I cannot recall the last time I posted the announcement of our Boston/New England Windows Phone User and Developer Groups meeting so far in advance. It’s always nice to have a vision beyond 30 days, I tell you…

The next meeting of the Boston/New England Windows Phone User and Developer Groups will be held on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 starting at 6:30pm at the Microsoft offices in Waltham, MA (201 Jones Road, 6th Floor).

Our main presentation of the evening will continue our series on Windows Phone 7 Application Development that began back in April. This moth’s topic -

“State” and “Notifications”: A Whole New Meaning in Windows Phone 7
.NET Compact Framework developers who hear the words “state” and “notifications” invariably think of the State and Notification API, used to respond to various device state information and events. In Windows Phone 7, however, these words take on an entirely different and potentially critical meaning for application developers.

In this presentation, you will learn about the new application lifecycle for Windows Phone 7 applications and understand the importance of managing application state and responding to OS-level events. You will also learn about the use of the Microsoft Push Notification service as a means to communicate information to users when your application is not running.

We will also be repeating our very special drawing of the July meeting. One lucky attendee will receive a 1-year Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscription courtesy of Microsoft! Nothing special required – just be in attendance.

I look forward to seeing everybody there!

Recently, I’ve seen a number of questions posted in various forums that typically come in the form of something like -

“I am using the Windows Phone 7 Device Emulator to test my application. The application creates data which is saved in Isolated Storage. The other day I ran tests. I then ended the day and shut down Visual Studio and the emulator. When I started the next day’s work, I discovered that the data I had created are nowhere to be found on the emulator.

Where on my hard drive are the files related to Isolated Storage data?”

I’ve also been asked similar questions like this a lot lately. If I wanted to be blunt, the best answer would be – They’re gone. Bye-bye. I think a bit more of an explanation is in order, however

It’s important to being with by saying that the device emulator is just that – an emulator. It is a self-contained emulation of a device from both a hardware and software perspective. This includes the ROM image for the device and “local storage” for the device. As such, data written to the emulator is stored within the confines of the emulator session.

In past versions of Windows Mobile development, shutting down an emulator would first prompt you to save the current state of the device.

If you said yes to this question, the emulator would write out the current state of the emulator (including applications running in memory and data written to file systems) to your local hard drive. The next time you started the emulator, this information would be used to restore the emulator to it’s last running state. Think of it like hibernation on a PC. If you said no to saving state, the data written during the current session would be lost.

The Windows Phone 7 device emulator works on the same principle, with one major difference – the current implementation of the emulator does not give you the option to save emulator state. In other words – once shut down, your device data is gone.

I am not certain of any plans to bring the Windows Phone 7 emulator to a par with it’s Windows Mobile 6.5 brethren. I would image the state persistence will come eventually. In the meantime, just remember – once you close the device emulator, anything you had created in the form of data on the device (files in isolated storage, contacts, etc) are gone. 

Thanks go out to everyone who attended last night’s Boston/New England Windows Phone User/Developer Group meeting. In addition to a great group of participants, I also want to thank both Johan van Mierlo (of MobilityMinded.com) and Jon Westfall (of WindowsPhoneThoughts.com) for taking the time to make the journey up from CT and NY respectively. I’ve developed a lot of great friendships over my years with the Microsoft MVP Program, but so many of my friends are so far away (geographically speaking). Any chance to spend some time with them is always appreciated.

We did have one lucky winner of a 1-year Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscription. As is always the case with our meetings, all our winner had to do was attend and wait for the drawing at the end of the meeting (I think that making it through some of our meetings is enough of a price to pay for a giveaway ). We also had some additional great giveaways.

As I promised, I have made my PowerPoint deck for the presentation I gave on Windows Phone 7 Development available for download. The slides, of course, hardly do justice to all of the great conversation and questions that came up through he course of the presentation.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 starting at 6:30pm. We will continue our Windows Phone 7 development-focused presentation series with the next meeting focusing on application state management and developing for the Microsoft Push Notification Service. Both are topics that can potentially have a major impact of your development plans. Oh, and by the way… we will be repeating our drawing of a lucky winner of a 1-year Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscription, so don’t miss out!

