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Windows Phone is a clean and modern mobile operating system created by Microsoft to rival the likes of Android and iPhone.

Weekend Sky Photos

Posted on August 1, 2011 at 09:02 by Julian Kay

I took a few interesting photos over the weekend and I thought I’d share them with you here, as well as upload them to my Flickr account.

This photo of the sunset on Friday night was taken with my Canon 7D – as you can see it’s rather pretty looking! I used my ND filter here to get a long exposure, and then slightly modified the contrast using the ever-helpful Windows Live Photo Gallery.

The two photos above were both taken during the lovely sunshine of Saturday, with my Samsung Omnia 7 – and the HDR mode turned on. Nice effect to have really!

These final photographs were taken on Saturday night. My plan was to take some photographs of the constellations, but unfortunately the high up cloud didn’t clear while I was out there. I thought I’d share these attempts anyway.

I especially like this photo of a couple of contrails with Ursa Major in the distance.

Feel free to check out my other Sky Photos!

Task Management in Windows Phone Mango

Posted on July 5, 2011 at 09:03 by Julian Kay

At least one* of the 500 new features in Windows Phone Mango is the addition of the to-do items in the Calendar app.

The fact Exchange Tasks was not supported in Windows Phone 7 was a very sore point for a lot of users. Some even going as far as to say that the platform was not suitable for business at all until this was rectified.

It’s understandable for users to be upset. Task support has been in the Windows Mobile platform since forever, and users have come to expect it to be there. Currently the best solution is to buy a task application like the one by APPA Mundi which I use (and seems to be the best of the bunch) – but paying for something that many feel should be baked into the operating system leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

The to-do list is included as part of the Calendar application in Windows Phone Mango – not a separate application. There is no support for folders or categories – which is somewhat annoying – and all tasks from each account is just shown in one list. But the synchronisation of the tasks is much more robust than is available in third party applications, and includes the handy features of being able to see tasks with a due date on the calendar (though  this doesn’t seem to show up on the tile) and the ability to have reminders pop up just like an alarm or calendar appointment.

As a ‘power user’ of tasks in Outlook, I’d much rather the this as a separate application in future versions of Windows Phone. I’d also like to see the ability to use organise tasks with folders and categories, and to be able to pin each of these to the start screen in a similar way to OneNote’s impressive implementation of tiles.

Until then, I’m probably going to end up using some combination of APPA Mundi tasks and the built in support.

* I’m unsure how they count a ‘feature’

Note Taking in Windows Phone Mango

Posted on July 4, 2011 at 09:05 by Julian Kay

One of the nice new features in OneNote for Windows Phone Mango is the ability to pin a ‘new note’ tile to the start screen. I absolutely love this feature, and I don’t remember reading about this anywhere else – so it was a bit of a surprise. When you tap on this tile you are taken to a brand new note inside your default OneNote location. For me this is synchronised with SkyDrive and is accessible from my any of my other computers. Very handy for capturing information when on the move.

Another new addition when it comes to pinning, is the ability to pin a whole OneNote notebook. Currently missing (in this build) is the ability to pin a OneNote section.

When you tap on the notebook tile you’re taken directly into the list of sections just as expected. Here you can make sure you have the latest changes from SkyDrive or pick your default location for new notes.

Once you are inside a section you can see the pages. Above you can see a few of my pages are actually nested. I don’t recall seeing the nesting like this on the previous version of Windows Phone – but it might have been there!

Once you’re actually editing a page you can now create to-do items which can be ticked off. This mirrors the functionality on the desktop version of OneNote. I’m pretty sure this feature was actually available in OneNote for the older Windows Mobile 6 operating system, so I don’t know why it wasn’t in the initial release of Windows Phone 7. I actually use these to-do widgets for simple project management, so I’m very pleased to have the feature back.

Finally, as in the previous version of Windows Phone, you can also pin a note itself directly on the start screen. All of the OneNote tiles now match the colour of the icon on the desktop version of the product, unlike the ‘Office orange’ that was used last time.

Build your own Astrolight app

Posted on May 29, 2011 at 16:47 by Julian Kay

Astrolight is a simple red flashlight application which you can get in the Windows Phone Marketplace, it’s so simple that I’m going to tell you how you can create one too. With two lines of code.

Assuming you’re all up and running with the free Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone, we just need to start a new Windows Phone Game project…

Then we double click the Game1.cs file and find the Draw method. Here we need to change replace one line with two:

/// <summary>
/// This is called when the game should draw itself.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param>
protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)
{
    graphics.IsFullScreen = true;
    graphics.GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Red);

    base.Draw(gameTime);
}

Press play and watch your brand new app on the Windows Phone Emulator!

TouchStudio for Windows Phone 7

Posted on May 26, 2011 at 06:31 by Julian Kay

Microsoft Research has created a fancy project for Windows Phone 7 called TouchStudio – a scripting environment which allows you to write code on your phone with just your fingertips.

I’ve been playing with TouchStudio for a couple of weeks now, and I can definitely say it brings the fun of messing around with a programming language to the phone. But don’t expect to be creating any higher level applications just yet.

The language itself seems to be still in flux right now, including breaking changes in the V1.1 release. But it is a very modern and good looking language, without extra semicolons or curly braces that would be included if you were porting a language like C# over to the phone.

Check Channel 9 for some cool videos, or if you don’t have a Windows Phone you can check out a related project from Microsoft called Small Basic. While the language is totally different to the one in TouchStudio, it does seem to have similar goals for the end user.

Update…

TouchStudio 1.2 has been released. This includes new features such as posting to Facebook!

APPA Mundi – Too much nerd, not enough smarts?

