I'm excited to share the news that we have released a number of new iOS samples for Windows Azure Mobile Services. These samples demonstrate common scenarios that developers will run into when using Mobile Services. All of these samples have been open sourced on GitHub and are available today.

Event Buddy

This is an iOS version of the EventBuddy samples already released for the Windows Store and Windows Phone 8. It enables you to view events and the sessions that correspond to those events.  You also have the ability to add new events and sessions from the app. Finally, you can view the details for each session and provide a rating for it. This is a great sample app to demonstrate as we now have versions that run on Windows Store, Windows Phone 8, and iOS. Once the Android SDK is released, we'll be looking to release an Android version as well.

Source in GitHub

Tic Tac Toe Leaderboard

This sample demonstrates how to make a simple leaderboard that is stored in Mobile Services and displayed in the application. The game in this application is Tic Tac Toe and each player's wins, losses, and ties are recorded and then shown on the scores screen.

Source in GitHub

Feedback

This sample shows an easy way to put a feedback form into an iOS application to capture feedback and store it in Mobile Services. In this scenario, the user can enter comments, their email address, and a 1 – 5 star rating before submitting their feedback. Additionally, this sample was generated so the files used to enter the feedback and send it to Mobile Services can be copied into a different iOS project with minimal effort.

Source in GitHub

Each sample includes some set up information in it's README. Additionally, we'll be adding more samples for iOS as time goes on. Finally, we'll be changing the link to Samples on the Mobile Services Dev Center to provide a separate page for samples for different operating systems. This should make it easier for developers to find the samples they are looking for.

I’m pleased to announce that Windows Azure Media Encoding, Encoding Reserved Unit, and On-Demand Streaming Reserved Unit are now generally available with the support of service level agreements.

Media Encoding will remain free of charge until February 18, 2013, when it will be billed based on data processed on a graduated scale starting at $1.99 per gigabyte for the first terabyte per month. The total gigabytes processed are equal to the data input to the encoder plus the data output from the encoder, calculated for a billing month. Both input and output data will be stored in the Media Services customer’s storage account, for which the standard Windows Azure storage and data transfer charges will apply.

Additionally, you can take advantage of improved on-demand streaming throughput with the new Windows Azure Media On-Demand Streaming Reserved Unit. The On-Demand Streaming Reserved Unit provides dedicated egress capacity that can be purchased in increments of 200 megabits per second . On-Demand Streaming Reserved Units will be offered free of charge until February 1, 2013, when they will be billed at the per-unit rate of $199.00 per month, calculated on a daily basis using the highest number of reserved units that are provisioned in the account in the corresponding 24-hour period. The original On-Demand Streaming service, which makes use of a shared compute environment without a service level agreement, will continue at no additional charge.

For more information, please refer to the Media section of our Pricing Details webpage.

As always, stay tuned to my twitter feed for Windows 8, Windows Azure and other Microsoft announcements, updates, and links: @clinted

It has been less than four months since we introduced the first public preview for Windows Azure Mobile Services and in this short time we have seen continual improvements to the service offering including:

• SDKs for Windows Store, Windows Phone 8 and iOS app
• Auth using Microsoft Account, Facebook, Google and Twitter
• Push Notification support via WNS, MPNS and APNS
• Structured storage
• Deployments in East and West US datacenters

What’s New

We are continuing this great momentum and I’m happy to announce another round of exciting updates to Windows Azure Mobile Services.

• Rapid Development: configure a straightforward and secure backend for Windows 8 and mobile applications in less than five minutes.
• Scheduler (a.k.a “CRON”): you can now run a server script on a pre-set schedule or on-demand. This enables new scenarios, including:
  • aggregating data from Twitter, RSS feeds, or any external web services
  • executing background code efficiently, such as process/resize images, performing complex calculations, or sending emails
  • schedule sending push notifications to customers to ensure they arrive at the right time of day
• Command-line support: you can now use the Windows Azure command line tools to create and manage your mobile services.
• Availability in the North Europe datacenter: you can now deploy your mobile services in Europe to enjoy reduced latency for your European customers.

Whether you are a developer building for the Windows Store, Windows Phone 8, iPhone, or iPad, these new features in Windows Azure Mobile Services provides an easy, streamlined process for backend elements like storing structured data, configuring user authentication via Windows Live, Facebook, Twitter, and Google, and incorporating push notifications.

Visit WindowsAzure.com to access Mobile Services either by logging into a current Windows Azure account or sign up for the free Mobile Services trial. You get 10 Mobile Services for FREE!

As always, stay tuned to my twitter feed for Windows 8, Windows Azure and other Microsoft announcements, updates, and links: @clinted