Tech QQ

Moving the blog!

2011-01-05T23:57:00.001+01:00

Since a while back I’ve been thinking of moving this blog. I wanted to host it on my own domain and also wanted to swap platform.

At first I was looking at BlogEngine.NET for platform because I liked the idea of a .NET based platform. But after some reading and pondering I decided to also test the most used platform, WordPress.

After trying them both out on my Windows 2008R2 server I decided on going with WordPress. Largest reason was it had the most community support, and therefore I hoped to spend less time customizing it.

But color me surprised, the recent weeks spare time has been spent on the new blogs customizations. A bit like stepping on Lego, it catches you off guard and surprises you with how painful it actually is…

The CSS files loading in the template I choose was a little messy, the styles were very unstructured and the CSS hierarchy actually had a faulty file reference out of the box. This plus the fact I haven’t done any web work the last 3 years made the process drag out, and moving home for my virtual pen took way more time than planned.

Now I feel I’m done though, and therefore I proclaim this blog moved over to mobilemancer.com!

So dear readers, thank you for this year, thanks for your input and encouragement. I wish you all the best and hope to see you at the new site.

Windows Phone Marketplace passes 5000

2010-12-29T01:10:00.001+01:00

Windows Phone 7 Marketplace pass 5000 apps

After what seems to be a pretty productive December, the Windows Phone Market just passed 5000 apps.

Some time early December it had 3000 submitted apps, hence about 2000 apps have been submitted and passed during this month. Not at all bad for a new platform seeing it’s second month in service.

Not that a direct comparison is fair - but if memory serves me right, Android had a growth rate at about 10000 apps a month in July 2010. So compared to that it’s still some way to go – but at that time Android had gathered a considerable momentum and been a valid platform for far longer time(having seen it’s first device launched the 22nd October 2008 with the HTC Dream).

State of the WP7 ecosystem

The big question is if there are any one buying all these apps, cause what good is an app without buyers?

One important part in discerning that puzzle - is the sales figures for devices. Regarding the sales figures of Windows Phone 7 devices, all Microsoft has said so far is that 1.5Million devices was shipped to retailers and stores during the first 6 weeks after the Europe release(21st Oct). Question is how many of those has actually reached users?

Even if 1.5Milion devices feels like a low number, there might be a reason for that. Because one major issue, at least at the Europe release, was to actually be able to find a device at all. Here in Sweden we had absolutely no devices at all in stores for the official release on the 21st Oct. I know that in UK there was a different situation with release parties in stores and a lot of devices available. But I do suspect that the situation in the larger part of Europe was just like here in Sweden. And there is no real question in my mind that lack of available devices is hurting the sales.

The future of Windows Phone 7

We will see Microsoft’s real first test in early Q1 of 2011 in my opinion. As I’m very anxious to see how the first update will go.

I think the first update will test the support structure and show how prepared they are. We know the Windows update system has been running for a long time now, and I’ve never had any problems with it personally for any of my computers. Since they will use the same infrastructure for the phone updates I really hope it will give us a smooth experience.

If the update works well, it’s only a fact of trying to upscale the Windows Phone 7 team and get productivity up(not an all too easy equation though unfortunately). Reason I say this is that I think the updates needs to come with more content than now planned and I really think they need to come within shorter intervals than what the newly divulged release plan states.

With that said, I have to admit I love my Omnia 7. It’s the best phone I have ever owned and I can’t really see any contender out there that I would like to swap too at the moment.

Accessing Bing Visual Search

2010-12-28T00:32:00.001+01:00

With the Windows Phone Marketplace now closing in on 5000 apps, it’s quite hard to get an overview of it from the Marketplace within the phone. Enter Bing Visual Search.

One of the categories in the Bing Visual Search is Windows Phone 7 Apps. Here you can twist and bend the results, look at most downloaded, newest paid, newest free and top ranked. Add to this that you can filter it all by categories and subcategories, price and publisher. Basically an invaluable tool in your search for apps for the Windows Phone 7 device you got this Christmas! (Only beef I got with it is that it is only showing the top 3000 Apps for some strange reason, but since filtering apps rarely give a result set larger than 3000 – what do they really mean?)