Posted on May 17, 2011 at 18:12 by Julian Kay

APPA Mundi are a British company who employ some very talented staff, most of whom are very well known in developer circles via books, videos and other means.

However, they just don’t get how to engage their customers. Something is very wrong, but what is it?

Unhappy customers are unhappy

APPA Mundi Tasks is a fairly decent application for tracking Exchange tasks and syncing them over the air. I’ve paid for this app and to be honest it could be better but it’s not bad – but I’m not here to moan about the features of the app itself.

The problem is that people seem to have issues when APPA Mundi decide to release an update. For whatever reason, the application crashes at start-up when loading in the settings from the previous version. This isn’t even the first time it has happened, and the only way to get around this issue is to uninstall – wiping any un-synchronised tasks – and re-install a fresh copy. Then you then have to set up with your Exchange details… which you always keep on you, right?

I’m not the only one who has this issue, a quick check of the reviews on the Marketplace shows a lot of people with similar issues:

“New update crash” – DAguia
“This program is no longer working, need tech support” – Player304316965
“No longer works after upgrade, please repair” – tag63
“This is crashing everytime after the recent upgrade!!! Please fix ASAP!!!!!!!!!” – CRLNAZ

These people paid for this application.

It’s not our fault, honest

So APPA Mundi have suggested a fix for this issue (the same one I described above) – but that’s not all, when I questioned them on why they hadn’t tested their update properly they informed me that it wasn’t their falt, and Microsoft was to blame

@ The bug is in Marketplace's update. Uninstall and reinstall the latest version from Marketplace Hub to fix the issue.
May 13, 2011 23:28 via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@appamundi
APPA Mundi

What? This is news to me. There’s a MAJOR bug in Microsoft’s update process, and no-one else knows about it apart from the smarty-pants over at APPA Mundi? Hey it’s possible…

Don’t be on Twitter if you’re not going to use it

Not your fault? Prove it!

So @ says 'The bug is in Marketplace's update.' I don't believe them. Anyone else know of a 'Marketplace update bug' for #WP7 apps?
May 14, 2011 18:53 via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@juliankay
Julian Kay

I’ve not heard anything from them since, and as you can tell, these guys don’t update their Twitter account very often. I guess you either get social media or you don’t, but why even bother to have a Twitter account if you don’t check your replies? Does no one at APPA Mundi care about their company image?

APPA Mundi have some extremely intelligent employees – I even own their books. Why can’t they get something as simple as app updates sorted?

I was very dismayed to find this quote on their website:

“The level of Windows Mobile development expertise at APPA Mundi is virtually unrivaled anywhere in the world.” – Rob Tiffany, Mobility Architect, Microsoft

Oh god. We’re doomed.

Update…

Check the comments below for a reply from APPA Mundi.

Pokéject 1.1 Released

Posted on April 27, 2011 at 11:35 by Julian Kay

At last Pokéject 1.1 has been released to the Windows Phone 7 marketplace.

The latest version now features graphics for all forms and genders of the 649 Pokémon currently available in a swooby user experience – perfectly designed for Windows Phone 7.

You can have a look at the Pokéject app page, or download it now from the Windows Phone marketplace.

You can even try it for free with the first 151 Pokémon, and no nag screens!

Pokéject 1.1 has been approved and will be on the Marketplace shortly, check out the new trial version! #WP7 #Pokémon
April 27, 2011 08:59 via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@pokeject
Pokéject

Creating Pokéject for Windows Phone 7

Posted on April 4, 2011 at 18:00 by Julian Kay

Pokéject is a new brand new Pokédex app for Windows Phone.

I thought I’d share some of the thought process behind creating an app for Windows Phone 7. The app is still very much in development, but I thought I’d share some of my thoughts about the start of the process while they’re still fresh in my mind.

First I started with a simple prototype. By using some of the templates that come with the Windows Phone tools for Visual Studio 2010 I created the screens I’ll need for the application. By using the built in templates I ensure the prototype will fit into the Metro design language specifications. I already have a library for Windows Phone app development which I add to keep the amount of code to write at this point to down to a minimum.

Then I collected some basic data for use with the prototype – by using the wonders of Bulbapedia with an Excel / PowerShell combo, I had enough data to see if the core concept would actually work. The Windows Phone Emulator does a pretty good job of getting you early feedback at this point.

Pokéject for Windows Phone Prototype

Then I started working on the actual look and feel. I mainly used Expression Design to create icons and and visually edited the XAML with Expression Blend. At this point I deployed the application to my Samsung Omnia 7 and checked performance was good.

When I had a good idea of what might work, I set to using Visio to create the wireframes for the application. Within a few hours I was at a point when I was formally designing the app, with a view to integrate this into the already working prototype.

Pokéject for Windows Phone Wireframes

Naturally, the stuff in the wireframes was more complex (in functionality, not user interface clutter) than the existing prototype, so here’s where the fun starts! I go back to Visual Studio and Expression Blend and start thinking about the best way to implement the the features in the wireframes. Not bad for an evening’s work.

After the initial prototype was completed, I showed it to a small selection of people. This early feedback helps me shape the design while keeping honest to the initial idea. This is one of the great things about having the prototype sat on your phone ready to show people!

Phone

On the development side, I started playing with the finer details. When it comes to selecting which controls to use, I suggest having a look at the Silverlight Toolkit for Windows Phone 7. This includes such gems as the LongListSelector and WrapPanel – both of which have been used in the app.

Essentially, the work this point forward is about turning the prototype into the real thing. I wont go too deep into this process in this post – but if you’re a .NET developer, you already know how this works, though I’ll go into detail about the Windows Phone 7 development gotchas over the next few weeks.

Buy Pokéject from the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace »