MSDN Magazine: July 2012

Andrew Byrne has had his coding ups and downs, but when he has stumbled, he has picked himself up and continued. Here, he points out some Windows Phone programming techniques to make your own road a little smoother.
Andrew Byrne

The Working Programmer:
The Science of Computers

Our columnist enlists the help of a bona-fide computer scientist to explain how developers can make their lives a little easier by understanding the theories behind certain parts of computer science.
Ted Neward

Features

ASP.NET MVC 4: Test-Driving ASP.NET MVC
Learn best practices and techniques for enhancing the testability of your ASP.NET MVC applications.
Keith Burnell

Windows Phone: Writing a Compass Application for Windows Phone
Windows Phone now exposes sensors such as the accelerometer, GPS and compass (magnetometer). Here, Donn Morse walks through the creation of a compass app to demonstrate how developers can interact with that sensor.
Donn Morse

Microsoft Azure: Hadoop on Microsoft Azure
What’s all the buzz about Hadoop? Find out as you learn how to set up a cluster on Azure, how to run a Map/Reduce job using Java, JavaScript and C# Streaming, how to run queries in HIVE, and more.
Lynn Langit

ASP.NET: How to Handle Relational Data in a Distributed Cache
Iqbal Khan discusses how developers handle data relationships while caching data, and shows through source code examples how those relationships can be mapped. The net effect is that the application doesn’t have to keep track of those relationships in the cache. Rather, the cache is aware of them and handles them correctly.
Iqbal Khan

Internet of Things: A Smart Thermostat on the Service Bus
We continue our series on the Internet of Things by building a connected device—a smart thermostat—and wiring it up to the Azure Service Bus.
Clemens Vasters

Columns

Cutting Edge
Mobile Site Development, Part 2: Design
Dino Esposito debunks some mobile site development myths as he explains how to present users with Web pages designed to work best with their individual devices.
Dino Esposito

Data Points
Create and Consume JSON-Formatted OData
JSON is an increasingly important format for application development. Make sure you know how to consume OData in JSON format and create WCF Data Services that return JSON.
Julie Lerman

Forecast: Cloudy
Mixing Node.js into Your Microsoft Azure Solution
Node.js is generating lots of buzz, and Joseph Fultz explains how he incorporated it into an existing Azure solution.
Joseph Fultz

Test Run
Classification and Prediction Using Neural Networks
In the May issue, James McCaffrey explained the basics of neural networks. Now he shows you how to use neural networks to classify existing data into groups, and to predict the group membership of new data.
James McCaffrey

Touch and Go
Windows Phone Motion and 3D Views
When a Windows Phone program knows the orientation of the phone in 3D space, the phone can provide a portal into a 3D world. The new Motion class makes it possible, as Charles Petzold explains.
Charles Petzold

Don't Get Me Started
The Patient Knows What’s Wrong with Him
It's hard to create an effective user experience when your users struggle to tell you what they need. David Platt says good designers know how to gain actionable insight from their users.
David Platt

Editor's Note
The Long Test Run
Over the years, McCaffrey has proposed, written and reviewed innumerable article concepts. And, no surprise, he has some pointed thoughts on what makes an idea worthy of publication.
Michael Desmond

Online-only Features

Web Dev Report: Working with Graphics on the Web: Canvas vs. SVG
In this installment of the Web Dev Report, find out whether to use Canvas or SVG when developing Web graphics.
Rachel Appel

Kinect: Starting to Develop with Kinect
The first in our series of Kinect-themed features shows how you can use the skeleton-tracking capability of the Kinect in a WPF app without writing a single line of code.
Leland Holmquest

Windows Azure: Comparing Windows Azure Queues and Service Bus Queues
Find out whether Windows Azure queues or Service Bus queues are the best choice for the messaging queues in your application.
Ricardo Villalobos

Leading Lightswitch: Tales of Advanced LightSwitch Client Customizations
Enjoy these tales of creating custom applications that show off the versatility and ease of use LightSwitch offers. You will also get a glimpse of how a real pro works with clients.
Jan Van der Haegen