Some projects integrating windows phone with Kinect emerge

Some projects integrating Kinect on the PC and windows phone have begun to appear on the internet.

By Sushovan De

App Hub no longer requires GeoTrust verification for students and individuals

This news was first reported by Tom Warren on 19 July, but there was a lot of misgivings about accuracy of that article at that time due to lack of a source. Well, Tom seems to have been vindicated now, as WMPU reports that the App Hub Registration Walkthrough has been updated, stating that individuals and students (wait… aren’t students individuals also?) will no longer be required to go through a GeoTrust verification process. As a student in the US whose GeoTrust verification was processed within the hour, I don’t think this will make much of a difference to me… but this is definitely good news for people elsewhere where GeoTrust was causing unnecessary delays. It should also let students unlock their phones immediately after registration (which was earlier delayed till someone submitted their first app.)

By Sushovan De

App hub refresh: new look and feel, reports, private beta publishing

Microsoft has refreshed the look and feel for the App Hub website. The new features are: at-a-glance reports of all your apps, a new, cleaner status board for apps in submission, the ability to see how many times your app has crashed recently and the biggest feature of them all: publishing apps as private beta apps to people of your choice. Developers are required to agree to a newer terms of service before entering the site.

By Sushovan De

Abolade Gbadegesin offers deep technical perspective on mango

We got our hands on mango and I have to admit - I'm in awe. It's nearly perfect and I am not the only one saying this, mind you. Anyways, we have the perspective of end users and bloggers but what about developers? They love the updated Mango SDK. We won't dive into the technical details because Abodale Gbadgesi, who played a key role in developing Windows phone OS, just posted a fantastic video on Channel 9 highlighting technical achievements and know hows concerning Mango update. Developers should definitely watch the Silverlight video after the break.

By Rahul Mathur

Remote screen capture for Windows phone (Homebrew)

We previously covered On Device screen shot from XDA user Finnix. Now a developer from China has created a homebrew solution which enables real time remote screen capturing capability between PC and your Windows Phone.

Windows Phone Hacker has more information on this:

 The application is relatively simple: download the ZIP that contains both the phone and desktop applications. Then, deploy the phone application, and enable Jaxbot's dehydration hack. After that, connect your phone to your computer, run the desktop server, and enter your computer's IP address. Voila, your computer will now display whatever content is displayed on your phone, and you can use a screen recorder of your choice from this point on.

Click here to download the zip file.  

By Rahul Mathur

Windows Phone Sauce Developer Labs

Microsoft Released Windows Phone 7 on October 26th last year with only 1000 applications available in the Marketplace. Around 2 weeks ago , we reported that the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace crossed 20,000 apps roughly in 219 days. These figures clearly show the efforts put in by Redmond are paying off .



With the Mango SDK already available, 500 new features, 1500 new APIs and Microsoft working to bring Mango to Developers before consumers - Developing for Windows Phone 7 all of a sudden has got everybody interested.

We at Windows Phone Sauce have decided to start a Windows Phone Development Series in the coming weeks that lets you develop apps for Windows Phone 7 right from the scratch. Join us as we get our hands dirty with code.

Watch out this space for more updates

By Rahul Mathur

Microsoft Releases Developer Tool To Port Android apps To Windows Phone

Microsoft is working hard to get as many developers on board as possible. Not only that they are trying to make it as easy as possible for developers to port their applications from different platforms. After launch of iOS porting tools, Microsoft has just released developer tools to help port applications from Android to Windows Phone. The tools don't simply port applications from one platform to other, instead it eases the process my providing a list of API mappings.

The tools are available for free of cost and there is a guide along with it. So if you are an Android developer looking to give Windows Phone a try, these are just the right tools to get you started.

via RWW 

By Rahul Mathur

Check if your application meets the Windows Phone certification criteria

Punit Ganshani from ganshani.com has posted an immensely useful service for developers. He has created a test that evaluates whether your application is ready to be certified. The test will ask you some questions which are essential requirements to clear the marketplace certification test and then email you the results with feedback. It's essential to read the guidelines before you submit the application. If you have missed a few points there, the test mentioned will be very helpful. It will give you an idea of what you know and most importantly, what you need to know. If you are submitting an application for the first time, I highly recommend that you take this test first.

Detailed description of the test:

Take this short test to evaluate whether your application is ready for certification. Please note that your application details (name, version, etc) are not captured in this test, however your responses may be recorded and stored for analysis purpose. The test is only indicative of how fair your application will do in the certification process.
The test will also give you hints & suggested applications/frameworks to achieve some functionalities
Once you appear for this survey, you will receive a mail with the survey results telling you how ready you are for WP7 Application Certification.