There is however a small issue you might run into when you want to try this out – namely it won’t work at all. The problem is it’s not supposed to work for a great many countries Microsoft thinks. So if you live in a country where you’re not allowed to search the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, you have to pretend you live some where else. Here’s how you do it:

1. Go to Bing.com and click your country in the right hand upper corner.

2. Change your location to “USA – English”.

3. Now you’ll get(hopefully) a new header in the upper left hand corner saying “Explore”.

4. Pressing the Explore link will give you access to a lot of new toys, but click the one saying “Visual Search”.

5. After accessing the Visual Search just press the “Featured Galleries” tab just below the search row, at the end of those featured galleries you will find the link to the Windows Phone 7 Apps.

Now search and play around, find some nice looking apps and support some of the hard working developers.

Happy app hunting!

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-25T18:57:00.001+01:00

Hello everyone!

I hope you are enjoying yourself and getting some time off during the holidays.

I just wanted to write a short post saying that there’s not been a lot of activity here during the last two weeks. That’s due to me working during my spare time to relocate this blog.

That’s right, beginning with the new year I am moving the blog to a new platform(WordPress) as well as moving it to a different domain.

I’m currently laying the last hand on the layout, I need to tweak some more CSS files and a little more php before I feel ready, but it will be done soon™!

Thanks for this year, I wish you all Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

How to enable Eclipse to phone apk deployment

2010-12-12T14:56:00.001+01:00

I wanted to deploy my app to my HTC Desire to see what it looks like on a phone but it wasn't quite as straight forward as I had hoped.

When reading the Android documentation it says that you have to turn on USB debugging by "go to the home screen, press MENU, select Applications > Development, then enable USB debugging".

Now I don't know if it's the Sense UI, me running it localized in swedish or that I'm running Froyo - but the above description proved hard to follow.

The way to do it for me was to open the apps tab, select Settings (Inställningar) then go to Programs (Program) > Development (Utveckling) then select USB debugging (USB-felsökning).

Then changing the current Run configuration and setting the Deploy Target Selection Mode to Manual did the trick. And as I feared my buttons wouldn't work at all, I have to say my black tinted buttons not only worked, but came out even better than I had expected.

Visual Basic becomes a little more meaningful

2010-12-11T00:54:00.003+01:00

The Visual Basic team has released Visual Basic for the Windows Phone 7 developer tools RTW. This release enables you to finally submit your apps written in VB to the marketplace.
For those that haven’t already started playing with the VB for Windows Phone 7 developer tools that were released in September a few tips are in place.
With the Visual Basic tools you can only develop Silverlight apps, the XNA framework is not yet supported, so if you need outstanding graphic performance for your game idea that will beat Angry Birds in sales – you will need to use the C# version of the tools.
The VB tools requires the Premium, Professional or Ultimate version of Visual Studio 2010, i.e. you can’t use the Express editions sadly.
Download the Visual Basic for Windows Phone Developer Tools – RTW.
Info about the release from the Visual Basic Team here (good read if you want the tools in any other language than English!).
More Windows Phone 7 related stuff on mobilemancer.

Nexus S Officially Announced

2010-12-06T23:39:00.001+01:00

The Nexus S was officially announced today. As suspected from all the leaks the device is indeed produced by Samsung and it’s running the new stock Android 2.3(Gingerbread) OS.

A lot of the rumors flying around didn't hit home like a 8MP camera, 1080p recording, Bluetooth 3.0, dual core processor and HDMI connectors. But one new exiting thing showed up, namely NFC support!

If you are new to it, NFC is short for Near Field Communication and enables you to for example paying for your Coke by just swiping your phone near a vending machine. It’s pretty cool technology being used in among others the UK now, but at the moment mostly integrated to various card products.

The Nexus S will be running the anticipated Gingerbread version of Android. Gingerbread is version 2.3(or API Level 9 if you are a developer) of Google's popular smartphone OS that mostly brings a lot of optimizations for both performance and battery longevity. Other improvements are VoIP support, NFC framework, gyroscope support, multi camera support, mixable audio effects, extra large screen support for tablets and quite a few other additions.

