You might have just seen my UK TechDays 2011 presentation which will be available online after the show, however if you didn’t get time to make a note of the resources, here you go:
•Springboard: http://bit.ly/W7SB
•Download Windows 7 Eval: http://bit.ly/smw7trial
•Office 365: http://office365.com
•Windows Collection PCs: http://bit.ly/wincoll
So a couple of days ago I started doing experience write ups of using some Windows Phone 7 applications to remote control Windows Media Center. The first app was Big Screen byRemote which is excellent for being able to remotely schedule recordings and otherwise manage your recorded content and EPG. But what about point and do remote control? Something I’ve always wanted to be able to do since getting my Logitech Duo a couple of years ago was to be able to view the content on my Media Center from my remote, then when I found what I wanted to play to…well…just play it.
That’s now possible thanks to apps like Remotely Possible.
As is the way with all these remote applications you need to install a server component onto the Media Center PC and you need to download the Windows Phone 7 application from the Marketplace. Before we take a look at the installation experience we’ll have a quick review of some of the things that are possible with this application:
) The application, at the moment, doesn’t give you access to EPG data on your device or provide any of the remote record facilities that an application like Big Screen byRemote does. Ok I know you’re itching to see it in action so here you go:
So how do you go about configuring this thing?
Download the Server from Validbit.com and install it on your Media Center, there’s not much more to it than that. If you don’t fancy remote controlling iTunes you won’t need Bonjour. You will need to set a password which you’ll later need to enter on your Windows Phone 7 device. To make things easy just follow this 2(ish) minute video. I’d also recommend rebooting to get things into a totally stable state.
Next download the Windows Phone 7 App from the Marketplace or using the Zune software. Make sure you’re connected to your home network via WiFi. Then launch the app and go to Settings, use the + at the bottom to enter the IP address of your Media Center, you’ll also need to enter the password you entered when setting up the server software. Save everything and you’re done.
Final thoughts
Another good application that does a really handy job, I especially love the ability to view files on the phone first and I really, really like the additional meta data that it makes available. That extra meta data improves the usability of the application no end and makes it look delicious on the phone.
On the down side I’ve just spoken to someone else who’s mileage has varied from mine. He couldn’t get reliable skipping during playback or a couple of other things working perfectly. I however did (as the video shows) and I had a great experience. This is one of the best things about Windows Phone 7 you can Try the application before you buy, just like I did. In the trial the fetching of media in your collection is limited to 10 albums / TV shows etc. but it’s plenty to test….indeed it’s plenty to make 2 videos and a blog post from
p.s. that’s my first video with my new Sony a55, nice isn’t it!
It’s been a while since I’ve written here. You might know the reason but essentially blogging has become my full time job and my exploits with Media Center have taken a back seat. Anyway I thought I’d mark my return by writing a little series on some of the apps that have become available for Windows Phone 7 for remote controlling your Media Center in some way…and there are already quite a few which is a testament to how easy it is to get to doing stuff for Windows Phone 7 with the SDK – especially now that VB.net is a compatible language.
Any way the first app is Big Screen byRemote Ian’s written about it in the past but I thought’s you be interested in the installation experience and using it for a couple of days first hand.
Setup
Well it’s pretty simple, the basic architecture is that you run a server on your Media Center and that provides web / phone access. Whilst that’s the top level view there’s a few key tasks that you’ll need to go through to get it working beautifully.
Yes my machine is called MONKEY! Hit Reverify Registration (might be veryify on yours) and enter your code on the subsequent screen then select Begin Registration. And you’re done with your Media Center install.
It’s kinda cool to be able to use this in your house, but you’ll want to be able to do it elsewhere so it’s time to do some router config.
Ok that’s pretty cool, but you can make it easier to use yet. You could do with a nice friendly name, if you’ve got a home server that will sort it out for you, hopefully just pop in your home server address with :83/sl at the end. If you don’t then a service like DynDNS will help. This basically updates DNS with a name for your home network and they have a client that you can run on your PC to keep the service constantly updated. My router actually does this for me.
So with that little lot done it’s time to get the phone going.
