developers

Vote For Apps At Windows Phone Marketplace Requests Page

February 9, 2012 | By Pradeep

We already have an official uservoice page for Windows Phone to post our feature requests. Scott J Dorman, a Microsoft MVP has started a new uservoice page for marketplace requests alone. As usual you can vote for your favorite apps that you would like to see on Windows Phone Marketplace.

So far Skype, Instagram, Mint, Audible, Pandora leads the list of apps.

Check the page here.

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Developers: Photon Cloud Adds Support For Windows Phone Platform

February 8, 2012 | By Pradeep

Photon Cloud has added the support for Windows Phone platform for its network engine. Photon Cloud allows you to rapidly develop online multiplayer games . You can now add multiplayer to your games within a fraction of the time you normally would need to develop fast and reliable networking. It even supports cross-platform gaming. There is a free SDK which allows you to develop in C#/.NETck 4.0 and easy UI creation and view-management via Silverlight/XAML.

Check out here for more details.

via: wpcentral

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Only 48 apps using Native Code in Marketplace

February 8, 2012 | By Surur

nativeapps

Tezawaly from Nanapho.jp have examined the manifests of all the apps in Marketplace to determine if they used native code. To use native code the manifest needs to contain the ‘WMInteropManifest.xml’ file.

Surprisingly only 48 apps turned out to use the feature, 32 from OEMs, 9 from carriers, 7 from others.

The usual suspects are involved – DLNA apps, Augmented Reality apps and even compass apps from before Mango supported these features.

Surprisingly GPS navigation apps like Telenav GPS Nav and AT&T Navigator also used native code, likely to make porting as quick as possible.

Interestingly the practice has become more common, with 55% of the apps using native code being released in the second half of 2011. This is likely due to increasing pressure on OEMs to differentiate their offerings and due to devices by more OEMs like Nokia entering the market.

Native apps provide developers access to the full capabilities of the hardware, beyond what is exposed by the Silverlight API, and makes it easier to port applications from one OS to another. On the other hand it allows applications the opportunity to bring down the whole operating system and device when they crash or cause unforeseen problems, such as the problems in the early days of the Tango video calling app.

Surprisingly the list does not appear to contain any games. I am not sure if this is a true reflection of the situation, but if it is, it means we should probably be expecting a bit more from Indie developers on Windows Phone, given how great some of the Xbox Live titles look.

See the full list at Nanapho.jp here.

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Developers: How To Get Your App Featured In Windows Phone Marketplace?

February 7, 2012 | By Pradeep

How To Get Your App Featured In Windows Phone Marketplace? I know many Windows Phone developers ask the same question again and again. Before answering the above, what will happen when you get featured on Windows Phone Marketplace.

Panorama Placement: Panorama placement is the premiere placement for promotion on the Windows Phone Marketplace. The value of this placement is immense as we have seen a 2000% increase in downloads for an app (on average) that is featured in panorma mode.

Featured Icon Placement: Being promoted as a featured icon is the second best way to be featured on the Marketplace. Apps that get Featured Icon Placement on average see an 800% increase in app/game downloads during their time being featured.

Featured List: The third mode of getting featured in the Marketplace is the Featured List. It does return an average of a 150% increase in app/game downloads.

The answer to the question of “How To Get Your App Featured In Windows Phone Marketplace?” depends on whether your app has all the three important attributes listed below,

Delight
Utility
Functionality

You can read each of them in detail through this blog post from MSDN.

This post was the fifth and final post in a series of five posts on strategies for being successful on the Windows Phone Marketplace. The first post (publishing in the right geographies) is here. The second post (trial mode and the art of the upsell) is here. The third post (finding the pricing sweet spot) is here. The fourth post (the differentiation game) is here.

Great job by Paul Laberge.

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AppDeals : Get great deals! Plus we offer to 5 developers to have their app featured for FREE in February!

February 1, 2012 | By aheadsolutions

2 of 4 AppDeals was launched one month ago and we can already say it’s a big success. We want to thank all Windows Phone users and developers that are more and more every day to use AppDeals app, making it one of Windows Phone must have app today for users that want to be informed about selected or exclusive deals and get paid apps for less or for FREE!

For its 1st month anniversary, AppDeals app offers the opportunity to 5 developers to have one Windows Phone app featured for FREE on AppDeals.

Those developers will be chosen in February among the first 100 developers than SUBMIT THEIR WINDOWS PHONE App on our new AppDeals web site!

With the number of AppDeals users growing up fast, we will be able to provide users with more and more exclusive deals. So don’t hesitate to tell your friends about this app and hopefuly you will discover some great apps you’ll love and use!

At Ahead Solutions we want to build up great mobile services. AppDeals is one of them. We will be happy to welcome Windows Phone developers that care about their apps and either want to publish news or propose a deal to Windows Phone users like Utlimate Poker Manager, MyThings Pro, AlcooloTest, GeoMemory, Measure Note, Intrusion Alarm, AlterEgo and many more already did…

Don’t hesitate to contact our team anytime you need it.
AppDeals is a unique service that now helps users and developers!

appdealqr Sebastien.
CEO & Founder, Ahead Solutions.

Follow us on twitter: www.twitter.com/appdealswp

Download AppDeals for FREE here.

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Visual Studio Achievements For Windows Phone Now Available From Marketplace

February 1, 2012 | By Pradeep

Visual Studio Achievements for Windows Phone allows users to track their achievements and share it with others. Microsoft announced the program two weeks ago, using a Visual Studio Extension achievements are unlocked based on your activity.

