WPBlogger now available in the Marketplace for free

My Google Blogger client for the Windows Phone 7 has been approved is available in the Marketplace. It’s a free application, ad supported, that allows you to create simple blog posts for all your Blogger blogs. In the future more features will be included such as adding pictures to a post, view/update posts, comments…

Here’s a link that will direct you to WPBlogger on the Marketplace:
http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=dc93e334-809a-e011-986b-78e7d1fa76f8

If you have any problems, questions, remarks, ideas… just let me know.

For the technically curious people, I’ve used the following tools to create WPBlogger:
- Hammock, for the communication with Google API
- Coding4Fun, for some UI stuff such as the about box
- Adduplex, special ad network to promote your app, your app shows ads for other wp7 apps, and they show ads for yours

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no web.config transformation in local Azure

If I’m not mistaken this happened after the Azure SDK 1.3 update. Web.config transformation didn’t when running your website in the local Development Fabric/Compute Emulator. Running your website outside of Azure or publishing to Azure still executed the config trasformation.

To fix this, unload your Azure project, open the project file for edit and add the tag

<packagewebrole>true</packagewebrole>

as a child of the following element:

<Project ...>
   <PropertyGroup>
      ...
      <packagewebrole>true</packagewebrole>
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Who’s owing wp7 app available

Who’s owing is now available for Windows Phone 7, get it from the Marketplace.

Do you have any friends or colleagues that owe you anything or are you the one always forgetting what you owe to others? With “Who’s owing” you can keep track of what people are owing you or what you are owing them. You can even send them a reminder directly from the application.

If you have any questions, remarks or ideas don’t hesitate to contact me, also possible from inside the app.

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SOASchool Certification, Exam Information

Here you have some basic information about the different exams of SOASchool certification:

S90.01: 50 questions, 82% pass grade, 1 hour
S90.02: 50 questions, 78% pass grade, 1 hour
S90.03: 50 questions, 80% pass grade, 1 hour
S90.04: 50 questions, 68% pass grade, 1 hour
S90.05 (lab style exam): 20 questions, 70% pass grade, 2 hours, choose 1 answer from 4
S90.08: 50 questions, 78% pass grade, 1 hour
S90.09: (lab style exam): 20 questions, 60% pass grade, 2 hours, choose 1 answer from 4 and choose all that apply

Posted in SOA | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Officialy a Certified SOA Consultant

SOA Systems has processed my last exam and now I’m officially a Certified SOA Consultant, and here’s the proof:

In December I’ll probably start the SOA Architect track, just 2 more exams (S90.08 and S90.09). I’ll give more information on those exams once I started. After those two I’ll probably stop, although Cloud Computing Specialist could be interesting as well :-)

Posted in SOA | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Passed exam S90.05: SOA Technology Lab

So I finally finished my Certified SOA Consultant certification. This last exam is all about XML, XSD, WSDL and XML namespaces. The exam is not very difficult but you have to pay attention to some details (namespaces!!).

The exam style is a bit different from the previous ones… It consists of 20 multiple choice questions (only 1 correct answer) and you have 2 hours to finish it with a passing grade of 70% (6 wrong answers). I managed to finish after 1h15 including review. At the end I only had doubts about 1 question and I passed with only 2 wrong answers.

Posted in SOA | Tagged , | 1 Comment

ListBox ItemTemplate Stretching

Here’s a simple solution to get the contents of your ListBox ItemTemplate to stretch over the full width of the ListBox. Add this to the declaration of your ListBox:

<ListBox.ItemContainerStyle>
<Style TargetType="ListBoxItem">
<Setter Property="HorizontalContentAlignment" Value="Stretch"></Setter>
</Style>
</ListBox.ItemContainerStyle>

Posted in silverlight, Windows Phone 7 | Tagged , | Leave a comment

WP7 frameworks

Here’s a list of some interesting WP7 frameworks to keep an eye on. If you know other frameworks please add the to the list.

Picker Box
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/priozersk/archive/2010/09/14/update-to-the-picker-box-control.aspx

http://msaf.codeplex.com/
Extensible Web Analytics Framework for Microsoft Silverlight, WPF, and Windows Phone 7 Applications.

http://bewisephonecontrols.codeplex.com/
Set of tools for Windows Phone 7 (Jump List, Rating control)

http://writeablebitmapex.codeplex.com/
The WriteableBitmapEx library is a collection of extension methods for Silverlight’s WriteableBitmap. The WriteableBitmap class that was added in Silverlight 3, allows the direct manipulation of a bitmap and could be used to generate fast procedural images by drawing directly to a bitmap. The WriteableBitmap API is very minimalistic and there’s only the raw Pixels  array for such operations. The WriteableBitmapEx library tries to compensate that with extensions methods that are easy to use like built in methods and offer GDI+ like functionality. The library extends the WriteableBitmap class with elementary and fast (2D drawing) functionality, conversion methods and functions to combine (blit) WriteableBitmaps.
The extension methods are grouped into different CS files with a partial class. It is possible to include just a few methods by using the specific source CS files directly or all extension methods through the built library assembly.

http://facebooksdk.codeplex.com/
This toolkit helps .Net developers create Facebook iframe and web apps using the most current and fully supported Facebook APIs. This toolkit allows you to quickly create a facebook application, or integrate your website with Facebook, and use the new Graph API or old rest API.

http://nroute.codeplex.com/
nRoute is a composite application framework for creating MVVM-style applications in Silverlight, WPF, and Windows Phone 7.

http://phone7.codeplex.com/
This projet contains a port of the Prism: patterns & practices Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight for Windows Phone 7. It’s contain a small sample project to show you how to work with.

http://silverlight.codeplex.com/
A product of the Microsoft Silverlight team, the Silverlight Toolkit adds new functionality for designers, developers, and the community to provide an efficient way to help shape product development. It includes full open source code, samples, documentation, and design-time support for controls focusing on both Silverlight 4 as well as the Windows Phone.

http://winphone7db.codeplex.com/
This project implements a Isolated Storage (IsolatedStorage) based database for Windows Phone 7. The database consists of table object, each one supporting any number of columns. Use this as persistance engine for WIndows Phone 7 Silverlight (and XNA) applications.

http://wp7dropbox.codeplex.com/
WP7DropBox is a library for DropBox designed for Silverlight on WP7. WP7DropBox includes a basic OAuth library, so it’s simple to use and build in to most WP7 silverlight apps.

http://caliburnmicro.codeplex.com/
A small, yet powerful implementation of Caliburn designed for WPF, Silverlight and WP7. The framework implements a variety of UI patterns for solving real-world problems. Patterns that are enabled include MVC, MVP, Presentation Model (MVVM), and Application Controller.

Posted in Windows Phone 7 | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Passed exam S90.04: SOA Project Delivery & Methodology

This exam doesn’t differ a lot from the others, just the passmark is much lower, 68%.

Concerning the content of the exam, most questions concerned service analysis, service modeling and the involvement of the different SOA roles in the different stages. When I saw the low passmark I thought the exam would be more difficult but my score was in line with the rest, so I wouldn’t say it’s more difficult maybe just a bit more confusing.

Now one more exam to pass and I’m a certified SOA Consultant. The fifth exam will be quite technical (XML, XML schema, WSDL, SOAP, REST…) and the exam structure will also be different. 20 questions, 2 hours and single choice from 4 answers.

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Moved to wordpress.com

So I moved my blog to wordpress.com, most things should work as I mapped my domain to my new wordpress blog. There is still some work to do (theme, rss…) but the most important thing, my posts, are available.

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