Futurecat - Michael Karek

In June, we announced Project Hilo and promised a set of cool sample applications written in C++. At that time we released the first application in that series. Since then we have been busy publishing some articles that walk you through all the steps that go into developing that application (See Chapter 1 thru 8 here ).

This time we are back with the next application in the Project Hilo series. We call it the Hilo Annotator.

The Hilo Annotator provides basic image editing capabilities but more importantly it illustrates how to take advantage of the following Windows functionalities:

• Ribbon: To provide a modern, easy to use and easy to learn user interface.
• Windows Imaging Component (WIC): To display and manipulate images.

What’s more is that it even tells you more about the Windows Animation Manager and Direct2D that we have seen in the previous articles.

Feel free to download the source code for this application from the Hilo Code Gallery Page. The article introducing the Hilo Annotator app can be found here. As we did earlier, over the coming weeks we will be publishing a series of articles on the MSDN library that will walk you through building this application.

As always, you can also follow Hilo updates on Twitter @projecthilo. Stay tuned and code-on!

August marks the six-month anniversary of the public unveiling of our next-generation mobile phone, Windows Phone 7. Six months is an interesting bit of time; it can fly by, or it can feel like it’s dragging on forever.  The gating factor tends to be how much fun you are having.  For us on the Windows Phone team, it feels like just yesterday that we first introduced Windows Phone 7 to the world. Now, just a blink of the eye and phones will be on shelves.

All of the work of the last six months is certainly paying off, as just about every conversation we have with developers focuses on their strategy for generating more business with Windows Phone 7.  It’s amazing to see so many inspired developers looking to create experiences for Windows Phone 7. In fact, to date there have been north of 300,000 downloads of the Windows Phone Developer Tools.

These first six months have affirmed that a rich application platform based on the well understood Silverlight and XNA technologies, combined with great free tools based on Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend is the right approach for enabling developers and designers of all skill levels who are looking to capitalize on the opportunities presented by Windows Phone 7. Throughout the process, the developer community has continued to astound us with their creative ideas.  Their use of the unique Windows Phone 7 features – like our design system, Live tiles, and location and notifications services – demonstrate that the experiences a developer can build on Windows Phone 7 match their imaginations.

While our developer community has been busy stretching the capabilities of the application platform and developer tools, we have been working very closely with some amazing application and game developers to ensure that Windows Phone 7 customers have the applications they expect, across a wide swath of the categories they value. Here’s a just small sample of the variety of companies with whom we have been working:

Adenclassifieds, Allociné (including sister brands: Screenrush, Filmstarts, Sensacine), APPA Mundi Ltd, Artificial Life, Inc., ebay, Inc., Esurance Insurance Services, Inc, Flixster, Intelligent Touch Solutions Ltd., Jobsite UK (Worldwide), Limited, Kelley Blue Book Co., Inc., Le Figaro group, My Interactive Limited, Open Table, Inc., Pageonce, Inc., Panoramic Software, Inc., photobucket inc., REALTOR.COM® Real Estate Search  (Move, Inc.), Red Badger Consulting Limited, rising systems networks GmbH, Seesmic, Sequence Collective Ltd, TBS Field Mobility Solutions, The Associated Press, Touchnote, Trip Mate, Inc., Tx3 Solutions, vente-privée.com, Viadeo S.A

Of course, it’s not just the big names in development who are going to bring great titles to Windows Phone 7 customers.  There are many multiples more of lesser known developers who are looking to be in the Windows Phone Marketplace.  Large or small, all developers will have equal opportunity to capitalize on the first mover advantage of having their apps or games ready at launch.  In order to do that, there are a few things developers will need to do:

1. Register at the marketplace today
2. Finish you application or game using the Beta tools
3. Download the final Windows Phone Developer Tools when they are released on September 16^th
4. Recompile your app or game using the final tools
5. Have your XAP ready for ingestion into the marketplace in early October when it opens

The final tools will likely have some minor breaking changes from the Beta tools, so developers may have to fix some bugs that arise.  The final tools will also include several highly requested Silverlight controls which will make it even easier for developers to deliver high quality Windows Phone 7 experiences.  Also in the September 16^th final release, the panorama, pivot and Bing maps controls will all be available to drop into applications.

