Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Belux Team Blog

Guest post: “Antenna Finder: the first leap into Windows 8”

MSDN Belux — Thu, 30 May 2013 08:33:53 GMT

On March 27, 2013 we welcomed over 200 developers at the Windows 8 Super Hackathon. Rudy Van den Bergh & Jeroen Vangeffelen from ToughComputing also attended and in the below blogpost they share their experience with building their app, Antenna Finder.

The MSDN Belux team

Earlier this year, we created a new startup, called ToughComputing, based in Tongeren. As the name says, we focus on projects that implement tough, rugged, connected computers and tablets for outdoors mobile workers. Together with the University of Leuven (DTAI – Department Declaratieve Talen en Artificiële Intelligentie) we try to bring Machine Learning into the mobile environment to improve connectivity and user-experience.

A new startup means a new team, new technologies and a good time to re-evaluate everything you did in the past. Through the MIC Vlaanderen unit in Genk, we got introductions to the Windows Azure Platform and Windows 8. We started to use the Azure platform for data mining but we were missing a short and easy goal to bring it all together. That goal presented itself when the people of the Microsoft Innovation Center at Genk told us about the Super Hackaton.

The Hackathon

A hackathon was a complete new kind of event for us. Just going there for a day, program, deliver an app seemed fun and easy. It makes you wonder though where you lose your time most days .

We came a little bit prepared. Not too much. We needed an idea for an app that was somehow related to what we do and that had at least a minor match with the event’s medical/health-theme.

In the end we decided to go for an app that would visualize gsm antennas. A colleague of us had, two years earlier, a medical emergency. His son couldn’t get gsm reception at his home and had to run a street further to call an ambulance. It was a very close call. The bad connection almost cost him his life. That was our link with health. Knowing where antennas are is obviously good for your health. Another operator would have given him a better connection in his home.

The app would be a simple Bing-maps app that would display the locations of cellular-antennas for three operators within Belgium. The app should allow you to make a solid choice between operators depending on your main locations or tell you which side of place you are in would give you the best connection to do your work.

We prepared the data in advance of course. About 8000 antenna-towers were uploaded to a SQL Azure database. We used the spatial format in order to be able to index them and to query based on distance.

During the hackathon, we worked mostly to get the data into the Bing-maps control. We used an Azure Mobile Service to interface to the stored procedures that performed the spatial queries and operations. That was reasonably hard since it was largely undocumented and in Preview status. Surprisingly, we lost more than expected time on design. A Windows 8 app runs on HD or better resolutions. You can’t afford to have it look clumsy and edged. We got it to an alpha-version that day. It worked but was not stable, nor polished-looking enough to publish.

Afterwards

After the hackathon, we kept working, between other things, on the app. We redid the graphical design with our new look and feel we just got from a Crowdspring project. We bought some professional images to improve on the look of the app. Those are really not expensive and guarantee that you will never have any rights-issues with the images you use. We thought it would be fun to see if people are interested in rating their phone operator on given or gps-locations. The rating mechanism we entered captures the ratings in a spatial format. Some functionality was added to match your operator to the three big physical operators (BASE, Belgacom, Mobistar). And we added Microsoft Pubcenter ads, just as a test to see how things go.

Just before going live we started testing with a new Windows 8 Pro Tablet. And the walls came tumbling down. Here we discovered the weak-part of the process up to now. In a very long roundtrip chain (database, stored procedure, mobile services, LinQ, Bing Maps Control, app and back again), it is hard to debug things that really go bump. Defensive programming really helps in determining where things go wrong. It happened to be the regional settings of the device that were ‘far’ removed from the US-standard. Once we knew what it was, a quick workaround could be implemented.

The app-validation was a pleasant experience. Of course it failed validation at first but the feedback we got from the Windows 8 Store validators was so good that we could iron out a couple of issues we hadn’t even noticed ourselves. Improved, it got published.

Next?

The app has been steadily growing in the store. Network ratings have been coming steadily in as well. We intend to give those back to the community in the next update.

Improvements that we are thinking of is caching data locally and using a local spatial index-mechanism. Since it is a point-layer, that shouldn’t be too difficult. A 2D-index coupled with a range function should be enough. We are going to look further into the dynamics that are possible in Bing-Maps. Eg. using range-indications or displaying shapes.

Parallel we are running algorithms that match the antenna sites with different cells and we are creating coverage maps using spatial-statistical techniques such as kriging. This data is our main focus because we use it to improve connectivity on rugged devices. We are also going to rework the SSIS-packages in order to be able to update the database regularly.

In Windows 8 this is a good app to lookup information and decide on coverage issues. On a phone it would be great. Ratings could be taken from exact locations and the app could help mobile users to better connect to their home offices. We are going to look into a phone-partner app that makes use of the same dataset.

All in all, what started out as an exercise to get to learn some new technologies has kind of grown on us and has started to hook back into our main business.