Now you can enjoy the ability to set your TV to record stuff remotely, browse your guide, delete recorded stuff and see how much storage you have available anywhere, including your phone or any PC with an internet connection.
I have to say I love this application, it’s really tightly integrated and after running it on my MC for a week the server component isn’t causing any impact on the box or on the Media Center experience, which some other software I’ve tried has. I would have recorded an awesome video, but Niall already did that…
Right, on to some more Windows Phone 7 + Media Center goodness … in the next post we’ll take a look at the experience of using the phone as an actual remote.
When you connect your Windows Phone 7 device up to the cloud you get a whole bunch of abilities through the windowsphone.live.com portal including the ability to remotely change device passwords, to locate your phone and to remote wipe your phone. What you might not realise is that when you connect a device to an Exchange account you also get the ability to do a remote wipe thus giving corporate level security to your device. Rather than detail the steps I recorded the following little video of the process:
If you don’t have a BPOS account you can get one by signing up for the FREE trial
Thanks to Simon May for writing this post and being as bouncy as ever the morning after UKPDC10, when the rest of us are just about managing to operate at all. You can also read this post on Simon’s blog.
I love it when we put on a good show, geeks, streams, quizzes, phones and most importantly TECH! Last night we played host to a whole bunch of people at the Microsoft Campus in Reading who all left happy (twitter says so #ukpdc10) and who all learnt some new stuff about Azure, Windows Phone 7, and IE9. There were some stonking announcements on the HD feed from Redmond given by a Steve Ballmer, and Bob Muglia and special guest stars like Pixar studios and Buzz Light-year. This was a developer conference so what’s important to the IT Pro in what was announced?
Windows Azure
TIP: If you don’t know what Azure is yet jump to my blog and subscribe where I’ll be explaining it next week but…
Windows Azure is true PaaS self scale-able (elastic) computing that grows and shrinks as the application needs to. At PDC10 we announced new Virtual Machine(VM) role which is a rock star move because with the VM role you can move an existing application to the cloud. How is such a feat achieved? Simple, take your application, install it on Windows 2008 R2 and take an image to a VHD file (super easy if you’re using Hyper-V ‘cos you already have the file) then copy-and-paste to file to the cloud server. With this new VM role you can do pretty much what you want, run the services you want and run scheduled tasks if you want to. Because it’s your server in the cloud you get to be the race car driver, make the decisions and be involved in the engineering process. I can’t stress how excited this role makes me as an IT Professional…but it gets even better.
Next your the VM role will be able to take your Windows 2003 Servers (but do yourself a favour and go to 2008 R2, you might as well) and you’ll be able to build the VMs in the cloud rather than just on premise.
The Web Role gets the enhancement of full features IIS, meaning that one role can run multiple sites and you can install IIS modules…oh yeah and management becomes familiar with Remote Desktop (RDP) and by elevating privileges you can do more complex deployments. So it’s now possible to install MSI files on a web role for example. By the way the PDC site and even Channel 9 are running on Azure.
The announcement of Windows Azure Connect means you can plumb Windows Azure into your internal network. That’s right you can domain join your Azure server roles so it’s just like it’s on premise, in your private data centre. Just by way of an example that means you could deploy your Intranet site to a Web Role or your expenses application to a VM Role and bosh it’s just there…you can probably use the VM Role to poke a DC up there too! It’s all done using familiar IP networking and VPN like connections. That sounds like a job for the IT Professional to me. Next year will bring SSL/TLS encryption for the pipes and Dynamic content caching so less stuff goes over the pipes (a bit like branch cache for the cloud) and a build out of the networking infrastructure.
Azure Licensing can be seen as too costly for some people so we’ve downsized! There’s a new Extra Small instance that costs just $0.05 per hour for a 1Ghz CPU, 768MB RAM and 20GB of storage…that sounds like the perfect kit to base my first instance on of an elastic application. All the Windows Azure Roles are Compute Instances and so are charged the same. There’s no CAL requirement to connect to an Azure VM role (awesome) and the Azure role license is covered through the compute costs…making it as cheap as (silicone) chips!
It’s all about to go Beta and we at UK TechNet will let you know when we drop the beta bomb.
