Why servicing UWP IoT apps via the store is such a Big Deal

In the past I have been dealing with IoT equipment made by a manufacturer that shall remain nameless here, but their solution was - like a lot of IoT solutions are today - based on Linux. Now granted, they had a quite nifty data exchange option via LoRa meshing. But updating both firmware and apps was a nightmare. You were constrained to your own network, so pushing out updates was your own responsibility, you had to do that per (sub) network, one by one, app by app.

Now this was (semi) professional sensing equipment, not intented for use by Joe and Jane Sixpack. The stuff that actually can be purchased by Joe and Jane is even in more dire straits. See for instance this horror story about smart locks. Or actually, dumb locks, as it turns out

Now first of all, a lot of these manufacturers are at fault for delivering essentially insufficient safe equipment. What's even worse is that they refuse to fix it. But in the long run, they are actually right about updating the lock software. It has very little sense, as most of the users won't update the lock (or whatever smart device they may have purchased anyway), either because they don't know how to do it, or because they rather watch the Olympics or some other sports event du jour in stead of reading obscure websites about security to keep up to date on the status of their smart lock, light bulb or whatever other gadget they bought (or got from a well intending friend or relative).

The only solution to this, of course, is that both the lock software itself and the firmware could be serviced remotely, without requiring the user to do something. This would of course require some kind of secure communication protocol, centrally guarded... kind of like how a computer or a phone and it's apps are updated. And wouldn't you know it, that is exactly what Microsoft are doing. Rather too quietly in my humble opinion. Maybe because it’s still in preview. But this is a big deal, and I think it deserves a lot more fanfare.

Windows 10 IoT Core can already update itself, so whenever Microsoft adds new features or improves overall security and stability, the base software can be updated without affecting what is running on top of it. Now by making the apps running on it servicable as well, Microsoft are providing the ultimate solution for making IoT devices servicable remotely and securely, without the user having to do anything.

Drawbacks? What if your lock is just about rebooting when you want to go out (or in)? And then there's the age old "quis custodiet ipsos custodes" - who guards the guards? You (and manufacturers) will have to decide whether or not they want to trust Microsoft - a company that has decades of security expertise, a enormous cloud infrastructure, and basically runs on selling trust - or just hope some random hardware dude does a better job and do it right the first time, because they cannot update their stuff once they have sold it.

I think the time is ripe for Smart IoT, and I applaud Microsoft for making this move. I once dreamed about it in a closed conversation with some Microsofties, and now it's coming true. Not doubt my dreaming has nothing to do with it, but the fact that it does come true indeed, is not the less awesome

The second blog post in a row without any code attached to it. My apologies, I will return to code next time ;)

Why you should update your apps to UWP

Woe is us

No code this time, but a kind of a rant. Or some advice. Whatever you want to call it.

So we all saw the stories. Several pundits all over the world claim Windows Phone is going down, the Windows Store is going nowhere, it’s all going bust, blah blah blah doom and gloom, woe is us. I must admit I’ve been lazy converting my apps from Windows 8.x / Windows Phone 8.x to UWP too. Not out of defaitism, but, well, I got distracted. And for good reason too – there’s now so much fun stuff to play with. First there was IoT Core and some great IoT Azure features, then came HoloLens and UWP on XBox One - it’s hard to set priorities. Especially if you suffer from the shiny new toy syndrome like me ;).

A little confession

So far I have updated only one app to UWP, and submitted it to the store – good old Map Mania. It was my first serious Windows Phone application, dating back to the Windows Phone 7 days; it made it’s transition to 8, 8.1 and was languishing in the store. You can buy it for €0.99, although buying apps is an outdated model in these freemium days, right? And it was not even my most downloaded app – a little over 8000 downloads does not even come close to my more-or-less hit 2 Phone Pong. So why did I chose to update this app specifically? Well, mainly because I use it myself. It’s ability to show Open Street Maps is a great boon when making hikes in more rural places of Europe where the wife and me tend to go on holiday (although it was also great in finding spots around Rome). In addition, I think its ability to show WMS maps is also fun, a throwback to my years as a GIS programmer. And there’s sentimental reasons as well. Anyway, May 11th 2016 Map Mania Universal passed certification. Mission accomplished. I announced its existence with one tweet and forgot about it – because a HoloLens was on it’s way. That is why I am an engineer, not an entrepreneur– I know nothing of marketing, nor am I particularly interested in it.

Money talks. Numbers too

Now three months in, I browsed around some new Dev Insiders Pages on the Dev Center, and found these rather unexpected numbers in the payout pages:

Apparently, for every copy of Map Mania for Windows Phone 8.x, I am selling a little over 1.4 UWP copies. But well, ho hum, that’s nice. It’s not exactly breaking the bank.

I am going to share another number with you. Not one that I am very proud of, but what the heck:

The point is, look at the latest payout date. June 2015. In fourteen months I have sold for like €10 Map Mania 8.x. copies. But in three months I have sold UWP copies for an amount of  €14.69 . Ergo: I net about 71 cents per month on 8.x, and €4,90 per month on the UWP app. That’s almost seven times as much. It’s still quite not time to call the boss and give my month’s notice, but still - seven times as much. And these are new users - because if you upgraded from an older version, you keep owning it.

What the [redacted]?

How is possible in the light of all the doom and gloom stories? If I check the new download reports I see quite a few Windows 10 mobile acquisitions, a little less tablet acquisitions – but both of those are outnumbered by a bucket load of PC acquisitions. Whatever “PC” may be these days – since Surface saw the light of day, the borders between a laptop and a tablet have become quite hazy.

I’ve been discussing this on Slack with a few people, and with my fellow MVP Ginny Caughey, and we think there are apparently three things at work

• Relative small store = relative high visibility
• The huge number of Windows 10 on PC installs is apparently kicking in
• Those new users are apparently willing to put down money.

Long story short

Update your apps! There is life (and money) in the UWP market. Learn new skills, earn a few bucks, and who knows, maybe you will sell an app to a HoloLens user. But an ‘ordinary’ PC user’s euros, dollars or whatever are currency too, right? There quite a lot more of those.

…and they are willing to pay, apparently.

Microsoft are not spying on your hard disk because there is nothing to gain - and everything to loose

There is a debating technique that is called "reductio ad absurdum" which demonstrates the validity of a statement by proving that the opposite is impossible (absurd). A common example is "rocks have weight, or else we should see them floating in the air". Without going into technical details, I state that Microsoft are not spying on your hard disk, because

1. they have nothing to gain from the act itself
2. there is no way they could prevent destroying themselves in the process - and they know that.

Let's just assume, for the sake of argument, that Microsoft are indeed the bunch of evil scientist some people seem to think they are. Spying on you would require some data gathering process and some process of transmitting data to Microsoft, using your own network connection. Agreed? Well then, with Windows 10 running on 75 million (and counting) machines, a substantial number of those owned by clever d- I mean smart persons - who know very well how to operate network analyzing tools like WireShark, there is no way in Hades they could keep the data transmitting part of that process secret forever. Any spying tool included in Windows 10  will be found. Sooner or later. By those smart people. By anti virus software makers. Or it will be revealed by a whistleblower. Whatever. When - not if - such a spying tool would be discovered, Microsoft would receive crackdowns from both the USA and EU governments that would make their experiences with the DOJ in the bad old days seem like a walk in the park on a sunny day, and they would loose the trust of all their clients overnight. People would stop using Windows, Azure, the whole kit and caboodle'. And what, exactly, would Microsoft have to gain? Your local games score is not that interesting, neither is your local document store. A local store of illegal imagery, music or movies may be of interest to the law, but not to Microsoft - whatever's on your PC is your responsibility.

The only 'spying' that is going on is some telemetry on apps or parts of Windows that run into trouble and report whatever happened when things went South back to Microsoft (or the app developer) to make it easier to fix those bugs. If you opt in for customer improvement programs (and I almost always do) some usage patterns may be transmitted. This is not new, telemetry has been part of the last couple of Windows releases and this is all anonymously, for the same reason - should Microsoft ever be caught red-handed spying on individual users, they would receive hell from all directions, and rightly so.

