‘I unlock Joy’ programme for developers has started from November 1, 2011 and will continue till June 30, 2012 whereas the program for students will begin on December 18, 2011 and conclude on March 30 next year.

Developer competitive categories:

· “SUBMIT & WIN” CATEGORY: A registered participant submits THREE qualified Windows Phone Application in the Marketplace and gets a chance to win a Windows Phone. In this category, the Applications must be distinct and of non-trivial utility value for the Application User. A “Spam” or close replicas of existing Windows Phone Applications are disqualified.

· “PORT 2 APPS & WIN” CATEGORY: A registered participant submitting TWO qualified Windows Phone Applications in the Marketplace which are ported from existing Android or iPhone Applications get to win a Windows Phone.

· “WOMEN SPECIAL” CATEGORY: A first of its kind in the developer space. The first 100 registered Woman Developers who submit ONE (1) qualified Windows Phone Application each in the Marketplace qualify to win a Windows Phone each. The applications can be based on Entertainment, Fashion, Leisure, Sports, Recreation or Travel themes.

Student competitive categories:

· “STUDENT” CATEGORY: Calling on the community to be a part of the initiative, the “I unlock Joy” programme is customized to unfold their innovative and creative best and become among the select first few proud owners of the Windows Phone.

The contestants need to build one or more applications using Dev Tools and submit on AppHub. If their apps get certified and published on the Windows Phone Marketplace during the contest period which ends November 18, they can claim goodies like a brand new Windows Phone, certificate of acknowledgment from Microsoft and Windows Phone T-Shirts as well as USB flash drives

private static PhoneApplicationPage FindRootPage(FrameworkElement control)
{
  if (control != null && !(control is PhoneApplicationPage))
  {
     control = FindRootPage(control.Parent as FrameworkElement);
   }
   return control as PhoneApplicationPage;
}

We will have the following technical tracks there.

• Building cross browser web applications with HTML5/CSS3
• Creating & Deploying Application for Azure
• Visual Studio Productivity tools
• Windows Phone App development with XNA
• Introducing Parallel Programming with .Net 4.0
• Windows Work Flow 4.0 – A sneak Peek
• Strategies for client side storage in the web world – DOM Storage and IndexedDB

More details can be located here (http://kmug.org)

Hope to see you all there!!

Kerala Microsoft Usergroup (k-mug) is pleased to invite you to the Windows Azure Camp – a 1- day deep dive session designed to help you speed up on developing for Windows Azure. The Windows Azure platform is a flexible cloud-computing platform that lets your customer focus on solving their business problems. We will have the following sessions.

• Cloud Computing and Azure Overview Azure
• Architecture
• Azure Management PortalServices and Tools Needed
• Create and debug Azure Application
• Deploy application in Azure
• Windows Azure App Fabric Cache
• Moving ASP.NET application to Azure
• Moving SQL Express database to Azure SQL

More updates and registration details can be located here

• Multi-tasking
• Enhanced Phone Framework
• XNA Silverlight Integration
• Integrating with the Phone
• Performance
• Database Access
• Sockets
• Enhanced Push notification
• Marketplace Services

Hope you will enjoy the following video

Microsoft Community IMPACT Awards recognizes the great work done by members of the technology community in India to drive awareness, readiness and excitement about Microsoft technologies among the broad Developer and IT Professional ecosystem in INDIA.  Award selection criteria includes the various user group activities (such as technical sessions, trainings, developer conferences etc) conducted by the community in last year.

More details about the CTD event can be located here.

DevCon 2010 part-2 will be conducting at Technopark on 4th sept 2010 with the following agenda.

08:30AM – 09:30AM – Registration Confirmation
09:30AM – 10:30AM – Functional programing with F#
10:30AM – 11:30AM – Power Shell – Your Wish is my Command
11:30AM – 11:45AM – Tea Break
11:45AM – 12:30PM – Visual Studio 2010 tips
12:30PM – 01:15PM – ASP.NET MVC2
01:15PM – 02:00PM – Lunch
02:00PM – 02:45PM – Great Developer Contest – Final
02:45PM – 03:45PM – Office Addins with Visual Studio 2010
03:45PM – 04:30PM – Entity Framework 4
04:30PM – 05:00PM – Closing Ceremony

More details and registration details here

DevCon 2010 added another golden feather to K-MUG, and it brought the K-MUG mission – Learn, Build Contacts & Socialize – into action. Software developers across Kerala got an opportunity to learn about the latest technologies from Microsoft and got opportunity to interact with speakers and peers.  Even though the event was conducted at Trivandrum (southern most state), we got many attendees from other parts of the state especially techies who travelled more than 350 KM. More detailed report can be located here