So IT Pro’s need to skill up on:
You’ll be wanting to Azure to get your head around it…trials are included as part of your MSDN subscription too.
SQL Azure
Community Technology Previews were announced for a bunch of new features including Reporting so reports can be authored using SQL Services Reporting tools and embedded in the database. Data Sync CTP 2 can sync databases across datacentres and with the data on your premises in your own SQL Server. That means you can have multiple geo-redundant SQL database or even just keep the data closest to the people who need it. So say you have your business has 10 people in Japan, 10 people in Europe and 100 people data mining in India the guys in Japan and Europe can access the DB from SQL Azure from their fastest local DC and the guys in India receive a “caching” effect of having the data sync to their local SQL Server saving on the cost of the main Internet pipe to the office.
The lightweight Database Manager formerly known as “Houston” (stunning Siverlight based app if you have a look) has entered CTP too and will become part of the developer portal.
DBAs and IT Pros doing SQL stuff need to skill up on:
You’ll be wanting to Try SQL Azure to get your head around it…trials are included as part of your MSDN subscription too.
IE9
Platform Preview 6 of Internet Explorer 9 was introduced at PDC10 and whilst the Beta is out and has rocked 10 million downloads already PP6 is important. It’s what you need to run to assess your stuff against IE9 whilst still using IE8 – which is exactly what you need to do right now, you’d don’t want to be deploying Beta code (even if it’s awesome) to your user base. There’s not a huge amount of IT Professional stuff in IE9 just yet, but this video (which is HTML5 by the way if your browser is capable) shows off the new platform preview and IE Test Drive Site.
Windows Phone 7
Oh boy was there a lot of love in the room for this last night. We gave a couple away, more devs came with their own phones…everyone loved them!
You might not know who Scott Guthrie is but he’s a demo-god, dev-god and he’s famed for his red shirts. He live built a Windows Phone 7 app that dynamically searches eBay using odata to help you buy red shirts…it took about 5 minutes. Do that on another mobile device.
We’ve only just released the phone so there were no new announcements other than the inclusion of oData. I’ll be releasing some info on how WP7 can be used by business and by IT Pros next week so stay tuned to my blog.
Summary
I’m excited by the VM Role, it adds a whole new dimension to Azure, Windows Phone 7 is amazing and the developer experience, just like the user experience is 2nd to none , IE9 is beautifying the web for 10 million people already. Oh yeah, we also had a Kinect at the event and this is what people had to say about it (#nowhereneardeadyet!):
@pauliom: Trying to decide what to concentrate on after #ukpdc10. Better wp7 storage/tombstoning, tfs in azure, rx, or getting an xbox kinect? about 5 hours ago via TweetStation
@pauliom: RT @mtaulty: I only played with kinect at #ukpdc10 tonight for 5 minutes and it won me over - seems just as natural as it looks on the demos. about 5 hours ago via MetroTwit
@JonAlb: Thanks to all organisers of #ukpdc10 a fantastic evening 
just two requests... can I have a phone and can I have an xbox kinect? about 14 hours ago via MetroTwit
@ajnt: Xbox Kinect is amazing! Great idea having it at #UKPDC10. 3d person tracking including face recognition. 10th November UK launch. about 14 hours ago via web
@JonAlb: playing on the xbox kinect was very cool, the ping pong game (wiff waff) was ace! you REALLY get into it, realistic tennis elbow! #Ukpdc10 about 14 hours ago via MetroTwit
@GrahamWilmott: #ukpdc10 just played with #kinect about 15 hours ago via HTC Peep
s@tack72: RT @simonster: can I just ask, who at #ukpdc10 thinks Kinect is AWESOME? about 16 hours ago via MetroTwit
@gthevenot: OK Microsoft, no free #WP7 at #ukpdc10, what about free #kinect then ? about 16 hours ago via web
@brandondjmurphy: Remember when wii was first released. Triple that and double that and you will come close to the kinect experience #ukpdc10 about 17 hours ago via Mobile Web
@Paul_Dunscombe: Playing with kinect. Looks like a wii killer. #ukpdc10 about 17 hours ago via Tweets60
