CodeChat (MP4) - Channel 9

Bill is like me in at least one way - he loves TypeScript and Angular 2.0. I pulled Bill aside during the Build conference and we had a little chat about TypeScript - a typed superset of JavaScript - and Angular 2.0 - the new version of Google's popular web framework. This language/framework combination makes working with client-side web apps a dream. You can also see Bill cover the topic in more detail in his Channel 9 episode Angular 2.0 with TypeScript by Bill Wagner. If you want to check out TypeScript, go to typescriptlang.org, and Angular 2.0 can be found at angular.io. If you happen to be looking for a good reference project, you can follow my Waterbug project on GitHub.

Daniel Lang from Toradex (@toradex) joins me as we take a break from all of the software talk to chat about something that is sometimes more exciting - hardware. Toradex makes devices. The Colibri which he shows off here is an ARM-based module that's fully capable of running Windows 10 IoT Core. This welcomes it in to the existing suite of supported boards such as the Raspberry Pi, Dragonboard, and Minnowboard Max. One of the things that differentiates the Colibri is the fact that it's a tiny compute module plus a carrier board for developer convenience. This features reminds me of the Intel Edison, which works the same way. And there's a starter kit too! For $99, you can get everything you need to dive into the deep end of the Internet of Things. Developers, go to developer.toradex.com/winiot to get started, and to www.toradex.com/community to help or get help from others. There's a bit more help to in the form of an online webinar available at www.toradex.com/webinars/introduction-to-windows-10-iot-core. Remember, if you build something, tweet it and include me (@codefoster) so I can enjoy it with you.

I was thrilled when Brad Green (@bradlygreen) of Google agreed to join me on CodeChat. I'm ramping up quickly on Angular 2.0 which hit beta status a few months ago. It's a delightful framework and I'm having a lot of fun, so getting a chance to talk to one of its founding fathers was a real pleasure. Brad and team are doing a great job with the project. The framework is stable, the documentation is helpful, and the community of developers is picking up momentum and enthusiasm. Join me for this fun chat with Brad about Angular 2.0.

Silicon Valley isn't the only place on earth where bold men and women launch startups, write software, and change the world. It happens in Atlanta too, and that's why Microsoft set up a Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC) in the heart of Georgia's capital city. In this episode of CodeChat, I sit down with Tommy Patterson from the Atlanta office and talk about all forms of software development happening there - startups, students, indie developers... you name it. Follow @codefoster

My colleague, Nick Landry, and I are both pretty into home automation using INSTEON. Nick is buying a new house and thinks it's time to go all out with a good home automation solution and then start writing some code to enable various natural speech scenarios. Really, who doesn't want to talk to their house and control the lights, locks, gadgets, and more?

Jennifer Marsman is all sorts of passionate about technology and specifically about machine learning. Get this. Jennifer made a lie detector using machine learning, and it actually works. And it was even featured on Bloomberg. I grabbed a few minutes of Jennifer's time to banter about a Microsoft hackathon we both attended. I hope you'll join us for this chat.

This is a fun episode of CodeChat with a casual conversation with fellow technical evangelist David Crook from Florida. David has a ton of great content online on the topics of big data, machine learning, and IoT. He's got his hand in some exciting projects, and it was really fun to steal a little bit of his time to discuss all of this.

Sam George (@samjgeorge) and team are responsible for the IoT offerings in Azure - a collection of services that will get your IoT solution connected to the cloud in a hurry. Join me for this episode of CodeChat as Sam and I talk all about these offerings. IoT Suite allows you in something like 6 minutes to create an excellent starting point for an end-to-end IoT solution. You even get a dashboard with data streaming in from simulated devices until you replace them with your real devices! IoT Hub allows you to connect literally millions of devices, and we're talking devices of all types - microcontrollers, Linux, Windows 10, JavaScript, etc. These services are capable of getting your IoT project connected to the cloud quickly and securely. Check out the Samples Gallery to very quickly get an idea of what you are now empowered to build.

Patrick Kettner (@patrickettner) is one of the core contributors on the modernizr project which we all know and love, and he did something really cool. I like cool things so I had a chat with him about it. Patrick made a command line UI for modernizr. If you're a command line type person, you don't want to dust off the mouse and open a browser every time you need to generate modernizr script files. No! You just want to do it at the command line. That's where the modernizr-blessed project comes in. modernizr-blessed uses the blessed module from npm which makes command line stuff easy, and it even supports a mouse. A mouse in the terminal! What a hoot. The project is not quite public yet, so just follow Patrick on Twitter and wait for an announcement that it's stable enough to let loose in the wild.

Livi Erickson (@misslivirose) is a good person to follow online if you're even remotely interested in the world of augmented and virtual reality (A/VR). Join me in this 52nd episode where Livi talks generally about A/VR concepts and then dives into the topic of WebVR - VR in the browser essentially - and shows some basic JavaScript code for making it happen. Livi has a website at livierickson.com and a great GitHub repository at misslivirose/learnvr that will get you some basic resources for getting started. Also, don't miss Livi's Just A/VR Show on Channel 9 and specifically her in-depth Introduction to the VR Web episode.