In my last post , I talked about the risks of failing to adapt your app to the selected user theme with the consequence, in that particular case was failing Marketplace certification. There are other good reasons to adapt to the selected theme of course...

I’d been helping someone out with a Windows Phone 7 application. Like many other apps, the app retrieved data from a webservice. If there was an issue retrieving data, a message would be displayed to the user which, in XAML looked like a bit like this...

If you haven’t yet signed up to come along to our Tech.Days event in May, you still have a chance to attend the two days dedicated to Windows Phone – we still have some places available. Day 1, on Tuesday 24th May , is all about Windows Phone as we know...

If you’ve been thinking about building a Windows Phone app but weren’t sure where to start, how about this for an idea? Nick Randolph of Built to Roam has created a customizable Social Viewer app template for Visual Studio. The template is the core of...

If you’ve been itching to use SketchFlow to create your WP7 prototypes but had a reality check when you realised that there’s no template in Expression Blend for this (only Silverlight and WPF) then help is at hand in the form of Martin Tirion . Martin...

Sadly this year I wont be there – I didn’t even ask to go (personal reasons) – but I do feel I’m going to miss out on what’s likely to be the most exciting MIX event so far. From a phone perspective, from a web perspective, from a client perspective ...

If you’re in the UK we have a great offer for you – earn rewards for creating and publishing unique and original Windows Phone 7 applications. There’s a massive line-up of prizes including Xbox 360s, TVs, home theatre systems and you can also be entered...

The recordings for the Windows Phone 7 Online Conference last week are now available. You can find the links below and embedded in the original agenda over here . Keynote: Developing for Windows Phone 7 in the UK (Will Coleman) General session: Tips &...

One of the requirements for application submission to Marketplace is a representative screenshot of your app in action. Being old-fashioned, I usually just use the built-in Snipping Tool in conjunction with the emulator (don’t forget to set it to 100...

Firstly many thanks to all of you who joined us on the Tech.Days Online Conference yesterday. It was pretty hectic in “mission control” but my thanks also to the speakers for their great sessions and for keeping to what were very challenging time constraints...

When: Thursday 24th March @ 3pm GMT Where: Anywhere with an internet connection Format The conference consists of a couple of joint sessions followed by two tracks – one on building apps for Windows Phone 7 (Silverlight focused) and one on building games...

As I mentioned last week, we’re running a series of Windows Phone 7 workshops in Birmingham, Manchester and London. Registration is now open for all these events – the URLs are below: Saturday 26/3 – Birmingham Saturday 2/4 – London Saturday 9/4 – Manchester...

I don’t know about you but I find creating the various application and marketplace icons a bit of a chore. Perhaps because I’m not very gifted artistically or perhaps it’s just because there are quite a few things to remember. I've created a set of templates...

Just a minor itch I ran into today which I felt needed to scratch. I wanted to collect all my image resources into one place in a Windows Phone 7 app (a folder called, for the sake of argument, “images”). I knew that SplashScreenImage.jpg could not be...

We’re running a series of workshops in association with APPA Mundi to help you get your apps working, tested, polished and submitted to Marketplace. Current locations are Birmingham, London and Manchester but there may be more depending on demand. This...

Well I was going to make it an adventure – and I did have a little one – but TBH it’s pretty well documented (there’s also a document in the download ) and there are a couple of crucial limitations which put me off doing a full post about it (which I...

Not as in FizzBuzz , just measuring Buzz, something that’s often talked about in Social Media. I’ll admit to being sceptical of companies that offer insight in the social media space “We monitor eighteen gazillion blogs, all of the Twitterverse, your...

When: Thursday 24th March @ 3pm GMT Where: Anywhere with an internet connection Full details: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ukmsdn/archive/2011/02/24/wanna-get-creative-on-24-march.aspx Format The conference consists of a couple of joint sessions followed by...

Well it took me a little longer than planned to consolidate all of this – things would’ve been a lot quicker if my stomach wasn’t perpetually doing somersaults and my car hadn’t almost caught fire. Anyways…. I got a great response to requests for authors...

Perhaps inspired by my recent acquisition of a Kindle and subsequent interest in all things eBooky, I’m hatching a plan to pull together an eBook on Windows Phone 7 development topics and I’ll need your help. I know what you’re thinking, we’re already...

Shortly after publishing my last OData post , I got an email from Phani who took me to task over my statement that there was no access to the ImageUri property. In fact, the image is a media resource (and thus not embedded in the feed itself) and there...

Late on Friday we released an update version of the Windows Phone Developer Tools . There’s a good post on the Windows Phone Developer Blog that summarises what’s in there and the impact on existing applications. More on this below. There’s one slightly...

This is just beautiful. If you’re anything like me I’m sure you’ve used services like Mailinator for those pesky situations when you *must* supply an email address but you really don’t want to. You know the consequences can be a never-ending barrage of...

It’s that that time of year again when the big one approaches – the big event that gives us an opportunity to get out and about and tell the story of the platform, current and future. This year Tech.Days will run from 23-25 May at a venue in London. It...

I’ve stumbled across a few useful things recently that I thought would be worth highlighting. Updated Windows Phone Training Kit An update to the Windows Phone Training Kit has been released. As well as refreshing nearly all the labs to fix bugs and ensure...