Developers
Unity Technologies, the company behind the Unity gaming engine, previously announced they would be 'skipping' Windows Phone 7.x due to a closed environment being present, much like Epic Games with Unreal. For those who have games built using said engines this was a fairly confusing situation, especially since Microsoft is actively pushing the mobile platform as a gaming platform.
Current gaming development is aided by both Silverlight and XNA. Cue Press Play, developer of the Xbox LIVE games Tentacles (our review) and Max & the Magic Marker (our review), who have announced in a Facebook post that they will be releasing their Unity 3D porting toolkit to the community as open source. This move will enable developers who have built games using the Unity engine to bring across their titles to the Windows Phone Marketplace.
Check out the post in full detail below. Good news for both game studios and consumers alike, bravo Press Play. Let us hope that we see some exciting titles brought over to fill up the catalogue of games.
Read more
We've been covering the launch of Windows Phone in Indonesia via the Lumia 710 and 800 for a few weeks now. Officially being released over the weekend, the launch was proceeded by numerous events to spark interest and build momentum.
One of those events was a Nokia Developer Day day sponsored by Microsoft and it was attempting to break a record with at least 800 developers coding at once for new Windows Phone apps. Now, the Indonesian Record Museum (Museum Rekor Indonesia / MURI), which is similar to Guinness for world-record keeping, has officially certified the day as a record with more than 800 devs participating in the 24-hour event.
Entered as record number 5308 in the MURI archives, the award was accepted by Narenda Wicaksono, Development Operations Manager Nokia Indonesia and Microsoft's Risman Adnan, Developer Director of Microsoft Indonesia (image above).
Nokia Developer Day was held on February 4 through the 5th at Graha Mandala Siliwangi, Bandung and seems to have been a resounding success in both gaining attention and hopefully a trove new applications for the Indonesian Marketplace. One of those apps evidently is a Reuters Kompass TV video streaming program, making it one of the first on-demand news apps for Windows Phone and it should be available to all users in the next few months.
Source: Tekno Kompass 1, 2; Nokia Developer Day image via Aca S. (@superaca); Thanks, Hermawan S., for the tip!
The site AppDreamr has a great idea in mind for consumers and developers: submit your app ideas, including any screenshots or features you want and let the community vote on it. Then a developer will see which app "dreams" are the most popular and will basically call "dibs" on it bringing the idea to life. From Arian Kulp, the site's creator:
"This isn't just a way to suggest that apps on other platforms are ported, but to be able to pitch a great idea for a new app. The main audience is for the end-users to dream up the app features and screen mockups, and discuss them. The expectation is that devs will see the highest-voted app ideas and will want to produce them (less of an unknown if it will succeed). I envision a community of passionate users dreaming up great concepts, and developers getting popular by implementing them."
It's really a great idea as users get the apps they want and devs can find work and new concepts to start off from. Plus, as pointed out, devs will have more confidence in the app being successful if folks are demanding and voting on the idea.
So devs and thinkers, head over to http://www.appdreamr.com/ to get started.
Every now and then we feature apps whose prices are going down for a small promotional period. Obviously, in general people seem to like free stuff. But how much?
Well, I have an app called FFFFound in the Windows Phone Marketplace, which has been mentioned here on WPCentral a few times. It's has quite a niche target market, and because of that doesn't have many users. So before going into numbers, you need to realize that this is an app that not too many people actually want or need. BUT for the few who are looking for something like this, they love it. Because the users who have reviewed it have made it quite clear that they love the design, I wanted to get it into more hands.
Read more
Ah, another week and another Windows Phone team member is moving on to other things. Yes, Jeff Wilcox who's a Senior Software Development Engineer at Microsoft and who was responsible for many aspects of the Windows Phone SDKs (7.0, 7.1) is moving to Microsoft's Azure team to work on their cloud services. From his personal blog:
"I’ve decided that for 2012, I would like to move to the Windows Azure team to focus on the open source story for Microsoft’s cloud. At Microsoft we’re becoming more and more involved in exciting new success stories and tech such as Node.js – along the way we’ve even started using GitHub to accept community open source contributions and make these things better. There’s a great opportunity here and I want to be there to be a part of it all."
Wilcox's work has been key to making Windows Phone devs happy by giving them the necessary tools and tricks to make their jobs easier. Our own Jay Bennett often refers to him as "Gandalf" out of admiration for his work to the platform, so his moving will surely be missed. In turn, we asked Jeff what his proudest contribution to the Windows Phone SDK was:
"My proudest contribution is the Pivot control for the Windows Phone team - I worked hard to bring it to developers in 7.0 and it turned out pretty well. The few bugs (yeah, like SelectedIndex sometimes getting angry) were frustrating, but we did an awful lot with the time allotted and I'm happy to see it in the tens of thousands of Windows Phone apps in the Marketplace. Yeah, there was a time we weren't sure that we would provide the Pivot and Panorama controls to developers :-) we've come so far. It's been a blast."
