Mobile + Cloud: Building Mobile Applications with Windows Azure

Windows Azure Tutorial for Beginners

C# Programming Simple Car Game Tutorial

Nokia Lumia Blowout!!!

September Lumia Blowout!

Last month we gave a way an amazing Lumia 1020. That was pretty awesome. This month we wanted to take into consideration that maybe you aren’t on AT&T and would prefer a Lumia 925 or 928 to use on your carrier. Heck, it’s even possible you just don’t want a camera as awesome as the Lumia 1020 and would like a Lumia 920. If that’s the case then this months drawing is just for you. The winner will get their choice of a Lumia 920, 925, 928 or a 1020. The rules are simple:

1. You MUST live in the U.S. or Canada.
2. You MUST be an existing Windows Phone Developer WITH at least one published app currently in the marketplace.
3. You MUST be an active Windows Phone developer as of September 30th 2013, which means you must have either published a new Windows Phone application or have published an update to an existing Windows Phone application that required xap certification within a 180 day period (counting back from September 30th your last updated date must be April 4th 2013 or later.

Below is an example of where to find the last updated date on your Windows Phone application page in the Windows Phone Store.

Now that you know if you can participate or not here’s what you need to do. Email me the REQUIRED information below.

1. First and Last Name
2. Email address (this is the one we can reach you at, one you actually check daily)
3. The link to your qualifying application in the Windows Phone Store.
4. DVLUP.com username (If you haven’t registered yet, go do it, it’s free and you’ll be glad you did)
5. Your Windows Dev Center Publisher GUID (it’s on your dev center dashboard)
6. Your location: City, State/Province (and county if you are in TX or CA)

Make sure you include “September Lumia Blowout!” in the subject line or I might miss it. If you are missing any of the information above you will not be entered into the drawing for the new Lumia 920, 925, 928 or 1020.

Once I receive your entry I will verify your eligibility, enter you in the drawing then send it to the Ambassador for your area who will be your source for all things Nokia and Windows Phone development. We need your entry by September 30th. We will conduct the random drawing on October 1st 2013 and contact the winner.

No matter which area you are in the contest will be amazing and the entry is easy. So email me ASAP!

Send the email to ext-rich.dunbar@nokia.com with the subject “September Lumia Blowout!” .

Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2012 shines on Windows 8

Visual Studio is no longer simply an IDE, no longer a place you go just to write and debug C/C++ code.

Visual Studio is no longer simply an IDE, no longer a place you go just to write and debug C/C++ code. It has long since become something of a development mashup. It’s where you go to tackle any task in the development process, regardless of the target. It’s where you head to do your LightSwitch development, your SQL Server development, your Web application development, your Windows Azure development, and your ASP.Net or Windows Forms development in C#, F#, VB.Net, and — oh, yes — good old Visual C++. Naturally, it’s where you build applications for http://www.infoworld.com/category/tags/microsoft-windows-azure and Windows RT.

That’s not all. With the new Visual Studio 2012, you have to start wondering what you don’t do in Visual Studio 2012. It’s not the Master Control Program by a long shot … but it’s trying.

[ Learn how to work smarter, not harder with InfoWorld’s roundup of all the tips and trends programmers need to know in the Developers’ Survival Guide. Download the PDF today! | Stay abreast of key Microsoft technologies in our Technology: Microsoft newsletter. ]

As with earlier releases of Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2012 is available in several editions. The Express editions are, of course, free. Whereas some of the non-free editions target QA and Team Managers, the Express editions are intended specifically for developers:

Express 2012 for Web. Aimed at Web developers, this version provides tools for HTML5 and JavaScript, with particular attention paid to jQuery. It also includes a CSS editor that understands CSS3. For server-side code, you can develop ASP.Net or MVC framework applications in any of the .Net languages.

Express for Windows Desktop. This version of Express caters to the more traditional developer, one employing the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Forms, or the tried-and-true Win32 libraries. This edition also supports the creation of Windows 8 Store applications.

Express for Windows 8. Provides a trimmed-down IDE specifically for creating Window Store applications using either HTML5 and JavaScript or XAML plus C#, VB.Net, or C++. This Express edition also includes the Blend tool for UI construction.

