Microsoft Sponsored WP7 App Development Contest - Windows Phone 7 Software Development

Hey all, In addition to the XDA WP7 dev contest currently running, Microsoft is sponsoring an additional competition that closes on June 6th called the WP7 app challenge.
10 finalist will be chosen and given two free passes to Microsoft's Partner Conference in Los Angeles in July (it normally cost ~2k each to attend) where they will compete on stage in front of a live audience for the title.
My microsoft sources are telling me that they will also get a sitdown at the show with the WP7 dev team and VP + that each entry will get a free set of cool WP7 dev tools from one of their vendors.
http://wp7challenge.com

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$8000 for the winner of a visually compelling WP7S App

Windows Phone 7 Series "Rockstar" Award
To win the Windows Phone 7 Series “Rockstar” Award, your team is challenged to create a Windows Phone 7 Series application (app) in either Silverlight or XNA. This app needs to be designed with the consumer in mind and should be as visually compelling as possible. Be prepared to demonstrate your team’s app entry running on an actual Windows Phone 7 Series device or in an emulator. Mobile applications are “all the” buzz today. Windows Phone 7 Series is a revolutionary new platform and you have the opportunity to be a part of it. This is your chance to think of something that is truly outside the box and be one of the first developers, ever, to be building apps for Windows Phone 7 Series. Create an app that people will love having on their Windows Phone.
Your team will submit an 'XAP' application package when you’ve completed your application in Silverlight or XNA. The applications will be judged based on originality, the consumer appeal and the unique mobile oriented features integrated in to your app.
DreamSpark has partnered with Windows Marketplace for Mobile so you can sell your mobile applications! Go to DreamSpark to learn more!
Why sign-up for this Award?
More chances to win cash and prizes (including a Windows Phone for each winning team member) and possibly a trip to Poland for the Worldwide Finals!
You don’t need to create a separate entry. Simply incorporate the award elements into your software solution.
You don’t need to be signed up for one of the 5 competitions.
Entering the Windows Phone 7 Series “Rockstar” Award competition is easy:
Register and sign-up your team (maximum team size: 4 people) before May 24, 2010 at 11:59 P.M. GMT.
Read the complete Rules and Regulations for this award competition. Make sure you carefully review and understand the unique entry requirements, and judging criteria.
Submit your entry before May 24, 2010 at 11:59 P.M. GMT. We recommend that you use these helpful guidelines and plan to begin the upload process for your entry at least 24 hours prior to the deadline in case you experience any technical difficulties.
Looking for ideas for apps to work on? Here are a few examples (in no way are you limited to or should you think about building these):
An app that could help you in school, like a study guide or a note-taking app or a test prep app
An app that might help you monitor power consumption at your residence
An app that consumes data from popular API providers, like Twitter or Foursquare, and helps you visualize it in a compelling way
Existing Silverlight web apps that you would want to see running on a Windows Phone
Existing XNA applications that you would want to see running on a Windows Phone
Questions? Post them to the Windows Phone 7 Series "Rockstar" Award forum.
Prizes:
Award Finalists receive:
First Prize: $8,000 USD, a trip to the Worldwide Finals in Warsaw, Poland from July 3-8, 2010, and a Windows Phone for each team member.
Second Prize: $4,000 USD and a Windows Phone for each team member
Third Prize: $3,000 USD and a Windows Phone for each team member
via imaginecup.com via 1800PocketPC
Good luck to you guys, hope one of our own xda-dev member wins gold
I want a Windows Phone wonder if you get it early.

