Adam Grocholski

In my last post (http://thinkfirstcodelater.com/blog/?p=3058) I showed you how to create a Windows Azure web site that is integrated with Git from the command line. The benefit of this approach its that you can modify your web site locally, and once you’re happy with it you can push it to Azure using Git. In this post I’ll show you how to use the popular site GitHub to do the same thing. Once again, just a reminder that I’m using the command line tools on a MacBook Air with OSX (Mountain Lion) installed, and I’m using Google Chrome as my default browser. However, the experience should be identical on Windows and Linux as well. To follow along with this post you’ll need the following: A GitHub account (http://github.com). An empty GitHub repository. A Windows Azure account. If you don’t already have one, you can get a free 30 day trial account at http://aka.ms/thec... (more)

Windows Azure Mobile Services for Android

Overnight the Windows Azure Mobile Services team released official support for Android. Along with the SDK Microsoft has also written a number of tutorials to help you get started. The best place to start if you’ve never used Windows Azure Mobile Services before is the Getting started with Mobile Services tutorial. After you complete the initial walkthrough, there are a number of options you can look at depending on what your specific needs are: Data Get started with data – Learn how you can use Mobile Services to store and retrieve data from an app. Validate and modify data usi... (more)

Android to Windows 8 | Part 1

Over the past several weeks I’ve been working on some content I’m excited to finally share with you through a series of blog posts. This series will introduce you to Windows 8 development from an Android developer’s perspective. Through the course of the series you’ll create your first app. It won’t be anything pretty, but you’ll learn the ins and outs of the development environment, how to create a simple user interface, and how to perform navigation. Along the way you’ll see some Android Hints that will help make it easier for you to transition your existing skills to the Windo... (more)

Disabling DirectAccess Functionality in Windows 8

Let me start by saying I love DirectAccess in Windows 8. It’s great for accessing resources on the Microsoft network when I’m not in the office (which is about 90% of the time). DirectAccess, is case you aren’t aware of it, gives remote users (like yours truly) seamless access to corporate networks with the need to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network). I highly recommend you look into. As I stated in the intro, DirectAccess is great. I only have one caveat to add, when it works. On and off over the past couple of weeks I’ve been running into an issue where DirectAccess is in a co... (more)

Android to Windows Phone 8: Manage Network Usage

It’s more than likely that a Windows Phone app will need to work with data that resides on the Internet. For example, an app may aggregate data from various news sources using RSS feeds. Consuming this type of data in a Windows Phone app is very similar to consuming it in an Android app. In this post I’ll show you how to manage network usage. It’s important to consider how your Windows Phone app will access network resources once it has the capability to do so. If your app is going to perform a large number of network operations or transfer large amounts of data (e.g. audio/vide... (more)