From Microsoft,

A software engineer’s glory so often goes unnoticed. Attention seems to come either when there are bugs or when the final project ships. But rarely is a developer appreciated for all the nuances and subtleties of a piece of code–and all the heroics it took to write it. With Visual Studio Achievements Beta, your talents are recognized as you perform various coding feats, unlock achievements and earn badges.

Download the free app here from the marketplace.

via: wpcentral

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Microsoft Releases Amazon Web Services SDK For Windows Phone Beta

January 31, 2012 | By Pradeep

Windows Phone Interoperability team at Microsoft today announced the availability of the beta version of Amazon Web Services SDK for Windows Phone. The SDK will let developers quickly connect and integrate Windows Phone applications with Amazon Web Services such as S3, SimpleDB, and SQS Cloud Services. This will help developers familiar with AWS and working on Android, iOS or any other platform to port their apps to Windows Phone with this SDK.

You can download the SDK , along with the complete source code. More details can be found here and here.

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US Developers: Win Awesome Prizes By Taking On 30 to Launch Challenge From Microsoft

January 31, 2012 | By Pradeep

30 to Launch is a new program for Windows Phone developers powered by Microsoft Platform Ready (MPR) group. You have to sign up for the challenge and complete a Windows Phone app and publish it in marketplace. Also there will be an opportunity to register for App Hub for free in week 2 of the challenge.

Contest Prizes:

Four (4) Grand Prizes. Each winner will receive a Prize Package consisting of the following items:
? Samsung – 46″ Class 3D / HDTV
? Samsung – 2.1-Ch. Home Theater SoundBar System with Wireless Subwoofer
? Two DVDs for 3D Movies
? A pair of 3D Viewing Glasses
? Xbox 360 4GB Console with Kinect
? Two Xbox Games
The total Approximate Retail Value (ARV) of this Package is $3,000

Five hundred (500) incentive prizes. Each winner will receive one (1) Nokia Lumia 800 phone. Approximate Retail Value (ARV) $500.00

Get ready and start your app development soon. Try to be in the first five hundred people and win the awesome Lumia 800.

More contest details here.

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Developers: Guidance For Choosing Between Panoramas, Pivots And/Or Pages

January 30, 2012 | By Pradeep

As part of the 31 Weeks Of Windows Phone Metro Design series, Microsoft UX Designer Arturo Toledo today posted a very important aspect of app development in Windows Phone. How do you choose between Panoramas, Pivots And/Or Pages for your app ?

According to Arturo,

Panoramas are for content consumption.

Pivots are mostly for content consumption and in some cases for content input.

Pages are for one dimensional (one view) content consumption scenarios (whether lists or video, audio, images/photos…), great for content input and great for content generation.

Read his post on his blog to get a clear view of panoramas, pivots, etc,.

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Windows Phone Developers: Microsoft Advertising pubCenter Expands To 7 New Countries

January 26, 2012 | By Pradeep

Yesterday, Microsoft Advertising announced the expansion of pubCenter to 7 new countries around the world. The new countries that are added to the list is as follows,

India
Sweden
Switzerland
Japan
Mexico
Hong Kong
Denmark

Now Windows Phone developers from nineteen countries can make money by taking advantage of Microsoft’s Advertising solution for mobile developers. Also developers can now recieve ad money in their local currency when their ad revenue reaches the limit as seen in the above picture.

Source: MS Advertising

Thanks to Niranjan for the heads up.

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[Your App Here] Advertising Campaign For Developers From Microsoft & Nokia

January 26, 2012 | By Pradeep

Great opportunity for Windows Phone platform developers to showcase their app among the consumers. Windows Phone team along with Nokia is running a new program called ”Your App Here” advertising campaign for developers. As part of the program, the selected apps will be showcased in ad campaigns by Nokia & Windows Phone across the web in banner ads, marketplace placement, etc,. All you need is to develop a high quality app that takes advantage of Windows Phone platform and submit it in the website http://www.wpyourapphere.com/.

Happy Coding..

Thanks to everyone who sent this info.

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For Developers: Buzzdoes app marketing service working on Windows Phone support

January 24, 2012 | By Surur

After creating your amazing app, the biggest challenge for developers it letting the world know about it.

At WMPoweruser.com we do a bit to help that process, but of course there are many other services, such as ADduplex, which recently served their billionth impression.

Buzzdoes is an app promotion system which uses the app downloaders to spread the word about the app and rewards them in turn (and of course charges the developer for the privilege, but only if they gain new users).

The service currently supports iPhone and Android, but we have heard they are currently working on supporting Windows Phone 7, and will have a product soon.

Read more about their current offering at their website here.

Is there any other services which support Windows Phone 7 to help devs promote their apps? Let us know in the comments below.

Thanks Ryan for the news.

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App Hub reporting 0 downloads for some developer’s apps

January 21, 2012 | By andrewbares

Stop Music reports zero downloads despite being ranked 1,700 out of all the apps on the Marketplace

In addition to the c101b001 Marketplace error some Windows Phone users are experiencing, some developers are also reporting issues with Marketplace data.

Numerous threads have appeared on the App Hub, all reporting that their app downloads have went down to 0 in record time. This thread has 28 replies and was just started 10 days ago.

It seems like Microsoft has a history with inconsistent download reports. A thread from 6 months ago reports the same issue.

There is some good news to all of this. If the issue is the same as it was 6 months ago, the inconsistent download reports have absolutely no affect on apps ratings, and will actually be updated once Microsoft solves the issue. So in the end, everything should be fine!

Have any other developers experienced issues with the App Hub? Tell us in the comments below.

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