The developer tools, controls and application platform are great, but we also recognize the need for smart training.  Just last week we released a course called the Windows Phone 7 Jump Start, delivered by two of our MVPs, Andy Wigley and Rob Miles.  It includes 12 hours of classroom training and supporting exercises.  We have also recently updated the Windows Phone 7 Developer Training Kit.  We will be releasing many more hours of training in the coming weeks and months. For the XNA developers, the XNA Creator Club announced today a new set of educational materials.

We’re also taking additional steps to make sure that the developer experience with Windows Phone Marketplace is even more friendly and intuitive. Ask any mobile developers about their biggest headaches and you are likely to hear about an opaque or non-existent app store ingestion process.  We’ve shown how we are making the process of building apps and games easier for developers, but that is only part of the journey. The next step is getting apps and games in front of customers.  The Windows Phone Marketplace continues our commitment to having a clear and open process for certifying apps and games.  To reinforce that, today we have posted an updated set of Windows Phone Marketplace policies.  Further, in the coming weeks we will be conducting a limited Beta test cycle of our app submission and certification process.  We’re also working on significant changes to our developer portal that reflects feedback from the community.  In those changes, you’ll see enhancements meant to simplify and streamline the path for developers to get the information they need.

So what does this all mean?  We’ve demonstrated that you can build a phone that doesn’t just allow developers to build apps, but rather one that enhances apps with unique features like Live tiles and a design system not available anywhere else.  We’ve shown that a phone isn’t there to just run apps, but rather to understand the full context of what customers are trying to do; integrating functions like maps and search and saving the state of apps so that customers can move between them without losing content or negatively impacting battery life.  Lastly, we aren’t just building a marketplace to deliver apps and games, but rather testing and certifying every one for quality and performance – all the while maintaining a fully open and transparent process to support the developer and their Marketplace success. Our rich developer ecosystem is creating a variety of quality apps and games that take advantage of the phone’s unique features and design.

How will you spend the next couple of weeks?  For the developers telling us how much fun they are having with our productive set of tools and APIs, launch day will be here before they know it.  Developers now know when they will receive the final Windows Phone Developer Tools (September 16^th!) and when they should have their XAPs ready for Marketplace ingestion.  300,000 tools downloads means quite a bit of imagination is going to be pouring into the apps and games that customers see on Windows Phone 7 this holiday season.  The clock is ticking.  Will you be ready?

Today we are publishing the first in our training content led by our MVPs.  Rob Miles and Andy Wigley led an incredibly well received live training course about a month ago, focused on getting developers trained up on building amazing applications and games for Windows Phone 7.

We recognize that providing as much technical content as we can for the full range of developers is what developers deserve. While we plan on having more live training sessions in the coming weeks and months, we are also committed to making that content available as quickly as possible to as many developers as possible. Since this round of content is based on Beta Windows Phone Developer Tools, we will not be localizing it.  For our non-English speaking developers, we will be providing localized training once we have released the final developer tools.

Andy and Rob provide a good bit of humor along with their incredible depth of knowledge on the topic of building apps and games for Windows Phone 7. We think they have covered a fair amount ground, but if there are topics you feel we need to cover more in depth, don’t hesitate to let us know.

There are 12 sessions in total, each about :50 minutes in length. Think of this as a semester’s worth of class time to help you in your quest to be an awesome Windows Phone 7 developer. It’s self-paced, and both Rob and Andy are pretty approachable. Head on over to their blogs if you want to get more plugged into what they are doing.

Here are the sessions, and a link to their course material.  UPDATED: Here’s a link to the Zune subscription link.  Also a link to the iTunes subscription.

Windows Phone 7 Jump Start (Session 1 of 12): Introduction 

A quick tour of Windows Phone 7 and how you write programs for it. We take a look at the platform capabilities and the software development options. We also offer you a chance to win a prize that is almost certainly not a private jet.