The top of the Visual Studio 2012 line is the Ultimate edition, which is the version I tested. Ultimate installs enough gigabytes (about 10GB on my system) of development tools and libraries and documentation to occupy a person for a lifetime. You can target any of the platforms mentioned in the above list of Express editions, and you’ll find support for all the .Net languages. Plus, Ultimate edition includes modeling, lifecycle management, testing, and development team management tools.

Next, there’s the Premium Edition, meant primarily for agile development teams. It includes tools for task planning and development workflow. The Professional edition is meant for small development teams, and it includes tools for building applications on the Windows desktop, the Web, in the Azure cloud, and even Windows-supported mobile devices.

The Test Professional edition is obviously intended for QA team members. It incorporates tools for managing tests and test plans, executing tests, and analyzing test results.

It is not possible to cover all of the features of Visual Studio 2012. This article will concentrate on those new features developers are likely to be interested in. Even then, it will be a challenge to do the IDE justice. Details for all the editions — their intended users, as well as a comparison of features provided as well as omitted — can be found at Microsoft’s Visual Studio website.

Building Windows Store apps

In such a broad panorama of editions, target platforms, and target applications, it is difficult to identify a sole, outstanding, key new component of Visual Studio 2012. However, it is safe to assert that — given the proximity of the release of Visual Studio 2012 with the release of Windows 8 — the new IDE’s support of the new operating system is at the top of the list.

Windows 8 presents a new kind of application: the Windows Store application (sometimes just called a Windows 8 app). Originally referred to as a Metro Style application, a Windows Store app or Windows 8 app is a “whole screen” application that runs on Windows 8 or Windows RT. It is not composed of multiple, overlapping windows (which is a bit weird given that it’s running on an OS called Windows). The user interface of a Windows 8 app is clearly optimized for finger or stylus input, but can employ mouse or keyboard. The display surface is partitioned into a grid of tessellated rectangular regions, and the fundamental onscreen object is a tile, rather than an icon. On the startup screen of Windows 8, of course, the applications themselves appear as tiles.

You construct a Windows Store app using several language combinations, typically a language pair. A pair of languages is needed because the application code consists of both front-end and back-end components. The front-end (display) component is defined using a declarative language like XAML or HTML5; the back end (execution logic) executes in a procedural (or object-oriented) language such as C# or C++.

The specific combinations supported by Visual Studio 2012 are JavaScript and HTML, and C#, VB.Net, or C++ and XAML. If you want to build a game for Windows 8 and RT, you can add C++ with DirectX to the list.

Auto-magical multithreading

In concert with the arrival of Windows 8, .Net is being updated to version 4.5. Here, Visual Studio 2012 supports the new “async code” constructs in C# and VB.Net, which require new syntax elements in the languages and define new behaviors. Using the async and await keywords, you can identify potentially long-running methods — that is, methods that may be blocked waiting for an I/O response — but permit other parts of your code to continue executing, unimpeded by the blocked methods. Asynchronicity is key in Windows 8 apps. The Windows 8 application model is geared toward responsiveness, and many of the Windows 8 runtime APIs only support asynchronous operations.

When you define an async method, you’re specifying that the method’s results will be available at some unknown time in the future. The calling code can continue to execute, until it reaches a point where it must use the async method’s return value. You identify this point with the await keyword. An async method returns a Task object, which encapsulates the rendezvous point (used by await) and provides access to the method’s return value. In essence, the async and await keywords provide multithreading without your having to write callback functions, or thread startup and teardown code.

Not only does Visual Studio 2012 recognize the new async keywords, the IDE’s debugger is also async-aware. You can debug an application as though the otherwise asynchronous code executed synchronously.

The .Net async feature is similar to JavaScript’s “promise” (also called “deferred”) objects. As in the case of .Net async, a promise object encapsulates the results of an operation that, if called synchronously, would block execution. JavaScript promises are not syntactic elements (unlike the .Net async feature), but abstractions of behavior. The jQuery and Dojo JavaScript libraries provide implementations of promises, as does the Windows JavaScript library, WinJS, which is used when you build Windows 8 Apps with JavaScript and HTML5.

