As much as I love the ‘Beta’ tag (read: Get Out Of Jail Free card), full releases have that extra sparkle. A few weeks ago I wrote about the Windows Azure for PHP SDK v3 Beta; well we’ve now got the full-fat version available with some new features, bug fixes, and real-world examples of it being used in a particularly cool way.

what’s new?

From Craig Kitterman, Sr Technical Evangelist: “There’s a new “service management” library, which makes it easy to monitor the activity of your running instances (Windows Azure web roles & workers roles virtual machines), and to start/stop automatically instances based on usage. Then it becomes easy for you to decide which parameters (CPU, bandwidth, # of connections, etc.) and threshold to use to scale up and down, and maintain the optimum quality of service for your web applications.”

Basically the new Service Management API gives PHP devs a simple way to pilot how and when application should scale. You don’t need the Windows Azure SDK for PHP to actually run PHP on Windows Azure, but it simplifies considerably to work to make web applications take advantage of Windows Azure cloud oriented features. The SDK for PHP provides speed dial to these features, which are available through APIs (using REST protocol for the most part).

Bug fixes

See the list from Maarten Balliauw’s preview, but top-level fixes are:

• Breaking change: Table storage entities now return DateTime objects instead of strings for Edm.DateTime properties
• New feature: Service Management API in the form of Microsoft_WindowsAzure_Management_Client
• New feature: logging infrastructure on top of table storage
• Session provider now works on table storage for small sessions, larger sessions can be persisted to blob storage
• Queue storage client: new hasMessages() method
• Introduction of an autoloader class, increasing speed for class resolving
• Several minor bugfixes and performance tweaks

right, but who actually uses it?

Check out www.HotelPeeps.com for an example of this in use (a Facebook app running on Windows Azure, using the SDK for PHP in addition to SQL Azure. A full interview with Alexandru Lapusan from Zitec can be found here, but a good quote to summarise:

“HotelPeeps Trends running on the Windows Azure platform is the epitome of interoperability. Some people think that a PHP application running on Microsoft infrastructure is science fiction, but that’s not the case”

Click here to get your hands dirty with the SDK

Yesterday I and my colleague Jim had the good fortune to attend The Cloud Hack at the Brewery in London. I found out about the event just two days before, it was my first hacking event and I really enjoyed it.

For those who haven’t been to such an event before here is a quick overview of the concept. A group of programmers, developers and designers get together at a venue and are given access to various API’s. Prizes are offered to the best apps produced after a set time limit.

The Cloud Hack’s API partners were National Rail Enquires, Bing Maps, PayPal and Huddle (a people management API). The prizes ranged from £500 to £1000 and an Xbox 360 was given to one lucky participant at random.

After arriving at The Brewery at about 9:30am the first task of the day was to register, get some coffee and find a spot with excellent wifi. Before the event I was concerned that with the key sponsor of the event being Windows Azure I might not be able to find fellow PHP developers to work with and chat to. This turned out not to be the case, at registration badges where handed out and participants were asked to attach stickers with their languages and skills on. Jim and I soon found a good spot and some others with similar skills to talk to.

After registration an introduction took place and all the API partners gave a quick introduction to their products. The most interesting introduction came from National Rail Enquires. They made both their journey planning and live departure API’s available for the day (this API is normally private). After this Bing introduced both their javascript maps control and also their location based web services. PayPal showed off their new payment workflows and Huddle demoed their group and file management API.

After the introduction the assembled developers piled out into the hacking area and worked either in pre arranged groups, impromptu teams or as individuals. There was a great buzz at this point, we had about four and a half hours to produce something with the APIs demonstrated earlier.