So why would Microsoft spy on your hard drive? There is nothing to gain, and everything to loose. Microsoft are in the business of making great software and services and making money with that - preferably lots, and they are pretty good and successful at that. They are not into spying, because they won't make money from the act itself but they would put nearly all of their existing money makers in very real danger. It would be just absurd to do that. It would not make sense even when they were indeed an 'evil spying company', which they are not. They are making billions in cloud services, a business primarily based on technical excellence, high availability and above all trust. To put it very bluntly, whatever is on your hard drive cannot possibly be worth violating that trust. You are simply not that interesting - or profitable.I am sorry to have to put it like that, but that is the simple truth.

The Microsoft Band and me–three weeks later

Why? How?

I will be honest – I wasn’t really thinking the whole thing about wearables is more than a bit overhyped marketing stuff and that I personally would not get much use of it. Sure, you had all these devices that could track your running but I am not a really sporty person nor do I feel the need to tell the whole world where I was while I go running. Which is easy enough, because I don’t. So when I woke op on October 30th with the news the Microsoft Band had launched out of the blue, I was surprised but not really enticed by what I deemed to be ‘yet another fitness device’.

Boy, was I wrong.

My gadget addicted former colleague Jarno Peshier - who had read up on the specs - contacted me that morning, writing “I want one. You will be in the USA soon (for the MVP Summit). Let’s order two, you take them home, and split the next day delivery costs”. I was like, “what the heck, it’s not that expensive and if I don’t like it I can probably sell it off easily as they are not for sale in Europe”. So he ordered, got them delivered at the home of a friend living in Seattle, and before 3PM CET (while the USA was still kind of waking up) the order was already processed and two bands were on their way from California to Seattle. This quick decisive action turned out a be a very good idea indeed, as you all probably know what happened when the USA did wake up. Bands sold out faster than turkeys on Thanksgiving and back orders now stretch up until Christmas. MVPs arriving in Seattle mostly ran into sold-out stores. It must have been a pretty frustrating experience both for them and the ever friendly and helpful Store staff. But my Band was already delivered and waiting for me in Seattle a few hours before I actually got up to leave for the airport.

Notifications - the killer feature

Some 24 hours later I actually got my Band

and initially I thought it was pretty OK. At the very least, I could bug all the American MVPs who thought they could buy one in the Bellevue store which – of course – was cleaned out empty. After a few days, I noticed substantial changes in my behavioral patterns. Some week later, after I already was back home again, I found it was now an indispensible device. Why? One word – notifications. I was no longer attached to my phone. I even turned off my phone’s ringer and notification sounds. For a very simple reason. Consider someone like me, who is online a lot and has a Windows Phone. I get a notification. I pick up the phone. I look at the notification. But then I see all these other things on the screen. Which is the whole idea of Windows Phone – to be ‘glanceable’. But I tend get distracted by all these interesting things. So I go and answer this tweet, that Facebook post – and before I know 15 minutes have passed by, my wife – with whom I was on an the typical on-and-off talk when we both arrive home a bit tired from work, is now reading a book, whatever.

Now I get a light vibration on my wrist, look at the Band’s screen (I wear it face-up, so not like in the commercials or on the picture above, and it ended up on my right wrist for some reason), and can see enough if it’s important enough to get up and get my phone (that is lying around somewhere in the room, usually on the charging place) without missing a beat in a conversation. And you know what – usually it is not. I can see every notification from the Notification center, and every mail – but only the few first lines. The same during work. I don’t even have to lift my hands from the keyboard or mouse to check the notification. In a restaurant – my phone is somewhere in a pocket (or last time, in my wife’s handbag). At times, it’s more like a wireless hot spot for my Band ;)

Without noticing, I had become a more sociable creature, and more efficient too. The Band has become my gate keeper. Going into social media and mail is now a conscious decision. I have to get up and find my phone, for instance. Yet I don’t have to shut off my phone anymore to reach that state. I have found a kind of middle ground.

But there’s more

The calendar is synced to the Band as well, so even when I walk out of the house without my phone to do some quick shopping (I never forgot my phone before, but now I do) I still get calendar reminders. It has Cortana integration, so I can actually say “Remind me to take the pizza out of the oven in 30 minutes” to my Band using the action button, and it will remind me in 30 minutes. That will need connection to my phone at the moment I actually take the reminder, but I don’t need to get my phone first. And then I can get out of range and it will still remind me. The other day I was in bed, my wife was out, and my phone was lying around downstairs. I was very tired, and decided to tell my wife I went shut-eye. I found out I could actually say to my band “Text my wife I am going to sleep now” and sure enough, my phone, one floor down (and we have 40cm – well over a foot - concrete floors here) picked up the command. And it sent back response to my Band a minute later, too: “will be home in 15 minutes”.

And even more…

You can read online of course about all the that the Band does. It actually does quite a lot. Apart from notifications, alarms and the Cortana commands, it tracks hearth rate, steps, and calorie burn, you can use it as a fitness coach, track running (it has its own GPS so you don’t have to lug around your phone), and you can use it to check UV levels. I am not even sure I have the complete list covered now. I can tell you it felt a bit odd noticing that, when the cabin attendants told us to put all devices in airplane mode before taking off from Seattle, there is actually an airplane mode on the Band. In 2014, my freaking watch actually has airplane mode and takes voice commands. Welcome in the future.

I really think the UV meter is a really nice and smart touch in these days when we learn more and more about sun burn and skin cancer correlations. It basically takes a sample, and says how much minutes current sustained will typically get you a sunburn. As there has not been very much sun both in Seattle and here since I got the device, I only got “low” the few times the sun actually was out.

Some people, like Paul Thurrott, call it “Microsoft’s moonshot” meaning that Microsoft could not decide what should and should not go into it’s first wearable, so they put in everything and the kitchen sink, making the device complex and hard to operate. I personally think the day-to-day operation of the device is very easy (the tile interface is very simple and natural, especially for someone who has seen Windows Phone or Windows 8 applications) and there are only two buttons. How hard can it be. I think by putting all this stuff into one little device they actually made it something for everyone. My wife wants one too – not for all the gizmo’s I like, but for the fitness/sleep stuff.

Finally – what the designers probably never thought of as actual usage – it makes for an excellent night light in the dark. When you press the big button in the middle – even in sleep mode the screen gives off enough light to see a little by in the pitch dark. And since you are wearing it, you don’t have to find it first. Very useful when you are staying in a strange house or hotel and want to find the toilet without waking everyone up in the middle of the night by turning on the light (or crashing down the stairs – something I narrowly avoided last year).

Charge and charging

Your mileage may vary. The first day, you will probably have a very bad battery experience, as you constantly play with the device. Typical usage will last me just a little short of 48 hours. Charging from empty to full takes about 90 minutes I think, but the funny thing is – charging from like 30% to 80% (which will take you through the day) goes very fast, think 20 minutes (at most). So you can do that over breakfast or while you are in the shower. It only comes with a charging cable, any USB power port will do. Very nice, as it also saved me of having yet another useless USA plug charger ;)

Further effects so far

Apart from a different usage pattern for my phone, making me more sociable and efficient, it also has had an impact on my sleep pattern. I like the sleep tracker, but I don’t like what it’s telling me – I sleep too little. I thought I was getting 8 hours per night – it was more like a little over 6. I should rest more, and I do – it’s now close to 7 hours per night and already feel better. I also feel I will need to do more exercise, as the steps tracker has a default goal of 5000 steps and I get to that usually only half the time. In general, it makes me conscious about a lot of things I did not really know about.