Microsoft: Bring on the Windows Phone 7 developers, developers developers

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft...phone-7-developers-developers-developers/6867
Windcape said:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft...phone-7-developers-developers-developers/6867
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the quoted materia:
ZDNet said:
Microsoft: Bring on the Windows Phone 7 developers, developers developers
On July 19, Microsoft began shipping out thousands of Windows Phone 7 (WP7) test units from LG and Samsung — running a near-final Technical Preview build of its new mobile operating system — to developers all over the world.
It’s crunch time for the Softies. They have developed a new phone platform from scratch that looks and feels different from what’s available from Apple, Android backers and RIM. They’ve built it, but will developers come? Microsoft is counting on its developer tools, its developer outreach programs and developer guarantees (in the form of payments if WP7 apps don’t sell as well as expected) to generate quantity and quality WP7 apps.
It’s no coincidence, as Engadget notes, that the packaging for the WP7 test units says “developers, developers, developers” on the box. (Sorry, there’s no Monkey Boy toy inside.) WP7 phone hardware and data plans are going to be key to determining how well WP7 will do versus its competition when those phones begin shipping in October in Europe and November in the U.S. But the number and kinds of apps that developers build are going to be make-or-break, as well.
There’s an evangelism team that’s been working for months to get developers on board with WP7. I’ve been talking to a number of them for the past few weeks so as to understand their big-picture goals and plans to try to win developers hearts and minds in a world where Windows Mobile is falling out of favor and iOS and Android are grabbing the attention and share.
Charlie Kindel, a 20-year Microsoft veteran who runs the Windows Phone Developer Experience, is one of the main forces behind Microsoft’s mobile developer outreach. After hearing about Microsoft’s renewed focus on mobile (and some of the big names named to run the development side of the project), Kindel joined the team in February 2009.
“Windows Phone is not an end game. It’s more of a means,” said Kindel. “Devs don’t think about apps being just client code any more. Over the past ten years, it has become the case that the core resides in the cloud, and rich clients ‘light it up’ for the user. That means it’s not so much about porting the same apps to different screens, it’s more about creating application components that cross all three screens. As your experience changes, what should an app look like and how do you eanble that? I want to make WP7 one of the screens that is supported.”
(The “cloud,” in this case, can mean Microsoft cloud services like Azure; cloud services someone else has built like Twitter; or services intrinsic to WP7, like notification, location, Xbox Live, etc., Kindel explained.)
I asked Kindel what has surprised him — and what he thinks might surprise others — about WP7. He talked about speaking to 7,000 mobile developers during a recent European tour. Relatively few had ever used Microsoft developer tools. (In one meeting, only about 10 percent had used Microsoft tools of any kind, he said.) When Microsoft showed them Visual Studio and Windows Phone development tools, “the reaction was one of disbelief,” he said, because “our tools were so much better.”
“Developers want to use the tools they already know, but at the same time, they want to know someone has thought holistically about the end-to-end process,” Kindel said. “Even though we are investing in all of these (development) areas, you don’t have to use all of our stuff.”
Microsoft’s message to developers considering WP7 is to use Silverlight or the XNA Framework to write applications and games for the forthcoming phones. And company officials are touting the transparency of the app approval process, as well as the fact that only Microsoft-certified applications will be available via the Windows Phone Marketplace as positives for developers and users.
No matter how good Microsoft’s developer story sounds, Kindel knows that it’s going to be tough to convince some developers there’s enough financial opportunity to make the development of a WP7 app worthwhile.
“The installed market is not very big, so we have to show them how much we’re investing to create a phenomenal user experience. We have to show marketing and engineering seriousness,” he said.
Microsoft hasn’t made any promises as to how many WP7 phone apps there will be out of the gate, or provided many names of developers already committed to the platform. Kindel said to expect a mix of big-name apps and brand-new ones.
“There are a type of apps users just want to exist — things like a service-enabled world clock or a level, for example,” he said. “Then there are apps no one has really thought about yet, with unique capabilities. We want there to be fantastic and beautiful examples of each.”
Who else is on Microsoft’s WP7 developer outreach team? It’s not just members of Microsoft’s Communications Business. I’ve got a “who’s who” post coming up, which includes WP7 developer team members from Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, Windows Live and the Developer Division.
In the meantime, any developers (or potential customers) have developer-focused questions for the WP7 team?
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SkyFire Gone For Good Here What they Had To Say

Skyfire 2.0 is the world’s first hybrid browser, using the best of the device’s native browser, and adding a cloud “booster engine” for extra features like video and social networking. It is our flagship go-forward product, as we’ve reported publicly for months, since our Android launch.
With that in mind, we are announcing that we will complete the phase out of our legacy v1.0 product on Windows Mobile and Symbian on December 31st, 2010 for remaining countries. This two-year old product used a “proxy browser” approach which is no longer our vision. It was a revolutionary product when introduced and offered for free, but the fast-moving mobile market has changed significantly since 2007, and as a small tech start-up, we need to keep innovating forward.
Our new 2.0 product is built for the next generation of smartphones and tablets with full support for html5, offline browsing, javascript, WebKit, and full-screen video. The 2.0 architecture is exponentially more data efficient as well, and better fits the technology roadmaps of our B2B customers (wireless carriers and handset makers).
This was a very difficult decision for us. We put our hearts and souls into the 1.0 product and greatly value the many Skyfire fans who used the product and provided us with invaluable feedback during this intensive research & development phase of our company. We experimented with ways to charge for the product (in certain international test markets) so that existing Windows Mobile and Symbian users could continue to use the service, but the payment mechanisms were very cumbersome and the piracy rates were so high on those OS platforms that we could not make it work. More importantly, we faced a decision point: If we were to begin charging money for a product, we had to commit to multiple years of support and enhancement of the product. It would not be the ethical thing to do to start down that path, given that we would not expect enough revenue to make that sustainable on the legacy 1.0 product, and we can no longer subsidize it. The right thing we decided was to focus on 2.0 and beyond.
We do expect to bring Skyfire 2.0 to additional platforms, and have begun discussions with some carriers and OEMs to decide which will be our next OS. Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 and Nokia’s MeeGo platform are both shaping up as platforms with a lot of potential and the recent launch of the new Blackberry OS 6 with a WebKit browser core makes for interesting potential for a future release of Skyfire 2.0. We value feedback from our users, so please let us know what platform you would like to see Skyfire on next and just as importantly let your wireless carrier know that you want Skyfire!
Thanks to all of our fans, new and old, for their support. We’re a small 35-person development shop, so all the enthusiasm for Skyfire has been gratifying for all of the engineers here in Mountain View.
Jeff Glueck, CEO
[EDIT]
I was entering rant mode but it's just not worth it... Still what was the point of creating yet another topic on this subject (and again in Soft Dev...)?
Yes I know but I didnt see that other thread that the other person had made. So I made this one instead.
Well, it was crap in the end anyway.
Nothing of value was lost.