Jim and I had talked through a few concepts on the way to the hack and decided to work on the National Rail API and mash it together with some of the route planning features of the Bing Maps API. Our concept was called ‘Can I Catch It?’. The idea was to tell users if they could feasibly catch the train they wanted based on their current location. The app displayed how fast a user would have to drive in order to get to the train on time, when they should set off, distance to the station and also the train departure time. The app was to be accessed from a mobile device. We also wanted to change the colour of the background from green to red as the time of departure approached. With an idea firmly in hand we spent the next four hours trying to implement it. The NRE API was SOAP, it had been a very long time since I had to use one so this took some time to ‘hack’. On the other hand Jim found that Bing Maps was a ‘quick win’ and spent the majority of his time working on javascript and HTML5 necessary to display the page.

About half way through the day a truly sumptuous dinner was served. The cloud hack team really surpassed themselves here. Sushi, bargies, lamb pies, sandwiches, beef stew and king prawns. All the food was served by waiters so it wasn’t necessary to stop coding. A good call as timings were very tight!

The second part of the cloud hack challenge was to launch the application onto Azure. For the .net developers in the room this was a piece of cake for the other languages it was a little more difficult. Throughout the day I helped a number of people set up PHP on IIS to develop on and later gave some pointers on launching PHP apps to Azure. There were some comments on how easy it was to get PHP running on IIS but there were also some grumblings about the time in which it took to actually launch an application onto Azure using the Windows Azure Command Line Tools for PHP.

By 4:45 the majority of applications were on Azure. Unfortunately we didn’t make it to this point, we had an issue with the NRE API which took too long to solve. Jim later completed the app – you can take a look at it here (best on a mobile device). All the participants were asked to go and watch the presentations in the main auditorium. The cloud hack team handed round beers and six short listed teams presented their applications to the rest of the attendees.

The winners of the event were a team called ‘The Governor’ and they made an app called ‘Train vs Car’. They aimed to answer the question of whether it would be faster to complete a journey by train or by car. After the event we joined the Huddle team in a pub down the road where we talked about the API’s, hacks and the event.

I really enjoyed Cloud Hack, I hope they run the event again in the future. The atmosphere of creativity, the people involved, the great venue and food all combined into a really successful event! My only criticism of the event is there wasn’t enough development time. In the future I’d like to see a 24 hour ‘all nighter’ with team members working in shifts through the night to get bigger projects working. Thanks to the Cloud Hack team, API partners and for the team at ubelly for sending me to my first hacking event!

If you fancy doing some cloud hacking yourself, here’s where to start:

Azure

PHP on Azure

Last week we covered the Windows Azure SDK for PHP announcement, and it’s nice to know the train isn’t stopping there. Microsoft has announced the release of the Windows Azure toolkit for iOS, containing resources and services designed to make it easier for iOS developers to use Windows Azure.  This release makes it easier to tie mobile devices with the cloud by offering native libraries for non-Microsoft platforms.

the iOS announcement

I use a PC at work, a phone on the go, and a slate when I’m lounging around. Those three devices have three different operating systems. The toolkits being announced make it easier for developers to simplify the complexity of supporting multiple devices, with a common back-end that uses cloud services to share common requirements like device notifications, authentication, storage and even higher-level services like leaderboards. At the same time, developers can maximize the performance of each mobile device by writing client code that exploits each platform. As more and more mobile applications rely on back-end services, the cloud can become increasingly useful and strategic for developers.

The Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS works in two ways: you access Windows Azure storage directly, or alternatively, can go through a proxy service. The proxy service code is the same code as used in the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 and negates the need for the developer to store the Azure storage credentials locally on the device.

What about android?

Work is already underway; look for more information in the summer…

and Windows Phone 7?

Originally released last month, new features include integration with the Windows Azure Access Control Service (e.g., a wizard, automatic setup, tooling and code), full support for Windows Azure Storage Queues and an updated user interface for the supporting Web application.