For more information about what’s new in Gingerbread from a users perspective you can read the Android 2.3 User’s Guide.

Lucky us they are planning a release before the holidays, if I wasn’t so pleased with my Omnia 7 I would surely have tried to get my hands on one!

Nexus S - The Specs

A 4 Inch curved Super AMOLED screen(WVGA 800*480), sporting 235ppi and an anti-fingerprint coating

1GHz Hummingbird(Cortex A8) Processor

16GB iNAND flash memory (non replaceable, no SD card!)

5MP back facing camera (2560×1920) with flash and auto focus

720p Video recording capabilities

H.264, H.263 MPEG4 video recording

Front facing camera of VGA quality(640*480)

802.11 b/g/n WiFi

Bluetooth 2.1

63mm * 123,9mm * 10,88mm

Haptic feedback vibration

Three-axis gyroscope

Accelerometer

Digital compass

Proximity sensor

Light sensor

1500mAH battery

Talk time up to 6 hours on 3G and about 18 days of standby on 3G.

A comparison of Nexus S, Nexus One and HTC Desire from the Google phone gallery.

Pricing and Release date

UK: BPS 549,95 - 20 Dec at Carphone Warehouse

US: USD 529 - 16 Dec

Sony Ericsson PlayStation Phone

2010-12-05T23:42:00.001+01:00

Last few weeks the rumors have been running rampant about an upcoming PlayStation phone from Sony Ericsson, this accompanied by the mandatory photo evidence by Mr. Blurrycam.

But now it seems that some one has actually captured a video of it in good quality(can it really be possible???).

The video shows some handling of the device, the slide out keypad and some twisting and turning. A nice shot of the system info reveals the model to be named Zeus and running Gingerbread(Android 2.3). Check out the video below.

Apparently some one with a device has also taken a few photos and uploaded them to Picasa. From the pictures it’s discernable that the device has a 5MP camera and allegedly has an aperture rating of 2.4 and a focal length of 4.1mm

One of the persons uploading the pictures used to work as a software developer for Sony Ericsson, nowadays working as a consultant, but I’ll bet my hat he’s consulting for Sony Ericsson in Lund.

With personnel field testing the device, it’s just a question of when we’ll see an official announcement. It would be nice to see before Christmas, but that feels a bit early. Some rumors were discussing a February official announce, and that sounds more likely. Although I bet many would have liked to see this one in stores for the holiday season.

Bye bye USB – Hello Light Peak!

2010-12-04T14:46:00.001+01:00

Intel demoed their upcoming Light Peak connections on IDF 2010 in San Francisco.

The data is transferred in fiber cables with a transfer speed up to 10Gbit/s – bi directional!

I can see why Intel haven’t started supporting USB 3.0 yet with this in the pipe, hopefully they manage to get it to production soon. See the video below for a presentation of Light Peak.

Windows Phone Marketplace hits 3000

2010-12-04T00:00:00.001+01:00

Today the Bing visual search places the Windows Phone Marketplace at 3000 apps. Good work all app coders out there!

We’re still missing some of the big names, but I hope they are working on their apps and are just a bit late to jump on the wagon.

I hate to say it, but I would love to be able to fling around those angry birds on my Omnia 7!

maybe missing INTERNET permission?

2010-12-02T15:53:00.001+01:00

Had a small problem consuming a REST service in my Android client today, the error message I got was:
java.net.SocketException: Permission denied (maybe missing INTERNET permission)

After trying to figure out if my URI was badly formated I realized it was an Android device issue. To enable your Android app to access the internet (and subsequently use HttpClient calls) you need to add the INTERNET permission to the apps manifest.

Outside of the application tag just add the following:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

Who would have thought just reading the error message properly would have solved the problem?

Could not find YourApp.apk!

2010-12-01T09:47:00.001+01:00

I've just started some Android development at work. I've never developed for Android before so there is a few things that takes some getting used too, and some stuff is quite a bit different from developing for Windows Phone 7. But it's fun to learn new stuff as allways!