Windows Phone 7 Jump Start (Session 2 of 12): Building a Silverlight Application, Part 1

Building an application from scratch. How you can take a simple idea for a program and build the user interface, followed by the program behaviors that sit behind it. We take a look at databinding on Windows Phone and how best to structure your application to make best use of it.

Windows Phone 7 Jump Start (Session 3 of 12): Building a Silverlight Application, Part 2

Making more complex applications. You also get an overview of how the built in controls work, and how to tailor the user input to match your requirements. We also take a look at page navigation within a multi-form Silverlight application on the phone and how to use the navigation inputs for best effect.

Windows Phone 7 Jump Start (Session 4 of 12): Building Games for the Windows Phone 7 Platform

Using Silverlight as a platform for game creation. We show how to get a draw/update behavior into your Silverlight games and give you a fully worked game to chew on. We also illustrate how a Silverlight game can leverage the XNA libraries to add sound effects to a game.

Windows Phone 7 Jump Start (Session 5 of 12): Building XNA Games for the Windows Phone 7 Platform, Part 1

Getting Started with  XNA on Windows Phone. We talk about what makes the Windows Phone such a good platform for XNA development and how you create XNA games for it. We take a look at how games can manage the orientation of a phone and give you some tips on getting the best performance. Then we move on to take a look at the accelerometer input and how to make games that use this.

Windows Phone 7 Jump Start (Session 6 of 12): Building XNA Games for the Windows Phone 7 Platform, Part 2

Using the Windows Phone platform features in your XNA games. We continue with our look at Windows Phone features that make the platform so interesting to game developers. We cover the use of the touch screen, sound creation and finally give you some coverage of how to access the Zune media content in the device. Then we round off with a little look at how you can get text input from users by means of the Guide support in XNA.

Windows Phone 7 Jump Start (Session 7 of 12): Advanced Application Development, Part 1

Application Lifecycle. A look at the execution model on the phone, and how to create solutions that give a great user experience in the face of phone calls, termination and even total shutdown of the device itself. We show how to respond to messages to make your application give the appearance of being “always on” and the data persistence facilities that you will need to make this work.

Windows Phone 7 Jump Start (Session 8 of 12): Advanced Application Development, Part 2

Launchers and Choosers plus Using Isolated Storage. In this session we take a look at “Launchers and Choosers”, how your application can use the built in phone behaviors to place calls, take pictures and select contacts, making it part of how the phone works. We also show how your application can store data in its own isolated storage on the phone device.

Windows Phone 7 Jump Start (Session 9 of 12): Advanced Application Development, Part 3

Storing Data and Using the Network. In this session we look at the connectedness of Windows Phone and how you can make this work for you. We demonstrate connected applications and how the notification service is used to allow external systems to give your application a wake-up call. 

Windows Phone 7 Jump Start (Session 10 of 12): Marketing Your Windows Phone 7 Application

Using Windows Marketplace. In this session we explain how to join the Marketplace and get your applications out there. We take a look at how your solutions are packaged and deployed and how you go about registering a device for development and then using that with Visual Studio 2010 to test your applications.

Windows Phone 7 Jump Start (Session 11 of 12): Working with Media

Using XNA in 3D and with Media. In this session we take a quick look at how the Windows Phone works as an excellent platform for 3D games in XNA. We also explore how an XNA game can make use of the media stored in the phone, including photographs taken by the user and media loaded onto it from Zune.

Windows Phone 7 Jump Start (Session 12 of 12): Final Silverlight Topics and Wrap-Up

Taking Silverlight to the max. We start with a look at the Application bar, a crucial component in Windows Phone applications. We then move on to the Expression Blend tool, and how to create compelling user experiences with it. Finally we round off the session by showing how easy it is to use the map services in your phone and demonstrate some of the really cool navigation tools that are coming.

Here are the bios for our fearless session leaders.

Rob Miles

Rob Miles is a lecturer and Microsoft MVP based at Hull University in the UK. He teaches Programming, Software Engineering, Embedded Development and students. He has been working with XNA since before it was released and has been a big fan of Windows Phone 7 ever since he found out he could run his XNA and Silverlight programs on it. He writes a regular blog on programming and other forms of wit at www.robmiles.com and can be found on twitter with the unsurprising name of RobMiles.

