marketplace

Having bought my partner (who resides in Turkey) the HTC Trophy as she's smart and didn't want the iPhone or limited Android devices available (Turkey is horrible for smartphones, had to buy the Trophy here in the UK), I know second hand how frustrating it is for someone to use services on their WP7 outside supported countries. She gets by with Xbox Live and the Marketplace working fine with my bank card on file, but we've had to use workarounds and more to get the base line functionality working.

While we haven't attempted to get Zune Pass working with OTA music streaming, it seems there are plans for services to be moved beyond the US and UK so hopefully everything should work when Microsoft enhance their coverage (doubtful Turkey will be included). Joe Belfiore (Corporate Vice President of WP) mentioned, while enjoying the Mango Twitter integration, that there are plans in the works to expand the Zune services along with speech and more. This would definitely be a step in the right direction, especially for countries that don't have the services to cater for smartphones. 

We will keep an eye on the Windows Phone Team blog for more detail when released.

Source: Twitter, via: 1800 PocketPC

Update: Andrew Birch has posted a table which will be updated as country support is updated, very handy to bookmark and keep an eye on it!

After we got through the horrendous amount of champagne at WPCentral HQ with the milestone of 20,000 apps being passed, we decided to take a good look at the new apps being submitted (and approved) to see what really gave the total a sudden shove past the 20K marker. It seems to be down to a good number of apps including the recently famed real estate apps, which have been a constant addition for days now.

There's one better though. Check these absolute beauties out, which were developed by Eric_Rulz (I know what you're thinking, L337 right?). SPAM apps. No, not for the meat, they're not a spam history related app, nor can you order cans of the stuff to your doorstep. I'm talking about useless crap, that type of spam. This guy is trolling via apps. Microsoft is actually allowing someone (probably a competitive fanboy, who knows?) to clog up our marketplace with ridiculous content:

He's not the only one as well, which makes the whole situation more infuriating and this is where I get upset. Remember when we announced our awesome app and a short delay occurred due to the submission being declined? It was due to minute design problems, which (in my personal opinion) shouldn't have prompted the ban hammer to attack us. Now with that in mind, I would certainly find it entertaining for a member of the app review team (whom all seem to be either drunk/asleep or both at the present time) to explain how these spam apps are getting through the quality control?

C'mon Microsoft, you can't boast about reaching goals quicker than competitors if the said goals are being completed by spam, surely? Hopefully they'll get a hand on this soon enough and ensure this doesn't happen in future. 

Thanks Quicky for the tip!

That's correct folks, we've reached the 20,000 app marker, which is fantastic for the platform in seven months. Our 10,000 milestone marker coverage mentioned how we were expanding at a faster rate than both the iPhone and Android. It's worth to note that the 10,000 app marker was surpassed in four and a half months (since launch) - we've since halved the time taken to get another 10K. Not to mention it's only been a month since 15,000 apps were announced!

RIM currently has little over 20,000 apps available for their platform since 2009, which we will be over-taking shortly. Will this growth continue for WP7? It certainly seems that way. Check the graph below to see the increasing number of apps being submitted, the line is becoming more steep as we advance in time.

Of course, there's always a downside to high numbers; fragmentation and spam - iOS began experiencing this when they reached the 20k marker for the App Store with a ton of LITE apps. Some of which we've witnessed lately with regards to some real estate apps (one being submitted per state), which could possibly be integrated into one offering? Let's hope the certification process starts becoming strict on these sorts of submissions to keep the Marketplace clean.

None of the above would be possible without our contribution - the wpcentral app. See, even we're helping out in the counters where we can!

Source: Windows Phone Applist

Todd Brix, the overseer of the Marketplace, just posted an article on the Windows Team Blog which goes into more depth about the web version of the Windows Phone Marketplace. This was announced yesterday, which we relayed.

The new version of the Marketplace available on the web will launch later this year along with Mango. This will, as mentioned in the previous post, bring a new platform to developers that will automatically provide them with more reach to customers without requiring the developer to do (or change) a thing -- it's all backend as expected.

There will be more placements for featured apps that will bring more noticeability and reach, ensuring developers receive more potential conversions while their app is in the spotlight. Users who browse the web version will be able to share apps and games via social media and email to contacts and friends.

Bing visual search will be re-configured too. Any end-user searching for apps and games will now be linked straight to the web Marketplace on their PC, ready to download and install. Your Live ID will be integrated so you wont have to activate a separate payment gateway in order to make a purchase. Simply click and go using card details on your account. Applications and games will be downloaded over-the-air via SMS or email.

It will also be a huge plus for anyone using a Mac who doesn't have access to the Zune software. Oh, and it looks gorgeous, thank you Metro UI.

