The Tale of 3 Platforms

Written on January 24, 2012 by Daniel Egan in TaleOf3Platforms, Windows Phone

It was the best of times… it was the worst of times…. ok..ok… it is really the best of times to me. The tech world continues to push all things into a mobile format and I am loving it.

I certainly have my opinions on operating systems, and ease of development, and best IDEs etc… but I thought I would put this to the test with a multi platform development approach. Starting next week, I will be doing the same application on all three platforms (or possibly 6 if I include IPad, Android Tablet and Win 8 later). The application is called Uncorked, and it is a way to log and rate your wine collection. It will include the following features :

1) The use of a Wine API to store my data

2) The ability to scan my bottle to either look up or rate the bottle

3) Room for tasting notes

4) Saving of label pictures

5) And a few data points, price, when to drink by, purchase date, and info about the wine.

V1 will keep it simple so we can write all three in a quick fashion (I hope).

I will start from absolute 0… Brand new machine ( which I will blog about), install of tools, testing, patterns, etc…

I will not be using Phone Gap for this project ( But will be doing another series along side this one using phone gap and a different app)

Feel free to comment, make request, help out, debate, or just read the series. I hope you get as much out of it as I hope to.

Daniel

Others in this series

What is 4G

Written on January 24, 2012 by Daniel Egan in Windows Phone

As I talk to phone owners I find it funny when people talk about 3G 4G etc… I ask them if they know what they mean and most of them say no… but they know it means faster Smile …. “G” is not a technology but it just is an abbreviation for Generation 4G = Fourth Generation.

But within those generations, there IS the technology that makes them faster. I found a great video that explains the complexities simply.

“If you cant explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough” ~ Albert Einstein

Now you know Smile

Free Windows Phone

Written on December 23, 2011 by Daniel Egan in Windows Phone, Windows Phone 7

Are you looking for a Free Windows Phone? Are you a developer? Do you live on the West Coast of the US? Then I have a phone for you. (Read Below) If you have been looking for a free windows phone to do development on then all you need to do is contact me. Email me at Daniel.Egan@microsoft.com and I will send you all the details.

I want to be clear on a couple of things.

I am getting these phones to developers that are writing applications for the marketplace
I have a limited supply (First ones to get me the info I need)
You must live on the West Coast of the US

If you do not live on the West Coast of the US, I can try to find your windows phone champ for you. Just post the request here : http://thesociablegeek.com/forum/?mingleforumaction=viewforum&f=3.0

This does not mean that they will have a phone for you, but if you are developing for Windows Phone, you WANT to know your windows phone champ. If they don’t have phones, they may know someone who does ( I repeat, I am not saying they have phones Smile , but they may know a way. Either way, they are a great resource for you. )

So all of you West Coasters, get your Free Windows Phone while they last. Email me at Daniel.Egan@microsoft.com for the details.

Windows Phone Feedback

Written on December 22, 2011 by Daniel Egan in Windows Phone

WPDev Feedback You now have multiple ways to give your developer feedback to Microsoft on how change Windows Phone 7. You can still use the uservoice forums to either vote for an idea OR add your own.

http://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/110705-app-platform

But now, you can also use an application on your phone. Check out the app and the website, give your feedback and let us know how we can make Windows Phone 7 even better.

Here is a link to the application in the marketplace.

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/b5466109-2b8d-46f4-9461-c959e433ae4a

or scan this tag to go to the app on your Windows Phone 7.

WPDev Feedback

See Through Windows Phone

Written on December 21, 2011 by Daniel Egan in Windows Phone

Bouncing around checking out blogs, I found this great video on Youtube about the Microsoft prototype lab. The coolest part was looking at the Clear (See through) Windows Phone… OH I Wish Smile

Bumble and the Misfit Toys

Written on December 21, 2011 by Daniel Egan in Uncategorized

I have to say, I LOVE these commercials… These Rudolph Claymation stories were something I always looked forward to as a kid… heck, I even watch them now. Im not looking for any Bing Comments… I just love these.

