Building our EventBoard mobile solution for conferences was no easy task. The solution includes native applications for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8, Windows Azure cloud services, a web based administration portal, and a separate product website.

Thankfully, we were able to use the tools from Telerik in nearly every facet of development. The tools saved us time and money, and now Telerik has featured our development story in a detailed case study. You can read all about what it took to build EventBoard here.

Falafel Software’s mobile conference solution EventBoard, has been chosen as the official application of the Microsoft MVP Summit.

The Microsoft MVP Award is given to technical experts who actively participate in the community, sharing both their knowledge and enthusiasm for Microsoft products. For 20 years, it has remained one of the most difficult awards to earn and wearing the badge of an MVP has signified supreme technical excellence with Microsoft technologies.

Each year, every MVP from around the world is invited to Microsoft headquarters for the MVP Summit. This private event gives MVPs early and direct access to ...

Wow, I can't believe 2012 is gone already, not only that, but January of 2013 is over.  January has been a tremendous month for the company, the best January ever in the 10 years history of Falafel Software Inc.

We started the year very strong with multiple new accounts in the USA, Europe, Far East and Australia.

Sitefinity continues to be a very strong business for Falafel and we continue to assemble the best Engineering team in the industry to meet the consulting and architecture demands for our Sitefinity Business.  Great announcements coming soon!

SmartBear's relationship continues to flourish ...

Falafel Software is pleased to announce FalafelCon 2013, the new annual training conference for software developers.

Capitola CA - 29th January, 2013 - Falafel Software’s new annual training conference, FalafelCon, will take place at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus on June 10 and 11th, offering software developers four co-located events and 40 technical sessions to choose from.

FalafelCon’s four co-located events include Web and Mobile specific events that explore cutting edge software development techniques with Microsoft development tools. Advanced development topics include Azure tips and tricks, cross platform mobile development, NFC with Windows Phone, Windows 8 sensor integration and ...

Falafel CEO Lino Tadros takes a break from his Windows Phone 8 Workshop tour and joins Microsoft Developer Evangelist Daniel Egan for a free online Windows Phone 8 Phone Camp.

When: Friday Dec. 7th, 9AM - 2PM PST
Where: Online
Cost to attend: FREE!
Let us know you’ll be watching by registering here: http://wp8camp.eventbrite.com/

Full day Windows Phone workshops typically cost hundreds of dollars and you have an opportunity to to get the same Windows Phone development knowledge for FREE!

You’ll learn everything you need to know to develop and publish a Windows Phone application. Whether you’re a student just ...

If you are a fan of Microsoft development tools, you know the landscape has changed tremendously in the past few weeks. There have been major game changing releases that include Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Visual Studio 2012 and an array of Azure enhancements. Thankfully, there is an upcoming event where you can learn the skills you need to master these tools immediately, and if you register before Nov. 27th you’ll receive a free Windows Surface Tablet!

DevIntersection will be held Dec 9 -12th in Las Vegas and will be the last stop on Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell’s ....

Developing in XAML (Windows 8, Silverlight, Windows Phone, or WPF) gives you a powerful combination of declarative markup with databinding, but one shortcoming I often come up against is the ability to build simple ComboBox elements declaratively with both Content and Values.
If you are familiar with HTML, you know that you can use a select tag to pair the display name with a key value, such as:

<select>

  <option value="volvo">Volvo</option>

  <option value="saab">Saab</option>

  <option value="mercedes">Mercedes</option>

  <option value...

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 ...

Listen to this week's installment of "The Tablet Show" featuring Falafel CEO Lino Tadros.
 
The Tablet Show (Show 47, Released Aug. 27th, 2012 )

You'll enjoy this 10-time Microsoft MVP's take on Windows 8 development, HTML 5, JavaScript, iPad and more as Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell ask about his real world experiences developing in the mobile space. 

Two of Falafel Software's employees have been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award. The award is given to outstanding members of Microsoft's technical communities for contributions made during the previous 12 months.

For our CEO, Lino Tadros, it's a milestone. This is the 10th year in a row that Lino has been named a MVP. For over a decade Lino has actively contributed to the Microsoft community, adapting his expertise to the latest technology. Earlier this year, Lino was recognized at the Microsoft MVP Summit for bringing to market EventBoard for Windows Phone, one of the most trusted ...

In some of my previous WP7 blogs, such as Basic XNA Graphics for the WP7, I go over how to build basic 3D models for your applications. What happens when you want something more complex? You need a good 3D tool to generate those models for you. I started exploring Google SketchUp as a possibility for generating 3D models for the WP7. I found Jim’s Blog on how to load a Google SketchUp model into a XNA game. Jim used the DirectX/XNA Exporter Plugin. So I installed the plugin and started playing around. I thought it would ...

Microsoft TechEd Europe 2012 has chosen Falafel Software’s flagship mobile application, “EventBoard”, as the official conference companion for the event in June. 

Spanning 5 days and packed with over 1000 educational opportunities, TechEd is the premier European Microsoft technology education event, and this year navigating the event will be a breeze with EventBoard. Thousands of attendees will abandon the paper program and use EventBoard to plan out their day, navigate the show floor and stay connected. 

We like to think that TechEd Europe’s selection of EventBoard was an easy decision to make. EventBoard utilizes some of Microsoft’s latest and greatest ...

It has been said that good things come to those who wait. If you've been waiting to learn how to build Windows Phone applications, we have some good news. We are offering a 50% discount on our upcoming training class taking place April 4th - 6th. Join our expert trainers for 3 4-hour online sessions and they will walk you through Windows Phone Development, from project setup to submitting your app to the store. 

Just enter promo code: VALUEDCUST with your purchase. 

Sign up today!

We were very excited last week with the release of Sitefinity 5.  It has been running fast and solid on several machines (servers) here at Falafel Software.

One blemish though was the major breaking change to the authentication of the REST APIs.  If you are upgrading from a 4.x site to 5.0, no worry that change will not affect you (not right away at least), but if you are setting up a brand new Sitefinity 5 Web Application, the default authentication has changed from FORMS authentication to CLAIMS authentication which will break any code previously written using the REST API ...

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. ...

The Windows Phone is about to take off like a rocket, beat the competition and get on board now with Windows Phone development training from Falafel Software.

In 2012, sales of 40 million Windows Phones are expected. By 2015, multiple research firms expect Windows Phone to overtake iPhone for the #2 spot in smartphone market share. For individuals looking to monetize a mobile application, it is essential to enter this growing market now. For organizations thinking about their mobile strategy, Windows Phone now must to be part of that discussion. Once you see how easy it is to build ...

The Windows Phone platform has been making headlines lately.  A Customer Think survey recently revealed that among smartphone users, Windows Phone users experience the highest customer satisfaction. Nokia's new Lumia 900 Windows Phone debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show and took home CNET's best cell phone award. Market research firms iSuppli, Gartner and IDC all expect Windows Phone to claim the number two spot in smartphone market share by 2015.

So what's the big deal?

We are giving you a chance to see for yourself. On Feb 10th at 12PM EST, join us in our free Windows Phone webinar, "The ...

With Christmas coming up soon, what better blog can a nerdy geek come up with than to explain how to draw a Santa hat on the WP7 using the XNA Graphics Framework.

 

I’ve been working with computer graphics on and off for most of my 20+ year career. For me, it all started with OpenGL in the early 90’s. Since then I’ve worked with DirectX and now XNA. It’s amazing how little things have changed over that time. All those frameworks are based on triangles and arrays of vertices and normals. When you learn one of those frameworks, you ...

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 ...