• Integration with the Access Control Service (e.g. a wizard, automatic setup, tooling, and code)
• Full support for Windows Azure Storage Queues
• Updated UI/UX for the supporting web application

all the goodies

Blog posts

:

• Getting Started with the Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS : Details how to get started using the Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS
• Updates Coming Soon to the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 : What’s coming with the v1.2 release of the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7
• Using Windows Azure for Windows Phone 7 Push Notification Support : Details on how v1.1 of Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 provides out-of-the-box support for Push Notifications
• Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 1.2 will Integrate with ACS : Vittorio has blogged about upcoming details related to the Access Control Service 2.0 integration in v1.2

Screencasts:

• Getting Started with the Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS : Webcast showing where to get the bits and how to get started
• Deploying the Cloud Ready Packages for Devices : Webcast showing how to deploy the cloud ready package to Windows Azure

Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS:

• https://github.com/microsoft-dpe/watoolkitios-lib
• https://github.com/microsoft-dpe/watoolkitios-samples
• https://github.com/microsoft-dpe/watoolkitios-doc

Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7:

• http://watoolkitwp7.codeplex.com/

Cloud Ready Package for Devices:

• https://github.com/downloads/microsoft-dpe/watoolkitios-lib/cloudready.devices.zip

Viva the old Vegas. This week sees some of the world’s elite developers and designers descend upon the neon city to get to talk all things web. Ubelly pioneers Martin Beeby and Andrew Spooner took one for the team and have graciously flown over to immerse themselves in the latest and greatest (The Beebs even kindly offered to present), and will be posting updates on what’s really got them going over the next few days, so keep hitting up Ubelly for live updates.

The rest of us are manning the decks at Ubelly Towers. However, if we had attended – here’s the sessions we wouldn’t miss:

Andy

HTML5 for Silverlight Developers (Giorgio Sardo)

A ton of debate around the next-gen media platform for the web. If you’re already building beautiful Silverlight apps, taking a look at how HTML5 can complement and extend those experiences looks like a good bet – seeing CSS3 and ECMAScript 5 through the eyes of a XAML/C# developer is sure to answer a few open questions.

Building your websites with Kentico CMS on Windows Azure (Thom Robbins)

Big fan of the Kentico guys, they were one the first to embrace the cloud by actively building deployment tools for their CMS on Windows Azure; in this session I’d expect Thom to cover quick deployment that covers a super-scalable solution with minimal fuss.

Keynote: The 72 Hour Conversation on the Future of the Web Starts with Dean, Joe, and Scott (Dean Hachamovich, Joe Belfiore, Scott Guthrie)

The big hitters who run Microsoft’s engineering efforts for Internet Explorer, Windows Phone and .NET efforts – a broad perspective on where they see things going for the web as a platform, its accessibility and evolution through mobile devices, and the tools and skills required to create amazing experiences. Definitely not one to be missed – you can watch the keynotes live on 12th & 13th April at 4PM GMT via http://live.visitmix.com

Luke

A Whole NUI World: Microsoft Surface 2 and Windows Touch (Luis Cabrera)

Ever since I first played with the first Surface, way back in 2008, I have been massively excited about the future of Natural User Interfaces. With the new Microsoft Surface and Microsoft Touch devices coming out, it’d be great to learn some more on how to design and develop for the new hardware. This is exciting, exciting stuff.

Kinect for Xbox 360: Iterative Field Testing to Optimize the Out of Box Experience (John Dirks)

With the announcement of the Kinect SDK being released a few months ago, we’re all getting quite excited about the possibilities with the Kinect technology. When the Kinect was released, the Xbox team launched an extensive study in Europe, America and Japan to improve the out-of-the-box and first use experience. John will talk about the study and the results, which I’m sure will be extremely useful if you are planning on developing for the Kinect.

Designing Great Experiences for SharePoint 2010 (Paul Stubbs)

Many moons ago I made a living as a SharePoint designer and admin. A constant battle was convincing people that Sharepoint could be used to create gorgeous websites that had an extremely robust back end, which is perfect for high end commercial sites. Paul is not only going to take people through using HTML5 and CSS3 with Sharepoint, and how to make the most of Silverlight and IE9 for the best possible user experience.

