Category Archives: Announcement

Lets have Windows Phone 7 Dev XMass Drinks in Sydney

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Hi there Windows Phone 7 Developers in Sydney Australia,

I thought it would be cool to meet each other in person over some informal XMass drinks. So without any further delay, here are the details:

Event:
WP7Dev XMass Drinks meet and greet

Please indicate your attendance here – http://events.linkedin.com/Windows-Phone-7-Developer-XMass-Drinks/pub/496913

Purpose:
Let’s get together for some XMass Drinks and/or dinner to trade some WP7 Dev stories and demos. Event will be informal, i.e around bar tables, so bring along your device or laptop if you wish to show people what you have been up to.

Date, Time, Location:

6-8pm
Tues 14th Dec 2010
City Hotel,
Corner of King and Kent St, Sydney CBD.

Hope to see you there,

Nick Harris :)

Windows Phone 7 and HTC 7 Mozart Review

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I have had a several days to play with my new HTC 7 Mozart  now and I must say overall I am really impressed.  Having taken photos, emailed, used sms, used facebook, downloaded applications, watched video, listened to music, podcasts and the radio,  used the maps app to get directions, used Bing to find content, booked a steak night in my Windows Live Calendar and so much more.

The Hardware (HTC 7 Mozart):

Model – T8679

CPU – 1 GHz

Platform – Windows Phone OS 7

Memory – 512 ROM and 576 RAM

Size and Weight – 119 x 60.2 x 11.9 mm, 130 grams

Display – 3.7-inch touch screen

GPS – Internal GPS antenna

Network -

  • HSPA/WCDMA (850/2100 MHz)
  • GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)

Connectivity -

  • Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
  • Wi-Fi: IEEE 802.11 b/g/h
  • 3.5 mm stereo audio jack
  • Standard micro-USB

Camera -

  • 8 megapixel colour camera with auto focus and Xenon flash
  • 720p HD video recording

1. Face

– note my camera really does not do this Justice :(

2. Back

3. Top

4. Bottom

5. Side

6. Side

So what did I enjoy about my new Windows Phone 7 experience:

Well pretty much everything rocks, I don’t really go anywhere anymore without my phone and its only been 6 days :)

The whole Metro experience is definitely s3xy and slick the WP7 team have really done a fantastic job, if I ever met anyone of you then you would definitely receive a well deserved hug.

Nick + push notifications == love.  At the moment I am just starting to see some  third party apps out there starting to use them.  The build in phone, SMS, email and people tiles are using Live Tiles to bring your Start screen to life keeping  you informed e.g how many emails or SMS you have.  Some applications are also using toast notifications e.g SMS when it comes in and also AlphaJax a turn by turn based game to notify me when its my turn.  No picture could do the Start screen Live Tiles justice.  I would recommend that you check them out in action here for yourself or get your hands on a device to play with.

The People hub == awesome.  I can see whats going on with my Facebook, Windows Live and LinkedIn contacts, thats right I am watching you people, as well as post comment on their status.  You can even Pin some of your contacts to your Start screen and you get a nice Live Tile of that person on there that will show their updates as they come through.

The Pictures Hub and Camera is pretty cool. You can easily setup Zune to sync your pictures bidirectionally between your phone/PC .  Further you can configure your phone to upload the pictures you take to your windows Live Skydrive you can share your pics on facebook.     For those of you a bit hesitant to have photos uploading to Skydrive directly keep in mind that you can configure the uploaded files to be private.  Settings –> Applications pivot –> Pictures and camera — Auto upload to SkyDrive.  When selecting this you it will give you options on how visible you want the photo e.g private, friends, public etc.

Music and Video Hub, using Zune I was able to sync down music from my personal collection buy a Video to watch on the device and also listen to the radio.  Like the people hub you can pin items from here to your start screen as well.

Speech recognition and speech synthesis.  If you press down on your Start button your phone will start listening for your commands.  E.g “Call Adam Harris”, “Open Boom Baby” and if your not in Australia “Find local Pizza”.   You can also set speech to work when in locked mode through Settings –> Speech –> Use Speech when in locked mode.

If your a big fan of gaming you will also love the XBox Live Integration and I also find the Location Map application using Bing Maps is really handy.  One little know feature that i think is a good idea is the Find a Lost phone idea where you can lock your phone, see itslocation and even remote wipe it to see the full list of stuff you can do here check this out

So its been 6 days and I have had a good dig around through the Marketplace Hub, bought several apps and also used Trial mode on a few to see if i liked them.  Her here some of the gems I have found.

Apps:

  • Couch to 5k – This is the first application I purchased.  It is designed to help you move up to running 5km (which I have never been able to do) within 9 weeks. Will let you know how I go
  • Yoink – is a really cool concept you can get stuff free and also give stuff away in your local area straight from your WP7 device
  • Channel 9 – stream Channel  9 content
  • Ted – looking for inspiration then Stream some TED content
  • Facebook
  • BoomBaby – Download if your a developer and after using it if you are thinking whats that about my question to you is – Where were you?

Games:

  • Max and the Magic Marker – Awesome use of a physics engine.  Seriously, download it and test it out in trial mode now.
  • AlphaJax – A cool word game, sort of like comparable scrabble.  You can play a random person or call out for a game to  friends  on facebook or twitter.  The game also has an in application chat feature and is the first game where I have seen push notifications being used.
  • Unite – Uses your phones accelerometer to move balls around obstacles with the goal of uniting them.  Pretty cool actually.
  • RocketRiot – good for a bit of  rocket blasting and jetpack fun
  • Helicopter – first application that I have come across with Ad Content within it.  Still a fun application
  • Krashlander – This was fun also, i liked the design of the control overlay on the screen. I think it will be interesting to see what the new updates to this game will have

Theres a lot more that I could go into that I liked but I could quite literally go on forever.  In fact if you have read this far through I applaud you :) , keep going :)

What could be refined and/or improved – in no particular order:

  1. While the phone has many features it seems like some extra cool features are available in the United States but are missing for us Australians :( .  It would be great to see the following features available in Australia or I may just have to move to the United States:
    • Music Purchase directly in phone, or direct on PC, from Zune Marketplace
    • Music “Rental” i.e Zune Pass Marketplace – pay per month listen to as much music as you want and keep 10 at the end of each month.
    • Location and Direction features
      • Support Local Search results  Bing result pivot
      • Support Speech Find command
      • Support Clickable addresses to Maps from emails and websites etc.

    2. When we talk about developers its Developer Developers Developers, when you talk about a large proportion of consumers its not just Video it is also – Music Music Music.  The Music and Video hub is great and Zune helps sync the movies you have purchased through Zune onto the device.  As for music, currently in Australia you are unable to purchase music through Zune Marketplace or directly on the phone.  For many consumers including the one non tech female I tested it on it was something expected as an essential feature.  I assume that Zune Marketplace would open for music sometime in the future within Australia – lets hope its before everyone gets their new shiny device for Christmas – Anyone got any announcements about when this may happen?

  2. Improvements for Map Application that comes out of the box:
    • Enable drag on waypoints within map directions for re-routing.
    • Directions given by voice synthesis when driving
  3. Squeeze some more Battery Life –  I have not had major problems e.g only recharge about every 24hrs and i do listen to the radio, check email, and stream Channel 9 and TED sessions daily.  Here are some further small suggestions that could be made that would enable those who want to make the most of their battery to take it one step further:
    • Vibration feedback on Back, Search and Start button press is not configurable – even when the battery level is critical.  For me personally while the vibration feedback is cool, i would like to be able to turn off the vibrate for these virtual buttons through settings to help conserve battery.
  4. Zune Video Rentals – So this is available in Australia.  Rent for 14days or 24hours after first play.  Cost is about 350 credits – a bit steep…. well come on I don’t have a job :) .   As for an improvement with the rentals it would be cool if this too kept up with the always connected user experience.  Example I rented a movie to my Device and then Synchronized the copy of the Video back onto my PC for watching through Zune.  On attempting to watch through Zune it reports – “You have already used the maximum number of licenses for this item”.  So the experience I would expect here is sure the rental rules above apply.  But hey watch 1/2 on the desktop then go catch a train/bus/tram and watch the other half on your phone – This would rock :) .
  5. So what movie did I watch – Crazy Heart, was pretty cool and I must say having never been to the US the  landscape in the film is awesome.  And if your not using the HTC HD7 with built in stand, you can improvise with a Windows Phone cap :)

  6. I want the music on here to be available in the ringtones -Â

The Developer Platform:

The developer platform for WP7 is world class and even better its free :) I recommend that you jump in and try it out yourself.  Here is a link to a great starting place for getting your free developer tools - App Hub Downloads

In addition to these I recommend you check out

  1. Azure – I believe Azure is going to be an enabler for many great WP7 applications – got an application idea that needs to scale, process and/or store data in the cloud?
  2. OData SDK for WP7 – Makes easy work of consuming OData feeds.
  3. Sync Framework 4.o October 2010 CTP – enable data sync scenarios for WP7, iPhone, WM, Silverlight and more
  4. Silverlight Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 on Codeplex – a great bunch of controls for the UI.

Summary:

Windows Phone 7  Rocks and is a huge leap forward for both consumers and developers – it is “My Preeeeciouous” (Gollem, Lord of the Rings)

Now back to development :)

Nick

Note: if you want to have a play around on my device please feel free to approach me at http://thesaug.org this Thursday night 25/11/2010.

FREE Event The Sydney Architecture User Group Open Conference Protocol Co-creator Aaron Powell

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Open Conference Protocol: Co-creator Aaron Powell discusses what it is, what problems it solves, and how it does it.
Aaron Powell
Thursday 25/11/2010 06:30 PM
Grace Hotel , Kiralee or Pinaroo Function Room77 York stSydney,NSW. 2000

With the growth of internet-enabled mobile devices, conference goers are expecting easy access conference information. Conference organisers are forced to make a decision on how they provide their attendees with this experience. Some conferences develop native applications, such as the MIX iPhone app. Others, such as Web Directions, opt for mobile-enabled websites. This redundant development is costly and often a last-minute exercise. Let’s stop reinventing the wheel. After all, the only reason to reinvent the wheel is to learn more about wheels. The Open Conference Protocol is the plumbing we need to start delivering reusable conference applications across the full spectrum of platforms. Built on top of existing formats, conference organisers now have a documented and agreed format for providing their data to application developers. Now anybody can build their preferred conference experience, for their preferred platform, with easy access to the data. In this presentation, protocol co-creator Aaron Powell will provide the background to the protocol, discuss its implementation and review the API ecosystem evolving around it.

Aaron is an ASP.NET developer with a thing for Content Management Systems and Open Source software. Aaron is one of the core contributors to the Umbraco CMS open source project initially responsible for developing LINQ to Umbraco. As well as contributing to Umbraco he contributes on a number of other open source projects. Most recently he was involved in the Open Conference Protocol.
- Thanks
Note: If anyone wants to have a play with a Windows Phone 7 device i will have mine there, please feel free to grab it and have a play – Nick

Unboxing the HTC 7 Mozart

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Being a mobile developer that has targeted windows mobile devices for over 6 years  now I was happy to see Windows Phone 7  announced, delivered and as of last Thursday even happier to have a device I was fortunate enough to win at the PDC replay delivered to my hands by Christian Longstaff.  The device you ask is a HTC 7 Mozart – but first the traditional unboxing.

Wrapping:

The wrapping paper is a personal touch from someone at Microsoft.  Judging by the amount of sticky tape on the sides + back and on my own shocking gift wrapping abilities I would be guessing it was a developer, or new receptionist, that wrapped this :)

Box:

Box Open:

Initial Warning:

To Prevent damage, do not apply excessive pressure to the screen or device case. Please remove the device from your pants pocket before sitting down. For more details, see the Quick Start Guide.

Wasting no time – Initial Power Up:

- Beautiful

After a bit of personalisation:

- More on the pink tiles in my coming Review


Stay tuned, I am working on a Review and it should be up in the next couple of days after I have a chance to dig a bit deeper and play with more apps :)

Nick

Windows Phone 7 Dev News

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What an exciting time to be a developer. I have to say attending PDC shed some light on some seriously cool leaps forward in the Microsoft technology stack IE9, HTML5, Azure and you guessed it Windows Phone 7. This post is a update on the recent Windows Phone 7 related dev tool announcements:

  1. Updated OData Client Library for Windows Phone 7  
  2. Windows Phone 7 analysis tools – not yet released but would love to get my hands on it eary

    3. At PDC an upcoming performance analysis tool to run an instrumented version of your app on devices to provides profiler data in Visual Studio was demonstrated. In the demo the profiling performed gave data on CPU utilisation, frames per second and storyboard animations.

  3. Application Analytics and Code Obfuscation for Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone Marketplace

    4. Free analytics and code obfuscation for WP7. Well worthwhile using to analyse how your users use your apps and protect your IP through obfuscation

  4. Sync Framework v4 Oct 2010 CTP bits

    5. Check out the cool WP7 client sample to synchronize your data from and Azure cloud service. This is a really great enabler for offline capable smart client applications

  5. Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 toolkit November

    6. New Components; AutoCompleteBox, ListPicker, LongListSelector, Page Transitions.
    Existing Components; GestureService/GestureListener, ContextMenu, DatePicker, TimePicker, ToggleSwitch, WrapPanel

