MrDave's (David Yack) Blog!

I’ve run into this problem twice now and figured maybe someone else might hit it as well.  The error occurred right after installing the new Azure 1.5 SDK and the first time I went to run a regular application that did a WCF call I got the following error.  The error simply says NetTCPRelayBinding could not be found.

What was interesting was the fact I wasn’t even using service bus at all.  After looking all over I finally found a blog talking about removing entries left behind in the machine.config here  I was a little skeptical at first but as I got more desperate I figured worst I could do is kill one of my machines.  That didn’t completely fix the problem but removing all old entries having servicebus in the name did turn out to be part of the solution.  Do remember to backup this file before you edit it just in case you make a typo and need to recover it later.

The other part for me both times has been running the command   RelayConfigurationInstaller /I from the  %Program Files%\Windows Azure AppFabric SDK\V1.5\Assemblies\NET4.0 folder.  This was done after the machine.config was cleaned up from all old servicebus entries and saved.

Once that was done I was able to use WCF related things like before and all was good.  Please use care with using this approach as it’s not clear why this is even required but I figured I would share what I found in case it helps someone else not spend a few hours tracking down one possible solution.  I will pass this along to Microsoft and if they offer any additional guidance I will update the post later.

Update 10/10/2011:

This issue is related to AppFabric 1.0 SDK not uninstalling properly and clearing out entries in machine.config. We have captured the symptoms and workaround in the known-issues sections here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh148155.aspx#KnownIssues

For a brief period between April and June the AppFabric 1.0 installer on the download site had a bug where is did not remove all machine.config entries, this has since been fixed. In addition SDK 1.5 does not add any entries to machine.config.

This morning kicked off day one of the Microsoft Build Windows conference where developers got the first preview of building apps on Windows 8. It's been an interesting few months leading up to the conference as many people were speculating everything that they could get someone to believe. A few weeks back though facts started to come out via the Windows 8 Blog - you can find it here. The keynote and the session videos will be up on the conference site for free so even if you didn't make it you can find them here. I have no intent to repeat everything you can read in the press release here, so I will only highlight a few key thoughts.

A few random thoughts to get started…

• Every thing that runs on Windows 7 will run on Windows 8

• Even memory usage will be less. Windows 8, is even more optimized than Windows 7 for example a netbook running windows 7 used 404 mb of memory. That same netbook runs with just 281 mb in Windows 8.

• Look for small things that are new for example Picture password - allows picking points on picture or sliding across in gesture to login. Simple Pin support also appears to be in.
  
• Choose how you want to interact, mouse, keyboard touch, all work, touch clearly being thought of as a first class way of interacting. In fact I heard in one session - "If the monitor doesn't support touch it's broken". I personally think this will happen faster on the slate/tablets and slower on the desktop as there is a lot of existing desktops with non touch devices. That said, touch clearly adds some interesting interactions that are possible and that should push the pace desktops move to touch capable displays faster.
  
• Metro style, you know that style from the Windows Phone, is now going to be a consistent experience across the phone, slate and desktop, but with obvious tweaks to fit the form factor.
  
• Best Steve Sinofsky quote of the day "I don't think anything is better than a Chrome free browsing experience" - and I don't think he really was talking about the chrome around the browser (think Google Chrome if you don't get it...).
  
• Choose how you want to build applications, XAML with C++,C#,VB, or HTML5 and Javascript all sitting on top of WinRT (more on that in the future) which provides a clean optimized native runtime for them. For those that were proclaiming XAML as dead - can we move on now please?