Andy Wigley 

Andy Wigley is a device application development MVP and co-founder of UK-based mobile consultancy firm, Appa Mundi. He is the co-author of a number of Microsoft Press books, including the Mobile Development Handbook and the .NET Compact Framework Core Reference and is a regular speaker at major conferences such as Tech Ed. He lives in the mountains of Snowdonia, North Wales where a strong mobile phone signal is a total luxury which has helped him to hone his skills developing offline mobile apps. You can read his blog, and those of his Appamundi colleagues at http://mobileworld.appamundi.com/blogs.    

Six weeks ago we released the 3rd Internet Explorer Platform Preview as part of the commitment we made at MIX10 to release updated platform previews approximately every 8 weeks. Today, we’re releasing the 4th Internet Explorer Platform Preview and with that sending the signal to partners and developers that now is the time to start getting their sites ready for Internet Explorer 9 Beta.

With this latest platform preview we’ve updated the demos on the Internet Explorer Test Drive site to give you a sneak peak of the sort of web experiences developers will be able to deliver on Internet Explorer 9.

Our new open and transparent approach with the platform previews has been invaluable for getting early and quality feedback from developers. As with previous platform previews, our focus remains on:

• Enabling the same markup to work across browsers
• Delivering all-round performance
• Through Windows and modern hardware, unlocking the next class of experiences for the web with hardware acceleration

Developers and partners have been excited to experience the new IE9 web development and design capabilities, including fully hardware accelerating all graphics and text through Windows, our new Chakra JavaScript engine, as well as our support for modern standards like HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1 and DOM. We’ve received more than 1,300 pieces of feedback from developers and made many changes as a result.

Dean Hachamovitch goes into much more detail about Internet Explorer Platform Preview 4 over on the IE Engineering Blog.

We’re delighted with the response from the developer community to the platform previews and – as Dean mentions– we have seen over 2.5M downloads of the Internet Explorer Platform Previews and over 20M visits to the Internet Explorer Test Drive site.

Between now and the Beta, we encourage developers to test their web sites with PP4 to make sure well they’ll work with the Internet Explorer 9 Beta and begin to reimagine what they can build when they have a browser that is architected to take advantage of your hardware through Windows.

If you want to try it for yourself, you can visit the Internet Explorer Test Drive site, download Internet Explorer Platform Preview 4 and try some of the new demos like IE Beatz, Psychedelic Browsing and Hamster Dance Revolution.

Last night I spent some time with IE Beatz and came up with this beat. If you can do better – and I’m sure you can – why not post in the comments!

With the Windows Phone Developer Tools in Beta and Windows Phone 7 in Technical Preview, now is the time for you to build Windows Phone 7 apps in earnest. We have refreshed our developer documentation to help you build those apps, and we have two, new design-focused documents to help you make them look beautiful.

First up, the UI Design and Interaction Guide for Windows Phone 7 v2.0 has been updated from the ground up for beta. With additional information and a new layout we hope you will find more readable, this guide provides detailed information about UI elements and controls, UI system behaviors, and the interaction model for the touch interface based on the design system internally named Metro. Designers and developers should read this guide to learn about the dos and don’ts of UI implementations for their Windows Phone apps. We’ve made it easier to find specific guidance by putting it in bold in the right-hand column of each page.

Also available are the Design Templates for Windows Phone 7. These are a collection of 28 layered Photoshop template files and the Segoe WP font family that can be used to create pixel-perfect application layouts, to help guide UI development, or to pitch an idea. These design templates showcase many controls that are a part of the Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta. They also include examples of controls that are a part of Windows Phone, but are not available as a part of the Windows Phone Developer Tools.

Let us know what you think. If you have suggestions or feedback about these design resources, please email us at wp7des@microsoft.com and help spread the word – if you find these resources helpful, please tweet about them.