I use Eclipse for development, and one of the few quirks I have run in too so far is the very annoying message of "Could not find YourApp.apk!". The exact output from in the console is as follows:

Android Launch!
adb is running normally.
Could not find YourApp.apk!

The solution was easy for me, just had to clean the project. If you don't know how, just open Project in the menu and select the "Clean..." option.

Then choose "Clean all projects" and click OK.

After this hopefully you can just press run and your project will deploy properly again.

LG Star – A Tegra 2 based smartphone

2010-11-30T12:04:00.001+01:00

LG Promised to shake things up with their upcoming Android devices. A leak regarding their prototype Star makes me want to believe them.

The upcoming Star is apparently based on NVidia’s Tegra 2 chipset, meaning it will run on dual core’s.

And it sports some otherwise nice hardware specs as well, a 8MP camera and promising 1080p video recording. It also has a front facing camera, a 4 inch screen, micro USB and a 1500mAh battery.

The person responsible for the leak ran Quadrant(free benchmarking tool available on Android market) on the device, it produced a score of 1759. In perspective my HTC Desire scores 1289(higher than the reference Desire shown in the Quadrant comparison view, most likely due to me running Froyo).

The LG Star is told to be destined for a early 2011 release, and the leaked device was running Froyo. Hopefully it will be upgraded to Gingerbread if it releases in 2011.

Just to bad this beast couldn’t be released for the holidays 2010 instead!

Coolest iPhone charger yet!

2010-11-21T21:29:00.002+01:00

Are you a Sci-fi fan, or do you just happen to love stuff that looks alien. Or do you just want to creep out your colleagues at work?
If you have an iPhone and need a new charger cable, you are now in luck. Check out the vid below for a gadget that will charge(or eat) your iPhone and make those who see it want to give Sigourney Weaver a call…

Synching your Windows Phone 7 device with Outlook

2010-11-21T01:51:00.001+01:00

Got a brand spanking new WP7 handset but no one to call and tell about it?

You can synch your contacts over from Outlook if that’s where you keep all your contacts. If you aren’t connected to an Exchange server you can export your contacts as a CSV file to Windows Live, and that way pull them down to your Windows Phone 7 handset.

How to do it is described in this Microsoft Support article with ID 2454811.

ApplicationBar – not your usual control

2010-11-18T11:47:00.001+01:00

If you are coding Silverlight apps for Windows Phone 7 you have probably used the ApplicationBar for your menu needs. If it’s confusing you with the way it works, or even giving you NullPtr exceptions when you try to access it’s properties, it’s because it’s no Silverlight control.

Looking at the XAML for the template “Windows Phone Application” in Visual Studio, there is an ApplicationBar defined. If you have used that template and tried databinding the ApplicationBar then you will have noticed that it’s not working, or even producing exceptions.

If you need to control the ApplicationBar in any way and change things dynamically, you need to do this from the c# codebehind. Even if you name the bar (or it’s components) with x:Name in XAML, you won’t be able to reach those objects from the codebehind.

What you need to do is to work directly with the instanced ApplicationBar from the codebehind. Say for example you need to change the icon for button number 3 on the fly, this is the way to do it:
((ApplicationBarIconButton)(ApplicationBar.Buttons[2])).IconUri = new Uri("NewIcon.png", UriKind.Relative);

This is also very important to remember if you are going to localize your app, as you can’t databind the translations as you can with all other Silverlight controls!

Windows Phone Marketplace hitting 2000

2010-11-16T09:26:00.001+01:00

In a recent communication from Microsoft to it’s registered developers, regarding the security of their intellectual properties, numbers about the current number of apps in the Marketplace was given.

According to the mail the 2000 app limit have now been passed. Not all bad considering it was launched the in Europe first on the 21:st October.

And there is surely a big number of projects being finished up, as many high profile projects we’ve heard about before the OS was even released haven’t been seen on the marketplace yet.

My own publisher approval process has soon passed a week, so there seem to be a lot more developers registering as well. I must say I think it’s pretty bad that you have to pay the publisher fee before you can unlock a phone to test apps on. Shouldn’t the publisher fee be paid when you want to actually publish something, not just try stuff out on your own phone?

And regarding the security of your apps developers – Dotfuscate, Dotfuscate, Dotfuscate!