Did You Know? "The God Father Of Android"

Hello everyone! I will be using this tread to teach all readers knowledge of the Android OS. From it's history to it's many overlays and user interfaces. I am not a master of android and I don't claim to be. But I'm learning the OS at a rapid rate and I will share my findings with all that reads. I will update this thread daily with a new topic. This way we all can learn everything their is to know about this OS together. I hope you guys like what I'm trying to do for you guys. Enjoy!
"Did you know that the very first Android custom rom was make by the Legendary Ben Gruver B.K.A JesusFreke. He studied the G1's HBoot and discovered the it can be modded along with the system and recovery. This gave life to the Rom Development community. Although JesusFreke has retired one can't help but respect this developer. For he is the reason we can have fun with android to this day!
#TheMoreYouKnow
If I helped you use the thanks button!
Have an idea or a topic you'd like me to touch PM me or mention me on Twitter @XxVirusxX_
So the beta was released AFTER the official v1.0? Google: always innovative!
Didn't android used to be called android inc, android was started off by the guys from webtv, Google bought them out.
But the beginnings of android, started way before 2008 and was by webtv..........
Oh yeah just for the sake of it, I spoke to my friend, who has followed webtv since the beginning, and he was a major player in webtv, back in the day, he has a friend at webtv and this info is from him...
This is the guys resume and he is still a player.....just had to voice what I know. not trying to be defeatest, but to say google invented it, is not technically true, there were guys slaving away way before google got their hands on it.
http://www.fadden.com/resume.html
Ruudfood said:
So the beta was released AFTER the official v1.0? Google: always innovative!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My mistake. Info fixed!
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium
promethieus said:
Didn't android used to be called android inc, android was started off by the guys from webtv, Google bought them out.
But the beginnings of android, started way before 2008 and was by webtv..........
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I has been in development long before that but user like us did not have access to the OS until late 2007.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium
promethieus said:
Didn't android used to be called android inc, android was started off by the guys from webtv, Google bought them out.
But the beginnings of android, started way before 2008 and was by webtv..........
Oh yeah just for the sake of it, I spoke to my friend, who has followed webtv since the beginning, and he was a major player in webtv, back in the day, he has a friend at webtv and this info is from him...
This is the guys resume and he is still a player.....just had to voice what I know. not trying to be defeatest, but to say google invented it, is not technically true, there were guys slaving away way before google got their hands on it.
http://www.fadden.com/resume.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no knowledge of that inside info. All I know is what google didn't throw dirt over. But this is what this thread is make for so we can all share and learn this OS together. So thanks for this info.
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Android is an open-source software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. Google Inc. purchased the initial developer of the software, Android Inc., in 2005. Android's mobile operating system is based upon a modified version of the Linux kernel. Google and other members of the Open Handset Alliance collaborated on Android's development and release. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is tasked with the maintenance and further development of Android.
Canalys reported that in Q4 2010 the Android operating system was the world's best-selling smartphone platform, dethroning Nokia's Symbian from the 10-year top position. According to Gartner, Symbian is still slightly ahead on sales if some legacy non-Nokia Symbian smartphones are included in the Q4 2010 figures.
Android has a large community of developers writing application programs that extend the functionality of the devices. There are currently over 150,000 apps available for Android. Android Market is the online app store run by Google, though apps can also be downloaded from third-party sites. Developers write primarily in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries.
The unveiling of the Android distribution on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 79 hardware, software, and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices. Google released most of the Android code under the Apache License, a free software and open source license.
The Android open-source software stack consists of Java applications running on a Java-based, object-oriented application framework on top of Java core libraries running on a Dalvik virtual machine featuring JIT compilation. Libraries written in C include the surface manager, OpenCore media framework, SQLite relational database management system, OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics API, WebKit layout engine, SGL graphics engine, SSL, and Bionic libc. The Android operating system consists of 12 million lines of code including 3 million lines of XML, 2.8 million lines of C, 2.1 million lines of Java, and 1.75 million lines of C++.
