Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools

Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Beta2 is Available!

Posted by Rob Tiffany on June 29, 2011

Posted in: Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools. Tagged: Expression Blend, IE9, Microsoft, Mobile, Silverlight, SQL CE, Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2010, Windows Phone 7, XNA. Leave a Comment

Head on over to http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=26648 to download the new tools. This update can be used to develop applications for both 7.0 and 7.1 (Mango) version of Windows Phone OS releases.

The Windows Phone SDK includes the following components:

Windows Phone SDK 7.1 (Beta2)
Windows Phone Emulator (Beta2)
Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Assemblies (Beta2)
Silverlight 4 SDK and DRT
Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Extensions for XNA Game Studio 4.0
Microsoft Expression Blend SDK Preview for Windows Phone 7.1
WCF Data Services Client for Window Phone 7.1
Microsoft Advertising SDK for Windows Phone 7

Beyond developing apps and games with Silverlight and XNA, take advantage of the new emulator to view and test your new HTML5 websites.

-Rob

Video > New Windows Phone Mango Data Access Features @ Tech Ed North America 2011

Posted by Rob Tiffany on May 27, 2011

Posted in: Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools. Tagged: SQL Server Compact, Windows Phone 7. Leave a Comment

If you are a Windows Phone developer, this sample-filled video shows you how to create, manage, and access structured data that is locally stored on the phone via SQL Server Compact. This new functionality will be available in the next version of Windows Phone Mango later this year. This session is a “must” if your application works with a lot of local structured data. Come and get a deep dive and learn how to use these capabilities.

Great stuff for those of you who need a database on your device!
-Rob

Video > Connecting Windows Phones and Slates to Windows Azure @ Tech Ed North America 2011

Posted by Rob Tiffany on May 22, 2011

Posted in: Azure, Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools. Tagged: Azure, Windows Phone 7. 6 comments

The combination of mobile and cloud computing is like peanut butter and chocolate. Nobody does it better than Microsoft when Windows Phones and Slates are connected to Windows Azure over wireless. The Microsoft cloud platform offers mobile developers an easy way to add redundant storage, compute power, database access, queuing, caching and web services that are accessible by any mobile platform.

In this session, Rob helps you make sense of wireless-efficient web services and data transports such as JSON. You’ll learn how to scale out processing through multiple Web Role and Worker Role instances. Next, you’ll learn how to partition your data with Windows Azure Tables to dramatically increase your scalability via parallel reads. You’ll provide loose-coupling for inbound data from devices through the use of Azure Queues and Worker Roles. Finally, you’ll combine all this with distributed AppFabric Caching and Output Caching to provide a responsive mobile experience at Internet scale.

Keep coding,
-Rob

Building a Mobile Message Queue for Windows Phone @ Tech Ed 2011 North America

Posted by Rob Tiffany on May 11, 2011

Posted in: Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools. Leave a Comment

Mobile apps that operate against locally stored data allow users to be productive when disconnected, and enable even more compelling user experiences when a connection is available. Over the years Microsoft has offered technologies such as Merge Replication and the Sync Framework to keep devices in sync with Microsoft SQL Server and other back-end data repositories. Sometimes what’s needed is a loosely coupled way to pass any kind of message to any mobile or server endpoint. Join Rob as he shows you how to build a mobile message queuing system that will work with Windows Azure as well as on-premise infrastructures using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). Learn how to build a reliable system designed to send notifications, call remote methods, or retrieve a table full of data.

See you in Atlanta,

- Rob