Nexus S and Gingerbread imminent?

2010-11-11T22:00:00.001+01:00

Nexus S rumors buzzing of Gingerbread

Tech site Engadget have published a theory of theirs regarding the speculated next gen Google phone – Nexus S.

The theory says that the anticipated Nexus S is nothing but the Samsung GT-i9020. The 9020 series said to be closely tied to the Galaxy S series, the leaked device photos tell the same tale as well.

The rumors says it will be shipped with Android 2.3, code name Gingerbread, all so very fitting for this time of year. Let’s hope Google and Samsung goes official with the news before Christmas so that we got something more to be jolly about.

Gartner release Q3 statistics

2010-11-11T00:19:00.005+01:00

Gartner just released it’s Q3 report over mobile and smartphone sales. Mobile phone sales are up 35 percent and smartphone sales are up a whooping 95 percent and now totaling 19.3 percent of overall mobile sales.

Hardware wise Nokia is dropping about 10 percent market share. Apple continue to flourish with almost twice as many units sold as last Q3, but only increasing market share slightly. HTC is more than doubling the amount of sold units compared to last Q3, and almost doubling the market share.

Looking at the figures from an OS perspective the rise of Android is clear. Even though some have had very good sales (Apple) and other still doing quite decent (RIM) it’s obvious that Android is the strongest trend. Symbian is loosing almost 10 percent market share, RIM although selling over 3 million units more is still loosing 4 percent market share. Apple gaining about 1 percent market share even though doubling sales. Meanwhile Android sold over 19 million units more than last Q3 and thus increased market share by 22 percent to 25.5 percent.

This changes the placings in the top 5 sold units by OS category making Symbian still no1 at 36.6%, Android second at 25.5%, iOS third at 16.7%, RIM at 14.8% and at fifth place Microsoft Windows Mobile at 2.8%.
I’m predicting that Microsoft will rise considerably from the 2.8% to Q32011 with the sales of Windows Phone 7 driving their sales.

Windows Phone 7 so far is a very good OS, and has great potential with good performance and a steady influx of new apps to it’s marketplace. However, there are still a few things that feel very “v 1.0” about it so Microsoft needs to keep development pace up and start getting patches out there.

I’m very interested in seeing if the WP7 update process will be as good as the regular Microsoft PC OS updates, if so they’ll have a major advantage over competition. However, they need to start using it soon!

Article about smartphone statistics for Q4 2010.
More articles about statistics on mobilemancer.

Having problems installing Zune software on Win 7?

2010-10-31T22:03:00.001+01:00

If you, like me, just got your Windows Phone 7 device. Then you are probably installing it and setting everything up. If you are unlucky you might recognize this little box from trying to install the Zune software on your computer.

If you are running a Windows 7 N or KN version, the above error is due to Windows Media Player not being installed with these versions.

To get Windows Media Player just go to the download site and get the Media Feature Pack for the N and KN versions. (You have to pass the Genuine check for your Windows installation before you can download it.)

Then install the eventual patches that you might need after you are done installing the Media Player.

After doing this, Zune will install properly for you. Happy synching!

The fail of Tre

2010-10-30T23:59:00.006+02:00

So I got this really nice new phone (that I have been looking forward to for the last eight months in theory), but I can’t call, text or send nasty pictures on it. Why’s that you wonder?

Well, after I unpacked my shiny new toy it turns out I have no net connection. All seems to be due to the SIM card activation somehow has gotten stuck in some step of the chain at Tre.

So far I’ve called customer service five times or so since Tuesday, and it’s still not fixed.

First call I manage to get a hold of a real knucklehead. He asked if I had dialed in the activation code from my phone. I then had to explain to him again, for the second time within 5 minutes, that my SIM isn’t working and that I have not network connection – hence I can’t dial! He then asked if I had called “the number” that was enclosed in the package and given my number for activation. I tell him there was no number enclosed that I was supposed to call. He proceeds to tell me that it’s ok if I can’t find it and says he can connect me to it. I hang on and wait, the number get’s connected - I get a voice saying “This number is no longer in use”. Total win!

