Today i received an e-mail from the Microsoft MVP Award program congratulating me with the MVP Award 2010 for Device Application Development.

I am stoked and very happy to receive this award, and it’ll be a great inspiration for me in my continued work for mobility in communities and professionally. As I am the first MVP on Device Application Development in Norway I hope we’ll be able to use this in our effort to make the Windows Phone Developer Community grow even further.

A big thank you goes to former Microsoft Norway Community Manager Rune Grothaug!

While we are waiting for the full release of Windows Phone 7 Series, with devices, Marketplace and applications; Android based phones continues to grow and has passed Microsoft and Windows Mobile in the global device market.

A Gartner report released on may 19. shows that Android is the quickest growing mobile operating systems.

The report looks at the global market and market shares in 1Q of 2009 and 2010 and shows that the market leader Symbian is down 4,5% and has now 44,3% share of the market , RIM (Research In Motion blackberry) is the second largest OS with 19,4% share, but is down by 1,2%. Apple is up 4,9% to a 15,4% share  and Android is up 8% to a 9,5%.

The old Windows Mobile OS from Microsoft is down 3,4% to a market share of 6,8%. Continue Reading

Here’s a code snippet i just found really usefull. I was getting 20 MC75 pda’s ready for a customer pilot project and we’ve developed a solution but hadn’t design any deployment system for getting the devices ready, so it was all manual work.

The solution uses the network through GPRS/Edge and each of the devices needed to have a cellular (GPRS) Line modem connection defined. Doing this on 20 devices by browsing to Settings -> Connections -> Add new modem connection, then add the same data for APN, username, password was just to much of a pain.

An easier way of doing this is to use the ConfigurationManager, found in the Microsoft.WindowsMobile.Configuration namespace. My purpose was to just make sure there was a cellular modem connection defined  with a working configuration. I wanted this to be the first to be done, and i wanted this to be re-run at application launch each time to reset any “mis”-configuration done by end users thorough the pilot period.

Firstly i defined a method that would give me a string with xml data. – This could also have been done a bit more elegantly or smooth, but it works for me this way. Continue Reading

Windows Phone and Mobile developers are waiting for Microsoft to reveal the development environment for the new WPO7 Series platform. This will happen at the MIX 2010 conference in Las Vegas 14. – 17. March. Until then Microsoft employees find themselves “hunted down” for information and leaks on what to come.

Leaks are starting to spill out and wmpoweruser.com and engadget.com has released leaked documents on development guidelines and policies.

While reading this i can finally ”confirm”  that WPO7 Series is based on Windows CE 6. For us developers this is great news! Continue Reading

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.

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I am happy to see that Microsoft are working on an updated version of their 70-540 exam for Windows Mobile 5.0 application development. -It’s given the certification number 70-580 and is named TS: Windows Mobile 6.5, Application Development. It currently ”in development” and due as i understand it for release March 18, 2010.  From the list of “Skills being measured” in this exam it looks like Microsoft has put a bit more thought into what you actually need to learn before you venture into compact framework development.  If they at the same time upgrade the Microsoft Mobile Developer Handbookboth the exam and book will be a great starting point for new mobile application developers.

I hope that there will be a certification upgrade possibility for those of us that already has the 70-540  certification.

Windows Phone Developer Community meetup has been scheduled for Thursday March 4th. It will be held at The Scotsman downtown Oslo.

Speakers for the evening is Frank Dahle, usability expert and designer. He’s “mantra” of “Mobile design is to mobilize – not to miniaturize” is something i strongly believe in and are looking forward to help spread. keywords for Frank’s talk will be; Design is how it works -not how it looks, understanding the user, design for flow and the next generation of mobile apps.

The second speaker(s) for the evening is Ronny Gydar and Trine Nesland of Gydar Industries and developers of the norwegian windows mobile program series “TrineSeries”.  They will be talking about their applications, how and why they started and about the technology behind their applications.

We are also lucky enough to have Kristine Bjørnstad who is the acting Windows Phone Lead at Microsoft Norway to come tell us more about the Microsoft headlines announced at MWC (Mobile World Congress) Continue Reading

It had to come and competition is great. We are seeing more of 3rd party application stores for mobile solutions. Freeware Pocket PC has opened up an alternative application store for Windows Phones promising instant free downloads for your Windows Mobile phone.  OpnMarket is compatible with most of the Windows Mobile Professional devices with touch-screens, once installed it lets you browse, download and install FREE applications directly on your device. OpnMarket will use your mobile network connection or a WiFi connection to download software to your phone. It’s simple, instant and FREE  with access to more than 6,700 free windows mobile games, tools and themes.

The installer cab can be downloaded from here.

Planning has started for the second Windows Phone Developer Community meetup. The meetup topic wil be usability and UX on small screen devices. We have contacted a highly skilled UX professional and he’ll be giving a 45-60 minutes speak on the topic.

We would also like to have an application showcase that shows the use of good UX and are open for suggestions from users and developers. If you are a developer and would like to show off you app at the meetup, don’t hesitate, get in touch with us.

The meetup will take place in Oslo in the beginning of March.

Does the blogging activity of the Microsoft compact framework development team reflect it’s development activity?

I sure hope not because then they haven’t been up to much since august 2009.  The .NET compact framework team blog should have been a driving force for information about windows phone development, but is just quite anoyingly “dead”. Another blog hosted by blog.msdn.com called “The team blog for the mobile developer group“  shows the last posting from December 2008 as it’s last post. 

With all the hammering MS is getting from everywhere about it’s mobility strategy and development, are they giving up? is the battle lost?

Does anyone know of other official blog channels from Microsoft on the compact framework or Windows Phone? please let me know! Continue Reading