For years I've always liked the idea of having the ability to develop on the road. Few who know me would ever deny that I'm a true road warrior, although I'm beginning to slow down. Whether it was taking my kids all over the world to fence, chasing storms, hiking off the trail, or even jet skiing at the lake, I often had my laptop with me. I've come up with some of my best ideas while on the road. However, the size and bulk of my various laptops always had me wishing for something else.

 

The Surface RT ...

In my last blog post, Using Generic Attached Properties to Simplify Windows 8 Settings Charm Pages , I talked about how to easily add Settings Charm pages to any Windows 8 app. If your app happens to have an AdControl, you might have an issue that you need to handle. The issue is that AdControl is hosted in a WebView Control, which causes the control to always be on top. When flyout Settings Charm pages overlap AdControl elements you get unexpected behaviors. It's a known issue but is easy to handle. I've updated the GitHub example to include a couple of ...

Every year, October kicks off a very busy season at Falafel : “Conference Season”. Multiple members of the team travel across the country and around world to share their expertise on a number of technologies. All Falafel Software team members spend their days, and often their nights, helping design and build cutting edge solutions for our customers. Their technical presentations draw from these real world experiences and are assembled, practiced, and presented in what little spare time they have. That’s why we call them “Rock Stars”.

This weekend at Silicon Valley Code Camp, Falafel’s entire team from around the ...

I’ve been looking at several alternate reality application ideas and how to best show the real world on the phone. It’s easy to get the camera preview to show up in a WP7 application, but sometimes you want to maximize the camera preview in the screen. One problem is that the camera preview is a different size and aspect ratio than the WP7 screen. The size differences are illustrated below.

 

The WP7 screen is 480x800 and the camera preview is 480x640. If you want to show controls, then you can use the extra space at the top and bottom. ...

If you missed my blog about showing the WP7 magnetometer in 3D with an XNA/Silverlight application, you can read about it by clicking here. We are in the process of putting this application in the Marketplace so you’ll be able to check it out on your phone shortly. One of the steps in the Marketplace process is coming up with screenshots of the application. You can always use the screen capture option in the Windows Phone Emulator; however, in this case it was going to take some code to emulate the magnetometer sensor. Figuring out how to take screen ...

With the release of the HTC Titan, I needed to update a couple of my previous blogs.

In my blog Silverlight/XNA and Correcting WP7 Attitude Alignment, I talked about how to correct for any misalignment of the Attitude sensors with the phone body. With my Samsung Focus, I found that the Attitude alignment was off by about 3 degrees, which was noticeable in my compass application. The HTC Titan does not need any Attitude adjustment; its Attitude sensors are already inline with the phone body.

In my blog Showing the WP7 Magnetometer in 3D with XNA/Silverlight, I ...

I’ve always been interested in 3D graphics and wanted to investigate the capabilities of the WP7. As an engineer who has dealt with sensor technology most of his career, I was also interested in investigating the sensor capabilities of the WP7. Using the Mango Teapot as an example, I came up with a simple compass application to dive into these areas. This application is a Windows Phone Silverlight and XNA Application similar to the Mango Teapot but with a 3D blue arrow that always points up and a yellow arrow that always points North.

I found that the 3D graphics ...

Rounding the corners of a rectangle or a border is nothing new, but what if you want to clip other FrameworkElements such as images or buttons. The first step is to look at how to generate the necessary clipping geometries to give you the rounded corners.

Take a look at the clipping of the following rectangle that rounds each corner with a radius of 10.

Clip="M0,10C0,4.5 4.5,0 10,0L118,0C123.5,0 128,4.5 128,10L128,86C128,91.5 123.5,96 118,96L10,96C4.5,96 0,91.5 0,86z"

The quickest way I’ve found to decode clipping strings is to let Blend do it for you. After selecting the rectangle in Blend, select the Clip ...

The long-awaited Mango update is finally hitting the streets. If you can’t wait for it to roll out to your phone you can always try this.

For me, one of the most eagerly awaited features was custom ringtones. The omission of that feature in the first version of WP7 was almost a deal breaker for me, but I hung in there. After you get your Mango update, use the directions here to get your custom ringtones installed on your phone. For me, that can only mean one ringtone!

Falafel Software promotes Mike Dugan to Director of Marketing

Falafel Software is happy to announce that software industry veteran and MBA graduate Mike Dugan will now take the reins as Director of Marketing at Falafel Software. Dugan has been instrumental in the growth of Falafel over the past 6 years. His experience as both an engineer and a manager has given him a unique understanding of Falafel Software’s business. In his new position, Dugan will be responsible for guiding product development, promoting services, and seeking out new markets.

“I am very excited to see Mike in that new role at ...

Falafel is pleased to announce the availability of the DevReach Viewer on the Android Marketplace.  You can scan the QR barcode below or head to the Android MarketPlace and search for DevReach now! Hope you enjoy the application and find it useful during the conference next week in Sofia Bulgaria! Now the DevReach Viewer is available in the AppStore for iPhone, the Android MarketPlace for Android and the Zune Marketplace for Windows Phone 7.

	You can now DOWNLOAD the DevReach Viewer for iPhone from the AppStore.  The app will allow you to view all sessions, speakers, schedule, agenda, tracks and also view the latest NEWS about the conference as well as as mark sessions as favorites for off line viewing. Hope you enjoy the application and find it useful while attending next week’s DevReach Conference in Sofia Bulgaria.