Amongst these are a slew of other brilliant talks that I am gutted to be missing including Riding the Geolocation Wave, The Inspiring UX series, Fonts, Form and Function: A Primer on Digital Typography and Designing Infographics for Web Applications.

alex

Designer and Developer: A Case for the Hybrid (Jeff Croft)

The Cilla Black in me wants this to turn into a designer and developer blind date, think of all the beautiful application offspring that could come from this unison of specialists. However I can see the case for a hybrid, but when the pace of tech is changing so much, is it too much to be a specialist in both?  Would have preferred to see this as a panel to get a real debate going.

Interactive Panel: Kinect and Natural User Interface (Alex Kipman, Darren Bennett, Curtis Wong, Kristin Tolle)

Yeay! Panel –there is some really interesting speakers from game designers/creators and NUI researchers and scientists. Hearing from scientists automatically increases your intelligence – so a must watch. The debate will discuss some of the principles behind the Kinect sensing technology and reflecting on the potential for computers that can "see" in 3-D. What does this mean for how humans and computers will communicate going forward? Will Kinect take over the world?

Any sessions you want Spooner or The Beebs to attend specifically? Let us know in the Comments below.

What do the bands Take That and Abba have in common? No it’s not that they both have lead singers that like one too many cream cakes (I’m not mentioning names), they both run their websites using Umbraco. Umbraco is a .net open source content management system that powers over 85,000 websites and has one of the most friendly developer communities in the world.

In this post I’m going to show you in how to put Umbraco on Azure. Putting existing applications on Azure that have not been developed with Azure in mind can be tricky, but it is possible.

First you will need a copy of Umbraco, it’s best to configure this locally and then send the finished version up to Azure. The easiest way to get a copy of Umbraco is use WebMatrix. To get this go to http://www.microsoft.com/web/umbraco and hit the Install Umbraco button and follow the installation instructions.

When WebMatrix is installed you should be able to select “Build site from web Gallery”. Select “Umbraco CMS” and give you site name, I called mine UmbracoToAzure then I pressed the next button.

It will ask you to accept the licence and then download all of the required files to run Umbraco Locally. Once you have followed all of the the instructions you will be at the main Umbraco screen. Just press run and you can then go through the site set up. You should note down the application Path which is shown on this screen as you will need it later to configure the Azure application.

Click “Lets Get started” on the welcome screen and on the licence screen click accept. On the database screen enter the details of your SQL database. You can use SQL azure if you like, but this tutorial won’t cover that, details on how you can do it can be found here.

You will need to set up a user to access the site, then choose the type of site you want and the skin for the site. In this tutorial I have chosen, Business with a Umedia skin. Next we can start to configure Azure so that it is ready to host our site.

You should go to https://windows.azure.com login and then set up a new Storage Account. To configure a storage account you will need to enter a name and a location. I choose uktechdays and set the location as Western Europe. Once this has been set up, click on the storage account and view the storage access key. Copy this and paste it somewhere for safe keeping as you will need this later on.

Head over to http://azureaccelerators.codeplex.com/releases and download the Umbraco Azure Solution Accelerator and open it up in Visual Studio. For future reference you should also download the documentation which can be found at http://azureaccelerators.codeplex.com/documentation.

When you open up the accelerator solution scroll down to the AcceleratorService, right click AcceleratorWorkerRole and Select Properties. Edit the Application Connection String and enter the Azure storage Name and Account Key that you noted down earlier. You should also fill out the other properties like the file path of the Umbraco installation, this is something else you should have noted down earlier. Change the AcceleratorApplication property to Umbraco,4.x

Build the application then open up the Windows Azure SDK command Prompt an navigate to the publish folder and run the command AccelCon /u /w /q

For me the commands were:

cd C:\Users\mabeeby\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\umbraco\publish
AccelCon /u /w /q

This will place the project files in the cloud storage. We will then publish the application and select Create Service Package Only. It will output two files: AcceleratorService.cspkg and a ServiceConfiguration.cscfg. Take note of the folder that these are published too as you will need it in the next step.

