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 ...

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 ...

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!

I was recently asked by a client to help upgrade their application from Silverlight 4 to Silverlight 5. The upgrade worked perfectly except for one third-party assembly that had not yet been upgraded to Silverlight 5. The client only needed to use this assembly to generate QR Codes--those black-and-white barcode squares you often see people scanning on their smartphones—so my task was to find them a replacement QR Code library.

Sample QR Code

My colleague, Josh Eastburn, pointed me to a free option that was created for use in WP7 apps, but works just fine in Silverlight 5. You ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

EventBoard is making waves again. Telerik just released a customer case study featuring our mobile conference companion: http://www.telerik.com/company/customers/case-studies/telerik-s-integrated-technologies-help-make-falafel-s-eventboard-solution-a-hit-with-audiences.aspx

When Telerik asked if we wanted to be part of a customer case study, the answer was an enthusiastic yes! At every turn, EventBoard utilizes a Telerik solution. The WP7 mobile application uses RadControls for Windows Phone, the administration application uses RadControls for Silverlight, and even the product webpage features blogs powered by Sitefinity.

Thanks to the Telerik controls, EventBoard for Windows Phone continues to shine as a model of style and usability. Expanding the use of  Telerik’s  Window’s Phone Controls in ...

Microsoft’s next release of the Windows Phone operating system is here and brings over 500 new features to handsets everywhere. You can learn to build apps that leverage these new features and capitalize on the growing Windows Phone market with our new book, “Windows Phone 7.5 ‘Mango’ Nuts and Bolts”. The best part? It is 50% off through Friday! Get it now with promo code “MangoWeek”: https://www.falafel.com/store/courseware/wp7nutsandbolts.aspx

“Windows Phone 7.5 ‘Mango’ Nuts and Bolts” is over 600 pages of step-by-step instructions, detailed explanations, and downloadable source code that will have you cranking out robust, user-friendly apps in ...

Going to Silicon Valley Code Camp this weekend? Chances are, you will run into a Falafel. Our entire team travels from all over the country to Foothills College this weekend, to attend the biggest (and best) code camp in the country.

We love being a part of this fantastic event. This year, Falafel is a platinum sponsor, picked up the tab for Saturday’s pizza lunch, built the mobile track, supplied 7 speakers with 11 informative sessions and donated our mobile application, EventBoard, to be used as the official conference app.

Our 7 speakers have been having a friendly competition to see who can get the greatest number ...

You can use LongListSelector as a glorified ListBox, but that cripples its true purpose. The real power  of LongListSelector is to display long categorized lists, enable a "People Hub" style "jump list" to navigate between groups in the list and to allow performant scrolling.

Grouping

The trick to get LongListSelector working is to properly group the data assigned to the LongListSelector ItemsSource. You can start with a simple flat list of objects, where each object has a property suitable for grouping. In the snippet below, "MyObject" has a "Category" property that the list will be grouped on....

Many Windows Phone 7 developers (including those at Falafel) are pretty excited about the new features available in the upcoming ‘Windows Phone Mango’ update.  One of the features we are hearing a lot about is the new ‘deep linking’ through push notifications and also in live tiles.  It’s easy to find article after article listing this as one of the exciting upgrades to the WP7.

What’s not so easy to find is a simple example of these deep links!  Even the examples from MSDN which were supposed to be previewing the new release seemed to leave out this important part.  ...