Many of you non-devs will know his work from something else though: 4th & Mayor. Yes, Jeff is the man behind the super popular Foursquare client which started off as an alternative and now with 60,000 regular users, it has quickly become one of the top apps on the platform. The good news here is Jeff will continue working on 4th & Mayor in 2012 and 2013 with regular updates, including a Windows 8 desktop version for the Microsoft Store. Eventually he'll open source it using the Apache 2.0 license which should be an exciting contribution.
We'd like to personally extend out thanks to Jeff for his work on Windows Phone over these last few years. He's helped in solidifying the foundation for this OS and in making developers content with their tools. We wish him the best of luck on the Azure team and we look forward to more 4th & Mayor goodness in the future.
We're also told that he's not completely done yet with WP7 and has some "powerful developer phone stuff coming up soon". Stay tuned...
Source: Jeff Wilcox's blog
Good news for your shutterbugs out there, Aviary (Aviary.com), a photo-editing startup company will be releasing an SDK within the next two months for Windows Phone. The company specializes in image enhancements and providing effects for on-board photo editing on mobile phones. The system is already available on iOS, Android and web applications, so Windows Phone seems like the next logical step.
The company's decision was partially driven by Nokia's focus on photography, especially their use of Carl-Zeiss lenses. According to Paul Murphy, a vice president at Aviary, “At a hardware level they’ve just done everything right".
Interestingly, Paul Murphy is also an ex-Microsoftie and used to work under current Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, so we imagine having some of those connections played a roll too. The SDK will be free to anyone for all Windows Phones but will be first "showcased" on Nokia to show the potential of their software. While the SDK is free, the company brings in revenue by offering more premium features at a cost to developers. Finally, the company has close to 400 partners which they hope to leverage in getting more Windows Phone photo apps created.
Good news all around and we look forward to seeing Aviary tech in future software packages from devs.
Source: GeekWire; Eiffel Tower image via Shutterstock; Thanks, Stephen M., for the link!
Nokia has teamed up with Microsoft to offer more support for local developers in both Australia and New Zealand with a series of Training Workshops that will provide an insight to those who are interested in building apps for the platform. The event is free of charge and prizes (Lumia handsets) will be available in an App Challenge.
The event schedule:
Be sure to get in there quickly and register should you wish to attend.
Source: Nokia Developer Events, via: WPDownUnder
Yet another step in the right direction has been carried out for multiplayer gaming on Windows Phone. Already available on other platforms, Exit Games have released a free Windows Phone SDK that will use their socket-based network engine. While Microsoft was working on "Switchboard", a solution to mobile real-time multiplayer gaming, this solution will be welcomed by developers who wish to implement such functionality into their titles.
Some quick-glance features:
What's more is that this technology supports cross-platform connectivity. You can head over to the Exit Games website and check out the free SDK for yourself. For consumers, this could mean an MMO (or online FPS) title could be around the corner.
Source: Exit Games
Students at the Department of Computer Science and Telecommunications of Larissa Institute of Technology (TEI) in Greece were invited to participate in a Windows Phone app development contest earlier this year. Sponsored by both Microsoft and Nokia, the event saw students compete against one another for the grand prize, which were two Nokia Lumia 800s.
The winners of the contest were as follows:
The remaining apps are the work of the runner-ups, who all received a free Windows Phone (HTC or LG) each (note that some of these apps are in Greek).
For more information on the event, apps and winners, head on over to the website (link below). It's worth checking out for the design of the contest website, which makes use of Metro elements. With all the trouble that Greece is in with regards to economics and unemployment levels, it's fantastic to see young aspiring developers produce such fine works.
Source: TEI of Larissa, thanks Sofokis for the tip!
Here's a very cool (and smart) tool that Nokia have created: a banner generator for your Marketplace apps.
Need a quick way to advertise your app via web banners or perhaps your website? Hop over to Nokia's generator, enter in your App URL and away you go. The system will pull in your app's info and then allow you to customize how the banner looks. You can choose which Nokia Windows Phone to display, which Tiles to show and more.
Cost? Free. Of course, Nokia gets their phone shown off now every time you advertise your app--one hand washes the other, right? Regardless, we think it's a great idea and looks snazzy.
Try it right here: http://snac.nokia.com/2/omt
