Boston Azure Project - View Discussion

Coordinator

Feb 2 2011 at 5:02 PM

Edited Feb 14 2011 at 3:23 PM

Hackathon is Feb 16, 2011 at NERD from 4:00-9:00 PM. What are your project ideas?

(added 14-Feb-2011)
DETAILED WRITE-UP OF THE HACKATHON: http://blog.codingoutloud.com/2011/02/11/boston-azure-hackathon/

codingoutloud

Coordinator

Feb 2 2011 at 5:14 PM

Ideas that enhance the existing Azure-hosted www.bostonazure.org application and experience:

Enable / Use / Publish-usage-of Windows Performance Counters
- http://blogs.msdn.com/b/walterm/archive/2011/02/01/setting-up-performance-counters-in-your-web-and-worker-roles.aspx
- http://sqlblog.com/blogs/aaron_bertrand/archive/2011/01/31/how-i-use-powershell-to-collect-performance-counter-data.aspx
Enhance use of OData
- http://odata.org
- https://odata.sqlazurelabs.com/OData.svc/v0.1/s3eqxeo3ba/bostonazure.org/Events?$filter=event_id%20gt%2014
Enhance Monitoring
- Existing monitoring: http://www.bostonazure.org/webmaster/uptime
- Create separate Worker Role for self-monitoring; store its results in Table storage; create visualization
Enable Access Control Service (ACS) for Single-Sign-On via Facebook, LiveID and others
Using the ACS support, we could:
- Create a role of "Admin" or "Moderator" for ba.org
  - Allow anyone to upload an image
  - Allow anyone to upload a useful Azure link
  - Allow anyone to upload a useful Azure event
- Only allow Moderators to make uploaded data visible (via role-based Claims)
- Allow Moderators to make changes to Boston Azure event details
Upgrade to MVC 3.0, including Razor
Create Windows Phone 7 app for user community
- Bill has a draft of a simple one that gets its data from Azure
Create a Worker Role that will create Thumbnails in the background for images
Use Windows Azure Drives to enable some of the "legacy" images (the links to which are currently broken on the live site: http://www.bostonazure.org/Events)
Make the Newsletter sign-up form pop-up to be able to ask for first and last name
Integrate the user database with Constant Contact's event system so that authenticated users can RSVP with one click from Web or WP7 app
Create mobile app in iPhone or Android
Create UI for editing SQL Azure "events" data from ba.org (perhaps using Silverlight)

codingoutloud

Coordinator

Feb 9 2011 at 8:01 AM

General info of possible use at Hackathon:

Some MVC 3/Razor tutorials from The Gu: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2011/02/08/special-48-hour-offer-free-asp-net-mvc-3-video-training.aspx

codingoutloud

Coordinator

Feb 9 2011 at 8:04 AM

One project I personally want to work on is enabling Access Control Services (ACS) on bostonazure.org. This will enable: (a) personalization, (b) priviledged operations, and (c) integrated RSVP sorts of features. Can be extended to mobile devices.

Anyone else want to hack on this stuff? If not, what DO you want to hack on?

Cheers,

-Bill

arock3

Developer

Feb 11 2011 at 4:27 PM

I would like to create a project similar to DropBox using a Worker Role to process uploads and downloads. Store user information in SQL Azure or Table Storage and all data in blobs. This would then sync to all your desktops from Azure.

codingoutloud

Coordinator

Feb 11 2011 at 9:16 PM

Another idea: enable SSL on www.bostonazure.org. Fodder: http://www.imperialviolet.org/

codingoutloud

Coordinator

Feb 11 2011 at 9:18 PM

Maura tweeted she was interested in exploring the new DataJS library: http://datajs.codeplex.com/

jasonhaley

Developer

Feb 12 2011 at 3:23 PM

I would like to create a Windows Phone app for the site. Have to think about what it would do though. Here are some ideas:

Directions to the NERD from current location
Ability to subscribe
Ability to read the information about the meeting (that shows better than a web page)
Ability to view information about past meetings
Ability to add the event to your windows live or google calendar (might need this for the best reminder functionality)
Ability to upload images to the Azure site for things like the hackathon event or normal group meetings so they show on the site
Ability to send a message to contact

No way I can do all these myself in one night though, could use some help from others with some silverlight or wp7 skills. Also may need some new services exposed on the site to make the data available.

jasonhaley

Developer

Feb 12 2011 at 3:33 PM

Edited Feb 12 2011 at 3:34 PM

I just read all of Bill's entry above ... would love to see his sample wp7 app.

codingoutloud

Coordinator

Feb 13 2011 at 11:58 PM

Jason - I will hand over the bits. I've also been promising them to George. Better get on the ball!