Thoughts on improvements

So is this the perfect device? Not yet, although I must admit I like it 500% more than I ever imagined. My main concerns are

• While the screen itself seems pretty scratch resistant, the actual watch housing very susceptible to scratching. That is probably why it comes with a free screen protector. I tried to apply that, it did not work out for me, and decided to pull it off again. So I wear the device face up and try to be careful. The housing is now somewhat scratched. As it it is black, it does not attract much attention IMHO. But in a V2 this could be improved upon
• As the Band is now more or less functioning as a remote for my phone that is ‘somewhere’, I would much like a simple app or function to control the music player. Skip forward one track, skip back one track would be much appreciated. Skip forward 60 seconds, skip back 30 seconds would be an awesome bonus for listening to podcasts (and skipping ads).  I can do that with Cortana to an extent, but it does not always work, especially when the phone is streaming music over Bluetooth and thus that channel is already very busy.
• I would like to be able to see a 2nd time on ‘Watch mode’. There’s room enough on the screen for that. As someone dealing a lot with people from another time zone (i.e. PST) that would be convenient.
• The UV meter needs to take into account skin type, or just stick to saying the level. Apart from the level, it now says “typical times to sunburn nn minutes” but how does one define typical? Someone from African heritage can walk for hours in a sunshine that will burn a red-haired descendant from Irish stock into (blistering) misery in 15 minutes. That even varies over the year – while the first fierce spring sun can give bleached-out-me a sunburn, my skin darkens fairly quickly in the sun and the same level of sun power won’t bite me just a month later. I wonder if it would be possible to have the app take a picture of facial skin, analyze that and calibrate the sunburn time from that.
• The design worries me a little. I find it pretty cool looking and comfortable to wear. It’s light and does not get in the way when I am working on a keyboard, which I found puzzling as my normal watch is too constrictive for wearing while typing. The Band is just a little bit flexible, light and does not get in the way. I also am a fussy sleeper (the most stupid things keep me awake), but I have no troubles sleeping with it. And yet - I have also noticed over the years that the rest of humanity does not necessarily agree with me on what is good looking and what is not. It only comes in black. I wonder how fashionists will think about it.
• I understand why the companion app works and looks like it does. The New Microsoft went all-platform in the typical new way, which is very commendable and probably has contributed to the device selling out so fast. That does not help that on a Windows Phone it looks odd and alien. The awesome, well-designed and natural feeling UI of the Band itself is a stark contrast with the clunky UI of the companion app.
• I want an SDK! I want an SDK! Please give me an SDK ;)

Conclusion

For a first launch into the wearables, Microsoft have done a tremendous job at a pretty compelling price. Even with expensive NDD I ended up a little north of €180 (yay Euro!). People routinely spend that on watches that look like they come out of the dashboard of the Titanic bridge - and those only display time. Going cross platform with it from the get go and making it available the next day – full marks. The first batch sold out in a day, the second – this week – lasted about 10 minutes. Consumer demand says it all. I find the device an invaluable companion device to my phone. Especially since I use a 1520, which is pretty big – I don’t pull it out half as much anymore these days. It’s the first gadget I bought that my wife is very explicitly happy about, because I am less distracted. She wants to have one too – that is going to be a bit of a challenge I think. I am also very happy with it, to the extent that I would to get another one ASAP if this one would break down. In the mean time, I just have to be careful.

Long story short – if you are interested in these kind of devices and recognize this user story (or even partially) – go and try to get one. You won’t regret it and even on the very off chance you will – plenty of takers. ;)

Disclaimer

I am not a professional reviewer. This is just my experience with this one device, after about 3 weeks. As I have no comparison material, I also cannot tell if this device is better than comparable devices. I just felt the need to write it from a tech user’s perspective.

Surface RT versus Surface Pro versus the competition for REAL dummies

About every pundit who is somewhat interested in Microsoft either by love or abject hate has written about this already – and still I am going to do my take. Why? Because I am one the few people on this planet who actually was crazy enough to purchase both a Surface RT and a Surface Pro and therefore am entitled to my rant – and because I still get comments like “I think Surface Pro is too expensive for a tablet and has too little battery life for it”, which indicates people still completely don’t get it. With ‘tablet’ almost invariantly people mean “iPad”, by the way.

The very short version of this post is this ‘infographic’

I used a mathematical symbol ≈ which means ‘is equivalent to’. That is something entirely different than “equals to”. Very important distinction. Keep that in mind. I will use a lot of ‘equivalents’ in this blog post rant.

When you think of a Surface RT – think of something that moves in the same space as an iPad. Long battery life, relatively cheap (don’t get me started on Apple pricing), light, ideal for use on your lap or in your hand, good content consumption device. Plus some extras. But let’s not confuse the picture already.

When you think of a Surface Pro – think of an Ultrabook. Yes, a real computer. A real powerhouse too, ultra portable, and it runs the full Monty – I mean Windows 8 - but that comes at a price. It’s heavier, more expensive, burns more battery, and it gets hotter too. Of course it does. Look, it’s like saying “My wife has this cute Japanese car that does over 50 miles to the gallon when she’s doing 70 on the interstate but this other car burns much more fuel and generates a lot of exhaust” and then the car you use…

…is the car equivalent of something like this:
Dude, I have some bad news for you. If there’s indeed the equivalent of an F22 Raptor sitting in your driveway when you just want to do some cruising, you might have paid some more attention to the brochure or might have asked some more questions at the dealer clerk before getting out the ole’ VISA card. This machine can carry more and heavier load than your wife’s car – and it can take it there very much faster. This machine is made for serious business. As is Surface Pro. Only with less pyrotechnics.

Now I will admit Microsoft has made life a little bit more complicated than my simple images and broad statements do justice. That’s because of a very a simple reason: the current state of affairs in electronics, as well as the radical design approach the Surface hardware engineering team took, made it possible that under the “Surface” flag now reside two very similar looking – but very dissimilar devices. It’s like the F22 and your wife’s Japanese car nearly look the same, have the same controls, and even share accessories – but one will be a very good car, the other will take off at supersonic speed and be halfway Some Place Where Bad People Live (and – admittedly – a place where those Bad People won’t probably be for very much longer) before your wife has even made it to the onramp of the interstate. Incidently, your wife may be in for a hell of surprise when one day she just wants to take the kids to school and takes the wrong key set ;-).

The funny thing is – radical as it’s design may be, Surface Pro is ‘just a PC’. As I showed in the ‘infographic’ above, it’s actually ‘just an Ultrabook’, in the same way an F22 is ‘just a jet airplane’. Surface Pro is the nth generation descendant of all the PC’s in the world, and it’s odd that it took a software company to let it see the light. Yet, the smaller, cheaper Surface RT is actually a much more remarkable and innovative design – it runs on total different hardware, that has an extremely long battery life, but still it runs Windows 8. Like I said, RT is more like a tablet. But, to make things more complicated, in a smart move to make their ‘tablet’ offering more attractive and not just another me-too, Microsoft have made it possible to attach a keyboard to Surface RT and ships you a fully licensed Home version of Office. You get the crown ‘desktop jewels’ for free. Office in a very portable box. So in stead of only a consumption device, Surface RT is also a content creation device. You can make Word documents, Excel sheets, PowerPoint presentations just like on any other PC. Using a traditional desktop program. You can even attach a mouse to it using it’s USB port. So your tablet can act like a PC to an extent. And here my infographic breaks down, and my F22 versus the wife’s car analogy as well. It’s like your wife’s car has this extra set of controls that can be used to fly short distances at limited height as well - wouldn’t she want have that to overcome traffic jams and red lights ;).

So a more accurate way to position RT next to the competition is like this:

There is this other funny side effect too – because Surface RT runs on different hardware, the ‘foundation’ of it’s Windows needed to be changed too. You can hardly see that on the outside, but it has profound effects, one of them being that Windows RT – the Windows version that runs on Surface RT - is completely impervious to viruses. It’s like trying infect a fish with the human common cold – DNA does not match, the organs that are needed for infection are simply not there.

So it comes down to this:

• Surface Pro is a PC – it may look like a tablet and it can be used as a tablet, but it’s not its primary intended use. It’s a bit heavy for that and has this other characteristics that doesn’t make it the ideal tablet. Just like an F22 can be used on the highway – but it’s better in the air. You are doing development? Heavy gaming? Heavy duty photo or movie editing? This is the machine for you.
• Surface RT is primary a tablet but can also be used for some PC (Office) tasks that used to require a full PC. It’s like a car that can fly a little, but it cannot carry deadly loads with it. You are doing office, mail and some content/web browsing, casual games, maybe a bit of movie watching? A lot of it on the go, removed from any outlet?  Try this one.

And of course, you can also try any other kind of device, running either Windows RT or Windows Pro (i.e. being equivalent to Surface RT and Surface Pro) to find out what suits your need. I give you only one golden rule – whatever you buy, Surface or no Surface, RT of Pro – make sure it has a touch screen. With touch Windows 8 really shines.