Go to http://windows.azure.com and create a hosted service. Upload the two files created in the last step as the package location and the Configuration file. Make sure you give your application a unique name and URL and then choose the same region as you selected for your storage account, also choose to deploy straight to production.

After about 10 minutes you should then be able to navigate to your Azure URL and Umbraco should be installed.

We were pretty excited about the Drupal 7 launch event earlier this month; auditorium meeting room booked in our London office? Check. Cupcakes ready? Check. Thinking caps on for some of the upcoming brilliance that Drupal 7 allows? Check. Now that we’ve finally put the bin bags full of pizza boxes and empty beer bottles away, let’s take a close look at what we find awesome about Drupal including its step into the cloud and some of the new modules that make sites and apps more social.

Killer database

I sometimes get asked what the hell I, a Microsoft employee, am doing at an open source event. After doing my little product pitch and whipping out my WP7 I get down to the real stuff – I’m really there to a) learn about the product (I use CMSes on a daily basis) and b) help answer questions about how folks can get their stuff to work with Microsoft technology when the time arises. A question that comes up commonly is from agencies or dev shops who get asked by customers and clients how their web site/app can play nicely with their existing Microsoft infrastructure. As announced at last year’s DrupalCon, there is now support for SQL Server 2005 and later. The SQL Server driver for PHP 2.0 lets Drupal 7 use the PDO ‘PHP style’ that incorporates smoothly with the SQL Server database. For Drupal developers, this means taking advantage of Business Intelligence and reporting as well as SQL Azure features like exposing OData feeds.

Bryan House – Sr. Director, Marketing, from Acquia commented: “The Drupal 7 release with enhancements for the Microsoft platform is a tremendous milestone giving Drupal developers the freedom to use their existing Microsoft resources to build extraordinary web experiences with Drupal. It expands the set of options Drupal developers have to choose from when building the best solutions for their customers and end-users. We’re also pleased to see Microsoft really participating in the community, providing valuable assistance, and taking a long term approach to supporting Drupal.”

Install crazy simply with WebMatrix

If you use a Windows PC the easiest way of running Drupal is through WebMatrix. Honestly – if you know of a quicker or easier way – answers on a postcard please @androidrobb.  Want to run Acquia Drupal 6 or Drupal 7? Well you can – check it out. If you’re planning on attending the February Drupal drop-in Robert Castelo has kindly allowed me a few minutes to demo this.

(To continue my PR quotations in italics):

In response to the WebMatrix announcement, Damien TOURNOUD, CTO of Commerce Guys, said that ”Microsoft has become a citizen of the Drupal world, and the integration of Drupal 7 in WebMatrix is great news for the Drupal community.” Damien is a key contributor to Drupal 7 and the main developer of Drupal 7/SQL Server integration.

Get it in the cloud

Windows Azure is an easy way of building and deploying apps without having to manage the infrastructure or operations that just make it work. Handle your growth, determine whether you need on/off workloads or just having sudden spikes in traffic to absorb with Windows Azure.

Check out the Drupal & Windows Azure Companion tutorial

New modules that build on top of Drupal with some cool Microsoft technologies

Bing Maps – Embed maps into Drupal content easily

Watch the demo: http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Interoperability/Bing-Maps-Module-for-Drupal

Get the module / source code: https://github.com/mindtree/BingMapsDrupal

Silverlight Pivot Viewer - Embed Silverlight Pivot into Drupal content using preconfigured data sources

Get the module / source code: https://github.com/mindtree/PivotViewerDrupal

Windows Live ID – Associate your Windows Live ID (Hotmail address or Messenger sign-in) with your Drupal account for easier sign-in

Watch the demo: http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Interoperability/Windows-Live-ID-Module-for-Drupal

Get the module / source code: https://github.com/schakra/WindowsLiveID-Drupal-Module

OData Module – Allow data sources based on OData to be included in Drupal content

Watch the demo: http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Interoperability/oData-Module-for-Drupal

Get the module / source code: https://github.com/mindtree/ODataDrupal

(Thanks to Craig Kitterman for the images above).