Skin your Windows Phone Emulator

Written on December 21, 2011 by Daniel Egan in Windows Phone

wp7EmulatorSkinSwitcher

Geert van der Cruijsen has created a tool that makes it easy for you to change the skin on your windows phone emulator. Its pretty cool. It allows you make your emulator look like one of the new Nokia Phones.

Keep in mind that it is beta.. use at your own risk Winking smile

Check it out here.

http://vdcruijsen.net/2011/12/windows-phone-7-emulator-skin-switcher-1-0-beta/

PhoneGap for Windows Phone

Written on December 21, 2011 by Daniel Egan in Windows Phone

If you are writing your phone applications using HTML5, you will want to check this out. PhoneGap has released an update to work with Windows Phone. What PhoneGap does is allow you to write your phone application in HTML5 and still access most of the Native API’s and wrap it in a Native application wrapper so that you can put it in the marketplace. This means you can write your application cross platform.

You can download it from here : http://phonegap.com/ or just watch the video below for more information.

Windows Phone 7.5 Training Kit

Written on December 21, 2011 by Daniel Egan in Windows Phone 7, WP7 Hands On Labs

The new Windows Phone 7.5 Training Kit have been released. This time there is a Basic Version and an Advanced Version of the Windows Phone 7.5 Training Kit

You can download both of them here : http://bit.ly/w2xF6s

The Basic Labs Include

Hello Windows Phone
Building your first Windows Phone 7 Application
Windows Phone Navigation and Controls
Application Lifecycle
Using the Pivot and Panorama Controls
Accessing Windows Phone 7 Devices
Game Development with XNA Framework
Discovering Windows Phone 7 Device Capabilities
PhotoFun
Launchers
Choosers
Weather Service Push Notifications
Using Bing Maps

The Advanced Labs Include

Catapult Wars Lab
Multi-Touch Game Development with XNA
3D Game Development with XNA Framework
Using a local database in the “Tidy” application
Background Transfer Service in the “Tidy” application
Fast Application Switching in the “Tidy” application
Creating Notifications in the “Tidy” application
Adding Multitasking to your application
XNA 3D Model Viewer
Search Integration
Background Audio Agents

You can download both of them here : http://bit.ly/w2xF6s

The Web Role was started in a wrong port

Written on December 17, 2011 by Daniel Egan in Code Post, Windows Phone, Windows Phone 7

One of the great things about Windows Phone is all of the samples that are out there. And topping them all is the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 . The toolkit gives you everything you need to develop a Windows Phone application using Windows Azure. I will do a full post walkthrough of using the toolkit, but I thought I would post about one thing that seems to be tripping people up when they are trying to get things up and running.

If you start the project and get the error Sorry, an error occurred while processing your request, the web role was started in a wrong port, You might scratch your head. If you peek at the url you will notice that it is running on port 444 instead of 443

The reason it is doing this is because if it does not find port 443 open, it will increment by one until it finds an open port. If you look in your compute emulator you will also see the wrong port. Which is the reason it says The web role was started in a wrong port. Because it was

So now, to fix this you want to see what is running on port 443. To do this open a cmd window and type in the following netstat –aon

This will bring up a list of what is running on each port.

You want to look for anything that has a :443 at the end of it and look at the last column. This is the process ID for the process that is using that port.

Next, open up Task Manager and look for the process ids that you found. ( You may need to go to View –> Select Columns first to add the PID column)

My offending applications were:

SQL Reporting Services (Which I shut down in Services)
TweetDeck
Skype

That fixed it for me… hope that helps

Daniel

The Tale of 3 Platforms

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What is 4G

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Free Windows Phone

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Windows Phone Feedback

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See Through Windows Phone

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Bumble and the Misfit Toys

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Skin your Windows Phone Emulator

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PhoneGap for Windows Phone

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Windows Phone 7.5 Training Kit

The Basic Labs Include

The Advanced Labs Include

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The Web Role was started in a wrong port

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