den delimarsky

A lot of you are fans of Beem, a Digitally Imported client for Windows Phone. But what if you’re not really into the bass drops and seizure inducing music? Den Delimarsky, the lone wolf developer behind Beem, has a new Windows Phone app for music lovers – Beem for SKY.FM.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for… Digitally Imported. Lame humor aside, if you like electronic music you probably have Beem on your Windows Phone. Today it’s been upped to version 1.7. What do you get with that? Quite a bit, let’s dive in.

Although we're of the camp that doesn't mind that the Windows Phone Marketplace for apps has been retired from Zune Desktop, we imagine some of you think otherwise.

Luckily, Windows Phone guru Den Delimarsky has you covered. He figured out exactly what the change was that Microsoft pushed on to us all yesterday. More importantly, he also figured out to block that change so you can get back the Marketplace for those apps.

Unfortunately the change is a little tricky. Evidently the "update" comes from a simple modification in the configuration.xml that is sent from Microsoft every time you launch Zune Desktop. All you need to do is switch a "disabled" setting to "enabled" but the tough part is you have to intercept that .xml file.

That's where you'll need a mini-server (or something analogous). Basically you redirect your Zune Desktop to a local server where you can have it fetch your modified .xml file and boom, you're in business. Now of course, this is only works so long as you stay with version 4.8. If you update the Desktop client (and Microsoft is sure to push one eventually) you can probably kiss this trick goodbye.

Anyway, cool stuff just remember, you're using this at your own risk (sorry Microsoft if you get mad!). Go read the whole thing at Den's site for all the details.

In case you didn't get the memo, the world now runs on achievements. I would say that it's rather superficial, but honestly that magic little sound my XBOX makes when it thinks I'm awesome is just plain addictive. Yip, most of us have this weird compulsion - whether it's beating that final boss in some ridiculously hard kill-em-all, or serving 20 customers in one level in Sally's Salon.

So why is it just for games? Well, a little while ago the great minds at Channel 9 decided that us developers deserved a piece of the pie too, and launched Visual Studio Achievements.

What more could we need?

Personally I think there needs to be a lot more achievements added, but besides that Den Delimarsky seems to have hit the nail on the head. He has just released the beta of Visual Studio Achievements for Windows Phone which you can use to track achievements plus compare yourself to others (for modern-day bragging rights of course). There is also Live Tile integration plus a load of other features he has planned. And quite frankly, it's beautiful:

So if you didn't have enough reason to be using VS Achievements before, you do now.

Den is currently running the beta for all who are interested, so I would jump on the band-wagon quickly before all the space fills up. As with all beta's run through the marketplace you will need to provide him with you LiveID and your phone does not have to be unlocked.

Hit up the link below for more details.

Source: Den by default