Cottingham Day

Cottingham Church was open too

Today is Cottingham Day. I normally miss this because I’m out of the country at the Imagine Cup World Finals, but this year they are a week later and so I’ve had a chance to take a look. On Cottingham Day they close the main street and set up stalls and stuff for folk to take a look around. They also have some classic cars parked up, so it was out with the big camera and off for a look.

Cottingham churchyard

I used to have a Mini, but not as nice as this one…

Cool Rover

Proper motoring

The whole thing was great and had a super atmosphere. If you are around next year, well worth a trip.

Another year of MVP-ness

Just got the email from Microsoft telling me that I’ve been reappointed as a Windows Phone MVP for another year. Very pleased. It seems that rumours of the death of the Windows Phone MVP programme are somewhat exaggerated. Or something.

I’ve been an MVP since 2003. I’m never quite sure what I’ve done to deserve it, but I hope that as long as I keep doing stuff, they’ll look kindly on me each year.

Windows Phone 7 Mango Magic

Mango Upgrade - Star Trek fans please note

I upgraded my “proper” phone to Mango yesterday. I wasn’t going to, the plan was just to upgrade a developer phone and use that to play with the new SDK features. However, once I’d played with the system for a while I just had to do it so I can use Mango as much as possible.

One of the things that I used to love about my iPhone was the way that I really enjoyed using it. I’d fire it up knowing that whatever I was going to do, from create an appointment to surf the internets, would be fun. The people who make the iPhone really seem to understand how software must not get in the way, it should just make doing things better. With Mango, Windows Phone has reached that point. I love the way that it organises all the interactions with friends into single strand. I can see all the phone calls, emails, texts and messages in one conversation, which is just so nice. Being able to make family groups who I can message and deal with as a single entity is great too.

One thing I used to do with the iPhone was spend an evening browsing the App Store and parting with a couple of pounds (less than the price of a pint of beer) on little programs that would be fun to play with. The Windows Phone Marketplace is by no means as large as the App Store, but it is plenty big enough for me to start doing this again. And now we have Angry Birds and Plants vs Zombies (two must buys) as well.

There are still a couple of things missing to make my Windows Phone experience perfect. I’d love to have Street View for the navigation (although on the plus side I now have turn by turn navigation with spoken directions) and not having BBC iPlayer is sometimes a bit of a pain, but I now have a phone that I open up knowing it is going to be fun to use, which is really great.

If you are a Marketplace Developer I’d strongly advise you to get Mango on your device. Sure, it will make you able to play with the new code libraries, but it will also give you a really nice phone experience. I’ve said before I reckon that version 3.0 is when Microsoft start to really nail their products and Mango is definitely proof of this theory.

Poolside Programming with the C# Yellow Book

Russell, who has signed up to be in our First Year starting in September, shows how he is getting ahead of the game by taking the C# Yellow Book for some poolside programming in Fuerteventura. Good stuff.

It seems that the Yellow Book is looking a little pasty this year. I was going for an artistic shade reminiscent of dappled sunlight through tall tress in spring. Unfortunately I got muddy white. But don’t worry, the next Yellow Book is going to be the yellowist yellow you have ever seen. I’m presently working on updates for the content. Remember that you can get your own, completely free, PDF version of the book from www.csharpcourse.com I’ll put the new version up when I send it to the printers for copies for next year.

Mango Unleashed

In case you were wondering what a Mango actually looks like. I think you should know that I had to buy this picture from iStockPhoto….

Big things afoot in Windows Phone 7 land.

Firstly, the latest version (7.1 beta 2) of the toolchain is now available. You can get it from here. This lets you create Windows Phone apps for the Mango build. It replaces version 7.1 beta 1, which you must remove before you install this one. A tip, I download the iso image (there is a link on the download site) and burn it to a disk. Then I can update machines at home without losing all my network bandwidth.

Secondly, and this is the big one, all registered Marketplace developers will get access to a Microsoft Connect program which will enable them to put Mango system images onto their developer devices. And not just the special developer phones. This means that I should be able to get some Mango goodness onto my Samsung Omnia 7. Wonderful. The email invitations are going out at the moment. Not got mine yet, but I’m watching my inbox.

Thirdly, if you are a student you can take advantage of a new DreamSpark inspired competition.  Here are the instructions, hand stolen from the WindowsTeam Blog (I always think that says Window Steam Blog – but that’s just me).

1. Make sure you’re registered for DreamSpark
2. Download and install Expression Studio Ultimate and the new Mango Windows Phone Developer Tools (available free as a member of DreamSpark)
3. Get the free Sketchflow Template for Windows Phone and create a Sketchflow mock-up of your app
4. Post the Sketchflow mock-up somewhere online and tweet out the link using the hash tag #WPAppItUp
5. We will review all prototypes and will contact the developers who submit the best ones and send them a special Mango developer device.

Great stuff.  Windows Phone is going from strength to really strong.