Tech QQ

For those following the Windows mobile scene the changes to the marketplace policy might not be news. A quick recap for those who missed it:

• Yearly fee for developers of 99$
• You get to publish 5 apps for free
• Earlier 5 apps was a cap, now it you can submit as many as you like but for a cost of 19.99$ for additional apps after your first free 5
  
• Marketplace will take 30% of the earnings
• You will only be available to get your apps to other users via marketplace
  
• There will be a way to give access to your beta testers without having them pay for the app, but it will be just for a small limited amount of people
• The yearly fee and registration will let developers unlock up to 5 devices for side loading apps
• For Windows Phone 7 there will be a trial API available, enabling developers to let customers download and sample the application before buying it
• There will be several different business models - free, ad-funded, fremium and paid
  

A small tidbit that I haven't seen published before is - what about updates?
A developers will be able to publish updates for their apps, and the users will see in the marketplace hub on the "search page" that they have apps installed that have pending updates (see screenshot below).


I asked Ben Riga during the Windows Phone 7 Developer Hub in Stockholm, and he confirmed that since updates of your app will go through the same rigorous review as all apps, it will count as one of your 5 free app submits. It will also cost you 19.99$ to release an update given that you used your 5 free already.

Microsoft has published their Windows Phone 7 Application Requirement sheet, available here, and they have seen the debacle Apple had when pulling all adult themed material. So they are stating directly that no adult material will be allowed. In the document it states:
3.6 Adult Related Content
Content not allowed:

• Sex / Nudity – Images that are sexually suggestive or provocative (e.g. sexually provocative touching, bondage, masturbation); provocative images that reveal nipples, genitals, buttocks, or pubic hair.
• Content that a reasonable person would consider to be adult or borderline adult content (images, text, or audio).
• Content that generally falls under the category of pornography.
• Content that depicts or suggests prostitution.
• Content depicting sexual fetishes.
• Content of a sexual nature depicting children or animals.

Good news for all us parents, now we don't have to fear our kids can get access to smut when we buy them 700$ business phones!

The guys over at iFixYouri managed to get a hold of a iPhone 4 case, no hardware inside but the glass was said to be the real deal. They managed to drop it from three and a half foot's height, and this was the result:

Let's just hope that the case wasn't made of the same material as the iPhone 4 is actually going be produced in, as this isn't really the "20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic" kind of material that the Steve was talking about when he presented the device.

Wednesday the 9:th of June, I attended the Windows Phone 7 Developer Hub in Stockholm. Holding the technical presentations were Ben Riga and Niel Hutson and during the evening was a design centric lecture held by Albert Shum and Bryan Agnetta.

Overall the event was very good I felt. There was quite a lot of info I got that I never had heard about before, we also got some hands on with devices they had brought, and I also got a few of my questions answered.

The devices they had brought with them was the LG "Panther" and the Asus phone we've seen so many times by now. I didn't know it before, but the Asus phone actually got a name, it's called "Galaxy".


I got some hands on time with the Panther and these are some of my thoughts:

• The device it self feels pretty solid but there is still a plastic vibe there that they need to chip away before release.
  
• The slider keyboard is actually much nicer than I had originally thought.
  
• The keyboard felt easy to use and enter text on.
  
• The slide out mechanism was distinct and felt good.
• The OS felt responsive and quite complete, I was honestly expecting a less finished feel.
• There is a small resistance in the GUI when flipping between screens or pictures, some times it feels like that resistance is just a little too much. I think that the idea is great, it shouldn't start flipping about stuff to easily, so there should be a bit of a resistance and it ties in so beautifully with the accordion effect the UI got. But it shouldn't be too exaggerated either, cause right now it some times felt hard in portrait mode to flip stuff about.

I didn't get any hands on time with the Asus Galaxy device, but I got confirmed that it was just a very early prototype, just as suspected from it being shown as the first device in Barcelona at MWC 2010. They said Asus has more devices in line, and they look nothing like the Galaxy.

More posts with information from the event to follow tomorrow...

This week I have been in London holding a training session/workshop regarding the stuff I do at work. For the last one and a half years I have been working with our integration between our project module and Primavera Planner. It was great meeting up with all the people and get to know them all a bit more as well as learning more about how they work.

During my stay a very good friend of mine was kind enough to take me sight seeing in central London, and something I was curious of seeing was the Apple store.


The interior was quite cool, I especially liked the glass-like big set of stairs in the middle of the store. And everywhere there was large wooden tables and shelf's riddled with Apple products. Five or more large tables were populated with iPads, and there was a lot of people there, trying to get a sneak peak at the Steve's latest magical device. I joined the frenzied crowd and tried to get my paws on an iPad too!


After some waiting I managed to get my hands on one. It was about as heavy as I had thought it would be, but it was more tiring using it standing up without any kind of rest that I would have believed. The screen was really nice and responsive, and even though it was riddled with Apple-fanboy-grease it was still pleasant to browse the web on it.

I could see myself using this in the mornings to read the papers at breakfast, or looking up movie info from the TV-couch. But I'm not sure I'd like to find much other uses for it than just surfing the web. I finished up with some Plants vs. Zombies, but it just made me sad as I hate to see Zombies suffer needlessly...

WWDC kicked off today with an opening from the Steve. He talked a bit about his iPad then commenced to the new and totally unexpected(NOT!) iPhone 4.

All the leaks we've seen over the last few months turned out to be true. Sadly enough it meant almost no surprises. There is not a doubt tho that Apple has produced a very high quality device with some very alluring features. Among the many new features I think I'm actually most impressed with multitasking support and the new screen, as previously stated it is indeed 960*640 compared to the "old" iPhone 3GS that was 480*320.

At Computex Aava Mobile showed of their device based on Intel Moorestown architecture again.

Apparently it can play the full PC version of WOW. They couldn't log on to the American servers and show gameplay unfortunately, but it looks like the real McCoy.

They also demoed the device running Quake III Arena up to a staggering 120 frames per second! They claim that the device would be able to do this for a whole consecutive hour, which is quite good considering the CPU power it would require.

Go check out the entire article at Engadget for some actual vid clips.

For all the Droid users awaiting an Android update to run Froyo, it's now available in sorts.

The guys over at My Droid World have released a community edition Froyo upgrade. Most of the functionality is in place they say, although you will loose Wifi support at this moment.
So if you want to install Android 2.2 on your Droid, and can't wait for Motorola to make an official release, you can get your hands on the download here.