Windows Phone 8: Working with ICS Files

ICS is a file type online commonly used for calendar data. Windows Phone 8 doesn’t have support for ICS built in, but it does allow applications to handle that file for you, and given access to your calendar, can quickly add items to your calendar.

This video uses a nice application from Quincy Mitchell named Add to Calendar.

Maybe someday, the OS will have this baked in, but for now, we’re happy that the extensions can be handled by 3rd party applications.

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Windows Azure Website: Deploy from GitHub ScreenCast

WOW. That is how I describe this screen cast. It’s 7 minutes long, and what can be done in 7 minutes is simply amazing. I know there are other ways to do this, and that Azure isn’t the first continuous deployment solution by any means …. but WOW. I have seen this and heard it talked about before, but today is the first time I’ve actually done it on my own.

In this screen cast, I start from scratch. Zero. Ziltch. Zippo. Nadda. Nothing. And from there we …

  • Create a new Windows Azure Website
  • Create a public GitHub Repo
  • Clone that repo to my local machine
  • Create a blank Visual Studio MVC App, with a generic Home controller and View
  • Head back to Windows Azure, and sync the new Website to the Github Repo
  • Commit the new MVC App, and push to GitHub.
  • Watch and Smile as the AutoSync deploys to Windows Azure Website.
  • For Fun, do another small change, commit, push, watch the auto deploy.

Final site can be seen here: http://scottcate-waws.azurewebsites.net/
G
ithub repo: https://github.com/scottcate/scottcate-waws

Enjoy the Video … This one was REALLY fun to record. Watch it full screen, you’ll enjoy it.

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Building asp.net mvc Html helper for Display.Description Data Annotation

I wanted to use the Data Attributes in asp.net MVC, for both a label, and a description. After finding out there isn’t a build in helper for Description, I searched and found an answer on StackOverflow. Using that starter knowledge, I (copy/paste/enhanced) this little helper …


@Html.DisplayFor(m => m.PropertyName, cssClassName: "desc", "tagName: "div")

The sample code can be found in this github gist: https://gist.github.com/4469809

Hat Tip: Jakob Gade

SkyDrive.com: Demo of the Excel Survey’s

SkyDrive from Microsoft has a new Survey Over Excel feature. Fill out a few questions, publish, and BAM … you have a survey / form for people to fill out.

Easy, fast, and Free 🙂

This is a link to the survey I create in this video: http://sdrv.ms/Xa6VE7

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Windows Phone 8: Email Live Tile Notifications

Live Tiles. You love them right? Do you know what the live tile updates for email actually mean? It’s not the number of unread messages, it’s the number of new messages since the last time you opened your email on your phone.

This is a quick video, showing you the difference.

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