in the web.config file, but if you insert more sensitive modifications to uniqueness, such as for an HttpModule, it creates an error that prevents the site from functioning (Error 500).