• If you used to use your PC startup time to get coffee, you will have to find another excuse because boot time is going to just keep getting faster

Connecting Applications

Probably one of the most interesting thing I saw during the keynote was how applications could connect to another application. This isn't a new concept, after all copy/paste has been used for years to move data from one application to another. For example, you copy an address from an e-mail and paste it to the map application to get directions. In Windows Phone if you take a picture you might share it on Facebook, e-mail it away all via a Share type link. Windows 8 Metro style applications will now formalize this in what they are referring to as "Charms" (I'm guessing Charms as it's name won't make it past marketing by release) But the idea is an application can publish itself as a source and/or a target. Sources provide data that applications use, and targets indicate they can accept that same type of data. Contracts are used to perform the match making. For example, an Image application might publish as a source a picture and if I wrote a Smug Mug application it could be the Target and would show up on the list Charms because it accepts pictures. Search is another great example of where this might apply but you can think of a number of business scenarios where this is useful as well. By connecting applications it makes for a more consistent user experience and in a lot of ways can reduce the amount code you have to do for common application features. It is also important because it lets the user interact directly with other applications without leaving the existing application. For people building Charms (targets) it's an easy way to extend windows and other applications, ones that might not even be known at the time the Charm was created.

Windows App Store

One thing the mobile developers understand is the idea that a app store is an easy way to get people to buy applications. The idea someone can find it, click buy, install it and go makes it a low friction way to get people into your application. Windows 8 will have an app store integrated in that will allow metro style applications (those built in XAML, HTML5) to be first class citizens. The app store will also allow legacy applications(you know those non metro style applications) to be in there with a link to the companies web site. For the metro style apps, you pick a price, you decide if you want a trial, you go through the marketplace process and then the application is ready to buy. It looks similar to the Windows Phone process. To me this opens up a new opportunity to build small applications that people will pay a few $ for and anyone, not just huge ISVs will have the ability to have an application take off if people find it interesting.

I'm here at build with 5000 friends, in fact I've been impressed how packed the keynote and all the days sessions have been. It's now early afternoon, and there's a lot of excitement floating around. The fact that each attendee is getting a slate running a developer preview of Windows 8 and all the tools later today I'm sure doesn't hurt. Look for more on that once we get them later today and I get a chance to kick the tires.

Silverlight has always been a good fit for extending the Microsoft Dynamics CRM user experience.  CRM 2011 takes that a step further by providing first class support including the ability to host Silverlight content as web resources on the server.  Silverlight can be used for a little widget on a form to a full blown rich page of content.  In fact, we start out the book by talking about where it is a good fit and where it isn’t.

The Silverlight + CRM book takes the best parts of our Silverlight Jumpstart book and adds a ton of CRM specific content.  In fact I think its safe to say right now it’s the most CRM + Silverlight content found anywhere.  We cover everything from where Silverlight can be used with CRM to how to use OData and the WCF services to perform data and service actions.  You can read the full table of contents here.

If you’ve purchased one of our other books check your e-mail we sent you a really good discount.  If you haven’t bought one of our books or are just too lazy to look in your email here’s some codes to help you along as well.

You can find the book site at http://www.silverlightpluscrm.com

Finally, I know a number of you have been asking me about updates to our full CRM book CRM as a Rapid Application Development Platform. We have been crazy busy working on that as well. In fact, last night was another late night!  Part of what takes so long is not just updating content but making sure we cover new CRM 2011 features.  Got ideas for either of these books of stuff we should cover?  Send it over but only if you don’t mind if we write about it!

Recently we added the Windows Phone Ad Control to one of our existing applications.  It ran fine on the emulator but as soon as you put it on a real device it crashed with a System.OutOfMemoryException.  Turns out after a little investigation and locating this forum post the issue is related to capabilities specified on the application. 

More specifically you need to have ID_CAP_WEBBROWSERCOMPONENT in your WMAppManifest.xml list of capabilities.  Here’s the exact line you need to add:

<Capability Name="ID_CAP_WEBBROWSERCOMPONENT"/>

That’s not the only capability that is needed when you add advertising, just happened that we already had the other ones on the list.  Walt Ritscher has a good blog post here that talks about how 3rd party DLLs and other references you add can expand your security foot print.

