I decided to set about using the Bing Silverlight control to display available hotels from LateRooms.com.  LateRooms.com have an affiliate scheme that exposes the availability of hotels via XML feeds (you do need an affiliate ID to use the feeds but this could easily be replaced by any other similar feed).

You can view the sample app I have created here (note: LateRooms has mostly UK hotels so probably best trying a UK location, e.g. “Southport UK”). 

To create the app I create added four controls to my page;  

• Bing Silverlight Control – This is obviously the main focus of the app.
• A text box and a button to accept a location from the user and start the request to get the hotels.
• A list box to display a picture, the name and the first line of the address for each of the hotels.

Once the user enters a location into the text box and clicks the button the following happens;

• The location entered by the user is sent to the Bing Geocode web service and providing it can find a match it returns the lattitude and longitude for the location.
• This map is then centred on this location.
• Finally the newly returned coordinates are used to get a list of available hotels from the LateRooms XML feed. This list is then iterated through and a pin for each hotel is added to the map and the list is then bound to the list box.

Finally I added an event handler to the selection changed event of the list box to re-centre the map on the coordinates of the selected hotel.

There is plently more that could be done with this app, not least making the UI a little more attractive, but I wanted to just get a feel of how easy it was to implement some basic Bing maps functionality in Silverlight.

If you are interested to see the source code to the application let me know and I can post it.  Right now I am off to try some more experiments!

Don’t forget if you liked this, subscribe to my RSS feed and / or follow my Twitter (links at the top of the page).

Technorati Tags: bing, Silverlight

This 3 day hands-on training with both designer and developer tracks looks awesome and (uniquely) has two expert trainers per course. 

Currently scheduled in London, Manchester, and the Midlands for June, all courses also come with the chance to win an xbox 360, and Silverlight Spy licences!

Early bird discount of £100 if you book in May, and if you are a member of #SLUGUK or #nxtgenug there are additional discounts to be had.

Full Details are here: http://silverlightmasterclass.net

In addition bbits are holding a raffle for a free ticket for the masterclass. To be eligible to win the ticket (worth £1095!) you MUST paste this text, including all links, into your blog and email Ian@bbits.co.uk with the url to the blog entry.  The draw will be made on June 1st and the winner informed by email and on http://silverlightmasterclass.net

Technorati Tags: Silverlight, training

Windows Phone 7 Dev

WP7 Panorama App  �
http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspx

Twitter App Receiving Push Notifications on WP7   �
http://skeevs.com/blog/?p=35

Push Notifications Types and a Tutorial �
http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/design/archive/2010/03/30/building-the-elusive-windows-phone-panorama-control.aspx

Building a Flickr App�
http://skeevs.com/blog/?p=4&cpage=1#comment-16

Bing Location Programming on WP7 �
http://www.earthware.co.uk/blog/index.php/2010/03/writing-a-bing-maps-location-aware-application-for-windows-phone-7-series/

Windows Phone 7 Icon Pack  �
http://www.sevenforums.com/news/74137-windows-phone-7-series-icon-pack.html 

General Silverlight

Silverlight 4 – A guide to the new features �
http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/11/18/whats-new-in-silverlight-4-complete-guide-new-features.aspx

Getting Started with Silverlight and Blend   �
http://refcardz.dzone.com/refcardz/getting-started-silverlight?oid=hom20371

Silverlight UI Controls�
http://www.silverlight.net/learn/tutorials/controls-cs

Silverlight Data Binding �
http://www.silverlight.net/learn/tutorials/databinding-cs/

Visual State Manager  �
http://www.silverlight.net/learn/tutorials/stylestemplatesvsm-cs/

Intro to Behaivours�
http://www.kirupa.com/blend_silverlight/introduction_behaviors_pg1.htm

Technorati Tags: Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WP7

Beta 2 brings many improvements to the table, including improvements in Sharepoint, WPF, ASP.NET, WinForms, as well as improvements to the core IDE and testing tools. I saw some of these IDE improvements at an event with Scott Gu in Manchester a couple of weeks ago and they look pretty cool.

Visual Studio now comes in several flavours, namely Premium, Professional and Ultimate and the good news is that TFS 2010 comes out of the box with all three.  Apparently it only takes 20 minutes to setup source control, bug and issue tracking and automated build with it.

Finally, another great piece of news is that this release also ships with a Go-live license, so this can be used for production projects if you wish

If you are a member of MSDN and want to download the beta now, you can get it from here.

