Anith Gopal

Welcome to another installment of Counting Down to Seven , a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10 , when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series . For the longest time, the sessions listed under “Windows Phone” at the MIX10 conference (taking place in Las Vegas from March 15th through 17th) have had no details – just a “more details coming soon” message. That changed yesterday, and now the sessions have full names and abstracts, which I’ve listed below in chronological order.

It all starts next week on Thursday, March 4th: Ignite Your Coding , the live webcast where we interview some of the biggest brains in the industry, and then hand over the interview to you! In Ignite Your Coding , my fellow Developer Evangelist John Bristowe and I will talk to developers who’ve made their mark on the industry and ask them how they got started, what sorts of projects they’re working on, what interests them, where they see the industry heading, all with an eye towards helping you make sense of the changes happening in the world of software development. We’ll ask the questions for the first part, but then it’ll be your turn to ask them.

Avril Lavigne’s Hometown While on the road, we sent out a tweet asking anyone who was near the route we were taking to Montreal if they’d like to catch up with us. We got a message back from our friend Todd Lamothe (who’ll be presenting at TechDays Ottawa next week), who works in Avril Lavigne’s hometown, Napanee , so we decided to catch up with him at the nearby Tim Hortons . What Canadian roadtrip doesn’t include a visit to this venerable Canadian institution?

Vancouver Convention Centre, as seen from the Fairmont Hotel across the street Yesterday marked Day 2 of the TechDays Vancouver 2009 conference . The track that I’m in charge of is the most broad one: Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform . With such a wide array of topics that I could cover, I decided to focus on four areas that I and the people I surveyed thought would be both important and interesting: Rich (Internet) Applications The “Software” half of “Software + Services”, namely client applications on computers and other devices ASP.NET MVC, the model-view-controller web app framework that I like to call “Rails That Scales” The “Services” half of “Software + Services”: services accessible via the internet Day 1 was about the first two, and Day 2 covered MVC and Services.

Today is your last chance to register for TechDays Canada 2009’s Vancouver (September 14 – 15) and Toronto (September 29 – 30) conferences at the early bird price of CDN$299. Tomorrow, the price doubles to CDN$599 – that’s the price for procrastination! I’ve written a lot about TechDays Canada 2009 lately , so I think I’ll close with this video shot by the folks at TechVibes on the last leg of the TechDays Canada 2008 tour: Vancouver

Last month, I posted a video announcing the launch of the Race to Market Challenge , a competition that challenges you to add some Windows Phone applications to our up-and-coming Marketplace and compete for one of four grand prizes: developer editions of a Surface table.

Here’s a cute trick: Bing’s ip: operator lets you find out which domains are on a given IP address. For example, let’s consider the IP address of the Coffee and Code blog, whose URL is coffeeandcode.org

Last week, in a special edition of the MSDN Flash , I wrote about how you can get Windows 7 before the General Availability date by registering for TechDays 2009 before August 19th .  If you do so, or have already registered, we will activate your TechNet Plus Direct subscription within a couple of weeks.  This means that you will not only be registered to attend Microsoft Canada’s premier series of technical readiness events in one of 7 cities across Canada , but you will also get Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 before the General Availability date of October 22 so you can start working and becoming familiar with them early. Since the Flash was sent out, I received a number of emails regarding what is included in the TechNet Plus Direct subscription and how you will access Windows 7 and the other software.  The TechNet Plus Direct Subscription is an online one where you get access to all of the bits through the TechNet Subscriber Downloads site.   You can find out more information on TechNet Plus subscriptions here .  The list of products included in the TechNet Plus Direct subscription can be found by going to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/subscriptions/bb892756.aspx .  Even though Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 might not be listed, rest assured that RTM versions of both are available for download right now