Just a friendly reminder (and an update at the bottom of this post) -

The next meeting of the Boston/New England Windows Phone User and Developer Group will take place on Wednesday, July 21st starting at 6:30pm at the Microsoft offices in Waltham, MA (201 Jones Road, 6th Floor).

Continuing our meeting focus on preparing for Windows Phone 7 development, I will be presenting “Silverlight UI Tips and Tricks for Windows Phone Developers” -

In our previous presentation on Windows Phone 7 development for Compact Framework developers, be were introduced to the essentials surrounding UI development with Silverlight and Visual Studio 2010. The logical “next step” in the learning process is to enhance our user interfaces using the powerful capabilities that Silverlight provdes.

In this presentation, you will be introduced to animation capabilities to enhance your Windows Phone 7 UI. You will also learn about data access and data binding capabilities and see how to leverage “the cloud” and services it provides.

We will also be kicking off our meeting with a group discussion on Essential Applications for Windows Mobile. We have these discussions from time to time, and we’ve been asked to have another. We’re always willing to oblige in that respect

As for the update – in addition to our normal selection of items for our attendee giveaway at the end of each meeting, we have a very special giveaway this month courtesy of Microsoft. One lucky attendee this month will receive a Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN 1-year subscription!

If you are unaware of the value of this subscription, simply head over to the MSDN Subscriptions Comparison page (and be amazed). As always, there is no signup or fee required for attending our meetings, so I look forward to seeing you there! 

Well, it’s a bit later than expected, but it’s well worth the wait. Microsoft announced at the Worldwide Partners Conference on Monday the availability of the Beta (that’s right – beta) of the Windows Phone 7 SDK and Tools for developers.

Among the highlights -

• In addition to the inclusion of Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone Developers, the beta is compatible with the RTM version of Visual Studio 2010 (no more VS 2010 RC for me).
• The tools also include a beta version of Microsoft Expression Blend for Windows Phone. This version willinstall side-by-side with Microsoft Expression Blend 4 (another long-awaited install for yours truly).
• Very important to note – this release of the SDK includes a number of potentially breaking changes for previous users of the CTP version of the SDK. Fortunately, both the release notes included with the beta SDK and this blog post from Jaime Rodriguez walk through the required changes to CTP-based applications.

Rather than walk through all the highlights, the best advice I can give is to visit the Windows Phone Developer blog for all the details. You can also download the tools beta from the Windows Phone Developer homepage.

In a related note, Microsoft has also released an updated version of the Windows Phone Training Kit. The kit has been updated to include labs covering newly exposed features, including the Launcher and Chooser APIs for performing common tasks, as well as handling “tombstoning”, the OS process involved with terminating (but maintaining state) in your application when a launcher or chooser is used. There are also lots of other little enhancements included, many of which are detailed in this post on the Windows Phone Developer blog. You can also download the training kit from this post or the Windows Phone Developer website.

Happy coding!

The folks at Astraware have announced the release of two fun new games for Windows phone and Windows Mobile devices called OddBlob and Police Range.

OddBlob is a fun puzzle arcade game created entirely from modeling clay. Help OddBlob bound across the squishy maze to grab bonuses, chomp fruit, and win points as quickly as he can as the chasing tiles disappear behind. Bounce and double bounce tiles can help you reach your goal or throw you through the gaps to impending peril below, and cake slices earn you a try at the Cake Or Doom mini-puzzle!

Police Range is Astraware's take on the classic shooting range game. Put your skill and accuracy to the test as you train on the shooting range to become a crack police marksman. Choose from 2 ranges to train on: Target Practice, and Crime Alley, which between them test your accuracy, reaction speeds, eye and nerve!

Both OddBlob and Police Range include Astraware's new online high score table, which enables players to submit their best scores using wifi or data connection to see how they compare with other players worldwide. Players with non-connected devices can post their scores on the local high score table. Both games also include a range of fun awards and achievements.