Turning C++ to 11

Visual Studio 2012 also supports new syntactic features for the C++11 standard. These include range-based iteration for loops, which lets you define an iterable — say, an integer array — and compose a for statement whose index is drawn from successive members of that iterable. Among other new features, C++11 also implements a standard thread class and supports atomic operations, which provide classes and template classes that give more expressive control over multithreaded access to objects.

In addition, Visual Studio 2012 supports C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (AMP), announced last year by Microsoft. C++ AMP is a programming model that exploits the data parallelism present in graphics processing units (GPUs) and provides data handling constructs, as well as math function libraries. Visual Studio 2012 not only recognizes the new constructs, but also includes a GPU debugger for working with C++ AMP applications.

Debugging C++ AMP applications is not the only graphics debugging feature in Visual Studio 2012. Perhaps one of the IDE’s most interesting new capabilities is Pixel History. Used in debugging Direct3D applications, Pixel History lets you identify which piece of code is responsible for a specific pixel in your application’s display and examine the events that affected the pixel over the application’s lifetime. This is important if the rendered pixel is the result of a blending of two or more events that have modified it at different points in the past. You can step through the events and find the graphical primitive responsible for altering the pixel.

Visual Studio 2012 adds optimization features for ASP.Net development as well. This includes “minification,” which reduces the footprint of an application’s JavaScript libraries for deployment. During development and debugging, you want JavaScript code to be in its full-text, human-readable form. But when deployed, you want the JavaScript compressed (and possibly obfuscated) for performance and security. The minification process optimizes the JavaScript files for deployment.

While Visual Studio 2012 looks forward to Windows 8, it doesn’t shrug off its ancestry. The IDE is particularly tolerant of projects built by its predecessors. Provided that a project doesn’t explicitly employ a feature available only in Visual Studio 2012, that project file can be opened either in Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2012. The notable exceptions to this are F# and LightSwitch projects. Once you allow Visual Studio 2012 to upgrade such projects, they can no longer be opened in Visual Studio 2010. The reason given for these exceptions is the relative novelty of F# and LightSwitch. Microsoft deemed it unlikely that a large legacy codebase existed for either, so focused less effort on preserving backward compatibility with such projects.

In addition to all the new capabilities, some welcome features in the IDE have been updated. Code snippets have been improved with the inclusion of “surround with” snippets. Whereas ordinary code snippets are pieces of skeletal code for common constructs that you simply “pour” into a single location (like a glorified paste operation), “surround with” snippets let you define an enclosing construct — such as an if statement and its accompanying body — that surrounds a section of selected code.

Rafts and previews

While the ability to “dock” a specific window to a particular monitor has been available in earlier versions of the IDE, Visual Studio 2012 adds a new facility (and new nautical metaphor) called a “raft.” A raft is a collection of multiple windows that can be treated as a single unit for the purpose of docking.

Another welcome usability feature is the preview tab, which opens a file in a new tabbed window whenever you select a file from the solution explorer (or if you happen to step into the file in the debugger). Previously, viewing a file’s content required that you explicitly open it; now you simply select it to materialize a preview window. The preview is not an editor (its content is read-only), so you must take the extra step of actually opening the file to edit it. But the preview tab is a handy feature for large projects where you need to quickly search through source files.

IntelliSense includes support for JavaScript, an important addition now that JavaScript has become a first-class language used to build Windows 8 apps. IntelliSense understands JavaScript documentation ornamentation — which can specify function parameters, return values, and so on — and incorporates these elements into its internal database to assist in code completion whenever JavaScript functions are referenced in the editor. IntelliSense also provides JavaScript function signatures in code completion.

[10]

JavaScript is a first-class citizen in Visual Studio 2012. This AJAX solution shows the IDE’s combined design and source views in the editor area, solution explorer to the right, and architecture explorer (class browser) at bottom.

Visual Studio 2012 has also improved the dependency graph feature. A dependency graph will show not only logical dependencies (such as a method’s callers and callees), but also physical dependencies (what header files a specific C++ file required). Dependency graphs are useful for finding reference loops (a built-in analyzer helps locate such loops) and can identify code with no dependencies, which is probably a candidate for elimination.

In addition, the graphs are interactive. Click a node, and a pop-up materializes to display the details of the object highlighted: its category, the assembly it’s in, its data type, and its namespace. Similarly, click an arc, and you’re shown its category (reference or call) as well as the source and destination nodes. This latter feature is useful if you’re exploring a large and complex dependency graph.

You can actually build dependency graphs incrementally, by creating a directed graph file and adding it to your project. Then, you simply drag objects (for example, source for class definitions) from either the solution explorer or the architecture explorer and drop them into the graph file’s editor window. Visual Studio will parse the source code, index it, and incorporate it into the existing graph.

Working with Visual Studio 2012

When you install Visual Studio 2012, you’re presented with numerous optional components. These include Blend for Visual Studio, MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) for C++, Office Developer Tools, SharePoint Developer Tools, Visual Studio LightSwitch, and Web Developer Tools.

In addition to tuning the environment to your particular sort of development (LightSwitch, SQL Server, Web development, or any of the .Net languages), you can also select the quantity of help documentation installed. A management console lets you pick which content will be recorded locally and which will be accessed from the Web. All help text is available online, and the IDE will access its online repository as needed, but fine-tuning the cached content can help if you know you’re going to be working either offline or in an area with spotty connectivity.

The breadth of the development targets that Visual Studio 2012 now supports becomes apparent when you create a new project. The IDE presents more project templates than you can shake a stick at, in all of the supported languages — which now include JavaScript. You can also select templates from Microsoft’s online source; do that and the choices multiply even more. Also online are uncountable lists of code samples through which you can wander for hours.

I chose to build a Windows 8 application using HTML5 and JavaScript. To do this, I first had to acquire a Window’s 8 Developer license — a bit disconcerting, as I had no desire to actually try to sell the application or even execute it anywhere other than my system. Happily, the license is free; unhappily, it’s only good for 30 days, at which time you have to renew it — again, happily, for free. Had I wanted to make the application available on the Windows Store, I would have had to acquire a Windows Store license, which would not have been free.

The experience of building a Windows 8 application with HTML and JavaScript is reminiscent of creating a Web application, particularly in the way the project compartmentalizes the application’s individual files. CSS files go in one folder, images in another folder, and JavaScript code in still another. A top-level folder is home to the HTML as well as the manifest file (which carries the application’s name, description, splash screen, and so on) and security certificates file.

Of course, building a Windows 8 app is not precisely like building a Web application. You have to learn the event model — as well as the events themselves — imposed on Windows 8 applications. Microsoft has defined events that unify the handling of touch, mouse, and pointer input, so you don’t have to concern yourself with whether a finger or a mouse triggered an event.

You also have to learn a Windows 8 application’s lifecycle and how that is expressed in the JavaScript that executes the “business logic” of your application. Microsoft has defined JavaScript namespaces via whose methods and members you interact with the Windows API from JavaScript. The WinJS namespace, for example, includes objects that handle onscreen controls (like ListViews, DatePickers, and so on) as well as JavaScript promise asynchronous handler objects. The Windows namespace includes objects for dealing with an application’s lifecycle (objects for handling search operations) and system operations (a class for controlling whether a device’s display remains on during an inactive period).

Luckily, there are plenty of resources — everything from style sheets to libraries of controls — to draw on. Possibly the greatest hurdle that developers of Windows Store applications will face is simply wading through the mountains of choices to select from.

Big rock candy IDE

If you’ve used any of the previous versions of Visual Studio, you’ll be right at home in Visual Studio 2012. You’ll find plenty of documentation, guides, and tutorials online to help you navigate the new features. On the other hand, if you’re new to Visual Studio, you’ll quickly discover how vast it is. The only practical advice I can offer is to explore it one tributary at a time.

If you want a hint of just how big Visual Studio has become, consider its new Quick Launch capability. The idea behind Quick Launch: There’s some operation in the IDE you want to perform, but you can’t quite remember in which submenu or toolbar selection or pop-up window the control for that operation is hiding. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could search the IDE, in the same way you, say, search for a variable’s definition in your project’s source?

That’s exactly what Quick Launch lets you do. Enter a search string, and the IDE groups the results of your search. You can see matches in the most recent controls you’ve used, the documents you’ve opened, or menus or options you’ve selected. Click on one of the choices and — hopefully — you’ll be taken to the spot in the IDE you’re looking for.

As I warned at the beginning, Visual Studio 2012 is a big product. There’s a whole lot more I didn’t touch on: testing features, project lifecycle management, version control features, Visual Studio’s integration with other Microsoft products, and so on.

If you want to do Windows development — particularly Windows 8 and RT development — then Visual Studio is really the only game in town. This is simultaneously a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, Visual Studio 2012 does an admirable job as the platform for building applications for a dizzying variety of targets. On the other hand, if you don’t like it, you’re pretty much stuck with it. Nevertheless, countless successful applications, small and large, were born, raised, and graduated from the Visual Studio IDE. And countless more are still to come.

In reversal, Microsoft gives snarling developers Win 8.1 RTM to chew on

MSDN and TechNet subscribers were enraged when Microsoft denied them access to the latest Win 8.1 pre-release build

After developers and IT pros pelted Microsoft with complaints, the company has backtracked and decided to grant them access to the latest Windows 8.1 build instead of making them wait until mid-October.

When Microsoft sent to PC and tablet makers two weeks ago the latest pre-release version of Windows 8.1 — the so-called RTM (release to manufacturers) build — it broke with tradition and kept developers and IT pros out of the loop, enraging them.

Microsoft said at the time that these two camps would get access to the final version of Windows 8.1 when it starts shipping commercially on Oct. 17 and Oct. 18.

It justified the incendiary decision by saying that it had to collaborate closer than ever with its hardware partners because the OS has to work with a much broader variety of devices.

“As such, we’ve had to evolve the way we develop and the time in which we deliver to meet customers with the experience they need, want and expect,” Microsoft official Antoine Leblond wrote two weeks ago in the blog post announcing Windows 8.1 RTM.

But in blog comments, Twitter messages and other social media channels, developers and IT pros growled, saying that this wouldn’t give them time to test their applications, tools and IT environments, possibly causing chaos for them.

“How are IT pros and partners supposed to evaluate 8.1 now and perhaps change scripts/applications/whatever as needed?,” wrote one person in a comment to Leblond’s blog post.

On Monday, in a surprise reversal, Microsoft announced that it has changed its mind, and that subscribers to MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) and TechNet now have access to Windows 8.1 RTM.

“Weve listened, we value your partnership, and we are adjusting based on your feedback. As we refine our delivery schedules for a more rapid release cadence, we are working on the best way to support early releases to the various audiences within our ecosystem,” wrote MIcrosoft official Steven Guggenheimer in a blog post Monday.

The move is a “no-brainer,” according to IDC analyst Al Gillen. “This community is one of Microsoft’s points of entry to corporate IT,” he said via email.

Another IDC analyst, Al Hilwa, said that keeping the code from developers would have harmed them and Microsoft as well. “It does not materially help Microsoft or anyone to delay adoption,” he said via email.

It’s not clear why Microsoft made its initial decision, but Hilwa speculates it may have stemmed from its ongoing transformation into a devices and services company, a plan outlined in a broad reorganization launched in July by soon-to-be-retired CEO Steve Ballmer.

“I think they came to their senses to realize that their ecosystem of developers is different from Apples and prefers more open practices,” Hilwa said.

Developers and IT pros get to download both the Pro and standard editions of Windows 8.1 RTM, as well as Windows Server 2012 R2 RTM and Visual Studio 2013 Release Candidate.

However, they will not get access to the RTM version of Windows RT 8.1, the version of the OS for devices that run ARM chips, according to a Microsoft spokesman. Hardware vendors did get access to Windows RT 8.1 RTM two weeks ago.

Guggenheimer said it will still be necessary for IT pros and developers to refine and tweak their Windows 8.1 applications and IT environments once the final, GA (general availability) version of the OS ships in mid-October.

However, the RTM version offers code that is much closer to the final build than the Preview version developers and IT pros received in late June at Microsoft’s Build conference.

Microsoft had argued in its defense two weeks ago that the Preview versions of Windows 8.1 and Visual Studio were sufficiently baked for the purposes of IT pros and developers.

This was the latest flap involving Windows 8, a historically important upgrade to the company’s flagship OS for desktops, laptops and tablets.

Windows 8 started shipping October of last year with a radically altered user interface called Modern, and also with a more traditional Windows 7-like desktop for legacy applications.

Based on tile icons and optimized for touchscreen devices, the Modern interface was designed to make Windows a better OS for tablets, where the Microsoft OS has taken a beating at the hands of Android and Apple’s iOS.

Unfortunately, the Modern interface wasn’t well received, particularly among enterprise and consumer buyers of Windows 8 laptops and desktops, who complained that it was hard to master and inconvenient to use with a mouse and keyboard.

With Windows 8.1, Microsoft is hoping to put out the main fires keeping customers away from the OS. For instance, it’s adding something very close to the Windows 7 Start button, which the company took away in Windows 8, clearly unaware of how attached users are to it.

Windows 8.1 also attempts to smooth out the process of toggling between the Modern and traditional interfaces, which many users have described as awkward. To this end, it will be possible for Windows 8.1 users to boot directly to the traditional desktop interface.

Windows 8.1 also lets users view all the applications installed on their device and sort them by name, date installed, most used or category. The OS update also sports an improved search engine powered by Bing that will return results from a variety of sources, including the Web, applications, local files and the SkyDrive cloud storage service.

Windows 8.1 also comes with Internet Explorer 11, a new version of Microsoft’s browser that the company has said will load pages faster and offer better performance in touchscreen mode.

Other Windows 8.1 enhancements include the ability to make a Skype call and take photos with the Windows 8.1 device while the screen is in Lock mode without having to log in. It will be possible as well for users to select multiple applications at once and perform bulk actions on them, like resizing, uninstalling and rearranging them.

Windows 8.1 tablets with 64-bit Atom chips not coming until Q1

Intel’s Bay Trail chip will initially be used in 32-bit Windows 8.1 tablets, with 64-bit versions due in the first quarter

DG News Service – Buyers looking for a tablet with Intel’s new Bay Trail Atom chip and a 64-bit version of Windows 8.1 will have to wait until early next year.

Intel executives on Wednesday said the first Bay Trail tablets will use only the 32-bit version of Windows 8.1, despite 64-bit support on the chip.

Tablets with the 32-bit OS have a 4GB ceiling for DRAM memory, while 64-bit can actually support 512GB. Most early Bay Trail tablets with Windows 8.1 will not have more than 4GB of memory, said Steve Smith, vice president and director of tablet development at Intel.

“We have the capability, now it’s a matter of when a consumer system would need that, that’s probably sometime in the future, I’d say a few generations away,” Smith said.

The reason is limitations in Microsoft’s software, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64. A feature in Windows 8.1 called connected standby, which allows computers to be put in sleep mode and wake up instantly, is available today only in the 32-bit version.

Microsoft is adding the feature to the 64-bit Windows 8.1, and it will be available in early 2014.

Intel also doesn’t feel 64-bit is necessary on consumer tablets, though it knows IT managers want 64-bit compatibility across all PCs and mobile devices in the enterprise.

Intel is developing a separate Bay Trail tablet chip intended for 64-bit versions of Windows 8.1, and the processor will ship in the first quarter of next year, said Chris Walker, general manager of tablets at Intel’s Mobile Communications Group.

“We’re developing new hardware with Windows 8.1,” Walker said. “There will be a [chip] that supports the enterprise-class feature set.”

There are benefits to 64-bit support. Tablets with 64-bit operating systems can run applications faster with a wider bus and have access to more memory. A tablet is more likely to be able to play 4K video with 64-bit support.

64-bit may also be relevant in environments where IT administrators want to run the same OS images on PCs as on Windows tablets, Intel’s Smith said.

Intel’s upcoming Bay Trail chip for 64-bit enterprise tablets may include VPro, a set of remote management technologies for IT administrators. Such chips also have on-chip security technologies, and Intel’s McAfee security software has been optimized for 64-bit Bay Trail chips, said Hermann Eul, vice president and general manager of the mobile and communications group at Intel, during a question-and-answer session at IDF.

Brookwood said there could be 64-bit Windows 8.1 tablets for consumers by the first quarter of next year as well.

Intel’s previous Clover Trail and Clover Trail+ chips supported only 32-bit operating systems. Tablets running ARM processors are also 32-bit, as the chips do not support 64-bit addressing. Apple this week announced a 64-bit iPhone 5S smartphone.

The new Bay Trail chips are based on a new CPU architecture called Silvermont. Intel has started shipping 64-bit Atom server chips code-named Avoton based on Silvermont.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam’s e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com

Translator App For Windows Phone 8

Click on any screenshot to see the app in the store.

Language Translator for Windows Phone 8 is possibly one of the best language translation tools on the Windows Phone market. This translation app is equipped with speech recognition, text-to-speech, voice-to-text, and voice translation for your convenience. Language Translator app supports almost 50 different languages, making it one of the best translation tools and the best choice for anyone that needs to break the language barrier.
Language translator is an app that is designed to allow you to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Features:

* Social Media Integration
* Full voice support
* Text Prediction
* Share From Unlimited Accounts
* Share Translations using Email and SMS
* Share Translations using Social Networks
-Facebook
-Twitter
-LinkedIn
-Sina Weibo(China’s Twitter Network)
-and Any Other Verified WP8 Account
* Customize Preference Settings
* Voice Translation
* Text Translation
* Text-to-Voice
* No Advertising
* Supports More Languages than Almost every other Translator in the Windows Store.

-Text Prediction

The text editor will help you predict text and correct any misspelled words.

-Social Media Integration

You are now able to share your favorite translations with friends on Facebook, Twitter followers, your LinkedIn contacts, Sina Weibo, and many more, right from the UI.
You can share translations from multiple social media accounts. Simply set up your social media accounts and choose which account you would like to share from.

-Email Integration

Share your translations from any email account that is associated with your WP8. Share from unlimited accounts.

Windows Phone 8 Workshop

Saturday 9-21 from 10:30-4:30 we are having a Windows Phone 8 workshop. Please register quickly at the following link as we are holding spots for MIS majors thru the 15th then it will become open enrollment. If you have a friend you want to bring who is not a MIS major, they can enroll after the 15th. We will be doing a Windows Phone Infohub using a Template helper. The primary goal of this workshop will be to get people set up with Windows Phone Developer accounts and to help them with submitting their first Windows Phone app to the store. The Windows Phone Store is different from the Windows 8 store – different developer accounts, different process, different testers, different expectations.

https://ualr-wp8.eventbrite.com/

If you are bringing your own laptop, it must have 4GB of RAM and be capable of Hyper-V. If your laptop came with Windows 8 and does not have a Celeron processor, you should be fine. If your machine is less than 1 1/2 years old and had Windows 7 on it originally and has 4GB of RAM, it should support Win Phone development. If it is older than that, there is still a chance it will support Win Phone. Download the Windows Phone SDK https://dev.windowsphone.com/en-us/downloadsdk This is the latest and greatest Phone SDK as of 8/1. It requires Visual Studio 2012 and a minimum of update 2 although I would recommend going to Dreamspark Premium and downloading Update 3.

I also need to ask you guys for a favor… even if you already have Visual Studio 2012 installed, would you please log in to your new Dreamspark Premium account and download one of the Visual Studio 2012 (Professional, Premium, or Ultimate)? One of Brad Jensen’s (and his boss and his boss’ boss) metrics is the number of downloads of Visual Studio and the updates to it from Dreamspark Premium. We do our best every year to help them meet their numbers and this is a simple thing we can do for them. You don’t have to reinstall it, just download it. You do need to install Update 3 and then the Phone SDK. If your machine doesn’t support Phone, you still should install Update 3.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Janet L. Bailey, PhD
President Southwest Decision Sciences
Assoc Professor
Department of Business Information Systems
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
jlbailey@ualr.edu | drjanetbailey@live.com

Windows 8 App Development Tools

Image Resizer w/ Windows8 Development Tool is an image resizing tool designed to make development for Windows8 a lot easier and save some serious time. However, this isn’t just a tool for developers. It has batch image resizing capabilities, allows users to resize images to preset or custom sizes, and creates a folder for the generated images. It will also convert your images into 10 different image types.

Why should developers use this tool?
* It generates all the icons needed for the Windows8 and Windows 8 Phone store
* It also creates promotional images

It will literally knock hours off your app submission time!!!