PS: In case anyone wonders whether or not I am happy with my choice for Surface Pro as a portable development machine – let me just quote my fellow MVP Rob Miles on that one: “HELL YEAH!”

On blogging, sharing and commenting

This is not about code, but about something a fellow developer and blogger told me, which made me quite sad. It’s a kind of personal rant, so feel free to skip it if you are looking for code.

In 2007, after a frustrating search on the internet for a complete and working code sample for whatever it was, I was quite pissed off. And I decided “well if apparently people are too lazy or too much ‘look at me’ superior to post complete and working samples, I will start doing so myself”. I also could have gone to the blogs I visited posting comments like “you moron, this code is incomplete and/or wrong” or “why don’t you stop coding/blogging the cr*p you post is useless”. While technically I would have been right, I don’t think it would have helped me solve my problems. Starting blogging myself did not help me solve that problems either, but at least I had a place where I could dump my own solutions for later reference. Very handy. Apparently other people liked it too.

I was lucky enough to post a few good articles, and a few very dumb ones too, but those were met with “hey, that’s obsolete”, “hey, this is a better solution” or “I think you are missing a few steps” – with links and information. I either did take the articles down, or reworked them with the new information. I was lucky enough not to get lambasted, flamed or receive abusive comments or mails – no, my baby steps were encouraged by a few people – mostly MVPs by the way – who kind of nudged me along the rocky path of the beginning blogger.

That encouragement made me go on, becoming confident enough so that when the occasional abusive comment arrived, I was able to ignore the wording of the comment and fix the error, or challenge the commenter: “so if you are such a know-it-all, why don’t you blog about it - why do you leave me stumbling in the dark making stupid avoidable errors?”.

I recently talked to the beginning blogger I mentioned before, who was severely flamed in the beginning of his ‘career’, and he almost quit blogging of that. The wording I use in the second paragraph are more or less quotes of what he received.

This is really very counterproductive behavior. If you are someone who likes to demonstrate his/her knowledge on someone else’s blog by making demeaning remarks – realize what you are effectively doing is extinguishing enthusiasm that may have grown into the creation of a vast information resource. You are killing creativity, stomping out the sharing flame, making one of the very few willing to take time to share knowledge retreat into his/her shell, maybe never to come back again.

The very short version:

Flaming other people’s blog has never led to more examples and information. If you want more and better examples: stimulate and encourage where you can, correct if you feel you must, and try to behave like a civilized human being.

And above all, start blogging yourself. Don’t be a prick – share. Use your knowledge to improve people, not to tear them down. That’s community. That’s how it works.

Thank you.

MVP Summit 2012–the day after

So here I am, back in the Netherlands, after the MVP Summit 2012, still quite dazed from what hit me. It was my very first summit, and I was not quite sure what to expect. In retro respect the most amazing thing was what might be called ‘super Tuesday’. I spent a whole day with my fellow Windows Phone MVP’s and the product team. Suddenly all the people I only conversed with on twitter or live messenger were in one room: people like Ginny Caugey (I finally now know how to pronounce her last name), Matt Hidinger, Den ‘DennisCode’ Delimarsky (he actually is recognizable from his XBox avatar), Atley Hunter (who I think deserves the nickname ‘Fast Forward’) , Nick ‘ActiveNick’ Landry, Peter Novak, Rudy Huyn, to name just a few – and we where joined by people of the product team, which included Cliff Simpkins, Ben Lower and a few more whose name I omit because I am not even sure if I can mention them without spilling some beans. I feel a bit lame about this, but I like to err on the side of caution. For I must admit that when I got the award and was requested to sign an NDA documents it felt a bit over the top because frankly, I haven’t been seeing very much that required NDA for since October. Up until that remarkable Tuesday. I cannot go into any detail, other than that it was somewhat of a bewildering experience. For obvious reasons Microsoft are keeping their cards very close to the chest about anything related to Windows Phone, and this was quite different. To say the contents were interesting is like calling Mount Everest a ‘pretty steep hill’. After the formal sessions there was also an off-site event, which was at the Lucky Strike Lanes in Bellevue, where we got to know each other in a more informal way. I am still not sure who are the loudest, Canadians or Michiganians, but they give each other a run for the decibels ;-)

Another interesting observation I made during some sessions over the week was related to the recent row on the internet about MVP’s being Microsoft “marketing puppies”. Let me tell you this: behind doors, Microsoft asks for feedback and boy, do they get feedback from their MVP’s. A lot of typing and/or scribbling is being done while this is going on. Debates sometimes get pretty heated, but the setting is always a polite, frank exchange of ideas. Microsoft listens, listens intensely, and not only this occasion. But I feel a lot depends on how you put it in words. Think about what you would like to achieve before you spill your frustrations in a four-letter-words rant on the internet next time.

So what did I take from this occasion?

1. A lot of solid information. I was told this differs from product group to product group; Windows Phone being pretty new and making aggressive movements forward, inherently is a hot spot where a lot is going on.
2. Faces, names, and contact cards. It’s unbelievable how much people you meet. Being open to others is a natural things amongst most MVP’s – or else you would not be an MVP in the first place – and conversations start pretty easy, even for people who are bit contact shy like me. And it’s unbelievable how, in this time of online living, things are still different after you have shared a drink or talked a couple of hours into the evening. Apart from the people I mentioned above I met Rene Schulte, Laurent Bugnion, Scott Guthrie (thanks Laurent!), Scott Hanselman (sorry I pretended mixing you up with The Gu ;) ), Micheal Crump (he does exist, and I have pictures to prove it), Morten Nielsen, András Velvárt, Dave Bost, Chris Koening (both Windows Phone 7 DPE, equivalent to our own Matthijs Hoekstra), Davide Zordan (thanks for the Win8 copy!), David 'Wynapse' Campbell and I finally got the see our expertise group contact Tracey Hackney. They now have faces and voices. That still counts.
3. Too little sleep, a crumpled back from spending too much time in a cramped aircraft chair and if I am not mistaken, a severe cold or a flue in development ;-)

Simply put: this was definitely worth the trouble.

Now that I’ve had - and survived ;-) - my first Summit, I think I have some advice for next-time-newbies:

1. Try to get into one of the ‘central’ hotels: Hyatt, Westin, Silver Cloud or Courtyard. The other hotels are hotel-wise just a good but a lot more away from the ‘action’. Microsoft organizes a good shuttle service – but that stops at 9pm and I can assure you most times you are not done at that time. And then you have to get a cab or something.
2. When you need to be on the campus early in the morning, allow for an hour travelling time. It’s actually more like 20 minutes, but you have to allow for traffic jams or the fact that the bus sometimes needs to take a tour along other hotels. And you do want to be on time. Some people weren’t in time for some special event organized by our Dutch MVP lead and simply missed it. Set an alarm clock, take a strong coffee (or tea) and get outta there.
3. There’s usually a first-timers event early on the first evening. I found it useful to drop by. There were some Microsoft people and seasoned MVP’s talking with us newbies to get us in the mood. On the practical side, there’s food as well.
4. Prepare. The Schedule Builder is sometimes confusing and I ran into a problem getting the app on my phone to run, which I only noticed being on-site. Hook up with some seasoned MVP’s up front and ask advice as to which side sessions and/or side parties to go to. I did not, and I missed a few things because of that.
5. Download the MS Campus Maps app on your Windows Phone. It’s indispensible for getting around and getting directions.
6. Download My ContacTile  on your Windows Phone – it creates a QR code of your contact info to quickly share via Bing Vision.
7. Hotel rooms are for storing suitcases, taking a quick shower and some essential sleeping. That’s all. Don’t spend time there. Although most expenses during the Summit are covered I think I paid about €800 to fly to the USA and stuff so I made sure I got the most out of it. I figured I would pay the fatigue price later (like now :-) ).
8. Bring power. Have a charger with you all the time and/or buy yourself a simple ‘USB juice pack’. It’s also a great way to help out fellow MVP’s who did not bring one, so they can borrow yours. A great conversation starter if any.
9. When you are in a shuttle bus and get to sit next to a stranger, or at the breakfast room: introduce yourself and talk. Ask after their expertise and what they are working on. I was able to help out two people by showing them a blog post I wrote.
10. The attendee party is big and spectacular and usually the last occasion to meet everyone. Do go there and have fun.
11. Especially on the first days you want to be sharp. Keep down the booze and try to get a least some sleep.
12. Keep your NDA. Watch your use of social media. Don’t discuss things outside your product group or in public places. The hardest part is not to correct incorrect speculations or react with body language ;-). I resorted to “I’d rather talk about something else now” at one point. It made me respect the product group members who have to make this mental juggle all the time very much.