  6. October 2010 update for WP7 Dev tools

    7. Includes: A new Windows Phone Capability Detection Tool, Windows Phone Connect Tool – connect your PC and phone without needing Zune running and Updated Bing Maps Silverlight Control – performance improvements to guesture controls

Enjoy,
Nick

I Won a Windows Phone 7 at PDC Replay

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Hi there readers,

Last night i was at The SAUG  I was thinking about how far away the dream of owning one of these Windows Phone 7 devices would be especially since i had resigned from my job almost three months ago, sacraficing my salary to embark on a dream Development Adventure  that utilisies some of the techonologies I have been blogging about over the past few months – Azure, Windows Phone 7 and ASP .NET MVC 2 + 3(beta)

This is particularly great news and i am still quite excited so here it is  - I am now the happy new owner of a Windows Phone 7 – its just not delivered yet and in my excitement I forgot to ask which Model it was going to be. I haven’t had a chance to play with the hardware although have heard good things - I am really hoping it will be a HTC or Samsung model – but I guess I will see what comes :) .

A big thanks to Microsoft and their PDC replay event this morning at 9am and a very special thanks to Andrew Coates who asked the question about Windows Phone 7 that managed to win me this device :) .  I would list the Q&A but there is another replay session occuring now so dont want to spoil it of anyone.

Nick :) :) :)

Windows Phone Developer Tools October 2010 Update

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The Windows Phone Developer Tools October 2010 Update includes:
  • Windows Phone Capability Detection Tool – Detects the phone capabilities used by your application. When you submit your application to Windows Phone Marketplace , Microsoft performs a code analysis to detect the phone capabilities required by your application and then replaces the list of capabilities in the application manifest with the result of this detection process. This tool performs the same detection process and allows you to test your application using the same list of phone capabilities generated during the certification process. For more information, see How to: Use the Capability Detection Tool.
  • Windows Phone Connect Tool – Allows you to connect your phone to a PC when Zune® software is not running and debug applications that use media APIs. For more information, see How to: Use the Connect Tool.
  •  Updated Bing Maps Silverlight Control – Includes improvements to gesture performance when using Bingâ„¢ Maps Silverlight® Control.

Download Here

FREE Event – The Sydney Architecture User Group – Open ID vs OAuth Identity on the web

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: Open ID vs OAuth : Identity on the web
Lewis Benge
 Thursday 28/10/2010 06:30 PM
Grace Hotel , Kiralee or Pinaroo Function Room 77 York st Sydney,NSW. 2000

 
Lewis is the only English speaking Commerce Server MVP in the world. Lewis has extensive experience in all areas of eCommerce and knows what it takes to enable an organisation to embrace eCommerce. Lewis has extensive experience with clients such as Video Ezy and a host of other high profile clients.  We hope to see you there. Dont forget to visit http://thesaug.org to keep up to date with the user group details and news.
 
- Thanks

Happy 10000 hits time to introduce the team

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Hi there, 

Today the team here at www.NickHarris.net made it to the 10,000 hit milestone 

Hit Graph

Hit Graph

We decided to down tools and celebrate with a team photo: 

Team photo

Team photo

Thats an ROI of 10000/10 = 1000 per team member 

And of course the blog would not be complete without mentioning that the photo was taken using a MS lifecam and a custom Silverlight App using the System.Windows.Media namespace specifically CaptureSource, VideoCaptureDevice and CaptureSource.CaptureImageAsync method 

If you’re sad because this blog post is coming to an end and your just not sure what to do with yourself then I can recommend that you go checkout this excellent .NET Blog www.thatdotnetguy.com

Now time to get back to that unpaid job of mine :)  

Nick

FREE Event – The Sydney Architecture User Group – Acrhitecting High Performance LOB Applications

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: Acrhitecting High Performance LOB Applications
Paul Glavich
Thursday 23/09/2010 06:30 PM
Grace Hotel , Kiralee or Pinaroo Function Room 77 York st Sydney,NSW. 2000

Line of business applications might not be the new twitter or Facebook but often require high degrees of performance. This session will deal with the architectural considerations required to implement such an architecture and provide an open forum where performance issues in todays day to day business applications are discussed.
Paul Glavich is an ASP.NET MVP and a member of the ASPInsiders group with close links to the ASP.NET Team. Paul’s day job is working for Datacom as a solution architect, specialising in the web space but is currently involved in architecting a thick client WPF application. Paul has been working with .Net since its inception, has been in the industry for over 20 years and has written 3 books with the latest one on .NET Performance Testing and Optimization which is available as a free eBook or from Amazon in hardcopy

Free Windows Phone 7 Deep Dive Workshop(Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane)

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Hi All,

Nick Randolph from Built to Roam is running a Free Windows Phone 7 deep dive over two days, the content looks great, and did i mention it was Free :)

For more details and to register jump on over to his blog Windows Phone 7 Deep Dive Workshop(Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane)

Nick

Adventure Initiation

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Hey there,

Several years ago I walked out of a user group with a mate and an idea come to me, that idea had been rolling around in my head the past several years until in recent months I tried to utilise the time I had available after hours to begin implementation but unfortunately that time wasn’t enough.  As a result I was faced with the hard decision of either keep chipping away after hours or resign and give it the focus that was required.

