Looking for ideas for a fun project to learn WCF

Question

Starting next year, I'll be working on the WCF services area of our SOA application at work, so during the xmas break I want to learn WCF.

I would like to create a fun, useful project to work on in which I use WFC to make it work. But since WCF is a bit dry, I'm having a hard time thinking of a cool project, but I can imagine something like this:

• a Silverlight/WPF game that runs on two computers and communicates via WCF?
• some kind of service that monitors, e.g. email or twitter and gives notifications? (is this something that WCF can do, like a Windows Service?)
• I have a ASP.NET hosting site (http://domainbox.de), can I use WCF somehow to create e.g. RIA Services implementation which I consume from silverlight sites? It's a bit unclear to me where web services stop and WCF begins, e.g. in a hosting environment.
• I have a couple Windows 7 Ultimate machines at home, so I assume I just need to install IIS7, or are there other ways to host and use WCF on a small network? Up to now I have only done samples which run on a temporary http port URL.

What is the funnest WCF project that you have worked on, or what kind of ideas do you have for a project which would create something useful and teach WCF at the same time?

Answer 1

If you are a asp.net developer and also want to learn more ajax, (using ms ajax or jquery) you could build additional ajax controls for your library based on wcf services?

Added:

You could build an IM/chat API backend that can be consumed by asp.net / silverlight / flash etc

Answer 2

WCF and fun is a contradiction in terms.

You could try building a card game:

• Start with 2 players
• IP address of opponent in config files
• Each host acts as a client and a server
• Both tell the other which card they played