codingoutloud

Coordinator

Feb 13 2011 at 11:58 PM

For anyone looking at OData hacking, here is a pretty cool list of resources: http://odataprimer.com/Consuming%20OData%20Services.ashx

codingoutloud

Coordinator

Feb 14 2011 at 3:22 PM

Another thought in case we develop any dependencies on external components: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2011/02/14/nuget-1-1-released.aspx

codingoutloud

Coordinator

Feb 15 2011 at 10:37 PM

Jason and George - I stuck my (crude) WP7 code in CodePlex in same project as the Azure web site. There is a \BostonAzureWeb tree (the one you've coded in before). Parallel to this there is now a \BostonAzureMobile tree with two items of special interest:

\BostonAzureMobile\WP7\BostonAzureMemberApp
\BostonAzureMobile\WP7\BostonAzureMemberAppComplexHttpLogic.zip

The first item is a WP7 project that actually works, but is simple.

The second item is a lot more complex and is incomplete. It is a zip file of a hacky project I was using to learn from. I was trying to get to (a) not having the UI for the phone app tied to a web connection or data retrieval (for maximum performance and no chance of hanging), which would be accomplished by (b) having the UI only interact with isolated storage which would cache data that it (c) downloaded async from an Azure blob or (d) directly from SQL Azure via OData interface. I also wanted the browser control to be data-bound to a ViewModel with a BestHtmlAvailable property that could surface one value as the app wakes up, but might change as (in the background) updates are loaded from Azure.

There are other OData comments mentioned in this thread.

georgebabey

Developer

Feb 16 2011 at 1:09 PM

I hate to do this but it looks like I'm not going to be able to make it today to hack along with you all. Been having some car problems I was hoping would be fixed by today but it looks unlikely. Disappointed as it sounds like there are lots of great ideas being tossed around. Bill, thanks for posting the WP7 code - looking forward to checking out what you did, the complex app sounds very interesting!

codingoutloud

Coordinator

Feb 16 2011 at 1:31 PM

Booooo!

Hmmmm ... George / all •• I wonder if there is a meaningful way to join in remotely? I can set up a Live Meeting, we have codeplex to share bits, you are already familiar with some of the site code + azure DEV.

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 16, 2011, at 8:09 AM, "georgebabey" <notifications@codeplex.com> wrote:

From: georgebabey

I hate to do this but it looks like I'm not going to be able to make it today to hack along with you all. Been having some car problems I was hoping would be fixed by today but it looks unlikely. Disappointed as it sounds like there are lots of great ideas being tossed around. Bill, thanks for posting the WP7 code - looking forward to checking out what you did, the complex app sounds very interesting!

nazik

Coordinator

Feb 16 2011 at 7:52 PM

Fellow humans,

Intend to join you guys today no matter what. Able to break away from my projects and hope to contrubute in any away I can. I am going to attempt the light stuff today such "Create a Worker Role that will create Thumbnails in the background for images" . And if I have more time than I will attempt the UI stuff.

See in a few.

Nazik

georgebabey

Developer

Feb 16 2011 at 8:39 PM

Perhaps live meeting or skype might work? Maybe even a good old fashioned IRC chat? I don't want my lack of wheels to slow you guys down though.

I was planning on taking a look at the wp7 source Bill posted and/or possibly moving the code to MVC3 / Razor since the <% %> make my eyes bleed.

codingoutloud

Coordinator

Feb 17 2011 at 12:40 AM

George made the first check-in!!

"Updated project to MVC3 (assemblies and such, views still using ASPX)"

georgebabey

Developer

Feb 17 2011 at 1:44 AM

Thoughts from updating the views to Razor:

We could use RenderPartials - especially on the index page. FAQ and Agendas could be broken up.

We could use the dynamic ViewBag in MVC3 instead of the existing ViewData[" "] dictionary

The a hrefs could be changed to use HtmlLinks / Url.Content

Are the pages under /Account used? You can hit them directly but I don't see any links from the index

A few missing files that are in the csproj but not checked in. I did not create razor views for these:

/Views/Home/Sponsors.aspx
/Views/Webmaster/Validate.aspx
{Test Project}/Controllers/ConstantContactTests.cs

jasonhaley

Developer

Feb 20 2011 at 5:50 PM

Looks like WP7 supports the iCal format for the events, so if we add a download for that it should cover the phone too.

jasonhaley

Developer

Mar 5 2011 at 1:41 AM

Tool for parsing html

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mwo/archive/2011/03/02/fantastic-tool-for-html-parsing-tool.aspx