OddBlob  and Police Range  are both available for devices with touchscreens running Windows Mobile or Windows phone 5 and later. Both games are priced $4.99 each, and a special discount will be available to Astraware Newsletter subscribers. To subscribe, visit: http://www.astraware.com/my/subscribe.php.

One of the premier Social Media marketing firms we have worked with in the past on the WOMMIE Award-winning campaign, the 31 Days Of The Dragon and our recent RingCentral Mobile Contest Giveaway is Ivy Worldwide.  They are now conducting a survey targeting the small and medium business segment with a15-question survey that designed to find out the wants and needs of purchasing decisions in this space. In order for the survey to be statistically meaningful, they are looking for a minimum of 400 responses and have offered up some really great prizes for taking part in this survey.

The prizes are:

1. Grand prize:  One Lenovo A70z all-in-one PC

2. Second prize:  Five prize packages, each containing one of each of the following three devices:

   • One LG Bluetooth headset (HBM-210)

   • One LG Bluetooth stereo headset (HBS-250)

   • One LG Bluetooth Solar Car Kit & Emergency Charger (HFB-500)

To be eligible for entry into the drawing, you MUST perform the following tasks:

• Complete the full survey (the revenues question (or any other) can be skipped if too sensitive, although we’d of course prefer all questions be answered)

• Supply valid information in the free-text areas (i.e., no nonsensical answers)

• Supply a valid email address

• Email addresses will only be used to contact eligible winners and WILL NOT be retained once prize selection has occurred.  We WILL NOT share contact data or otherwise contact any respondent.

To participate in this survey and be automatically entered to win head here

Only the first 400 responses will be entered into the survey, so get moving!!!

The next meeting of the Boston/New England Windows Phone User and Developer Group will take place on Wednesday, July 21st starting at 6:30pm at the Microsoft offices in Waltham, MA (201 Jones Road, 6th Floor).

Continuing our meeting focus on preparing for Windows Phone 7 development, I will be presenting “Silverlight UI Tips and Tricks for Windows Phone Developers” -

In our previous presentation on Windows Phone 7 development for Compact Framework developers, be were introduced to the essentials surrounding UI development with Silverlight and Visual Studio 2010. The logical “next step” in the learning process is to enhance our user interfaces using the powerful capabiliities that SIlverlight provdes.

In this presentation, you will be introduced to animation capabilities to enhance your Windows Phone 7 UI. You will also learn about data access and data binding capabilities and see how to leverage “the cloud” and services it provides.

We will also be kicking off our meeting with a group discussion on Essential Applications for Windows Mobile. We have these discussions from time to time, and we’ve been asked to have another. We’re always willing to oblige in that respect :-)

I look forward to seeing you there!

Just a friendly reminder – the next meeting of the Boston/New England User and Developer Group will be held this Wednesday (June 16th) starting at 6:30pm at the Microsoft offices in Waltham, MA (201 Jones Road, 6th Floor). For details, check out this post or visit our Facebook page.

I am looking forward to presenting another in our series of Windows Phone 7 development topics. This time, it’s Silverlight UI Development Essentials for Windows Phone Developers. This topic is big enough to warrant a second session on more advanced topics, so it looks like our July meeting agenda is now set :-)

I look forward to seeing you all there!

The next Boston/New England Windows Mobile will be held on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 starting at 6:30pm at the Microsoft offices in Waltham, MA (201 Jones Road, 6th Floor).

Our featured presentation is the next in a series focused on Windows Phone 7 application development -

"Silverlight UI Development Essentials for Windows Phone Developers"
Much of the early focus in preparation for Windows Phone 7 application development has been targeted at existing Silverlight developers considering Windows Phone 7 as a target platform. If you are a Compact Framework developer considering making the move to the new Silverlight tools, however, UI develpment takes on a whole new aspect and meaning.

In this presentation, you will be introduced to the development of user interfaces using XAML, Silverlight and Visual Studio 2010. You will also learn about the basic controls and best practices for Windows Phone 7 user interface development.

PLEASE NOTE: This session will focus on Windows Phone 7 UI development within the Visual Studio 2010 environment. Stay tuned for another session this summer on Windows Phone 7 UI development using Microsoft Expression Blend 4!