Some special advice to MVP’s from outside the USA:

1. Make sure you have enough cash on you to be able to tip people. That’s what you do in the USA. Familiarize yourself with the unwritten rules. 10% is ok, 15% if you are really satisfied. Cafeteria and such sometimes don’t expect a tip to be handed over directly but then there is usually a kind of can where you can drop the change. It’s not always obvious to me.
2. Even more important: make sure you have a credit card. You don’t exist without a credit card in the USA.
3. There is free Wi-Fi almost everywhere but for whatever deity you care to believe in’s sake, get yourself a $25 AT&T 500mb data plan so you are online all the time so you can find your fellow MVP’s or use online maps and stuff like that. Also, it’s great for keeping contact with the home front. AT&T first tests your phone if it works at all and even configures it before they charge you.
4. Buses and light trail in Seattle are dirt cheap. Inside the city you pay about $2.25 for a trip from any given place to another and if you get back within a few hours, the return trip is free. The 550 bus from downtown to Bellevue costs $2.50. It partly runs inside the light rail tunnel, that’s why I couldn’t find it at first. There is also the 560 bus from SEA-TAC to Bellevue. Same price.
5. Visit the Microsoft Store in the Bellevue mall. You won’t believe your eyes. Think hard before you take your credit card along ;-)
6. Bring an umbrella. Seattle weather is erratic at best of times, but in February you can get everything from sunny weather to snow an back again in one day. People from the Netherlands or the UK just have to pretend they prepare for the weather at home ;-)

Carpe Lumia!

Last updated November 10 2011

You know that band you used to love when you were in your teens? They really rocked your adolescent years. They rocked like hell. Their concerts where one great party. I would never end. ….except you grew up, the times changed, so did the music, but the band stuck to what made them great. Fame faded, and slowly they disappeared from your sight. Maybe even their CD’s did not make it into your MP3 collection. They lost their mojo. Sometimes they still performed, but you did not know and even less cared. Sic transit gloria mundi. We all have such a band. If you ask politely and promise to keep it a secret, I’ll tell you mine ;-) .

Now suppose, just for the sake of this analogy, after years and years this band of yours got back together. Not to do a ‘one more time for old times’ sake or a Live Aid gig, no: they kick out the drug-addicted drummer, recruit two new young guitar players, a few cool babes as extra singers, and team up with a new song writer. They reinvent themselves, make a new album – totally different music than what they did before, but still keeping what made them great – a beautiful performance. They bring out their new album and they TOTALLY rock the charts.

Now if you try to imagine the WTF feeling this would give you, you get an idea what I had for a few moments when I first booted up the Nokia Lumia 800 that was delivered on November 4. My first four mobile phones were all Nokia – and now this! Enough poetic mesmerizing, down to business. My thoughts on the Nokia Lumia 800. I’ll just follow the format I used for my HTC 7 Pro to make a fair comparison

The phone itself

It’s physical dimensions are 11.5 x 6 x 1 cm according to my own measurements, although I have to allow for a bit of uncertainty on the latter two because a cross-section on this phone would basically be an oval. The back side is convex, and so is the front side, i.e. the screen. This gives a very beautiful result. It weights 142 grams, which I don’t think is very much but it feels heavy – although I think solid would be a better way to describe it. The first thing that strikes – this phone is different from what I am used to in the Windows Phone arena. It’s beautiful. It has a smooth, streamlined look. And it feels that way, too. Its polycarbonate unibody design feels soft and it has nothing of this plasticy feel so common for these kind of devices. The hardware buttons are freakin’ made of metal – having used the Lumia for only a short time makes the camera button of the HTC 7 Pro feel like a wobbly piece of plastic on a cheap bubble contact. See below how this looks. Click for larger picture – as with all pictures in this post

The USB port is on the top, which I initially thought was very stupid for in-car use. When I attach a charger the plug would stick out of the top of the phone. Turned out I had not thought long enough about it. More about that later.

Screen

Apparently Nokia have used some kind of AMOLED that is not the same as Samsung’s Super AMOLED. Nokia’s take on this is called “ClearBlack”. Black is very black, even seen from an extreme angle. Combined with the Nokia-only accent color “Nokia Blue” this gives a very beautiful, lively and crisp image on the start screen. The red is really like very burning fiery red. I don’t know if Omnia 7 users would be as impressed as I am, but coming from the considerably blander looking HTC screens this is nothing short of stunning. The tiles look like they are floating on the screen. Second thing that strikes is the device’s speed. There is a very notable performance increase compared to the HTC 7 Pro. Think Nodo-to-Mango faster. Things are happening at an uncanny speed. New messages in the People Hub are loaded like almost instantly. I suppose this is the faster processor doing its thing.

Another thing about the screen – it is very sensitive. So much actually that I had a little trouble getting the hang of it – I accidently kept selecting messages in the People hub when I just wanted to scroll trough them. But this extreme sensitivity has a rather unexpected bonus for me – combined the convex screen and the enhanced Mango keyboard I can actually touch type on it. I only managed this with the HTC Titan before – because that is simply big enough to accommodate my big carpenter’s son hands.

I am told the screen is made out of gorilla glass. This is supposed to be pretty scratch resistant. I did not try any destructive tests on it. I will report later on its durability.

Phone calls

Made one phone call with my wife. She said I sounded very crisp and and it was better than the HTC 7 Pro. Hello world, welcome to the smartphone that is actually able to make decent phone calls. Well phooey, is anyone impressed? Nokia were already making phones when I was just coming from college so if they had not figured out how to do this after all this time, they had best started making rubber boots again a long time ago.

The camera

The first thing that struck me about the camera is that there’s a lot more options in the camera menu than I was used to, like Contrast, Saturation, Focus Mode, ISO, Exposure Mode and White Balance. I took this pretty autumn scene picture with it and I think that looks pretty good. Like I said in my review of the HTC 7 Pro, I am a photographer too and if I take pictures I care about I use a Canon EOS 400 DSLR, so in my book pictures taken by any mobile phone are all, well, let’s keep this polite ;-). Having said that: if I zoom in on pictures made by my HTC 7 Pro I can zoom in about twice before things start to become grainy. Lumia 800: seven times. Nokia wins this hands-down. But that’s from my old phone. I have no comparison with other new phones. I have heard quite mixed results from this.

I also took a few pictures of flowers close by but that did not work out at all. Only later I found out that this probably has to do with the default Focus mode – that’s Macro, and then apparently it does not want to focus on things close by.

Sound

I think the best way to describe the sound that comes out of that tiny little speaker on the bottom is something among the lines of “HOLY C…!!!”. I played my little game of Catch’em Birds. When you slam a bird into a cage, it gives a kind of metallic clang, trying to convey the idea of a metal cage door closing behind the bird. On the Lumia 800 this actually sounds more like a vault slamming shut. This device makes a pretty decent stand alone music player. Which has a flip side, too – I played Hydro Thunder Go on it and, well, er, the excellent speaker mercilessly reveals the game sounds effects are actually pretty low quality. But I can hardly blame Nokia for that ;-)

Miscellaneous

The nice blue box it comes in contains the standard equipment, i.e. an USB charger with detachable cable (so it can be used to connect the phone to Zune as well), a pair of headphones, a box of manuals in various languages (still unread *cough*) and a silicon case. It actually fits like a glove, and is in the same color as the phone’s body. I suppose it’s for protecting the phone’s shell, but it eludes me from what exactly, since the phone itself is made from a material used in the helmets ice hockey players wear. My wife suggested it was for preventing the floor tiles to crack when you drop a Lumia 800 on it ;-). I also heard these cases will come in different colors, and if that is the case I am so much going to get a blue one ;-). [Note: the blueish reflection of the screen is a side effect of the flash, you don't see this in real life - I just wanted to emphasize the silicon case]

The headphones are kinda cheap and don’t to the phone’s music playing capabilities much justice. For those who want better sound quality, Nokia makes these amazing Monster headsets that are a much better match for the phone.

