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!

Got news on a quite new project on CodePlex through twitter and @gcaughey; A database framework project for Windows Phone 7 Silverlight and XNA projects.

From the project description it looks quite promising.

This project implements a Isolated Storage for Silverlight (IsolatedStorage) based database for Windows Phone 7. The usage of this software is very simple. You create a new database by Calling CreateDatabase. You can add tables to the database by calling db.CreateTable<T> where T is the type of entity to be stored in table rows. You can save database by calling Save, and open the database by calling OpenDatabase. This database supports version changes, so you can update your application and still be able to open the database. You can look for basic use of this database by examining test Silverlight application. Encryption has been implemented; just provide a password to use encryption. Also lazy loading has been implemented. If you open database with lazy loading flag, tables will be loaded when first accessed. Feel free to look documentation help file under current download for API details. The source code file contains unit test project that you can also examine for usage details. The database consists of table objects, each one supporting any number of columns. Continue Reading

Microsoft has released a Windows Phone training kit available for online viewing or offline download through Channel 9, to help developers jumpstart development of Windows Phone applications and games.

This release includes Windows Phone MIX10 videos as well as one new lab. Due to the limited nature of this release, which focused on getting the tools to work with VS2010 RTM, we managed to introduce only one new lab – Using Push Notifications. This lab features an end-2-end scenario for a simple weather application that register to receive Push Notifications as well as a WPF client application that mimics the 3rd party backend server.

Visit the Windows Phone Developer blog to read more about the contents of the kit.

Two weeks ago I compiled my agenda for the first day of Norwegian Developer Conference 2010. A killer conference day, but as a mobility developer the real goodies begins on day two. Here´s what i plan to attend:

Check out my first day agenda here.

9:00 – 10:00: Silverlight for Windows Phone  with Tim Heuer

Windows Phone 7 Series is coming…and if you are a Silverlight developer there is good news: Silverlight *is* the development platform for Windows Phone applications. Continue Reading

As I´d written earlier; Per Ola and I was invited to participate on the spring 2010 MSDN Live tour of Norway.

We´d been looking forward to this for a while and I must say that we were quite disappointed when we saw the news about the volcano eruption on Iceland and it´s effect on air travel…

Never lost behind a wagon we decided to drive. This is  a 6 hour drive from Oslo if you drive smart, if  you drive stupid it´s a 14 hour drive… Guess witch one we picked?

Images from the trip, Car on board computer stats, Per Ola at the Microsoft stand and the snow blizzard we ran into triving over the mountain (twice)

This year big event for Norwegian developers; NDC 2010 (Norwegian Developer Conference)  has an almost complete agenda and I thought I’d share my schedule for the first day. This is the  best session I’ve found seen from a Windows Phone developer perspective.

Visit the NDC2010 website for a full agenda and to purchase your tickets before it gets sold out!

10:20 – 11:20: Strategies against architecture with Kevlin Henney 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

10 days to go and i am off. Tickets and hotel are booked and i am going to Las Vegas and the Mandalay Hotel & Casino for the MIX10 conference.

After the launch of Windows Phone 7 Series at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona i am really looking forward to get a deep dive into the development capabilities of the new OS.

With me I’ll bring along a Canon 5D Mark II camera for snapshots and i’ll post updates as soon as time permits. Continue Reading

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.