Did you unlock your WP7 phone? Chevron having issues.
Posted Monday, November 7, 2011 at 5:00 pm by Jason Cartwright
Last Friday, Rafael Rivera, Chris Walsh, Long Zheng launched a Microsoft-supported Windows Phone unlock tool. While the Mango update brought a number of requested features to Windows Phone, there are still a some important that are missing. The ChevronWP7 will unlock your device for $19 and allow the side loading of apps.
Without the unlock the only method to get applications to your phone is via the Marketplace. So have you taken the step to ‘jailbreak’ your WP7 device ? For those still wondering why you would want to, the team say they have spotted a number of interesting homebrew apps.
Screen Capture v3 – Take screenshots from your Windows Phone 7 to share a funny SMS or illustrate an app on a blog post - Webserver (Mango) – Why wouldn’t you run a web server on your phone? (be sure to download the “no-interop” version)
- Folders for Windows Phone Mango – Organize apps and settings into folders on the Start screen
- Mango Battery Status – Check your phone’s battery stat in a Live Tile and graph your battery usage
Unfortunately since launch, ChevronWP7 Labs has been experiencing a number of issues. The good news is that the guys have been doing a great job of keeping fans of the project up to date via the blog and twitter.
ChevronWP7 is currently in maintenance mode and the unlock service will not work at this time. The problem seems to step from a few places, but the most interesting is downtime with Microsoft’s SQL Azure.
Let’s hope the unlock is back up and running soon.
More information @ ChevronWP7
Will you pay for games and apps 3 times ?
Posted Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 10:13 am by Jason Cartwright
In a demo a Tech.Ed Middle East, Eric Rudder showed how a single project (in this case a game) could be published and run on 3 entirely different platforms. Running on Windows, Xbox and Windows Phone 7 which all have different input mechanisms – keyboard and mouse, controller, touch-screen and accelerometer, this begins to get very interesting.
This gets a whole lot more awesome when you find out that your game/app can sync across platforms. So hit the save point on the Xbox, run out the door and continue playing on your phone. Someone should sort through the old beyond 2000 footage, this technology is probably in there somewhere. It sounds like futuristic and probably will be some ways off before you get a triple-platform app in your hand.
My biggest question out of this is the pricing model. Are we expected to buy the game 3 times to get ultra-portability ? It’s important to also recognise that this isn’t functionality everyone wants. So building it into the price of the first purchase will hurt those who only want it on one platform. For the right price, those that want ultra-portability should pay for that feature, but at a subsidised price. Maybe after the primary purchase, you could then pickup the same app/game on the other platforms for 5-10% of the original cost. I think that’s a model that would work.
For a $100 Xbox 360 game, you should be able to get the PC version for an additional $10 and maybe an additional $5 for the mobile version. Currently pricing models don’t recognise that people game in different places, when in reality that’s very true. Imagine if you didn’t have to make the console vs PC choice, but could have the game on both for an affordable price. Crazy thought right ?
More @ Engadget
