So You Want To Build Apps?

If you want to build apps for any number of mobile devices we thought we would provide those resources to you. The emerging mobile application space has exploded in recent years with developers even ametures making lots of money on the side with little marketing or other resources you would normally think of as having been done by a full company. From hobbiest to students and professionals ever one is building apps. Start by picking your poison (the platform you are interested in)

Android (Phone and Tablets)
Dominating the marketing but in a very fragmented way. Certainly the potential to really be the best platform if the carriers every can get out of the way. http://developer.android.com/index.html

iOS (iPhone/iPad)
The platform that started it all and arguable the best industrial design for mobile platforms... iOS. http://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/index.action

Cross platform Native(ish)
more or less a .NET environment like Java for mobile ...

Read the rest at: http://www.vnext.org/if-apps/so-you-want-to-build-apps

APPortunties for Mango WP7 App's

So there is a group of Silverlight/Phone 7 insiders helping with this contest to win some samsung slates running windows 8 and some free advertising for an app of your choice. There was a contest like this a few months back and certainly the free advertising helped me with my zillion apps so I'm hoping to win my self so you better get to it or I'll win (not that this would be bad ). Basically gets some Mango (also known as Windows Phone 7.5 apps into the market place, and no this doesn't count apps already in the market place and then go the link on this image blow and enter the super secret code: DKELL

'Extending' Your Phone 7...

So I can't condon hacking phone 7 outside of the context that MS has provided in any case... however it can be done easily enough.

I've found that it is straight forward enough to hack. One thing that has bothered me with the phone was the default accent colors on the phone are lame. for the most part I don't really like any of them. One way to fix it is this app you have to side load, called advanced config. Currently it only works for HTC but does let you test registry hacks on phone 7.

You can get the app (xap) from here http://www.touchxperience.com/

In this case there are a number of cool phone 7 hack apps. but for me having a nice steel gray just makes the phone more zen.

Again I'm not responsible for you mucking up your phone... don't do any of this...

Windows Phone 7 UX with David Kelley (thats me)

Had a great time talking about phone 7 ux this morning on MSDN Radio doing a podcast. Here are some great phone 7 resources related to touch and UX:

Phone 7 Links:
http://developer.windowsphone.com/windows-phone-7/
http://www.windowsphone7.com/
http://www.mobileappmatch.com/?fbid=IzTBJbx-cNj

Josh Blake as a great book on multitouch: http://manning.com/blake/ or http://nui.joshland.org/

http://www.Silverlight.net/
http://www.SilverlightCream.com/

user groups:
http://www.interactseattle.org/
http://www.SeattleSilverlight.net/

Other UX blog links that are cool:

teasers and trasitions

early ux phone 7 concepts

Windows Phone 7 Series User Interface (UI) codenamed “Metro” Design and Interaction Guide

Metro UI The Windows Phone 7 Aesthetic

Hacking Windows 7 Phone

So here is the Hack of the Week. For those who have had their heads in the closet and haven't heard Microsoft is coming out with this Windows Phone 7 - the mythical vapor ware for a number of years now has been made public. Like many Silverlight geeks especially we are estatic as this phone now public will run Silverlight as the primary way to develop applications for it. On the downside if you installed the developer kit, the VM for the phone lacks pretty much... um... everything... no sensors, (how can we do anything cool without sensors), no apps , not settings no nowthing except the Internet explorer and apps we write as long as they don't need sensor access. At least give us some proxies or fake data etc. But for now we are on our own.

Some people counldn't live with that and they hacked the vms. So one such example is Dan Ciprian from Italy and here is his two posts. I can attest to say that this seems to work as I have seen in live work, not that I my self would do such a thing and I can neither confirm nor deny that I did any such thing but Here are links to his posts on topic.

http://sviluppomobile.blogspot.com/2010/03/wmp7-emulator-unlock.html

http://sviluppomobile.blogspot.com/2010/03/wp7-emulator-unlocked-how-to.html

I was also aghast to see that one one greated a copy of the hacked VM and posted it here:

http://www.1800pocketpc.com/2010/03/20/how-to-unlock-the-windows-phone-7-emulator-download-the-unlocked-bin-file.html

which will get you a running version of the emulator unlocked in you follow these directions...

MIX 08 - Silverlight - Wish you were here...

Ah MIX... its finally here. Hmm... we will see what kind of coolness comes out of mix. The conference starts wed and since it is sooo late that I got back to my room in the Venetian that it actually starts later today. Anyway I digress. Even though the conference started I have learned alot. I spoke with Laurence (another author of the MS press book Silverlight 1.0) about publishers and our up coming books and the like. Plus there was the Silverligth Insiders 'meeting' such that it was at the V Bar. We can to meet some of the guys we didn't know and talk with some of the guys we did. Adam has blue hair and we will see how the rest goes but we still can't talk about too much. Also Nokia annouced that their phones will support Silveright so i think it is safe to extrapolate that MS is going to get it on windows CE. Oh plus the plane ride up... well I guess I have to save the good stuff for after the key note.