The MSDN Live tour is open for registration with a great program this year! The tour will be going to Stavanger on April 16th, Trondheim on April 20th, Bergen April 23rd and Oslo April 26th.

Continue Reading

If you are in Oslo, and you’re a developer that do Windows Phone software development, or are curious about what’s in it you should come to the December meetup for Windows Phone Developer Community.

WPDC has it’s first meetup next Thursday on December 3rd.  at 6 pm. The meeting will be held at NITH, located in Grønland.

View Schweigaards gate 14 in a larger map

In this first meetup we want to use more as a “constitutional” meeting. Getting to know those who are interested in Windows Phone development and most importantly find others who are interested in being “driving forces” and help build the community. Continue Reading

Today was a cool day!

Finally the Windows Phone Developer Community is announced and started. I was attending a developer presentation for Windows Mobile 6.5 and Microsoft Marketplace today and just before we broke for lunch i was called to stage to “tell the world” that on Thursday 3. December 2009 we´ll host the first meeting.

This first meetup will be mostly about getting to know each other, and find out who´s interested in becoming driving forces. It is not to be taken lightly that if this is to have any form of success it needs to have support and contribution from developers.

For the occasion we have set up a meetup.com group to handle “members” and announcement of meeting events, so check it out at http://www.meetup.com/Windows-Phone-Developer-Community/. Continue Reading

Last week we hosted our first 3 hour session on Microsoft Windows Mobile development at NITH in Oslo. The session was split into two topics - usability best practises and developing custom GUI controls. Me and Per Ola split the session where i did the first part and he did the custom control development.

Since this is an introductory class to Windows Mobile development we cannot go too deep into the how’s and why’s but rather give a brief overview with pointers to more information for those wanting to learn more.

The UX session started as i always like to do by introducing “Death to the stylus” as i am a firm believer of that it has no future in the world of mobility. It is an obstacle for efficient use of applications. Following this i talked about that it is not a goal for mobile developers to minimize an existing application or process, but to mobilize. Continue Reading

Norwegian Yellow Pages (Eniro)  have created one of the first augmented reality application for the iPhone.  Augmented reality is the concept of adding value-adding information onto real time imaging. One use i think this could be a really cool tool for is visiting tourists. Hold up your iPhone and get instant tourist information anywhere in Oslo.  The application is due to be launched in November/December 2009 at no cost, but will only be available for the iPhone 3GS because it uses the digital compass.

For developers of Android applications there is an AR API called Wikitude. It is a application programming interface which allows for the open development of markerless AR experiences, providing developers with the tools to either create their own android augmented reality applications, or enhance their existing Android applications with an AR camera-view engine. Continue Reading

Nice! It’s Friday and in a few hours I am off to go rafting in Sjoa for the weekend. Ice cold river water and adrenaline will hopefully get me back in shape after 3 crazy weeks of 16 hour work days writing system design in a BID case for a huge national computer system.

It won’t be all fun and games tho, because part of the weekend needs to be used for work! Extra fun work tho! On Tuesday i start lecturing .NETCF and Windows Mobile development at NITH in Oslo. This is something i am really looking forward to do! and it will be fun to do it together with my good colleague Per Ola Sæther.

Through the weekend we need to review some of the class material and scheme up a plan on how to tackle this before the first class gathering on Tuesday. Luckily, most of the material looks good and there’s just a few places where we need to do minor changes. To bring it up to date on issues like security, communication and usability. Continue Reading

In the future, you wil not need your Master/Visa/AmEx card, you will simply use your cellphone or pda.

Norwegian carrier Telenor and the bank DnB Nor have been collaborating since 2006 working toward promoting the cellphone as the new wallet. We are not talking about paying through SMS or a browser application but use rfid enabled mobile phones.

As always when it comes to newTech, Japan already has this technology, but doing it through proprietary solutions from TDD DoCoMo. The Telenor/DnB Nor solution is the first of it’s kind using open industry standards end to end, which makes it quite easy to adopt.

Near Field Communication or NFC, is a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices over about a 10 centimetre (around 4 inches) distance. The technology is a simple extension of the ISO/IEC 14443 proximity-card standard (contactless card, RFID) that combines the interface of a smartcard and a reader into a single device. An NFC device can communicate with both existing ISO/IEC 14443 smartcards and readers, as well as with other NFC devices, and is thereby compatible with existing contactless infrastructure already in use for public transportation and payment. NFC is primarily aimed at usage in mobile phones. Continue Reading