Software and extra’s

No review of a Lumia 800 would be complete without the on-board extra’s. First of all – we got the genuine iconic, nay, legendary Nokia ringtone and SMS alert. Played on a xylophone. Very nice. For now I selected all the Nokia sounds as a default, just for the heck of it.

Then we have Nokia Drive. Say hello to free turn-by-turn navigation with downloadable maps and voice directions. I don’t know if it’s actually completely world wide, but if I select Manage Maps/Install, I first have to select which continent I want maps to install for: Africa, America, Asia, Australia/Oceania and Europe. Drilling down reveals Russia is in there. China is in there. South America is in there too - including Argentina which does not even have a Marketplace, and the Cayman Islands for heavens’ sake. If works way better than Bing Maps directions, and it’s free! And what’s even better – it supports landscape mode, so you can turn your phone sideways and have wide angle navigation. And then the penny dropped – maybe this is why the USB port is on top, for if you use it for navigation you rotate it 90° and then the USB port is conveniently pointing sideways for the car charger.

The current version of Nokia Drive still needs an online connection for finding addresses and Points of Interest, but at the Tweakers event at November 9 in Amsterdam Nokia revealed an update that supports total offline navigation will be available very soon. So I guess it's time to kiss my old TomTom goodbye. The Germans have a very good saying about this, attributed to Mikhail Gorbachev: “Wer zu spät kommt, den bestraft das Leben” (life punishes those who are too late)

Nokia Maps – can’t say much about this; what I currently have on my phone is a very early beta that is obviously not ready yet, but it seems to be a non-driver’s map application for finding your way around. You know? Like Local Scout, but one that does work in Europe? As a GIS developer I very much wonder if this can be extended and used like the Bing maps control in custom applications. I am not sure if this will eventually work completely offline as well.

Nokia Music – reminds me of what I saw from Pandora before us Europeans got kicked out. Stream music from a multitude of pre-defined ‘stations’ and you can buy and download stuff from Nokia’s MP3 store if you like. Yesterday I just turned it on “80’s rock” and let it go for hours on end. You can skip a limited number of songs you don’t like. The price of listening: zilch. Nada. Nothing. No pass required, no subscription required. Booya Nokia! Does this compete with Zune? Like hell it does – if we could get Zune here. Zune is available in like, 8 countries? Nokia music in a little short of 40, if I am correct. In the mean time – this is great news for all people outside the Zune coverage area. But beware – this eats a lot of data. Don’t run this over your 3G connection unless your unlimited plan is really unlimited. The software specifically warns you for that on first startup.

Room for improvement

Nokia have gone out on a limb to make the ultimate Windows Phone 7 and I think they came pretty far – but there is still room for improvement. From a hardware standpoint, it lacks two features, which by now everyone has heard of:

• No front facing camera
• No gyro

Now the gyro is a feature that the proverbial Iowa soccer mom ain’t  gonna miss – the camera is going to hurt if indeed Skype comes to Windows Phone 7. Although I also wonder how much it will actually hurt – I’ve had a video call capable phone for 2.5 years and only used this feature it 3 times – to demo it. I have no idea how much iPhone users actually use FaceTime all the time.

I think Nokia could also look into bringing out a model with more storage aboard. It now ‘only’ has 16GB of storage, which is more than enough for my podcasts, photo’s and music (I may be just weird but I don’t go carrying around enormous music libraries) but apparently there are people need more these days.

Personally I would like also like to have seen a somewhat larger screen.

The verdict

I shelled out €562 to get a Windows Phone 7 with keyboard from the UK to the Netherlands only 8 months ago. I am a die hard physical keyboard phone user. After playing with the Nokia Lumia 800 for only 48 hours, I transferred all my stuff to it and shut down the HTC 7 Pro. Sorry old workhorse. You did well. I know I am going to miss the keyboard sometimes, but the screen colors, the relative sluggish response, the already battered plastic shell, the ablating battery case… it’s just no match for this design beastie.

If you want a phone that supports all the latest Windows Phone 7 hardware features, buy something else. There is plenty of choice. That’s the fun thing of Windows Phone 7 – there is a baseline quality, they’re basically all good, and you do have a choice. One size does not fit all – as for instance the HTC Titan shows quite literally. If you want a really well designed, durable and smart looking, and not overly large Windows Phone 7 device with some very nice free extra’s that’s available at a pretty aggressive price point, by all means, buy the Lumia 800. Especially the blue one. I predict that is going to be a phone you can put on the table and everyone will know what it is – pretty soon.

Concluding thoughts

If this is what Nokia can crank out in 8 months, I really wonder what will happen in 2012. But even more important than what they crank out, is how they do it. They really got their marketing act together, and it looks like we are finally going to see some serious marketing for the Windows Phone 7 environment. I see posters, dummy’s and demo models of actual Windows Phone 7 devices appearing in shops. Someone from the #wp7nl gang who has a Lumia too walked into a Vodafone shop to get a microsim and the staff all recognized the phone immediately.

The time for Windows Phone 7 being an ‘underground’ phone platform is over!

So what about Windows Phone 7 adoption rates?

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics” (Benjamin Disraeli)

There is a nifty little Windows Phone 7 app out there called “…I’m a WP7”, made by a person who calls himself “Liquid Daffodil”. It’s a bit hard to describe what its actual purpose is. It’s got a lot of features: it can show other people using the same app nearby on a map or a list, it’s got a forum in it, you can send messages to each other, you can see who is developer (or claims to be) and who is not, you can see Xbox avatars, it’s got news about Windows Phone, it also shows you in which ‘hive’ you are (I still don’t quite get that) – anyway, if I may name a main purpose it seems to be you can proudly flag you are a Windows Phone 7 user – but only to other Windows Phone users running the same app. Its subtitle is “join the movement”.

That may not sound very useful but there is this one thing – it’s got a little option called “statistics”. It shows how much people are using this app, both worldwide and in your country, and how much are claiming to be developers. I’ve been tracking these statistics for the last 14 days and ended up with the following results:

Left axis shows number of users, right axis number of people who claim to be developers.

I only show these numbers, and I leave interpretation to the reader’s responsibility and wisdom. I would like to point out these are the usage rates of a single app over 14 days, from an unverifiable source (which, if they are true, I am very jealous of). There are some oddities in it, like the number of Dutch users claiming to be developer actually dropping and then sharply rising. I show them anyway, if only to show that I am not only sharing things I would like to see. But I would also like to point out that apparently, in only 14 days worldwide usage of this app rose with a staggering 23%, the number of people claiming to be developers worldwide with 18%. For the Netherlands the numbers are 25% and 13%.

So what does this say about the actual adoption rate of Windows Phone 7 as a whole, as I so provocatively called this article? Well, basically nothing at all. How hard is this data? How many % of the total users and developers are actually running this App? How reliable is the developer’s tracking system? Is he telling the truth at all? I can only speculate, and on speculation I got a very good advice from a fellow MVP whose words I tend to take for wisdom, which basically was: “don’t speculate”. It only shows that there seems to be growth – and quite substantial growth, too. If this bears any kind of correlation with the actual growth of the Windows Phone 7 as a platform life will be interesting indeed :-)

It shows another thing: I really s*ck at making Excel charts. My sincere apologies ;-)

For the record, I wish to state that I have not been given insight in any actual Windows Phone 7 usage data. Microsoft is not telling these things, not even to a Phone Development MVP. As to why this is, once again one can only speculate, which I was advised not to do, so I don’t. I just used publicly available data.

Being spammed to MVP

This posting is not about code or anything. Skip it if you are searching for that ;)

I had a rotten day yesterday. I was tired from an extremely busy and stressed-out working week, I slept badly, and I was developing a severe cold while it finally looked like nice weather here. I was visiting my mum – who was relating about the funeral of my niece the day before. She had passed away out of the blue at 46, just four years older than me. This made me ponder about my own future, my dad who passed away at 48 (when I was only 15), stuff like that. A cheerful mood indeed.