The Marketplace Test Kit or the Windows Phone Capability Detection tool can detect and auto generate these capabilities for you – details here,

I’ve always in the past thought LinkedIn was a pretty stand up company, however recently some of their actions make you go hmmm…  I came across this post talking about how LinkedIn now has options for if your picture can be used in advertising and e-mail preferences allow unsolicited e-mail from 3rd party.  I thought for sure the post had to be wrong, I’ve always thought of LinkedIn as being above those games, but sure enough the post was accurate and my profile was enabled without my permission.  So go now, and check your settings the post here has details on how to do it.

I’ve used Linked In’s premium service off and on before – in the past it used to be easy to shutoff if you decided you didn’t need it for a while.  This last round after a few months of paying for it and not using it, I decided to turn it off again.  They make it easy to charge your card for services, but there is no link to easily request it to be turned off that I could find.  Ironically, I took advantage of the service to e-mail the Linked In CEO, who by morning made sure it got turned off.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Linked In has incredible value and if you aren’t on it, as long as they don’t keep playing games you should be there.  Hey Linked In, I’m not sure who’s making these decisions, but clean up your act!

Update 8/11 – Linked In Posted the following to their blog in response to the reaction of the community of the changes - http://blog.linkedin.com/2011/08/11/social-ads-update/

I’m running a virtual training event for the next few weeks but that didn’t stop me from catching up on the Mix Day 1 Keynote and all the buzz from the conference today.  You can catch up on the keynote too with the recording at http://live.visitmix.com/Keynotes Also if you want the full press release you can find it here.  Or read on and here are a few notes I took while catching up!

You might not even have installed IE 9 yet (why not? ) but a preview release of IE10 is now online at http://ietestdrive.com – they plan to update the preview every 8-12 weeks.  Key things highlighted in this preview are CSS3 FlexBox, CSS3 Grid Alignment, CSS3 Multi-column and CSS3 Gradients.  This preview is suppose to be able to run side by side too with IE9 (IE8 has some issues for side by side FYI)

MVC3 Tooling Update - http://www.asp.net/mvc/mvc3 which includes HTML 5 Templates, Modernizr support (http://www.modernizr.com/), new hooks for DI and Global Action Filters to name a few.

Razor Templates at Template Monster - http://tinyurl.com/44g7rqu  - these plug right into WebMatrix

Lot’s of Windows Azure news today as well today at Mix11.  The first release of AppFabric Caching  and an update for AppFabric Access Control and  has been released (more details here ) Both while live, can be used for free until at least Jan 2012! If you haven’t checked out Access Control it’s the easiest way I’ve seen to add LiveID, Yahoo,Facebook and Google sign in to your site.

Another thing I’ve been looking for is  smooth streaming hosting from Windows Azure Storage.  That’s now available in preview for Windows Azure CDN.

Offers for MSDN and Cloud Essential Pack have also been extended and have some increased resources – you can find the revised benefits here 

The momentum from Microsoft right now is pretty high and with another Keynote tomorrow I’m expecting to hear a lot more about Silverlight and Windows Phone

We’ve been busy working on a few Windows Phone applications and one of them hit the marketplace recently.  Smug Photos is a photo viewing application for Smugmug a popular photo sharing site.  We are excited to get this first version released and are looking forward to making some cool updates to it in the future.

Take your SmugMug photos with you on the go to show off to your friends and family.  Smug Photos provides a quick and easy way to connect to your SmugMug account and download a copy for quick viewing when on the go.  You are also one click away from viewing the current SmugMug community popular photos and One Week Here’s photos from around the world.

Features

• Supports downloading albums to local storage for quick viewing
• Slideshow viewing of albums
• Multi-touch viewing of image

Install from the Windows Phone Marketplace here.

View your photos, Community Photos, or One Week Here pictures from around the world	Albums are organized into categories.  Images on the tile show which categories have downloaded albums for quick offline viewing
Albums can be easily found by Name and again presence of a thumbnail show the ones that are available when offline	View the thumbnails for the photos in an album and quickly mark it for offline viewing by downloading it to your phone.
Drill down to a detail view either in portrait or landscape and best of all one click from here start a slide show of all the photos in the album.	A quick pinch of the fingers and you kick in multi-touch mode which allows you to explore the photo using gestures.