You’ve heard us talk about some great Device Stage implementations such as Sierra Wireless AirCards, Kodak EasyShare M530, Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro and Canon Cameras and Printers but never about how to make Device Stage experiences come to life. We want to make it as easy as possible for our partners to enable Device Stage for their hardware products. So we’re excited to announce that the Device Stage Visual Editor Tool is now available for our partners. This new new tool and accompanying user’s guide make it extremely easy for our partners (device manufacturers) to develop and build custom Device Stage metadata packages for their products that include realistic device icons, eye-catching branding, and tasks tailored to the needs of their customers.

Glenn Ward, Principal Group Program Manager on the Windows Planning Ecosystem Team, describes the tool as “a more intuitive process for partners to create their own Device Stage experience” and that it “enables faster experience prototyping, with an instant preview of the device experience that awaits the user on Windows 7.” The diagram from the user guide says it all.

Device Stage in Windows 7 is a new way for consumers to interact with their “Compatible with Windows 7” logo’d devices. Device Stage connects users to the status information, tasks, and settings they most care about – things like memory and battery status, uploading pictures, synching media, and accessing support resources. This Windows 7 feature enables device manufacturers to brand and customize the experience to help their customers get the most from their device.

To get the most out of this tool, partners that are new to Device Stage should review the Windows Summit sessions dedicated to the topic (viewing the sessions requires a quick and free registration).  There’s a session for each device class supported by Device Stage (printers, cameras, media players, mobile phones, etc.) but make sure to start with the Device Stage Workshops-Getting Started session.

I am pleased to announce that Intuit is developing an SDK for Windows Phone 7, making it easier for developers to write Windows Phone 7 applications that interface with the Intuit Partner Platform’s cloud services for businesses, including QuickBooks. This enables business professionals to access key data from a variety of Windows Phone 7 devices and easily view their cloud data hosted in Windows Azure.

Our work with Intuit further demonstrates the industry momentum for Windows Phone 7. Today’s announcement also extends the relationship we began with Intuit in January, when we announced that we were joining forces to deliver Web applications to millions of small businesses through the Intuit App Center via integration between the two companies cloud services platforms:  the Intuit Partner Platform and Windows Azure platform.

Both Microsoft and Intuit Partner Platform remain committed to providing developers from both companies additional opportunities for revenue and by enabling them to develop for the cloud and for Windows Phone 7 devices, while also reaching Intuit’s vast network of businesses, we are certainly meeting this goal. I look forward to this continued relationship with Intuit and am excited about future opportunities.

Today I’m at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington D.C., meeting with our partners and talking about the capabilities that Windows Phone 7 offers for creating mobile solutions and applications to help them grow their business.

I’m really energized by the conversations I’m having with partners at this year’s conference. I’m seeing some really exciting solutions coming together for Windows Phone 7 as partners from around the globe apply their unique skills to build compelling experiences for our mutual customers.

With a focus on end users, we designed an entirely different kind of phone experience and platform for partners to build on. Windows Phone 7 supports the needs of organizations in new ways and excels at a broad range of tasks that people do most frequently, which means it will be appealing to more people than previous versions. We incorporated software and services from across the company and integrated them into a rich set of experiences called hubs including People, Office, Marketplace, Pictures, Music and Video, and Games. Windows Phone 7 also delivers a powerful application platform for people to create compelling new experiences.

The net result is new opportunities for systems integrators and people creating applications to get into or to expand their businesses, such as:

• Creating compelling mobile solutions and services for businesses
• Providing unique experiences through mobile applications

In a session at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, I note that there is a billion dollar opportunity in smartphones. After the conference, you can access my presentation entitled “Windows Phone Partner Opportunity” on demand from Digital WPC.

If you’re interested in growing your mobile practice, here are the top things you can do.

Create Compelling Mobile Solutions and Services for Businesses

Businesses are progressively mobilizing their workforce to help them be more productive, creating opportunity for new services and solutions. Integration with popular Microsoft offerings like SharePoint Server, Exchange Server, Microsoft Office and Business Productivity Online Suite helps people communicate and collaborate through their smartphone, PC or the browser.