@westleyl: Noooooo, our beer .. RT @petemill: Finally made it to #ukpdc10 - helping myself to beer. Played with the kinect. Recognition is incredbile! about 17 hours ago via Seesmic for Android
@CLaueR: RT @petemill: Finally made it to #ukpdc10 - helping myself to beer. Played with the kinect. Recognition is incredbile! Bowling arm hurts about 17 hours ago via Twitter for Windows Phone
@petemill: Finally made it to #ukpdc10 - helping myself to beer. Played with the kinect. Recognition is incredbile! Bowling arm hurts about 17 hours ago via Twitter for Windows Phonef
@blakepender: SB: Kinect is remarkable! Talking about it being great 
#ukpdc10 about 19 hours ago via txt
@pauliom: At #ukpdc10 as a backing dancer to lady gaga apparently #kinect making a t1t of myself about 20 hours ago via TweetStation
@brandondjmurphy: At #ukpdc10, impressed with the kinect. about 20 hours ago via Mobile Web
@johanbarnard: #UKPDC10. Dance Central on #Kinect http://twitpic.com/31lul4
I love it when we put on a good show, geeks, streams, quizzes, phones and most importantly TECH! Last night we played host to a whole bunch of people at the Microsoft Campus in Reading who all left happy (twitter says so #ukpdc10) and who all learnt some new stuff about Azure, Windows Phone 7, and IE9. There were some stonking announcements on the HD feed from Redmond given by a Steve Ballmer, and Bob Muglia and special guest stars like Pixar studios and Buzz Light-year. This was a developer conference so what’s important to the IT Pro in what was announced?
Windows Azure
TIP: If you don’t know what Azure is yet jump to my blog and subscribe where I’ll be explaining it next week but…
Windows Azure is true PaaS self scale-able (elastic) computing that grows and shrinks as the application needs to. At PDC10 we announced new Virtual Machine(VM) role which is a rock star move because with the VM role you can move an existing application to the cloud. How is such a feat achieved? Simple, take your application, install it on Windows 2008 R2 and take an image to a VHD file (super easy if you’re using Hyper-V ‘cos you already have the file) then copy-and-paste to file to the cloud server. With this new VM role you can do pretty much what you want, run the services you want and run scheduled tasks if you want to. Because it’s your server in the cloud you get to be the race car driver, make the decisions and be involved in the engineering process. I can’t stress how excited this role makes me as an IT Professional…but it gets even better.
Next your the VM role will be able to take your Windows 2003 Servers (but do yourself a favour and go to 2008 R2, you might as well) and you’ll be able to build the VMs in the cloud rather than just on premise.
The Web Role gets the enhancement of full features IIS, meaning that one role can run multiple sites and you can install IIS modules…oh yeah and management becomes familiar with Remote Desktop (RDP) and by elevating privileges you can do more complex deployments. So it’s now possible to install MSI files on a web role for example. By the way the PDC site and even Channel 9 are running on Azure.
The announcement of Windows Azure Connect means you can plumb Windows Azure into your internal network. That’s right you can domain join your Azure server roles so it’s just like it’s on premise, in your private data centre. Just by way of an example that means you could deploy your Intranet site to a Web Role or your expenses application to a VM Role and bosh it’s just there…you can probably use the VM Role to poke a DC up there too! It’s all done using familiar IP networking and VPN like connections. That sounds like a job for the IT Professional to me. Next year will bring SSL/TLS encryption for the pipes and Dynamic content caching so less stuff goes over the pipes (a bit like branch cache for the cloud) and a build out of the networking infrastructure.
Azure Licensing can be seen as too costly for some people so we’ve downsized! There’s a new Extra Small instance that costs just $0.05 per hour for a 1Ghz CPU, 768MB RAM and 20GB of storage…that sounds like the perfect kit to base my first instance on of an elastic application. All the Windows Azure Roles are Compute Instances and so are charged the same. There’s no CAL requirement to connect to an Azure VM role (awesome) and the Azure role license is covered through the compute costs…making it as cheap as (silicone) chips!