I was considering the pros and cons to try to deciding whether to resign, I found that I was in a unique life position:

Pros:

  •  27 years old
  • a risky but good product idea
  • no children + not married
  • just enough savings to scrape (I definitely mean scrape – e.g fishing for coins in that old shoe box :) ) through 6 months of unemployment/self employment.

Cons:

  • If it doesn’t work I start out at Zero $$ savings again – a big setback, but hey I will have a broader skillset
  • No, NULL, Zero income for 6 months – how much would this cost you?
  • Spending my life savings, lets put this one in perspective – add the life savings to the spend bucket
    • This was on its way to be a deposit for a home loan
    • It’s enough to have paid for a round the world trip rather than sitting in a 4m x3.5m x 3 room
    • 5000+ beers

      beer

      beer

After a lot of thought and a little bit of emotion about the beers that could have been mine I resigned from my job as a senior software engineer thus enabling myself to focus, this was an extremely difficult decision but one that I am comfortable with. 

So where too now – well it is coming towards the end of my first week working on my project full time.  It’s been interesting both technically and personally. On the personal front it is somewhat daunting acknowledging the situation I have thrown myself into, but hey i can only point the finger at one person :) .  At the same time it has been empowering to really feel dependent upon myself to make the most of this great opportunity.  On the technical front, you can look forward to more seeing posts relating too:

  • Windows Phone 7 – wp7dev
  • Azure *
  • ASP .NET MVC
  • Scrum

Stay tuned.

Nick

FREE Event – The Sydney Architecture User Group – Building Enterprise Web Applications

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Re-posting the announcement for the SAUG here:

Title: Building Enterprise Web Applications
Presenter: Paul Glavich
Date/Time: Thursday 24/06/2010 06:30 PM
Where: Grace Hotel , Kiralee or Pinaroo Function Room 77 York st Sydney,NSW. 2000
Abstract
Enterprise web applications. Are they any different to other web applications? What kinds of patterns should we apply to these kinds of applications? What considerations should be taken into account when building these kinds of applications? Reporting, Auditing, performance, general architecture, client side considerations and more. This presentation is a follow on from Omar Besiso’s presentation on Enterprise thick client patterns and will answer all these questions and more. If you want to find out the answers to these questions and more details around building enhterprise savvy web applications, then this presentation will provide some value. Presenter Bio Paul Glavich is an ASP.NET MVP and a member of the ASPInsiders group with close links to the ASP.NET Team. Paul’s day job is working for Datacom as a solution architect, specialising in the web space but is currently involved in architecting a thick client WPF application. Paul has been working with .Net since its inception, has been in the industry for over 20 years and has written 3 books with the latest one on .NET Performance Testing and Optimization which is available as a free eBook or from Amazon in hardcopy.

FREE Event – The Sydney Architecture User Group – Domain Driven Design

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Re-posting the announcement for the SAUG here:

Next Meeting: Thursday 27/05/2010 06:00 PM
Location: Grace Hotel, Kiralee or Pinaroo Function Room,77 York st, Sydney, NSW. 2000

Title: Practical Domain Driven Design, Message Based Architectures and CQRS
Presenter: Jak Charlton
Abstract:
The original book on Domain Driven Design was subtitled “Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software”, and even where a system does not merit “full on” DDD, many of the practices and principles can massively reduce the complexity of software, especially when combined with messaging and events.

Presenter Bio:
Jak Charlton, is now based in Sydney, Australia, and working as a Senior Consultant for Readify (http://readify.net/). Jak is a well known community figure in the Microsoft and .NET worlds with a reputation for a passionate view of development. With primary interests around Domain Driven Design, software architecture, and putting the world to rights one debate at a time, he is a strong believer in principles and practices, allowing developers to concentrate on delivering business value.

We hope to see you there. Dont forget to visit http://thesaug.org to keep up to date with the user group details and news.

- Thanks
Paul Glavich (paul.glavich@datacom.com.au) and Omar Besiso (Omar.Besiso@datacom.com.au)