Microsoft enticing Aussie developers with a free Nokia WP7
Posted Friday, January 6, 2012 at 10:08 am by Jason Cartwright
As Microsoft continues its efforts to gain market share in the smartphone war, they have just announced a new competition for local developers. Australians who develop applications for Windows Phone will have the chance to win either a Nokia Lumia 710 or the flagship Nokia WP7 phone, the Nokia Lumia 800.
To qualify, you have to publish 3 or 4 apps between Jan 1st 2012 and 12 midnight EST Mar 30th, 2012. This offer is limited to the first 50 developers and only 1 phone per developer.
It’ll be interesting to see the quality of apps that arise as a result of this promotion. While Microsoft continues its efforts to increase the number of apps available in the Marketplace, it’s important not to lower the quality of apps, just to hit a theoretical number. Your applications will still need to pass through standard certification to be published.
Dave Glover is a Developer Consultant, Technical and Business Development at Microsoft Australia and has published the full information. Dave Glover’s blog.
Via WPDownunder and WPCentral.
Zune Pass Australia: $12pm, 11M tracks on WP7, Xbox or PC
Posted Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 10:21 am by Jason Cartwright
Microsoft Australia have just announced they have finally got the deal done with music labels to offer Zune Pass in Australia. For just $11.99 per month or $119.99 per year, Australians can enjoy access to over 11 Million tracks. This now becomes serious competition to the iTunes model which still lacks a subscription service.
Naturally the downside of subscription is the music goes away if you stop paying. Until recently, the US version of Zune Pass allowed users to download 10 songs per month to keep. This feature was discontinued and won’t be available in Australia.
Delivering a music purchasing system to Windows Phone 7, solves one of it’s biggest issues. As crazy as it sounds, users were forced to purchase music through another service like iTunes, then sync to their WP7 device. It’s great to see this finally being resolved and the Zune on WP7 becoming a full end-to-end ecosystem.
The Xbox 360 access to the Zune pass is likely to arrive with the new Dashboard to be released soon. If you chose, you will be able to stream your favourite tracks from the Zune collection while playing your favourite game.
Zune Pass Australia arrives November 16th.
Do we really need mobile Anti-virus ? AVG for WP7 released
Posted Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 7:35 pm by Jason Cartwright
Desktop anti-virus is an absolute necessity, with an unprotected machine online lasting only a few minutes before becoming infected. So how about our data-powered mobile devices of today, do they too need AV protection ? Today arrives a Windows Phone application from security company AVG, it serves two main functions.
The AVG WP7 app allows you to scan files stored on your device for infections. Strangely it seems only audio and image files are scanned, with videos and documents being missed out, at least according to the report. AVG’s inability to scan documents created, is likely a result of the sandboxed nature of application storage. Typically desktop AV sits at a lower level of the OS, allowing it to access all parts of the disk.
The other feature of the app is a ‘secure’ browser. This works by checking links on request, before visiting the site. Should the site be known to be malicious, the user will be prevented from visiting the site, with a warning displayed. While you may be ‘safer’ you are actually giving up some functionality of the IE browser built into WP7. Particularly to those devices running Mango and IE9.
While mobile platforms are experiencing exponential growth, in reality malicious sites and software is still, on a whole, targeting Windows. It’s a similar situation to MacOSX, AV providers will try and sell us on the idea of the need for security everywhere, but the reality is, right now, there’s very little need. There’s certainly a case for this to change at some point in the future, but the protection needs to be automatic and transparent to the user.
The user-initiated scanning provided in this app, really isn’t the solution. Security vendors need to work with Microsoft to get lower-level access, while being acutely aware of the performance impact on lower-powered mobile devices.
The AVG app is available in the WP7 Marketplace now.
WP7 Marketplace experiencing c101b00b error (updated)
Posted Tuesday, September 6, 2011 at 10:02 pm by Jason Cartwright
Over the past 24 hours, some Windows Phone 7 users are experiencing an error when downloading apps from the Marketplace. After going through the standard download process from the device, the following error message is displayed.
“There is a problem completing your request. Try again later. Error code: c101b00b.”
The only option to proceed is to hit the Close button and the application installation fails. It seems the issue is effecting multiple WP7 models, running everything from the standard 7.0 firmware, even up to the unreleased mango 7.5 build. Lets hope Microsoft can solve the issue shortly, for both their sake, and developers who are loosing potential sales.
Update
This morning apps are installing as normal. Anyone else still experiencing the issue ?
TrafficMate WP7 app uses live data. GPS just got smarter.
Posted Saturday, September 3, 2011 at 6:03 pm by Jason CartwrightRecent Australian Bureau of Statistics research showed that 750,000 people in Queensland travelled to work by car, motorbikes or even scooters. It’s not surprising that congestion and traffic delays are an ever increasing frustration.
Ezi Data Solutions have created a Windows Phone app called TrafficMate. This app uses up-to-the-minute information on traffic congestion caused by peak times, accidents, road works etc, to allow for live re-routing. GPS as we know them today choose the most efficient route from A to B based on estimated time on standard conditions.. i.e. speed being 100km/hr which assumes traffic travels at 100km/h along that stretch of road. In reality, we all know the story is quite different.
Constantly changing conditions mean that route A may have been the fastest way at first, but due to an accident and one lane being closed, that route B is now the more efficient path. This indicates the power of having live information by comparison to out-of-date and effectively incorrect information.
User-submitted traffic events and incidents contribute significantly to the TrafficMate data which adds to data.gov.au data. The app polls the server every minute to check for updated incidents to keep you up-to-date information relevant to your situation. The application currently supports QLD and NSW with plans for other states and cities to follow shortly.
Cameron Moses and James Burning from Ezi Data Solutions sat down with techAU for a chat about TrafficMate at Tech.Ed Australia 2011.
TrafficMate is available in the WP7 Marketplace for free now! For more information, check out http://trafficmate.com.au
TransHub taps Gov data to minimise multi-mode commute times
Posted Saturday, September 3, 2011 at 11:54 am by Jason Cartwright
TransHub is a Windows Phone application looking to solve traffic congestion issues in your city. TransHub can instantly recommend the fastest routes to your desired location across multiple transit methods. Soul Solutions created the TransHub application, using NSW government transport data for Sydney to deliver timetabled information, on-demand journey calculations, fare prices and alerts.
There are currently a number of public transportation vehicles that contain live GPS tracking. Unfortunately, only some of that geolocation data from trains, trams, ferries and busses, is exposed to developers. Governments around Australia should be encouraged to expose more or all of this data so developers can build apps and services to help solve traffic congestion issues in our cities.
During Tech.Ed this week, I sat down with John O’Brien from Soul Solutions to discuss the app and winning the crowd-voted Spotlight competition.
The TransHub Sydney WP7 application is now available in the Marketplace available for A$4.49, a free is also available.
For more information head to http://transhub.com