For more information on the release visit Scott Gu’s blog where you he has started a series of posts on the new features in 2010 Beta 2.

Have any of you been using Beta 1? Will you be using Beta 2? What do you think of the way 2010 and .Net 4.0 are shaping up?

Technorati Tags: .NET 4.0, beta 2, visual studio 2010, vs2010

According to the Silverlight team, they are totally commited to having Silverlight work on all mediums, from desktop PCs, TVs and mobile devices.

This comes at a time when Flash is likely to appear on more and more mobile devices soon, but with the success of Flash Lite…well…not really being a success, it remains to be seen how well the next wave of Flash mobile will be accepted.  It certainly looks like Silverlight might have the upper hand here if things continue as they are.

There has been talk about Silverlight coming to the mobile platform for some time, with a lot of people for a while, myself included, expecting it to arrive in time for Windows Mobile 6.5, which is due for release in around a month.  However, 6.5 is only an interrim release until the complete overhaul that is Windows Mobile 7 is released.

So, are you excited about seeing Silverlight on mobile devices? do you think it will be a good thing or a bad thing? or could you not care less?

Technorati Tags: mobile, Silverlight, Windows Mobile

Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice Presedent and all round .Net Guru is coming to Manchester, UK, later this month to talk about what’s new with Visual Studio 2010, ASP.Net 4.0, Silverlight 3 and upcoming improvements to the MVC Framework!

Seating for this event, entitled Guathon 2009,  is very limited and as such you can only join the wait list at the moment, but I have been lucky enough to secure a place at what promises to be a fantastic workshop.

The announcement on the event home page over at DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper also has a funny section of “things you might not know about Scott Gu”, such as;

When Scott Guthrie throws exceptions, it’s across the room.

All arrays Scott Guthrie declares are of infinite size, because Scott Guthrie knows no bounds.

Scott Guthrie doesn’t have disk latency because the hard drive knows to hurry the hell up.

Scott Guthrie writes code that optimizes itself.

Scott Guthrie can’t test for equality because he has no equal.

Scott Guthrie doesn’t need garbage collection because he doesn’t call .Dispose(), he calls .DropKick().

For the rest of this amusing list and more info on the event or to add yourself to the wait list, visit the event home page.

Technorati Tags: ASP.Net, ASP.NET MVC, scott gu, scott guthrie, silverlight 3, visual studio 2010

MSDN license holders should find Expression Studio including Expression Web 3 available for download now from the MSDN web site, whilst everyone else can take advantage of free trials (the Expression Web 3 trail can be downloaded here and is around 122mb) and upgrade offers, where appropriate.

Expression Web 3 brings some exciting stuff to the table to improve on the already popular Expression Web 2.

Amongst the most notable features are;

• Brand new look and feel to match the darker style seen in Expression Blend 2.

Image used taken from Expression Web site from Microsoft. Coptright Microsoft.

• SuperPreview – allowing you to view your pages / sites in multiples browsers and examine and resolve any cross browser compatibility issues with your designs.
• SnapShot Preview – A browser preview that automatically updates side by side with your design / code, meaning that you do not have to load the browser everytime you make a change to see what it will render like.
  

  Image used taken from Expression Studio Web Site from Microsoft. Copyright Microsoft.

• Silverlight and DeepZoom support – You can now embed Silverlight movies as well as DeepZoom movies into your pages using Expression Web 3.
• Improved FTP Publishing and Site Management – Expression Web 3 now claims to upload and sync your sites with your remote server faster than before, uploading multiple files at once.  It now also boasts improved site management which should make switching between sites and saving associated settings a breeze.
• Internet Explorer 8 Support – Support for IE8 now comes with EW3 allowing you to target web sites for this browser.
• Expression Design 3 Included – The graphical editor from Microsoft, Expression Design is now included with Expression Web.

Also released as part of Expression Studio 3 are the new versions of Expression Blend, Expression Encoder and,  as already mentioned, Expression Design.

I have only just installed the new version of the studio, but will post some follow ups of anything interesting I think would be worth sharing.

Below are some links to pages for Expression Web 3 and Expression Studio 3;

Expression 3 Web Site

Expression Web 3 Trial Download

Expression Web 3 Product Information

Let me know your thoughts on the new versions….

Technorati Tags: expression studio, Expression Web, expression web 3

I received an email this morning inviting me to an exclusive launch event for Silverlight 3 and Expression 3.