So what does this all really let you do?

I’d bucket the benefits into three main areas: First off, you can get Drupal up and running easily on your PC using WebMatrix (especially great for beginners) on Windows, in addition to providing Drupal solutions to customers or clients who already run Microsoft technologies. Second, take advantage of some products or features such as Bing, Windows Live, Silverlight and more that people are using across the web and embedding it into your site. Finally, take advantage of the cloud movement by managing scalability and reliability with Windows Azure.

If you’re at the Drupal event stop by and and say hey – would love to chat about this, and other Drupal goodness!

What actually happened?

Umbraco took a two-phased approach. First, to accommodate existing customers, Umbraco created its Windows Azure Accelerator for the Umbraco CMS. The accelerator—which integrates the Windows Azure web role, Blob Storage, and authentication—makes it possible for users to run the Umbraco CMS software in a hosted web role on the Windows Azure platform without any modifications. The second phase is the introduction of Umbraco CMS 5.0, a cloud-based version that will operate natively on Windows Azure and is scheduled for release in 2011.

This first release of the accelerator is targeted at web developers, but there is no complex code to understand and only configuration is required in order to use the accelerator to run Umbraco on Windows Azure.  There is a detailed usage guide available along with the accelerator which can be found on CodePlex.

Why did they do it?

“We wanted to find a way of reducing the technical requirements for great web design so that Umbraco can be used by a much wider audience, including hobbyists and other users who are not professional web developers,” says Paul Sterling, Partner with Umbraco. “The work required to get Umbraco implementations hosted and configured can be technically complex, particularly for potential users who do not have the time or expertise needed to deal with the IT infrastructure.”

Effectively they removed the administrative overhead and managed to get on improving the actual app itself.

What are the benefits?

First off this opens the door to huge markets as it removes the requirement for users to configure and deploy their own web server infrastructure. Second, enterprise customers can add features and benefits without needing to constantly assess its server strategy; as their application scales so does the unit that processes and supports it. Finally it reduces the need for constant licensing and other underlying IT infrastructure efforts.

Check out this site for more information from Umbraco themselves on the integration, or here to view more information on deploying Umbraco on Windows. Paul Sterling did a great video interview which you can also watch here

Windows Azure Platform introductory special – try out Windows Azure for no charge

Like what you see about Umbraco and the cloud? Then take advantage yourself! When you subscribe you’ll receive a base level of Windows Azure compute hours, storage, data transfers, and a three-month trial for Microsoft SQL Azure database software. You will also get access to the Windows Azure Platform AppFabric, providing service bus and access control services. Click here to get it now.

On October 8 2010 there’s a free days worth of content on Windows Azure beautifully titled Microsoft Online Cloud Conference: the TechDays team goes online.

The day runs in 3 different tracks, each geared at people with different levels of understanding. Track 1 provides and entry level overview of Azure. Track 2 and 3 dive a bit deeper. So, no matter your level, if you want to know more about cloud computing on the Azure Platform, there will be something for you here.

Go check out the schedule > > >

Firefox 3.6 Release Notes – the new release includes a number of fixes including security and stability issues

Java Verified Launches Simple J2ME App Testing - new Simple App testing criteria reduces the amount of time and money it takes to test many Java ME applications

Share the work! Opera comes with SharedWorker support – Dion Almaer of Ajaxian explains all

Want to know more about Azure? Here’s a FREE 96 page book – Windows Azure Platform: Articles from the Trenches Volume One covering everything from getting started to implementing best practices for elastic applications

Umbraco’s Paul Sterling gives a taster of what’s happening at this year’s CodeGarden10 in Copenhagen Conference Highlight: Umbraco Runs on Windows Azure

Windows Azure now supports .NET Framework 4 – the updated Azure SDK also supports Visual Studio 2010, and IntelliTrace, a debugging tool

It’s the second annual Hackathon is this weekend in Washington DC, hosted by the Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) initiative – NASA, Microsoft, Google Hosting Hackathon