Windows Phone 7 uniquely enables collaboration through the SharePoint Workspace client, empowering people to download, edit and synchronize documents with their phone so that their teams always have a current document to work from. The overall services opportunity for Microsoft partners and developers with SharePoint is $5.6 billion today and will grow to over $6.7 billion in FY12. With SharePoint Workspace client and a rich Office hub experience that includes access to the mobile versions of OneNote, PowerPoint, Excel and Word for viewing and editing documents, Windows Phone 7 offers a unique way for partners to deliver value to their customers and to grow their services business.

Windows Phone 7 was also designed to help organizations make the most efficient use of resources by enabling IT departments to use familiar tools and existing infrastructure to manage phones and to help meet corporate security and management needs.

Provide Unique Experiences Through Mobile Applications

We’ve invested heavily to deliver a significant step forward for developers and designers, with a new application platform, world-class tools, and an application store, the Windows Phone Marketplace. This system enables the quick and efficient creation of compelling applications and easy distribution to every Windows Phone 7 user.

People creating applications for Windows Phone 7 have access to a powerful and familiar arsenal of tools–Silverlight, the XNA Framework, Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend. These tools, combined with a strong set of web services enable quick and efficient development of compelling experiences for business and consumer use that can easily be extended from the phone to any screen. Best of all, these powerful tools are available free of charge, reducing development costs and making it an even more compelling proposition.

Today we announced the immediate availability of the beta version of the Windows Phone Developer Tools, which include all the tools necessary to start building new experiences now. Applications built with the beta version of the tools will be near ready to submit to the Windows Phone Marketplace. The tools will RTM later this summer, at which time final touches could be added with components announced previously such as Maps, Pivot or Panorama control. More information about the beta tools can be found here.

Aside from providing a great set of tools, the new design and integrated experiences in Windows Phone 7 provide an opportunity to create a fresh take on business applications—with richness on the client combined with the power of the cloud. The following picture is what a custom Silverlight-based productivity application might look like on Windows Phone 7. With a swipe, the user could switch between “Dashboard”, “Sales” and “Marketing” to access up to date business information.

All of these great applications will be delivered through the Windows Phone Marketplace, enabling partners to sell or distribute directly to customers. A clear advantage for developers and designers in the Windows Phone Marketplace is a structured yet open and transparent marketplace for applications. Additionally, we’ve recently lowered Marketplace fees, reduced administrative overhead and introduced private beta distribution for the better testing of applications.

We’re working closely with partners to help them learn more about the new Windows Phone 7. If you would like to get more information about opportunities with Windows Phone 7 or the Windows Phone Marketplace, you can find the latest resources at our web site: http://Partner.microsoft.com/windowsphone.

First things first: go get the Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta. It has arrived!

The term “Beta” is understood to mean that things are close to being finished.  Well, that’s what we mean anyway. This Beta release represents the near final version of the tools for building applications and games for Windows Phone 7. 

Since the initial CTP release of the tools just this March, the Windows Phone Developer Tool CTP has been widely embraced by the community, and they have shown what’s possible on our new development platform.

It’s time to get serious about building the actual apps and games for Windows Phone 7 that consumers will be looking for starting this holiday season.

One of the things I really want to do is just take a step back and congratulate the entire Windows Phone 7 team.  They have done an amazing job of delivering code month after month on our path to releasing later this year.  Check out this timeline:

• Feb 2010 – Windows Phone 7 was unveiled at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
• Mar 2010 – The application platform was unveiled at MIX 10 in Las Vegas.  With that, we had the first CTP of the Windows Phone Developer Tools.
• Apr 2010 – The tools received an updated, and the CTP Refresh shipped.
• Jun 2010 – Windows Phone Marketplace details unveiled at TechEd 2010.  Get the Windows Phone 7 Application Certification Requirements.
• July 2010 – Beta release of Windows Phone Developer Tools, and the preview developer phones start shipping to ISVs

Whew! The Windows Phone engineering team has been crushing it.