In the godforsaken town my mum lives there’s hardly wireless internet, so I saw two or three MVP renewals trickling in, but could hardly respond. Nor was I really in the mood for it. Next stop were my parents-in-law, who live in the same town a couple of blocks away (yeah so I married the Girl Next Door, sue me ;) ) for a family BBQ. Fortunately no sick or dead relatives talk here, but to compensate for that I had developed a splitting headache. Picture the scene? “One of those days”.

So while I was listlessly munching away some BBQ stuff I wanted to show my Windows Phone 7 to my Android-using brother in law (his Facebook App was broken again) and for some reason noticed a revolving live tile with a twitter message congratulating new and renewed MVP’s in general and if everyone else could please check their spam folder? So I connected to my father-in-laws Wi-Fi network (he’s a bit more up-to-date than my mum), and still not believing anything I let my phone sync my gmail spam folder and picked it up again 10 minutes later or so.

I almost dropped my phone and I suppose I made some kind of strangled sound. I don’t quite remember, I think a few neurons fused out that moment ;) - just that my wife looked at me with that special worried ‘what the hell is wrong with YOU?’ look. I just showed her my phone. It read:

Congratulations 2011 Microsoft MVP!

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2011 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Windows Phone Development technical communities during the past year.

She passed it to the people present and they all started to congratulate me. Still not believing it, I managed to retrieve my phone and contacted our local Windows Phone 7 DPE Matthijs Hoekstra (using – how fitting – Windows Phone 7 Live Messenger integration, or maybe Facebook chat, I did not quite pay attention to that) to check if no-one was pulling a sick joke on me. He confirmed it was the real thing and he was already wondering why he did not hear anything from me – it was more than 2.5 hours since the mails got out.

I can assure you even Windows Phone 7 auto correction had a hard time with my trembling hands (sneezing in the process does not help either), but I finally managed to get out

… and then my phone nearly exploded with congratulations, it was just impossible to keep up with it and thank everyone in person. It’s a bit lame, but hereby: thank you all for your good wishes and congratulations. I especially thank my fellow developers from #wp7nl who have nominated me. I hope to prove being worthy of this honor.

Just remember this: I will not deny being very proud of this, but I am still just Joost. I am an ordinary developer just like you, who got enthusiastic about Windows Phone 7. I like to tinker, code, write (and write about code), help out other people who got stuck if I can, share ideas and knowledge, on a user or developer level. Just because I have fun doing that, and I learn a lot in the process of doing so, too. Apparently I did this in a way that pleased some people within Microsoft to such an extent that they decided to praise me in public this way. I appreciate this very much, but I never was, nor will I ever be, a divine oracle of Windows Phone 7. Nor have I transcended to some god-like being.

So please don’t approach me differently because ‘wow he’s now an MVP’ right? Still ‘just Joost’, who will help if he can.

Marketplace monetization idea: gift items

I seem to be going off-topic a lot these days but I hope you will forgive me for that.

My wife has been eying my new HTC 7 Pro quite a lot, especially since I showed her some of her favorite XBox puzzle games on it. I see where this is going to end – sooner or later (and from the looks of it rather sooner than later) her old Nokia phone will be replaced by something that runs Windows Phone 7 as well. If only because I would like to retain control over my own phone, thank you very much ;-)

And then it started to dawn on me: it would be great to buy gifts for someone else in the Marketplace.

Suppose I am browsing the Marketplace and find a game or piece of music that I know my wife (or anyone else for what matters) would like very much. I would like to be able to buy the item as a gift, i.e. I pay with my live id, but instead of installing the item on my own device I would get the option to enter someone else’s live id, and a personal note. My wife for instance would then get an e-mail on her live account (“Hi luv look what I got you”) with a Zune link, she clicks on it, the Marketplace recognizes it’s already paid for, and she gets her beloved game. Or a romantic song, or whatever.

I have no idea if this is a possible or even a viable scenario, but the thought crossed my mind yesterday evening (when my wife was watching me play a puzzle game on my phone and all but ripped it from my hands) and I just wanted to share it.

What do you think? Sensible idea, or simply not viable (too complicated for the expected ROI).?

HTC 7 Pro in da house!

After my first smartphone – my honored Windows Mobile 6.0 and later 6.1 powered Samsung i780 – I got hooked on smartphones – with a physical keyboard. Don’t get me wrong, touchscreens are great for navigation, but if you are, like me, trained in ‘blind touch typing’ and in addition are blessed with a carpenter’s son hands, typing anything more than a few occasional words becomes an excruciating experience. Unfortunately, a certain company from Cupertino made made virtual keyboards into high fashion and although their keyboards are very good I never got more than 50% correct typing at a reasonable speed. I will not talk about trying to use the virtual keyboard on a HTC Hero Android device. I still dream of it, sometimes ;-).

Anyway, fast forward February 2010, the presentation of Windows Phone 7, I saw two devices with a physical keyboard, the LG Quantum and the Dell Venue Pro, and I knew I was going to one of those. Wrong. The LG never made it to Europe – allegedly because of EU regulations about radiation. The Dell Venue Pro looks like something from a science fiction show – and apparently is, for although it appeared for pre-order at several suppliers from the UK as early as November 2010 it has yet failed to materialize. At February 2, almost a year after the initial presentation I cancelled my order for the Venue Pro at Clove UK. On February 7, I received an e-mail that the HTC 7 Pro had become available. Today it arrived. The long wait is over and I can say goodbye to the prototype LG, so graciously supplied to me by Microsoft.

The phone itself

It’s physical dimensions are 11.5 x 5.5 x 1.5 cm and it weighs about 190 grams. It’s a bit on the heavy side, but it feels reassuringly solid. The weight is not without reason for there’s quite a substantial battery in there, as well as its European USP, a slide-out keyboard. Personally I don’t care about the extra weight in that light. You can find quite a bit of pictures of the HTC 7 Pro on the internet, but a review would not have been complete without mine:

Keyboard

The keyboard sports five(!) rows of keys. The keys are nicely spaced, give very little resistance but are not wobbly at all and provide a smooth typing experience. The top row is far enough from the actual screen so your thumbs won’t bump against its edge (which I experienced typing at a Omnia QWERTY) and five rows means you can type characters as well as numbers without having to resort to shift or fn keys. There is a large space bar and an enter key, a full set of cursor keys, point and comma have their own key and other often used stuff is easily accessed with the FN key. I like the fact that even the underscore is directly accessible from the keyboard - a nice geeky touch. Notice the hardly visible dots just left of the “FN” text left of the A. These are actually extremely tiny but very bright white LEDs that will light up if you use the Shift or FN key. Pressing either of these keys for a little longer make it act as Caps Lock  and FN-lock (whatever). I think this keyboard will serve me very well. The only thing I would have done differently is make a bigger backspace key. You tend to use this quite a lot ;-)

Screen

No AMOLED here folks, but nevertheless bright, vivid and smooth. When seen from an angle of 45 degrees the black seems to become gray and blue goes a little green, but it works for me. I think I will need to have a side-by-side comparison with an Omnia 7 to give a real opinion about this. [Update: I did do the compare, and I must say: compared to the Omnia the screen is really pale, but that's AMOLED for you. But it also is quite pale compared to my wife's LG Optimus 7 screen. So apparently HTC cut a little on the costs of this specialized device by putting in a lower quality screen. I know for a fact the first batch of HTC Trophy suffered from this same feat]

Phone calls

Yeah, I still do that occasionally. My wife reported good and very crisp sound from her venerable old Nokia (pun indented) and I did get good sound likewise. I have not been able to detect any antenna gate like effects, but so far I made about two calls with this phone so you never now ;-)

The camera

Let’s say it’s good but not great (Click to see full picture). So far I took only a few pictures with it. I am used to Canon EOS 400D DSLR picture quality so this is no match anyway. I think the picture of this Witches’ Hazel is pretty good, but the results were varying. There is a led flash, which is quite good, but I don’t think it’s a good camera to shoot the standard “drunken group hug in the pub”-pictures. But then again, you mind want to reconsider using a pretty expensive device in that kind of circumstances.