It’s all about to go Beta and we at UK TechNet will let you know when we drop the beta bomb.
So IT Pro’s need to skill up on:
You’ll be wanting to Azure to get your head around it…trials are included as part of your MSDN subscription too.
SQL Azure
Community Technology Previews were announced for a bunch of new features including Reporting so reports can be authored using SQL Services Reporting tools and embedded in the database. Data Sync CTP 2 can sync databases across datacentres and with the data on your premises in your own SQL Server. That means you can have multiple geo-redundant SQL database or even just keep the data closest to the people who need it. So say you have your business has 10 people in Japan, 10 people in Europe and 100 people data mining in India the guys in Japan and Europe can access the DB from SQL Azure from their fastest local DC and the guys in India receive a “caching” effect of having the data sync to their local SQL Server saving on the cost of the main Internet pipe to the office.
The lightweight Database Manager formerly known as “Houston” (stunning Siverlight based app if you have a look) has entered CTP too and will become part of the developer portal.
DBAs and IT Pros doing SQL stuff need to skill up on:
You’ll be wanting to Try SQL Azure to get your head around it…trials are included as part of your MSDN subscription too.
IE9
Platform Preview 6 of Internet Explorer 9 was introduced at PDC10 and whilst the Beta is out and has rocked 10 million downloads already PP6 is important. It’s what you need to run to assess your stuff against IE9 whilst still using IE8 – which is exactly what you need to do right now, you’d don’t want to be deploying Beta code (even if it’s awesome) to your user base. There’s not a huge amount of IT Professional stuff in IE9 just yet, but this video (which is HTML5 by the way if your browser is capable) shows off the new platform preview and IE Test Drive Site.
Windows Phone 7
Oh boy was there a lot of love in the room for this last night. We gave a couple away, more devs came with their own phones…everyone loved them!
You might not know who Scott Guthrie is but he’s a demo-god, dev-god and he’s famed for his red shirts. He live built a Windows Phone 7 app that dynamically searches eBay using odata to help you buy red shirts…it took about 5 minutes. Do that on another mobile device.
We’ve only just released the phone so there were no new announcements other than the inclusion of oData. I’ll be releasing some info on how WP7 can be used by business and by IT Pros next week so stay tuned to my blog.
Summary
I’m excited by the VM Role, it adds a whole new dimension to Azure, Windows Phone 7 is amazing and the developer experience, just like the user experience is 2nd to none , IE9 is beautifying the web for 10 million people already. Oh yeah, we also had a Kinect at the event and this is what people had to say about it (#nowhereneardeadyet!):
@pauliom: Trying to decide what to concentrate on after #ukpdc10. Better wp7 storage/tombstoning, tfs in azure, rx, or getting an xbox kinect? about 5 hours ago via TweetStation
@pauliom: RT @mtaulty: I only played with kinect at #ukpdc10 tonight for 5 minutes and it won me over - seems just as natural as it looks on the demos. about 5 hours ago via MetroTwit
@JonAlb: Thanks to all organisers of #ukpdc10 a fantastic evening just two requests... can I have a phone and can I have an xbox kinect? about 14 hours ago via MetroTwit
@ajnt: Xbox Kinect is amazing! Great idea having it at #UKPDC10. 3d person tracking including face recognition. 10th November UK launch. about 14 hours ago via web
@JonAlb: playing on the xbox kinect was very cool, the ping pong game (wiff waff) was ace! you REALLY get into it, realistic tennis elbow! #Ukpdc10 about 14 hours ago via MetroTwit
@GrahamWilmott: #ukpdc10 just played with #kinect about 15 hours ago via HTC Peep
s@tack72: RT @simonster: can I just ask, who at #ukpdc10 thinks Kinect is AWESOME? about 16 hours ago via MetroTwit
@gthevenot: OK Microsoft, no free #WP7 at #ukpdc10, what about free #kinect then ? about 16 hours ago via web
@brandondjmurphy: Remember when wii was first released. Triple that and double that and you will come close to the kinect experience #ukpdc10 about 17 hours ago via Mobile Web
@Paul_Dunscombe: Playing with kinect. Looks like a wii killer. #ukpdc10 about 17 hours ago via Tweets60