Here’s a link to the release notes for the beta, but I wanted to talk about a few top level items:

• Microsoft Expression Blend for Windows Phone – Blend is now integrated completely into the Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta.
• Developer Registration Utility – Now you can unlock you Windows Phone 7 device for development purposes.
• XAP Deployment Tool – if you want to deploy XAP files directly to an unlocked device, now you can.
• The Windows Phone 7 API – we’re getting close to completion.  Many namespaces that were previously distributed over several different DLLs have now been consolidated into one.  In addition, there have been realignments and changes in several other namespaces as well.  Push Notifications, Accelerometer and App Bar APIs have all been updated.
• Additional Controls – There are some additional controls coming in the next few weeks (i.e. Panorama and Pivot) which didn’t make the beta release.  They are coming soon.
• Control Templates – Silverlight for Windows Phone control templates have been updated to match evolutions in the overall OS.

Get Trained – Windows Phone 7 Jump Start

Windows Phone 7 JumpStart is a FREE virtual live class for developers interested in developing applications and games for Windows Phone 7.  We’re providing this in partnership with our MS Learning team. The course is organized into four virtual instructor-led sessions that are of 3-hour duration.  They will be presented by forthcoming MS Press authors and MVP’s, Andy Wigley and Rob Miles. It will provide developers a jump start for developing Windows Phone 7 applications.  The Labs will be completed offline with office hours access to the instructors.

The dates for these course sessions are:

• July 20 – 8am: Session One: Getting Started with Microsoft Windows Phone and Silverlight
• July 20 – 1pm: Session Two: Programming Game Applications with XNA
• July 22 – 8am: Session Three:  Programming Applications with Silverlight
• July 22 – 1pm: Session Four:  Review and Wrap Up

Go register for the course now!

Devices for Developers

We made a promise last month that we would be getting pre-production preview devices to developers this month. We are keeping that promise. In fact, the very first preview devices were awarded last week to a pair of pretty amazing high-school students who won the Windows Phone “Rockstar” contest as part of the Imagine Cup. When we saw what they had done, we knew we had to get them preview phones.

Starting next Monday (July 19th), we start shipping the devices more broadly. Sadly, we will not be able to meet all of that demand.  We are planning to set up deploy and test labs in major cities to make it a little easier for everyone who wants to have access to a preview phone to have it. More on that soon.

Lastly, to get your name in the queue, assuming you haven’t already sent in an email, you can now send an email to wp7req@microsoft.com.  A field representative will get back to you as soon as possible. Again, these are preview phones, so they are limited in quantity. When you send email, please include the following information:

• Your name
• Company name, if applicable
• What city/state/country you are located in
• App(s) you plan on developing (category and brief description)

Twitter

At some point, we had to mention Twitter, right? We strongly encourage developers establish a connection with their local field evangelist, since they will be the ones ultimately putting phones into the hands of developers, but they can also point you in the right direction for solving problems, get you connected to other partners, and generally help out. To make it easier to get to know your local evangelist, we’ve set up this list – wp7dev/champs (http://twitter.com/wp7dev/champs).

You can also follow other members of the team based on their area of coverage:

• @ckindel – WP7 Dev Platform
• @ai – Mobile Social Media
• @brandonwatson – Marketplace & Platform
• @cschormann – Silverlight & Blend (UPDATED: Fixed incorrect spelling/link)
• @mklucher – Gaming & XNA
• @ozymandias – Gaming
• @shawnhargreaves – Game Design

In Closing

This is a big milestone for everyone involved in Windows Phone 7 – inside and outside of Microsoft – and we hope you share in our excitement. With the Beta release of the tools, developers can build apps with a “ship it” mentality. There have already been so many amazing apps shown running on the emulator, and a lucky few who have been able to deploy to the phones at our developer events. We’re blown away by the early look at the apps, all of the sharing in the community, the blogging, and the screenshots. There’s a huge team of people here in Redmond who are all watching for new content tagged with “wp7dev” or “Windows Phone 7 Development.” It’s not uncommon for links to get passed around with a “wow, check out what these guys did!”  Keep it up, and keep the faith.

