Wintellect Webinar: Putting the Cloud in Your Pocket Part 2

Guest blog post by John Garland, of Wintellect

During my last webinar, “Putting the Cloud in Your Pocket Part 1: A Guide to Using Windows Azure to Build Cloud-Enabled Windows Phone Apps,” I started discussing the growing concept of mobility in modern computing. Our mobile devices’ ability to interact with “the cloud” has changed dramatically in just a few years, and (at least from where I stand) the rate of change shows little sign of slowing.

While Windows Azure provides a wealth of resources that can be used to enrich the users’ experiences with apps for Windows Phone and other platforms, it may be more than what some apps need. Maintaining a set of services dedicated to an app may be too much overhead for a simple app, though the concepts of identity, personalization, and storage may still be desirable.

Fortunately, Microsoft does provide an API that offers access to this functionality on a set of pre-existing services: the Live Connect API. This API offers access to several Live services, including authentication using a person’s Microsoft account (formerly Live ID), access to Hotmail calendars and contacts, access to SkyDrive storage, and the ability to exchange information via Messenger.

In my upcoming talk, “Putting the Cloud in Your Pocket Part 2: Using Live Connect to Build Cloud-Enabled Windows Phone Apps,” I will discuss tools and techniques for using the Live Connect APIs in Windows Phone apps to bring identity, personalization, and storage features to Windows Phone apps. While this talk will focus on Windows Phone, the concepts—and in some cases, even the tools—I will discuss can also be used to provide similar functionality to other smartphone platforms.

This talk is being sponsored by both Syncfusion and Wintellect. Wintellect is a nationally recognized consulting, training, and debugging firm dedicated to helping companies build better software faster through a concentration on .NET and Windows technologies. Wintellect is a dedicated team of technology experts accompanied by top-tier software engineers. Its employees have published more than 30 software technology books and hundreds of articles for nearly all major software development magazines, and have been involved in the development of dozens of commercial software products.

As part of this talk, Syncfusion is giving each attendee access to its Technology Resource Portal. The portal is a gateway to free e-books and white papers from Syncfusion. The Succinctly e-book series covers a range of topics that all developers will find useful, whether you’re working on .NET platforms, web development, or even pet projects. The white papers cover topics of current interest for software architects, developers, and managers. In addition, Wintellect will award an attendee one of its virtual training courses (a $499 value) during the webinar.

Please join me on August 23rd to learn about bringing these two platforms together, receive your access to Syncfusion’s Metro Studio, and enter for your chance to win a free Wintellect virtual training course. Details for the event are available online at http://lidnug-wintellect5.eventbrite.com/.