History Android, Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California, United States in October, 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, et al. to develop, in Rubin's words "...smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner's location and preferences." Other early key employees include Andy McFadden, who worked with Rubin at WebTV, and Chris White, who led the design and interface of WebTV, before helping to found Android.
Rubin, a co-founder of Danger Inc., Miner, a co-founder of Wildfire Communications, Inc. and former vice-president of Technology and innovation at Orange, and the other early employees brought considerable wireless industry experience to the company. Despite the obvious past accomplishments of the founders and early employees, Android Inc. operated secretively, admitting only that it was working on software for mobile phones.
Google acquired Android Inc. in August, 2005, making Android Inc. a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google Inc. Key employees of Android Inc., including Andy Rubin, Rich Miner and Chris White, stayed at the company after the acquisition.
At the time of the acquisition, because little was known about the work of Android Inc., some guessed that Google was planning to enter the mobile phone market.
At Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel. Google marketed the platform to handset makers and carriers on the premise of providing a flexible, upgradable system. Google had lined up a series of hardware component and software partners and signaled to carriers that it was open to various degrees of cooperation on their part.
Speculation about Google's intention to enter the mobile communications market continued to build through December 2006. Reports from the BBC and The Wall Street Journal noted that Google wanted its search and applications on mobile phones and it was working hard to deliver that. Print and online media outlets soon reported rumors that Google was developing a Google-branded handset. Some speculated that as Google was defining technical specifications, it was showing prototypes to cell phone manufacturers and network operators. In September 2007, InformationWeek covered an Evalueserve study reporting that Google had filed several patent applications in the area of mobile telephony.
On the November 5, 2007 the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of several companies which include Texas Instruments, Broadcom Corporation, Google, HTC, Intel, LG, Marvell Technology Group, Motorola, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile unveiled itself. The goal of the Open Handset Alliance is to develop open standards for mobile devices. On the same day, the Open Handset Alliance also unveiled their first product, Android, a mobile device platform built on the Linux kernel version 2.6. On December 9, 2008, 14 new members joined, including PacketVideo, ARM Holdings, Atheros Communications, Asustek Computer Inc, Garmin Ltd, Softbank, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba Corp, and Vodafone Group Plc.
---------- Post added at 12:59 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:04 AM ----------
Hope this helps
http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/7/2585779/android-history
All you need to know on the history of android OS.
It's a good read and the videos are nice to see the differences between releases. It really has developed since it's inception.
But your post says android began in 2008, which is Not the case, I will let you carry on with this on your own, you can not just omit the beginnings as they were the initial spark, dedication, make and break, times and the info I have given you is the real information. Good luck.
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prom1414 said:
But your post says android began in 2008, which is Not the case, I will let you carry on with this on your own, you can not just omit the beginnings as they were the initial spark, dedication, make and break, times and the info I have given you is the real information. Good luck.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No it's say 2007. I'm sure Android sparked long b4 that but unless their is proof of that to be true I can't post it.
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By began do you mean the release date or something like that?
Because if you mean the actual "birth date" then it is at least a few years before 2007. It takes a long time to build an OS
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TeamSnap [Boulder, CO or Remote]: Android Developer

Our Company:
Fun product seeks Android Developer in Boulder, CO or your U.S-based home office. TeamSnap is an award-winning mobile and web service for managing ongoing activities including recreational and competitive sports teams, social groups, and other organizations. We’re a fast-moving and fun company. Mobile is a huge part of what we do, and you’ll be driving our Android development efforts!
About the Job:
You should have a vision for what it means to build amazing apps on Android, across different screen sizes, device types, and OS versions. You’ll have a great deal of latitude to help us build the best Android sports app in the store. No pressure.
We have a proven revenue model and an enthusiastic, rapidly-growing customer base. Find more details here: http://www.teamsnap.com/jobs/android_developer.php
To Apply:
Please email [email protected] tell us a little bit about yourself, and a lot about how you would improve our Android app. A link to your portfolio would be great and putting the job title in the subject line would be helpful too.
And you’ll really impress us if you sign up for a free TeamSnap account, download our current Android app, and come at us with real ideas. Just sayin’.

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