Source: Ganshani 

By Rahul Mathur

On Device screenshot on Windows Phone now a reality (HomeBrew)

How hard is to to take a screen shot on your device? iOS - feature is built in, painless process. Android - you have to root your device and then use shady app (via @sunnychl although it it built in some devices(!) and finally Windows Phone- there is no way. When there's XDA, nothing is impossible. Star Windows Phone hacker and XDA user fiinix has developed a homebrew solution to capture screen shots directly from the device.
The application requires you to enable the dehydration hack and then follow a simple procedure :

- Enter this app- Navigate to the app you want to capture (no more than 2 apps in between (this app will be killed by "Watchdog"))

- Hold "focus" (not click, >focus), for at least 500ms

- Wait for messagebox to verify capture

- (SUCCESS) > Located under "Pictures > All > Saved Pictures"

I can see developers and fellow bloggers befitting from this immensely. Strange that Microsoft still hasn't figured out the utility of this feature, hence they are avoiding implementation of this feature to be built in.

Download the latest version and read more about it on XDA.

By Rahul Mathur

Microsoft working to bring Mango to developers before consumers

This has to be the best news of the day! Joe belfiore just tweeted :

@0xMW We are working on a plan for DEVELOPERs to be able to get Mango for phones before we launch -- but for end-users: this fall.

Yes, Microsoft is working to provide Developers an early access to Mango, which is a great idea since developers know their tech well and can act as great testers resulting in ironing out issues before the final release which is also beneficial for the company as well as consumers. Also, developers prefer device over emulators - who wouldn't ? So this sounds just about the perfect move to make developers oh so happy. Today, seems to be a fine day for developers, first the launch of beta tools and now this announcement. 

By Rahul Mathur

Windows Phone 7.1 beta developer tools now available for download

This must be an exciting time to be a Windows Phone developers. Mango update gives developers tons of new opportunities to target a large audience in coming months. Before you begin exploring the Mango SDK, make sure you take a look at updated Windows Phone development Docs.

Contents of  developer tool kit : 

The Windows Phone Developer Tools includes the following

• Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 (Beta)
• Windows Phone Emulator (Beta)
• Silverlight 4 SDK and DRT
• Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0 Referesh Windows Phone Extensions
• Microsoft Expression Blend SDK Preview for Windows Phone 7.1
• WCF Data Services Client for Window Phone 7.1

Download link for Mango / Windows Phone 7.1 beta developers tool

#wp7dev - Time to dive deep into the SDK. Let's make some awesome apps !

By Rahul Mathur

Get The Windows Phone 7 UI For Windows Mobile Using TodayXLive

Even though the world is shifting to modern mobile operating systems, it seems that dev interest in Microsoft's old Windows Mobile has not died yet. Filipe Oliveira has developed a Today screen plugin which provides you with a Metro UI like skin. It supports Windows Mobile 5 and 6.x and works with all screen resolutions. The free app is currently in beta with an ongoing thread at XDA to report bugs and provide suggestions.

Feedback on the thread tells that the plugin is very light and uses about 3-4 MB of memory, and some bugs on the non-english versions of the plugin have already been fixed. A user guide and background wallpapers have been requested, and future versions will have the flashing avatars on the people hub tile. Quoting from the official site :

Main Features :

XLive items:

-Shortcut

-Shortcut notification

-Shortcut notification ex

-Digital clock

-Calendar

Screens:

-Task manager

-Device lock

-Device settings

Smooth kinetic scrolling

"WP7 Dark" as default theme

25 accent colors

Vibration feedback

Override Taskbar

You can view a lot of screenshots and download the plugin here.

[Source]

By Akshay Bakshi

End of the road for Windows Mobile 6.x, no marketplace submission after 15th July

Wow. Looks like, this is it. Developers, as stated by a user on MSDN forums, are getting email from Microsoft stating that they will not accept any new application submission for Windows Mobile 6.x platform after 15th of July, 2011. You can continue to download / purchase applications after the specified date but you cannot submit a new application after 15th July.

