Feb 18
The MSDN & TechNet Live tour in Norway are as usual filled with interesting and great sessions. The tour will visit Stavanger (16/4), Trondheim (20/4), Bergen (23/4) and Oslo (26/4).
Oct 29
Microsoft My Phone is a service for synchronizing the data on your Windows Phone to a web account. I tested this service when it was released in beta and have not used it since, until today. I have not used it because I am using active sync to synchronize my contacts, calendar and mail with outlook. Today I took a firmware (ROM) update on my phone and wanted to store more information like images, sms, videos, music and documents. That’s when the My Phone service came in handy.
A lot have happened since the last time I used this service. First of all the user experience on the phone is much better and there are more functionality now than before. To start using this you simply install a small application on your phone and register for an account with your Windows Live pass.
Oct 17
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.
Oct 07
To boost Windows Mobile 6.5 development and applications added to the new Windows Marketplace for Mobile, Microsoft announces the race to market challenge. They challenge you to develop application(s) and add them to the Windows Marketplace.
It looks like Microsoft will be focusing more on the mobile market in the future and as a part of this they have changed the name from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone. Windows Mobile will still be the name of the OS on the phones, but Windows Phone will be the branding name.
Sep 16
I have been very fascinated by the Microsoft Surface since the first time I tried it (earlier post about my first experience with Microsoft Surface). The development kit have now been available for quite a while and I was curious about what kind of applications have been developed.
This post is a quick summary of the different applications I have found so far.
Jul 09
Enable ClearType screen on my HTC Touch Pro (text in Norwegian)
Choosing the right fonts for your mobile applications have a great influence on the application look & feel. All Windows Mobile 6 devices gives you the option to enable ClearType. On most devices it is disabled by default. ClearType is a technology developed by Microsoft that improves the readability of text on LCD screens. Quick and Easy explained it is smoothing the edges on the fonts. You can read more about ClearType at Microsoft Typography.
May 05
A few days ago I wanted to create a fresher UI then what .NET Compact Framework offers out of the box. I wanted to create a gradient background for the screen and I wanted to have transparent labels on top of the background. In my opinion this is not much to ask for and I was a bit surprised that I actually had to do this myself.
Well after a few hours I made a gradient background and a transparent label. I will now step by step go through my solution.
Apr 29
Curious about developing applications for Microsoft Surface? I can assure you that you are not the only one. I have done some research on how to get started doing so.
The first thing you need to do is to get hold of the Microsoft Surface unit, this is yet only available for commercial purchase. If you are working in a company that are a Microsoft partner or using/developing within the Microsoft family it should not be too hard to acquire one. Have a look here for detailed information on how to by the Microsoft Surface. Actually you can develop and test Microsoft Surface applications on your PC using the Surface simulator, but guess what this simulator is only available from the Microsoft Surface SDK and to get hold of this SDK you need to purchase the Surface Developer unit. With good connections within MS it should not be impossible to get access to the SDK and simulator without purchasing the unit…
Apr 13
I recently downloaded and read the Mobile Architecture Pocket Guide by Microsoft patterns & practices. The purpose of this guide is to improve the effectiveness when building mobile applications on the Microsoft Platform. The primary audience for this guide is solution architects and development leads.
Chapter overview (quoted from the book) Continue reading »
Mar 18
I looked at a blog by Lars Wilhelmsen about Microsoft Tag and suddenly found this quite interesting. I have been reading about this system earlier but I didn’t find it interesting at that time. After installing the application on my phone and scanning some tags I wanted to try this myself.
These tags can be used to store all kind of information like vCards, free text, url and dialer by simply installing an application on your phone and point the camera at the tag. To install the application direct your phone’s browser to http://gettag.mobi/
