Adding gradient details to your application graphic can make a big difference. The out-of-box support for this in Compact Framework is not very good and you need to custom build controls with gradient support. This post explains how to create your own gradient buttons in .NET Compact Framework.

I have earlier written a post about Creating gradient background with transparent labels in .NET Compact Framework and the approach when creating a gradient button is quite similar. As a base for drawing gradient I use the same GradientFill.cs and Win32Helper.cs that I used and explained when creating gradient background.

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In my pet project Run Smart With Me I decided to use GPS.NET 3.0 to handle the GPS functionality. GPS.NET is an open source project and can be found on CodePlex. My pet project will use the built in GPS device on mobile devices to track speed and distance when working out (running, cycling, skating).

In this post I will explain how I used the GPS.NET in my project.

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One of my main area of interest is mobility and I read a lot of blogs and news sites to keep my self up to date. In this post I will share some of my favorite blogs and sites about mobility with you. The last 1 1/2 year I have mainly been working with Microsoft technology when it comes to mobility and therefore you will see a majority of Windows Phone and Windows Mobile blogs in this list.

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This post will first explain the advantages you get from separating language and hard coded text from your application code and then show code examples in C# helping you getting started implementing language and text separating.

Lets have a look at the advantages:

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We have entered 2010 and I am now actually enjoying (a lot of people are complaining) the cold and nice winter weather in Oslo (20 degrees Celsius below freezing). I have had a hectic start on this year preparing the start up of a large national project. This is very exciting and I find this a promising start on 2010.

2009 was the year that I started this blog. It has been interesting writing the posts and communicating with my readers. I have also learned a lot in 2009 and I will for sure continue writing posts on topics I find interesting.

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Today I found this great guidance regarding WCF for Mobile Devices. It is a 72 pages PDF document written by Michele Leroux Bustamante and Nickolas Landry in May 2009.

I recommend that you read this if you are designing/developing Windows Mobile applications that are using any kind of communication.

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It is easy to think that developing an application for Windows Mobile using the built in GPS unit requires  a lot and complex code. Luckily this is not the case. You can actually have the base for a .NET Compact Framework GPS application up and running in less than 10 minutes if you choose the correct tools.

This post describes what I have found to be the easiest and fastest way to create an application that is interacting with the GPS unit in .NET Compact Framework.

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When developing Windows Mobile applications in Visual Studio creating user controls or custom controls will often help you get a better application and decrease your development time. Often you will have problem using your user controls or custom controls in the Visual Studio designer. Forms using your controls will not show at all in the designer and sometimes Visual Studio will shut down because of this (happens often if you are referring to external .dll in the user control or custom control).

I will walk you through a simple example on how you can achieve this with out any problems at all.

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Finally, we have decided to start a Windows Phone Developer Community in Norway. I will do this together with my good colleague Alexander Viken and we will be responsible for running and facilitating this community. Before we started this group we discussed it and had a meeting with Microsoft Norway, so they are supporting this initiative and will help us getting hold of good and interesting speakers for the upcoming meetings.

The purpose of this community is to have a place where Windows Mobile/Phone developers can meet and exchange knowledge within this field. In the near future we will create a website for this community with a forum, blog posts and useful information. We have created a meetup group were we will announce all meetings and events. We have scheduled the first meeting for this group Thursday, 3th December in Oslo. This will be the start up meeting were we will present the group and discuss what this group should do from this point on. We are also looking for persons that are interesting in helping us organize and facilitate the community.

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When developing all kind of projects a good strategy for logging can save you a lot of time and frustration. Personally I am very found of using Apache log4net and this post will describe the most important features in log4net and how to implement and use this in a .Net Compact Framework project.

log4net can be configured with different appenders that logs to different sources (file, output window, smtp, server ++). You can also configure what kind of log levels will be written to the different appenders (info, debug, warn, error and fatal).

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