Looks like Microsoft is planning to shift their focus completely on the Windows Phone dev. community, which is the right thing. I guess most of Windows Mobile 6.x developer has/is worked/working on an application for Windows Phone 7 so it's not a big problem for developers as it is for device owners running Win Mo 6.x. Windows Mobile OS never really took off, it didn't have anything innovative to offer thus never created any momentum with consumers resulting in developers losing interest and migrating to develop on other exciting platforms. But with Windows Phone, Microsoft has a lot to offer and the developer community is going pretty strong. Another reason to switch from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone OS. The platform might by officially support - less  ( it seems Microsoft would just isolate it later this year, if things go at this pace). So the wise choice is to move on to another OS if you are a Win Mo 6.x user.

via WMPoweruser

By Rahul Mathur

Windows Azure toolkit v1.2 for Windows Phone 7 coming soon (Update : Now available!)

Windows Azure, cloud platform used to build, host and scale web , for Windows Phone 7 will soon get an update ( v1.2 ) as stated in a blog by Wage Wegner who is a Microsoft tech evangelist for Azure platform.

Having absolutely no clue about the technicalities involved here ( I plan to change this soon, positively) , I'll just quote the three significant updates coming in the next release of the toolkit :

Windows Azure Access Control Service 2.0With the help and guidance of Vittorio Bertocci (aka Captain Identity) we are introducing integration with the Access Control Service (ACS) 2.0.  The current (and previous) versions of the toolkit provide a very simple ASP.NET membership store in Windows Azure Tables.  With the next release the new project wizard will give you the ability to choose between ASP.NET membership and the ACS.
The wizard only asks for the essentials and will then configure ACS automatically for you.  The result is that, after the wizard completes, you can hit F5 and run.
For more details on the upcoming ACS integration, take a look at Vittorio’s post: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 1.2 will Integrate with ACS.

2. More StyleInspired by the Metro Design Language of Windows Phone 7, we’ve significantly updated the web application UI.  .

3. Support for Windows Azure Storage QueuesOne feature we “missed” in our initial releases—and to be honest it was a matter of prioritization—was support for Windows Azure storage queues.  With our next release we will provide support for queues in our storage library and the sample application.

v 1.1 was released last month at the Mix 11. The exact date hasn't been confirmed in the blog post but the plan is to release the toolkit at TechEd North America this year. Let us know what you developers think of this.

update : The toolkit is now available. Read more. 

By Rahul Mathur

WPH Task Viewer for Windows Phone lets you display running processes and memory consumption (HomeBrew)

XDA user, Jaxbot, an active member of the Windows Phone homebrew community has released a task viewer application that let's you view background threads, see how much memory the processes are occupying thus giving gives you an idea of how various applications handle memory which is essential requirement for  power users and developers alike. Mind you, it's a task viewer not a task manager so you cannot add / kill processes at the moment.

Here is a complete list of features :

• Displays memory load and total physical memory
• Displays device uptime
• Lists all running processes
• Displays a message over the current application with memory load information upon pressing VolUp+VolDown (dehydration hack must be enabled)

Watch the application in action below :



If you have a developer unlocked phone, download the application from here.

Deploy this app  to your device and let us know what you think. 

By Rahul Mathur

Project ' Let's Jailbreak NoDo ' aims to unofficially developer unlock devices running NoDo

Everybody remembers Chevron unlocker which provided a simple way for users to developer unlock their device and sideload applications to their devices without paying the 99$ registration fees. Sadly, the void / security hole that led to the hack was fixed in the NoDo update and consequently the flourishing and growing homebrew community suddenly came to a standstill. XDA Forums user, Jaxbot, started a thread on XDA Forums today commencing the Project ' Let's jailbreak NoDo '.

The aim of the project is to " jailbreak " or unlock your Windows phone 7 device running NoDo unofficially. Read more about his project here

Hope we some progress in this thread, we will keep if you updated if we find something useful. Homebrew community is something that plays a significant role in the growth of the platform and looks like the WP7 community hasn't given up yet. Let's see what those bright and talented people at XDA come up with.

By Rahul Mathur

Rhodes 3.0 becomes first framework to support WP7, Silverlight gets an open source alternative

Rhomobile , which provides cross platform mobile dev. tools, in a a recent PR have announced that their new development framework, Rhodes 3.0, which will provide support for  NFC, Windows Phone 7 and Windows CE. Rhodes 3.0 also includes a powerful new IDE called RhoStudio, which is an Eclipse based IDE.

What does it mean for Windows Phone 7 ?  Read the relevant PR data after the break :

Rhomobile : , the leader in tools for enterprise smartphone applications, today announced the release of Rhodes 3.0, the leading and first native smartphone app framework. Rhodes now includes support for near field communications (NFC) chips as well as Windows Phone 7 and Windows CE support. Additionally, Rhodes 3.0 now includes RhoStudio, its own Integrated Development Environment (IDE) which provides integrated app generation, editing building, device emulation and debugging.