Second call I manage to get a hold of some one with a little clue as to what is going on, and she even asks me for my to-be phone number. After looking it up she says there’s been a snag in the system but that it’ll be fixed during the day.

Very late that same day my SIM still isn’t working. Person number three at customer service explains these kind’s of cases takes minimum 24 hours to fix, but that the technicians have gone home for the day so “maybe tomorrow”.

Day after that early morning, I talk to person number four at customer service, “I see the case is in progress, I see 24 hours has passed so it’s probably done soon. Have a good day!” – Good day, yeah right…
Later that day I call again, person number five answers, but this time I rang tech support instead of customer service for phone contracts. –“Yeah the technicians are working on it, but these kind’s of things takes 48 hours.” I get as a reply.

I say: “48? Your colleague said 24!”. “Oh that’s wrong” he says, and that’s all.

Later that day (48h since first phone contact initiated has passed) I call customer service for contracts and ask for status. Still the same status they say. I tell them it’s about time for some compensation. The reply I got –“Call back when it works and we’ll see how this has impacted you”.

Weak. Very weak in my opinion. If you live in Sweden and are waiting for a Windows Phone 7 device, I highly recommend you to get one of the HTC models or the LG model. Just don’t get the Samsung Omnia 7 so that you are forced to go with Tre as the provider!

Some issues you might face installing your new Windows Phone 7

2010-10-28T23:48:00.000+02:00

Can't reach Market, XBox Live or Zune?

If you live in a country that’s not one of the originally supported ones, you might face some issues when installing your Windows Phone 7.

When you start connecting your phone to different services (under settings-> email & accounts), the very first Windows Live account that you provide will be the one that will control your connection to Marketplace, XBox Live and Zune.

If you, like me, live in one of the countries that’s not supported yet, then using your current Windows Live/MSN account will most likely lock you out from these services. To enable connection to Marketplace, XBox Live and Zune you should just select “create new account” when the phone asks for a Windows Live account.

After you create a Windows Live account as the first used account, you will have access to all the services, even though not living in one of the supported countries. When done you can then add the Windows Live/MSN account you use regularly together with other mail and/or facebook accounts.

If you already setup the phone the way you like it but used your regular MSN account and now can’t connect to the Microsoft services above, then you unfortunately have to reset the phone to factory settings and start over again but following the above process. Resetting the phone is done by going to Settings –> about, then pushing the “reset your phone” button.

Got my Windows Phone 7!

2010-10-28T00:46:00.000+02:00

After being pretty disappointed that they had no devices in store on the 21:st that was supposed to be the release day, I at least managed to sing up on a list for the Samsung Omina 7 device at the local 3 shop.
On Tuesday the 26:th this week I had a package to go grab at the nearby candy shop. My Omnia 7 had arrived, and 8 months of wait were done!

A bit of unpacking revealed a handset, USB cables, hands-free set with extra plugs for different size ears, battery, charger, warranty, user manual and a brief “How to get started” pamphlet.

As all electronic gadget manuals say – “Charge before use”, I actually took my time to charge this one. The two hours I waited for it to charge before I could start playing with it felt like an eternity…

After a few minutes I notice I had no network connection after installing the SIM-card. As I couldn't get that to work, and Tre:s webpage kept telling me I wasn't a registered customer(?) I finally managed to reach customer service today, just to hear them say there had been a misstake and that my account hadn't been activated properly. That should be sorted within 24 hours they said, so tomorrow I might be able to make my first call with it.

I've had quite a few other setup snags, but more about that some other night when I have more than 5 hours sleep ahead of me.

Gingerbread getting close?

2010-10-23T23:57:00.000+02:00

At the Google campus a new statue has been added to the previous pastry themed statues. This time it was time for the Gingerbread man to make an appearance.

Are we closing in on the next major build of Android already?

VHS isn't dead?

2010-10-23T23:54:00.000+02:00

Aparently there's still people using VHS vcr's. The guy in the following video has a whole collection of them even. Except from a collection of VHS vcrs he's also got a unique presentation style as well as a cool accent and maybe the nices hair-do this side of Halloween!

Check it out in the vid below.