Learning Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) - 16th June 2008 (Mon)

By now, you must have heard of one of the latest buzzwords in the industry – WCF (Windows Communication Foundation).

According to Microsoft,

“Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is Microsoft’s latest technology for developing service-oriented applications. WCF simplifies development of connected applications through a new service-oriented programming model. WCF supports many styles of distributed application development by providing a layered architecture. At its base, the WCF channel architecture provides asynchronous, untyped message-passing primitives. Built on top of this base are protocol facilities for secure, reliable, transacted data exchange and broad choice of transport and encoding options.”

You may also have attended numerous conference sessions on WCF. Most presentations focus on explaining the rationale and the motivation behind WCF. But what really is WCF from a developer’s point of view? How does a typical “hello, world” WCF application look like?

In this one-day workshop, you will learn the basics of building a WCF service and how to test it. At the end of the workshop, you would have a solid understanding of the capabilities of WCF and how you can use it to develop SOA (service-oriented architecture) applications!

DATE
Time: 9am to 5pm.
16th June 2008 (Mon)

COURSE FEE
S$399
Register before 31st May and receive S$100 discount (S$299 after discount).
Inclusive of 1 lunch and 2 tea breaks

Free 1/2 Workshop on Windows Mobile 6 Programming

Have you ever wondered how you can program your Windows Mobile 6 device but do not know how to get started? Now, you can can jumpstarted in Windows Mobile 6 programming in half a day! And for FREE!

Here are the details:
* You need to bring along your own notebook for the course.
* You need to preinstall your own notebook with Visual Studio 2008 Professional (free 90-day trial edition is available for download from Microsoft's web site). Instructions on what to install will be emailed to selected participants.
* This workshop is intended for beginners to Windows Mobile development (if you are already developing Windows Mobile applications, then you are not the target audience for this course).
* At the end of the workshop, you will achieve the following:
- Learn how to get started in Windows Mobile programming
- Understand how to use the Windows Mobile emulators for testing
- Understand how to use the Cellular Emulator for testing phone and SMS messaging applications
- How to test your application using a real device
- How to deploy an application after development
- Basic understanding of the .NET Compact Framework 3.5
- Ready to embrace enterprise-ready applications

Venue
Motorola Enterprise Mobility Business
230 Victoria Street #12-06/10
Bugis Junction Office Tower
Singapore 188024

Date: 6 June 2008 (Fri)
Session #1: 9am to 12.30pm
Session #2: 1pm to 4.30pm

As spaces are limited, registrations are on first-come-first-serve basis (subject to maximum 2 seats per company). Please send an email to weimenglee@learn2develop.net, indicating the session you would like to attend.

Book - Inside Steve's Brain

If you are a fan of Apple then you must also be a fan of Steve Jobs. If that is the case, I think you will enjoy this latest book by Leander Kahney - Inside Steve's Brain. Leander Kahney is also the author of The Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod.

In his latest book, Leander talked about what made Apple so special, with Steve Jobs at the helm. If you think that working under a fussy and demanding boss is a bad thing, think again. The bright side to this is that your work will be much more refined and of higher quality. And that's why Apple's products are so different from the rest of the competitors.

Overall, this book is an easy and interesting read and made me rethink about the quality of my work. If you are always curious about Steve Jobs and how he works, I strongly recommend this book. I have enjoyed it greatly and I am sure you will too. And one more thing, hug your fussy and perfectionist boss the next time you meet him at the office - he drives the best out of you.

Cruising the Interstate with Windows Mobile 6 Development

One benefit of choosing Microsoft technologies for your mobile apps is an integrated, streamlined development process. Find out how easy it is with this tutorial on the basics of developing Windows Mobile apps with the the .NET Compact Framework.

My new book - C# 2008 Programmer's Reference

I guess the cat is out of the bag...I am now working hard on my latest book - C# 2008 Programmer's Reference. This book covers all the important things you need to know to become a proficient C# programmer. It covers C# 3.0 using Visual Studio 2008. It will also include several chapters on developing Windows, Web, Silverlight, and Windows Mobile applications. Writing this book is actually much more involved than I had earlier expected, but I am enjoying every minute of it. When will be it be out? Well, sometime 3Q this year.

Pre-order it now. ;-)

Kindle-ready - Practical .NET 2.0 Networking Projects

I am excited to learn that my book - Practical .NET 2.0 Networking Projects, is now available on the Amazon.com's Kindle.

I have always wanted to be able to bring my books along with me when I travel, but I do not want to lug 10kg of paper with me. With Kindle, it is now possible to bring your favorite books with you without needing to worry about extra luggage. I think this is especially useful for technology books, which nowadays are huge - usually more than 1000 pages.