Update: We've been contacted by Microsoft for a clarification on how the Web Marketplace would operate, ideally:

Regarding how apps are pushed to the phone OTA, we expect the vast majority of customers to install apps to the phone from Web Marketplace in a single step, using our notification service. SMS would only be used the first time if the notification service is not already turned on. This means that customers get the app on their phone with no additional steps - - no links or added engagement on the phone. There is an alternate scenario whereby customers can choose to send themselves an email with a link as we discussed, but practically speaking, we expect most people to simply let the app install in the background.

Source: Windows Team Blog Thanks goes out to Jay for the tip!

Can't have a major OS update without developer tools, right? And to that end, Microsoft has announced that the beta release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools that work with Mango will be available at some point today.

The big strokes, according to Microsoft:

• Background processing
• New profiler and emulator for testing
• Use of Silverlight + XNA together
• Silverlight 4
• IE9 web browser control
• Live Tile enhancements: use of back of tiles and ability to update Live Tiles locally
• Deep linking into apps from notifications and Live Tiles
• Additional sensors; direct camera access, compass & gyro
• Fast application switching
• Networking / sockets for communications
• Local SQL database for structured storage
• Access to calendar and contacts for apps

And that's just the tip of the iceburg. Along iwth the Mango release, the Marketplace is opening up to an addition 19 countires. They are: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, India, Japan, Korea (South), Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Sweden and Taiwan.

A fine update, indeed. Get the full deets at the Windows Phone dev blog, linked below.

Source: Windows Phone Developer Blog. Download: Mango Developer Tools

Paramount Digital Entertainment has announced that 10 more of their titles will be coming to the Marketplace and will be exclusive to Windows Phone as part of Silverlight Enhanced Movies. We've seen this before, way back in December when Paramount first started this new media-style,  Aside from just watching the movies, the new Silverlight Enhanced Movies include the ability to bookmark, create and share clips, and search for people and products in the films.  There is even a trivia game which will allow users to share results with each other over social networking sites.

The Paramount films will be available in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Italy, Germany and Spain.  Right now you can get Mean Girls and School of Rock for $9.99, and each week a new title will be available.  Keep and eye out for True Grit, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, Waiting For “Superman,” The Last Airbender, Zoolander, Gi Joe: The Rise Of Cobra, Beowulf  and The Italian Job.  An ecclectic mix, for sure.  Hopefully, more will be on the way.

via: GeekyGadgets

As Windows Phone fans who stay up till the wee hours probably know, the Marketplace usually updates with new apps and price drops between 10 PM and midnight PST. Thus the new Xbox Live game and Deal of the Week are available by the time most people get up on Wednesday mornings.

This week, however, there seem to be a wrench and possibly a squirrel in the works. As of 10 AM PST, Lunar Lander still isn’t available for purchase and The Harvest is not showing its discounted price. There are no new Non-Xbox Live apps either.

Did the guy at Microsoft who throws the switch on Marketplace updates call in sick? Is this just some technical error? Or is there something more sinister at work? With Sony’s recent and well-publicized shutdown of PSN due to malicious hackery, many gamers are on edge where online services are concerned.

The Marketplace’s stalled update will likely be resolved later today. Cleaning squirrel guts takes time! We’ve contacted the good folks at Microsoft, who are aware of the problem. We’ll let you know as soon as they have more information to share or the update goes through.

We all thought the worst was over after the Marketplace outage yesterday with scheduled maintenance, but now it seems Xbox Live is having an issue on multiple WP7 devices with backend Windows Live services. If you head on into the Xbox Live hub and await for the automatic update process to start, you should be left with a forever hanging "Updating..." at the top.

Both myself (Omnia 7) and our Daniel Rubino (Focus) have reproduced the error so it looks like it's not directly affecting a single location and multiple Live profiles are confirmed to be affected. Hopefully Microsoft will get the system back up to speed. For the time being they have stated on Twitter that "It’s a new issue that users are unable to access Xbox LIVE features at this time." Are you experiencing this issue?

via: WinRumors

Update: We've just had news (and have confirmed) that the Xbox service on WP7 is now back online. Thanks ash755 for the heads up!

As many of you probably remember, the Windows Phone Marketplace was down for a quite a few hours yesterday, resulting in an error message ‘Can't get this info right now. Check back in a little while.’, It was quite frustrating for a lot of us, but alas, these things happen. Microsoft quickly caught wind of the downage and claimed to be working on it and sure enough, within a few hours everything was peachy.

The odd part, confirmed by Chris Walsh of Chevron, was that it only had an effect on NoDo devices.

This morning, Microsoft updated their blog post with the following explanation as to the ultimate cause:

"The problem was the result of scheduled maintenance being performed on Microsoft’s infrastructure during the night. The root cause of this issue has been identified and steps are being taken to help prevent future disruptions to the Marketplace service.”

So bumps in the road but it looks like it won't be happening again, at least from this identified "root cause".

Source: Windows Phone Blog