Unfortunately I am out of the country, but the launch event is being held by Microsoft on July 22nd.

In the words of the invite, the event is to “celebrate the UK launch of Silverlight 3 and Expression 3” and will feature a keynote speaker in the form of PP&T General Manager, Ian Ellison-Taylor of Microsoft in Redmond.

So, it looks like we will be seeing the launch Expression 3 and Silverlight 3 on or around July 22nd 2009.

Technorati Tags: expression 3, microsoft, silverlight 3

There was also a link to a  new Blend Preview, but the link appears to be broken.  Maybe this is being saved for after certain annoucnements at Mix09.

Anyway, get youself over to these links and check out the new goodies;

Runtime:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=143433

Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=11dc7151-dbd6-4e39-878f-5081863cbb5d

SDK:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=d09b6ecf-9a45-4d99-b752-2a330a937bc4!

Documentation:
 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc838158(vs.96).aspx.

Technorati Tags: silverlight 3, silverlight beta

Firstly, the venue for this years event was excellent.  The Odeon in Manchester City Centre in the Printworks is quite simply huge.  Luckily there were escalators for those of use who were to lazy to climb all of the stairs.

Once you reached the third floor, we were greeted by poster boxes with MSDN posters inside with some nice quotes, such as "There’s No Place Like 127.0.0.1" and "I’ll make him a program he can’t refuse", which was a nice touch I thought. Made the whole thing feel like more of an event rather than just a meeting.

In the corridor outside of the actual conference room were the usual stands familiar to those who have attended a Roadshow before, such as the registration table, a stand with discount books from the guys over at Computer Manuals selling discounted books on a variety of subjects from Expression to LINQ and of course, every developers favourite stand, the SWAG stand, with free goodies like the updated Developers Highway Code (which is available for download and I have included a link in the useful links later in this post).  We did all get a free software pack when we left, but more on that shortly.

In addition to the usual stands this year though, we were treated to a couple of really interesting tables showing off the XNA Framework on a dev Xbox 360 and the new Microsoft Robotics studio.  I have to say, some of the games produced with the XNA framework for the 360 were pretty impressive and most of them are available as starter kits from Microsoft if you’re interested.  I will include some links for both of these areas at the end of this post.

The conference room itself was actually a cinema room (surprisingly being at the Odeon ), which was fantastic.  This meant most people got comfortable seats to enjoy the show and those all important cup holders! I arrived slightly late, and so didn’t manage to get a seat, however, the nice Roadshow staff got me a seat and put me right at the side of the stage and I got a ringside seat which was great.  As you can see from the picture to the right (apologies for the quality, somehow I managed to set my camera phones’ resolution unusually low by mistake) of MSDNs Mike Ormond presenting, the slide being on a cinema screen really helped, as they were always clear and nobody was struggling to see anything.

The presentations themselves were, as always, of an excellent quality, with the speakers conveying their expert knowledge in their respective topics clearly and concisely.  I particularly enjoyed Mike Ormonds’ talk on the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions, especially the new Dynamic Data capabilities (which I am hopefully going to be posting a small tutorial series about shortly. If you’re interested, add this blog to you’re favourites or subscribe to my RSS Feed).

The refreshments this year were good, a choice between ham, cheese and chicken sandwiches, along with crisps and soft drinks for lunch.  Very nice Coffee during the breaks and even popcorn or Ben and Jerrys ice cream in the afternoon!

As I have already mentioned, if you handed in your feedback form and your pass before you left you were treated to a nice software pack, which didn’t disappoint.  Contained within the set were promotional copies of Windows Server 2008 32bit and 64bit editions, SQL Server 2008 Preview along with a voucher to get a development copy when it is released, and my personal favourite, a full copy of Visual Studio 2008.

All in all, an excellent day, well put together and very well received!

One last note, the MSDN Roadshow’s are an invaluable free event from Microsoft giving excellent technical and hands-on insight into the latest techniques and strategies for developers.  Every year they seem to sell out really fast, so my one message to you for next year is….REGISTER EARLY!

Now as promised, some useful links regarding the days speakers, events and topics;

Presentation Slides

Definitely worth a look through…..

Xbox 360 XNA Game Framework and Microsoft Robotics Studio and the Developer Highway Code

As promised, a couple of links to the areas that were the subject of two impressive stands this years event.

Technorati Tags: .net 3.5, ado.net, ASP.NET MVC, Dynamic Data, Microsoft Robotics, msdn, Silverlight, XNA Framework