Right now, here are the various books that I want to put on my Kindle: Silverlight, ASP.NET 3.5, WCF, and iPhone. ;-)

If Kindle allows me to load my PDF documents onto it, I will give it a perfect score. Never mind if you say that it looks fugly...like Amazon said, when using the Kindle you are not suppose to know its presence.

3 new Visual Studio 2008 courses in June 2008!

I have just launched 3 new courses in Jun 2008! Here are the 3 courses:

Course #1: Learning C# 3.0 (11th June 2008 Wednesday)
Course #2: Foundation of Windows mobile programming (12th June 2008 Thursday)
Course #3: Programming ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX (13th June 2008 friday)

For more information, please download the course brochure here.

Media Guide

Wei-Meng Lee introduces the Silverlight MediaPlayer control, and demonstrates how to use it to save development time and effort.

Download the free PDF issue of aspnetPro magazine here.

Implementing Drag and Drop in Your Windows Application

One of the important features of Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) is drag and drop.Using a mouse you can drag and drop a file from one location to another or you may drag a file and drop it onto an application to launch it.

However, not many developers take the effort to implement drag and drop functionality in their applications. While it does take considerable effort to implement, the support for drag and drop in your application will greatly increase its usefulness. In this article, I will show you how to implement drag and drop functionality in your Windows Forms application.

Adding Multi-Touch to Your Windows Mobile Application's User Interface

What if you could convert your devices to use the kind multi-touch technology you see in an iPhone? It requires modifications to the OS and an overhaul to the entire UI, but it can be done.

What's New in Visual Basic 9.0? Part 2

The release of Visual Studio 2008 updates Visual Basic to version 9.0, with several key language enhancements and LINQ support. Part Two of this series will walk you through VB 9's new LINQ support features and other time-saving enhancements.

What's New in Visual Basic 9.0? Part 1

The release of Visual Studio 2008 updates Visual Basic to version 9.0, with several key language enhancements and LINQ support. Part one of this series will walk you through using nullable types, type inference, the If operator, and other time-saving enhancements.

New Course - Windows Mobile Network Programming and Hardware Interfacing using the .NET Compact Framework

This course introduces to participants the various techniques to program their Windows Mobile 5.0/6 Pocket PC devices to communicate with the outside world. Far from being an introductory course, this lab-intensive course will show you how to interface with external devices and communicate wirelessly with other devices.

What you will learn
* Introduction to the Windows Mobile 5.0/6 SDK
* Introduction to the .NET Compact Framework
* Using the Cellular Emulator
* Communicating with the outside world:
- SMS
- Web Services
- Infrared
- Bluetooth (Serial port)
- Sockets
* Interfacing with External devices
- Camera
- Barcode Reader
- GPS receivers
- Smart card reader
*Projects
- Implementing a call manager using SMS messaging
- Building a location-aware application using GPS
- Transferring Binary Data using Web Services
- Transferring data using infrared
- Data Synchronization using Sockets
- Activating the built-in camera
- 1D/2D Barcode scanning using the built-in camera
- Reading magnetic card information
- Accessing the SIM card information
- Voice recording using the OpenNetCF’s Smart Device Framework

Date
* Time: 9am to 5pm daily
* 25th April 2008

Course Fee
* $299
* Inclusive of 1 lunch and 2 tea breaks

Venue
* Motorola Enterprise Mobility Business

230 Victoria Street #12-06/10

Bugis Junction Office Tower

Singapore 188024

Download application form here.

New Jumpstart Course - ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX

SYNOPSIS

This course is targeted at Web developers who need to get jumpstarted to ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX development in the shortest amount of time. It will introduce to participants the various techniques to AJAX-enable their Web applications using the latest ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX framework.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• Architecture of the ASP.NET AJAX Framework
• How to update part of a Web page without a page reload
• How to auto-complete user inputs
• How to update a panel at regular intervals
• How to create a panel that’s always floating and visible
• How to populate a DropDownList control without a page refresh
• How to display a confirmation dialog on a page
• How to call Web/WCF services directly from a web page
• How to access the properties of a Profile property from a Web page
• How to add drag and drop functionality to a control
• How to give users control of the information shown by a panel

DATE

• 1 day, 9am to 5pm.
• 18th April 2008 (Fri)

COURSE FEE

• S$299
• Inclusive of 1 lunch and 2 tea breaks

VENUE

HDB Learning Center

HDB Hub 480 Lorong 6,

Toa Payoh

Singapore 310480

Download the course application here.