Our experiences so far

We set out to learn new technologies and implement some tests in a playful way. We achieved that rather well. Visual Studio 2012 is a great update of the IDE which has a lot of features that a lot of people aren’t even aware of. We started with a blank app in order to get grips on the whole process. In truth, it took a lot more work than we expected. Design and graphical work was heavier than expected. Publishing an app into the wild is also a completely different experience from releasing your applications through a rigid test and release scenario in an ITIL-organization. You only get to learn your users afterwards. It’s fun and keeps you wanting to do more…

Rudy Van den Bergh & Jeroen Vangeffelen

ToughComputing

How do you build a Windows Store LOB app?

Nick Trogh — Mon, 27 May 2013 12:12:22 GMT

When building a line-of-business (LOB) app there are numerous things to consider. Of course you need a great user experience, but what about validating user input, user authentication, how do you deal with application state across suspend-resume...(read more)

The updated Windows Phone 8 Training Kit is live!

David Hernie — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:35:00 GMT

Overview The Windows Phone 8 Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs, presentations and code samples that are designed to help you learn how to build applications using the latest Windows Phone features...(read more)

App Race winners of Asus Vivo Tabs

MSDN Belux — Tue, 07 May 2013 06:32:13 GMT

On April 17, 2013 we kicked off the Windows 8 App Race and invited developers from Belgium and Luxembourg to build apps on Windows 8.

We’re almost 3 weeks later now and the race to win 1 of 10 Asus Vivo Tabs has finished! These are the 10 fastest devs to have published 5 apps within the contest period:

1. Lothar Verledens
2. Iemen Uyttenhove
3. Lowie Huyghe
4. Frédéric Dehu
5. François Borgies
6. Thomas Verfaillie
7. Dieter Brouckaert
8. Azzedine Hassaini
9. Sven Vervynckt
10. Matthieu Vandenhende

Congratulations! Each of them will receive a brand new Asus Vivo Tab RT.

We would like to thank everyone who made the effort of publishing 5 apps, but did not make the cut of tablet winners. It was a very fast race!

The race to get an exclusive Visual Studio headset is still on however … Publish your app before June 15, 2013 and send us your details via http://aka.ms/race.

Winners of the #superhack Best App contest

MSDN Belux — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:07:00 GMT

About 3 weeks ago we closed the Windows 8 Super Hackathon at 4 locations in Belgium (Brussels, Genk, Kortrijk and Mons). We welcomed over 200 developers across all locations to build apps on the Windows platform.

The participants could also enter their app in a contest to win these amazing prizes:

1st place: free & full entrance to TechEd Madrid 25-28 June
2nd place: Marvellous Asus Vivo Tab
3rd place: Hot Windows Phone 8: Nokia Lumia 820

Based on a number of criteria – among them: app potential in the Windows Store, usage of Windows 8 features, connected services, design guidelines – 3 winners were selected by a jury of Microsoft employees and MEET members.

Our congratulations go to …

1st place Free & full entrance ticket for TechEd Europe (Madrid, 25-28 June).	Fit Beast Fit Beast is a management interface for your Fit Bit device and was developed by Denis Huvelle and some of his colleagues at Emakina. Download the app.
2nd place Asus Vivo Tab RT	Finds Finds is a great app to discover places to eat, drink, find a party, enjoy nature, etc. in Flanders. The app was built by a team of students (Team 6tiict), led by Tom Dupont. Download the app.
3rd place Nokia Lumia 820	Ataxx! Ataxx is a classic board game, in the style of Reversi and Go. The goal is to move your disks around the board, and convert as many of your opponents disks as possible. Built by Peter Van Weert. Download the app.

If you’re thinking about building an app yourself on the Windows platform, then please have a look at our Apps on Windows portal where you’ll find all the info you need to get started. Or join the Windows 8 App Race and win:

How to win

Your app(s) need to be published between April 1 and June 15, 2013. Complete the contest form(s) on http://aka.ms/race.

Join the Windows 8 App Race: Win Visual Studio headphones and Asus tablets

MSDN Belux — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:57:15 GMT

We want to give you a push in the back to develop great applications – join the Windows 8 App Race and win:

How to win

Your app(s) need to be published between April 1 and June 15, 2013. Complete the contest form(s) on http://aka.ms/race.

There is no limit to the number of entries you can submit but each entry must be substantially unique and different. The date and time of the first and fifth application as part of the entry submitted in a particular timeframe will determine the winners of the tablets. Note: this contest is only open for residents from Belgium and Luxembourg. Please read the full terms & conditions of this contest before entering. Questions? Contact us msdnbewm@microsoft.com.

We’re looking forward to see your apps shine in the Store … and who knows soon on your brand new Asus tablet!

Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service General Availability

Nick Trogh — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 23:15:24 GMT

Today we announced the general availability of our Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) support! With this release Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Network move out of Preview and are now ready to use for your production apps. With Azure...(read more)

Winners of Windows 8 apps contest: Asus Vivo Tabs

MSDN Belux — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:51:00 GMT

Back in November last year we opened a contest for Windows 8 app developers in Belgium and Luxembourg. The rules of the contest were short & clear: publish 5 apps to the Windows Store and be fast! Speed was important, because to win one of the Asus Vivo Tabs you had to be among the first 20 people to do so …

With this blogpost want to say thank you to everyone who participated – we hope it helped you learn a lot about developing apps for the Windows Store!

But unfortunately, not everyone can win … so here are the 20 winners (in alphabetical order). Congratulations!

Alexander Siccard
Dieter Brouckaert
Dieter Casier
Dries Peeters
Dries Vanmeert
François Rémy
Gene Vangampelaere
Iemen Uyttenhove
Jef Daels
Jérémie Melchior
Joeri Van Herreweghe
Kenneth Christiaens
Kevin Van Ryckegem
Lies Pinket
Mathias Raets
Michiel De Geeter
Niels Declercq
Sven Vervynckt
Tom Meersman
Wouter Vanmeert

They have all been notified personally – some have already received their tablet, others will receive it very soon! Here are some pictures we received from them :

If you aren’t among the winners or if you would like to start with developing apps for Windows 8, you can now join the Windows 8 App Race:

How to win

Your app(s) need to be published between April 1 and June 15, 2013. Complete the contest form(s) on http://aka.ms/race.

There is no limit to the number of entries you can submit but each entry must be substantially unique and different. The date and time of the first and fifth application as part of the entry submitted in a particular timeframe will determine the winners of the tablets. Please read the full terms & conditions of this contest before entering. Questions? Contact us msdnbewm@microsoft.com.

We’re looking forward to see your apps in action!

Java, PHP or mobile developer? Check out Open Week in Brussels

MSDN Belux — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:25:10 GMT

April 23, 18h-21h:
Open Week with PHP - Food for Thought

Get an overview of how you can leverage Windows Azure for your PHP applications and hear from other PHP developers how they take advantage of the platform.

More info

April 25, 17h-21h:
Open Week with Java - Hands-on labs

Learn first-hand about the capabilities of the Windows Azure platform for Java developers through a series of labs and discover how to run your Java application on a Tomcat application server in the cloud.

More info

April 26, 18-21h:
Open Week for Mobile Developers

Get an overview of how you can build mobile apps that take advantage of the Windows Azure platform and hear from other mobile developers how they do it.

More info

The number of seats is limited for these sessions, so register right now! In the meantime, why not try the Windows Azure platform for free?

Windows Store App Lab – The Brussels Experience

MSDN Belux — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:19:33 GMT

Windows Store App Labs are physical locations in more than 30 cities around the world where you can access Windows 8 devices, get design help, and meet with Windows experts to make your app great. We have one in Brussels (Zaventem) too and have welcomed several developers over the past few months.

One of them is Tim Van de Velde, student at HOWEST and developer intern at Bet.ty. Tim joined the App Lab on March 22 and spent 2 hours with our app experts Wesley De Bolster and Leslie Cottenje.

Afterwards we asked Tim a few questions …

What's your app all about?
“Bet.ty makes it easy to organize sports bets, both on a small scale (among friends) as on a bigger scale (professional sports teams). We don’t want any more hassle with Excel sheets and calculating scores or using paper and pencil.”

What's your experience overall after attending the lab? Did you find it a valuable investment of your time?
“It was a privilege and a great opportunity to get the opinion of Wesley and Leslie and I'm very pleased with the feedback I received. I got a new perspective on the project and learned a lot.”

Which issues surfaced during the UX consulting part of the lab? What tips & action items did you go home with?
“Sports is all about pleasure & creativity but my design was a bit too abstract. So the advice they gave me was to be more practical, to loosen up the concept and create a more suitable, vivid look.”

What did you learn from the technical guidance of the Windows 8 expert? How will you implement it in your app?
“I was able to send in my technical questions in advance of the lab. During the session it amazed me to see that he had prepared those questions extensively. He showed me some demo's and shared the solutions with me afterwards. He also provided me with a variety of interesting sources I definitely have to consult. (Mainly about Windows Azure Mobile Services).”

What will be your next steps after attending the lab? When are you planning to publish your app in the Windows Store?
”First and foremost, I'm going to process the feedback. Then I'm going to create a flowchart (the user scenarios). Next month I will certainly attend another App Lab to evaluate the process. Bet.ty will be published in the Windows Store during the last week of May.”

Do you want free consultancy (both technical and UX design) for your app too? Sign up today, it’s free! Next dates are:

- April 17
- May 24
- June 5
- June 19

We hope to welcome you in our lab very soon!