 

 

Sound

It’s a good music player, and then the Sound Enhancer come into play. When you plugin the headphone (which you do, for you don’t want to bother your fellow human being with your particular choice of music, eh ;-)? ) , the sound is quite thin –  until you start playing with Sound Enhancer. The “bass booster” setting gives quite an impressive thunder. I used it to play a Youtube video – without headphones, ahem – and my wife commented about the good sound quality.

Other hardware – and concerns about that

The back cover is solid metal and unlike a German review I read stated, it’s very easy to open. That is, provided you take the time to read the manual, in which the correct procedure is quite extensively described: first slide out the keyboard, that reveals a notch, put your fingernail there and then you easily pop open the back cover. No messing around with screwdrivers or knives. Remove battery, insert SIM card as depicted in manual, replace battery and cover, ready. Should take less than a minute.

The device sports quite a big volume rocker on the left side that is easy to operate. The power button is on top, and is a bit small for my taste, but it works. The same goes for the camera button on the left bottom – small but usable, and easier to find than the power button, The standard Windows Phone 7 Back, Start and Search button are not buttons at all but virtual buttons – you have to so much as touch them and they are activated. Which, I think, will mightily annoy game fans because sooner or later you will inadvertently hit such a button and poof goes your game. For me, it will take some getting used to, but that’s okay. There is a headphone plug and a Micro USB port – placed  on the side, the place where I like it most. I would have liked it even better on the other side, for now it is sitting on the ‘front’ side when the slider is open.

My biggest concern with this device is the slider mechanism. The slider itself feels solid enough, but once slided out the screen flips up. It looks cool, the phone looks like a miniature laptop top but that flip-up mechanism feels a tad vulnerable – I wonder how much durability tests went into that and how long it will last. Time will tell. [Update: the flip-up system makes it possible to put the device rock solid on a table and use it as a ‘dining table top’ Youtube player, or scroll through tweets or news and even typing with my left hand. Seen from that perspective the fact that the back button is a virtual button is very handy – you now only have to touch it a little and it activates. Pressing a physical button would make the device device topple backwards]. [Update 2: in 3 months the device has suffered two bad drops with the slider open, and although it fell apart in three parts (phone, battery pack and battery cover) it apparently suffered no ill effect. So the slider/flip-up mechanism apparently is pretty solid]

Also included in the package I got was a Bluetooth headset. Not that I needed one, but nice, still.

Software

Whether you like it or not, it runs Windows Phone 7. You may have noticed I like that fact very much indeed, as well as the fact that it runs Windows Phone 7 like it’s on steroids. The animations are very smooth after living on a prototype for over two months. There are some extra things aboard, like the HTC Hub which I haven’t even fully explored yet but which seems to include some weather gadget, a Youtube player, the already mentioned Sound Enhancer. In addition, a Photo Enhancer, a unit convertor (sorry Maurice) a Connection Setup Wizard and some other applications seem to be pre-installed. HTC also seems to have included a lot of ringtones that weren’t included on the prototype so I guess they are extra too.

Impatience has a price

As I wrote earlier this device comes from Clove UK. You can see this on the keyboard – there’s a Pound Sterling sign in stead of a Dollar sign. I don’t care about that. What I do care about is that both the phone and the headset come with a separate charger – both only support UK style wall sockets. I guess it’s the price I pay for my impatience, but then again, if you ship to the European mainland you should at least point this out to your customers. Even better is a link to ‘order your convertor plug here’ – and best is to include a convertor plug free of charge (in stead of a head set). Anyway, I went to the phone shop on the corner and forked over €18 for a standard HTC Micro USB charger. Since I now don’t have to buy an extra USB cable I am only about €10 down, but still, it feels a bit inconsiderate. Anyone from the UK interested in two Micro USB chargers? You can get them from me ;-)

Overall feeling

After a fellow #wp7nl developer’s disastrous experiences with the HTC Tytn II I grew a bit weary of HTC. So why did I buy this device? Three reasons:

1. Windows Phone 7
2. Physical keyboard
3. Available in or shippable to the Netherlands

So I bought HTC, because there was simply no competition. I hope phone manufacturers will take note of this. I am not alone in preference 2 – just watch all the youngsters walk around with BlackBerry devices. My advice: stop aping the iPhone, and corner that part of the business before RIM gets everything.

Anyway: what I’ve seen from the HTC 7 Pro – it feels good, it runs smoothly, and now I have a Windows Phone 7 device on which I can do some serious development, with a seriously usable keyboard that I can use for making notes, posting messages and blog comments, and boring you all on Twitter till the cows come home. I’d rather not think about the fact that including the charger I shelled out about €560 to finally lay may hands at a phone that meets my specs, but for now I am very satisfied with this device and in the end, that’s what counts for me.

WiX- A Developer's Guide to Windows Installer XML

And now for something completely different – a review of someone else’s examples. I have been reading “WiX- A Developer's Guide to Windows Installer XML“ by Nick Ramirez. I would not dare call myself a WiX expert – in fact I wrote one three-component setup in the cause of a few weeks, but I was asked to review this book by its publisher, Packt Publisher and well, here’s my verdict.

Examples examples examples

What I like about the book: it takes you by the hand using what I think is the most powerful tool in teaching: examples. Which is what I so painfully missed when I myself was struggling with WiX. Lots of concepts and half-*ssed postings on forums, but no complete examples. In the first chapter the author starts a small example which gets more and more elaborate. After reading that first chapter you have a good idea of the most important concepts of installing. The second chapter follows the same recipe and gives you more of the fine details on creating files and directories. If you have read the first two chapters, you can write a basic installer.

Pick and choose

The rest of the book is more of the pick-and-choose type. It still follows the same recipe, but whereas the first two chapters are mandatory, the rest is optional – use what you need, although I would recommend not skipping chapter 5, “Understanding the Installation Sequence”

What do I miss?

I was puzzled by the absence of  a description of the util:XmlFile task, which can be utilized for modifying config files during install. Apart from that, the sub titles says “Create a hassle-free installer for your Windows software using WiX”. That’s exactly what it delivers. I would very much have liked something on how you create and install web sites, handle the intricacies of creating applications pools, set the ASP.NET version, permissions, create CGI support settings and stuff like that – taking into account people can install on different operating systems and different versions of IIS. Maybe something for a second print? ;-)

Conclusion

First part learns you the basics pretty well, the rest is a solid reference. A book I should have bought and read before I started mucking around with WiX.

Browse the Marketplace for Windows Phone 7 apps outside the USA

This article does technically not belong to this blog, for it does not contain any code samples – in fact it does not handle code at all. But since the launch of Windows Phone 7 is a very special occasion and the devices will hit my country (the Netherlands) very soon I thought it important enough to break rank for once.

For all kinds of reasons – mostly legal, I’ve been told - about 17 countries are included in the Marketplace for Windows Phone 7. This by no means that you cannot be part of the fun of the Windows Phone 7 launch if you are not inside the USA or any of the other countries – like me. All you have to do to view the Windows Phone 7 apps that are currently in the Marketplace is follow the simple procedure below:

1. Install Zune software (if you haven’t done that already)
2. Browse to www.msn.com. This will redirect you to your local msn (in my case, nl.msn.com) but will also provide you with a popup that lets you choose between your local msn.com and the USA msn.com. Choose the USA version
3. If you are signed in with your live ID, sign out
4. Create a new live ID that has its location in the USA. You need to provide an USA state and ZIP code that actually exist and match. Which can be easily obtained via this site. Simply click somewhere on the map, choose one of the cities it suggests, and presto – one existing zip code and state combination
5. Start up the Zune software
6. Login with your freshly created live ID
7. Provide your birth date
8. Click Marketplace
9. Click Apps
10. And there you are

Update according to Rob Houweling this procedure will only work if the OS language is set to English. See comment. Thanks Rob!

Update 2 this works on a Windows Phone 7 as well. Tom Verhoeff has a blog post which explains (in Dutch) how you can setup a phone to use a specific Live Id that has it's location in the UK and a billing adress in the UK that will allow you to buy apps using an ordinary Dutch credit card.

Bear in mind that your local Microsoft office does not support this procedure, so when you have problems you are basically on your own. But that is what you have your local Microsoft community for - they can probably help you out, and if not, there are plenty of Microsoft employees who will help you out sub rosa – if you just ask the right person kindly enough. After all, we’re all in the same boat ;-)

Have fun!