Are you running a 64-bit edition of Windows 7? There is a high likelihood you are. As of June 2010, we see that 46% of all PCs worldwide running Windows 7 are running a 64-bit edition of Windows 7. That is, nearly half of all PCs running Windows 7 are running 64-bit. Compared to Windows Vista at 3 and a half years after launch, only 11% of PCs running Windows Vista worldwide are running 64-bit. With Windows 7, running a 64-bit OS is becoming the norm.

A primary benefit of 64-bit Windows is the increase in addressable memory. This makes more “bits” available to Windows (the OS), which means more information can be “addressed” at once. 32-bit architectures have a memory ceiling of 4GB while the 64-bit architecture increases the memory ceiling to approximately 17.2 billion GB or RAM! Windows 7 is designed to use up to 192 GB of RAM (see SKU and OS comparisons here), a huge jump compared to limits with all 32-bit systems.

Essentially, 64-bit Windows allows your PC to take advantage of more memory to do more things. If you are like me and are running tons of apps, you can see a real difference in performance. Aside from the performance gains, there are also security enhancements and support for virtualization as well.

The reason for the jump in transition to 64-bit PCs can be attributed to a few things. The first is the price of memory has dropped over the last several years making it easier for OEMs to up the amount of memory in the PCs they ship. And most major processors in PCs today are capable of running a 64-bit OS. There are also more and more compatible devices and applications for PCs running 64-bit Windows 7– but I’ll talk more about this in a minute.

OEMs today have fully embraced 64-bit. We have seen many OEMs convert entire consumer lines of PCs to 64-bit only – which can be seen quite a bit today in North America. According to Stephen Baker at NPD, 77% of PCs sold at retail in April 2010 in the U.S. had a 64-bit edition of Windows 7 pre-installed.

And businesses are adopting Windows 7 64-bit as well. According to Gartner*, by 2014 75% of all business PCs will be running a 64-bit edition of Windows. Intel recently migrated to 64-bit Windows 7 citing the following on their deployment:

“Our decision to move to 64-bit computing allows us to take advantage of new systems with higher memory capabilities while positioning Intel to take advantage of 64-bit applications as they become available. Moving to this computing model also provides additional security benefits, including Data Execution Prevention (DEP), which helps prevent malicious code exploits by disallowing applications from executing code from a non-executable memory region.”

Intel has released a whitepaper on their deployment of 64-bit Windows 7, which can be found here.

As I mentioned previously, there are more compatible hardware and software for PCs today thanks to the amazing work from our partners (ISVs and IHVs) making their products compatible with 64-bit. Through the Windows Logo Program (the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo today), hardware partners are required to develop 64-bit drivers for their devices and software partners are required to have their applications compatible with 64-bit Windows 7. This groundwork was laid with the Windows Logo Program for Windows Vista and carries through to today with Windows 7. To understand more about hardware and software for 64-bit Windows, check out this article by our Help and How-to team.

To find out what’s compatible with 64-bit Windows 7, millions of consumers and businesses are visiting the Windows 7 Compatibility Center where they can easily check 64-bit compatibility on thousands of devices and applications, get 64-bit driver and software downloads and send feedback on their experience. You can also find products that have met the Windows testing requirements to earn the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo.

And the Windows 7 Compatibility Center recently went international with support for 17 markets in 12 languages – see this recent post by Mark Relph on the latest release.

To find out if your PC can run a 64-bit edition of Windows 7, you can run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. If your PC isn’t currently capable of running a 64-bit edition of Windows 7, the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor will let you know if there are any memory upgrades that might be done to move to 64-bit. If you buy a new PC, you are likely to get 64-bit Windows 7 pre-installed but if you decide to upgrade your PC, all versions of Windows 7 (except Starter) include both a 32-bit and 64-bit DVD in the box.

As you can see, millions of consumers and business customers alike are making the transition to 64-bit computing with Windows 7. For me personally, almost every laptop and desktop PC I have is running 64-bit Windows 7.

Happy 64-bit computing!

* Gartner, Inc., “Plan to Implement Some 64-Bit Versions of Windows 7,” Stephen Kleynhans, October 6, 2009