@westleyl: Noooooo, our beer .. RT @petemill: Finally made it to #ukpdc10 - helping myself to beer. Played with the kinect. Recognition is incredbile! about 17 hours ago via Seesmic for Android
@CLaueR: RT @petemill: Finally made it to #ukpdc10 - helping myself to beer. Played with the kinect. Recognition is incredbile! Bowling arm hurts about 17 hours ago via Twitter for Windows Phone
@petemill: Finally made it to #ukpdc10 - helping myself to beer. Played with the kinect. Recognition is incredbile! Bowling arm hurts about 17 hours ago via Twitter for Windows Phonef
@blakepender: SB: Kinect is remarkable! Talking about it being great #ukpdc10 about 19 hours ago via txt
@pauliom: At #ukpdc10 as a backing dancer to lady gaga apparently #kinect making a t1t of myself about 20 hours ago via TweetStation
@brandondjmurphy: At #ukpdc10, impressed with the kinect. about 20 hours ago via Mobile Web
@johanbarnard: #UKPDC10. Dance Central on #Kinect http://twitpic.com/31lul4
Things have been quiet here for a couple of days whilst we were at IPExpo and interesting conference with a tangential subject line up but one that creates great conversations. I know the talk was great ‘cos I’m drinking lemon tea to help ease my throat…where are my herbal sweets? We had some great conversations around Windows Phone 7, Azure and around BPOS and Office 365, around System Center, Virtualisation, Desktop Deployment, Percy pigs, Windows Intune, Lync, Web Standards, IE9 and all sorts. Basically it was ace.
I got asked some superb questions over the course of the two days and now that I’m back in the office I’ll be buying lots of people coffee to find out the answers to publish here, things like:
And so many more that I can’t currently remember them. I also had Windows Phone 7 with me (as did @deepfat) and gave people some little demos. Things like being able to link your contacts, so if you know someone on Facebook, Windows Live and have them in your Exchange inbox then that can become one contact. Folks wanted a good look at the Market place so I showed them some of the apps from Tesco and Seesmic the Channel 9 app, oh and the Ebay app and the Bing Maps app. They also loved the metro interface and smooth transitions and navigation. I used it as a phone, apparently it does that too! 
Matt McSpirit (aka Virtual boy aka @mattmcspirit) and I presented on Windows Intune, BPOS and SQL Azure and you’ll find the slides embedded below – courtesy of Office Web Apps. We’re going to re-run the session and record it and get the video out there. Other highlights were meeting and talking to Zane Adam, who knows lots about SQL Azure and doing a round table with him before the show and some folks we invited along got to ask questions so we’ll have those vids online soon.
Next on the horizon is the Springboard tour, I can’t wait for that where we’ll be talking about the awesomeness of Windows 7 deployment and following that I’ll be at TechEd Europe where you’ll find me on the TechNet stand and squatting in presentations around the joint…can’t wait.
I do love these videos (0:23 is genius) we don’t always hit the mark with video, everything seeming too corporate and not individual enough. I can only imagine these were inspired by the number of people I’ve seen doing stuff like this on the streets of London.
I’m pretty sure that everyone knows that I’m a Windows Media Center geek, amongst other things, in fact I’ve blogged on the subject at TheDigitialLifestyle.com for a number of years. Well I love the idea of this. Being able to control my recording schedule from my soon-to-be-in-my-hands-Windows Phone 7 device.
It’s a great project by Nial this, because he’s already got BigScreen remote which uses Silverlight, so it’s just a simple case of code reuse and some skinning with Silverlight.
This will be installed as soon as it’s released.
Sneak Peek : byRemote native(?) client for Windowsphone 7 + Windows 7 Media Center – Windows Live
I’m stunned at the list of games titles we released today that will be coming to Windows Phone 7, it’s very complete, covering all the gaming bases…but some of favourites:
One of the titles we’re calling out is Crackdown 2. In this version there’s integration with Bing maps so you can defend your own home, or major building in your town…or your Data Center! There’s much more info in the Presskit and at the Windows blog.