Rhodes is now the first framework to provide support for Windows Phone 7 development. It provides a modern HTML5-based approach to creating native device-optimized WP7 apps, while still allowing instant portability to other phones. It is a great alternative to using Silverlight and XAML for WP7.

 Read the complete PR here.

You can download Rhodes 3.0 now. Give it a spin and tell us what you think of it !

By Rahul Mathur

Microsoft updates application certification requirement for Windows Phone marketplace

In a blog post, Microsoft have released an update to the policies regarding the application certification requirement required for submitting applications to the marketplace. Developers, take note.

More from the official blog post,

• First, we’ve updated and clarified our content policies and technical requirements to address some of the common questions and points of confusion that we have heard from several developers. These requirement changes will go into effect on June 3 for new applications and application updates.
• Second, we have added several test steps to the technical certification requirements to help developers conduct in-house application testing during the development cycle, in order to avoid common certification pitfalls and to improve pass rates and certification times.
• Finally, the application certification requirements for Windows Phone have now been integrated into our MSDN developer documentation. You can find the updated certification requirements here.

Now there have been addition to existing policies, a complete new policy and the usual expected modifications, here is a bit of an overview from Arktonic 

2.14  Your application must have distinct, substantial and legitimate content and purpose other than merely launching a webpage.This is a new requirement. It appears to be aimed at apps that are simple WebBrowser containers pointing to a publicly available site. Pretty self-explanatory.
3.7 (part)  Applications that enable legal gambling in the applicable jurisdiction where legal gambling is allowed may be permitted, subject to the Application Provider's acceptance of additional contract terms.This is an addition to the illegal gambling clause to clarify that legal gambling is generally not an issue.
4.7  Application Tile ImageThis section seems to have been added for the singular purpose of telling developers to make their small and large app tiles actually have someting to do with their apps. Seems kind of obvious to me, but I suppose this rule wouldn't have been made had someone not tried to violate it.
5.1.3  Application Responsiveness: If an application performs an operation that causes the device to appear to be unresponsive for more than three seconds, such as downloading data over a network connection, the application must display a visual progress or busy indicator.This was changed from the previous "5.1.3  Application Does not Hang". It now has a well-defined limit of three seconds maximum before an app is required to display some kind of "busy" indicator. This makes sense from a UX perspective, although the only real difference between the two versions is the explicit 3 second rule, so it's not thatdifferent.
5.2.3  (missing?)Um, yeah, I have a feeling Microsoft will fix this little omission.
6.5.4  The SoundEffect class must not be used to play a continuous background music track in an application.This was changed from a "should" in a note to a separate "must" clause. MediaPlayer is for music, and SoundEffect is for, well, sound effects.

 Do let us know your thoughts on this. 

By Rahul Mathur

Microsoft might give developers early access to Mango !

Brandon Watson during a Q&A round on #ch9live  made a lot of developers happy. Today, Mango update was announced which included a lot of stuff for developer ( 1500 + APIs, profilers, etc ) and now Brandon has stated that ' Microsoft is working hard to release Mango update for the developers early for testing '  which is a similar approach to what Apple does. Giving developers to test the OS before the consumers is a perfect way to iron out the bugs and get feedback from the developer community before it finally ships to consumers.

Update:  Brandon has tweeted it too now.

Promised we are committed to enabling early access. Still some things to solve. #wp7dev

By Rahul Mathur

Run your C# code on Windows Phone 7 with Pocket C#

C# programmers, this is something you might wanna download now. Being a ( C# newbie ) programmer myself, I often come up with ideas that might make my code better or sometimes I want to test a piece of code quickly, but sadly I can't carry my laptop everywhere with me. If you face a similar situation, Pocket C# is for you.

A C# development environment running in Windows Phone 7, with build and run functionality handled by an Azure-hosted web service. The C# editor has syntax highlighting, auto-indentation and code snippets to save typing on the little keyboard. There is also an MSDN search facility which reformats the content to be more phone-friendly. Code can be saved to the web service and accessed from your browser when you get to a computer.

 Pocket C# is essentially a mobile IDE ( first of it's kind ? ) which remote compiles your C# code ( console application only) and saves the code on a web service so you can access it anywhere from a browser.

Here is the application in action :

 At this moment, it is slightly limited but nevertheless filled with immense potential. The app is well worth the price. Hit the Zune link.

Zune Download link.

By Rahul Mathur