Nokia results: hope for Windows Phone?

By tim, on January 26th, 2012 Follow tim on Twitter

It is almost one year since Nokia’s dramatic announcement that it would transition its smartphone range to Windows Phone. Today the company released its results for the fourth quarter and for the full year 2011, the first since the release of the the Lumia range of Windows Phone devices. How it is doing?

This

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Why Microsoft is scrapping the MIX conference

By tim, on January 24th, 2012 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft is scrapping its MIX conference, according to General Manager Tim O’Brien:

we have decided to merge MIX, our spring web conference for developers and designers, into our next major developer conference, which we will host sometime in the coming year. I know a number of folks were wondering about MIX, given the time

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Silverlight 5 is done. Is Silverlight also done?

By tim, on December 10th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft has has announced the release of Silverlight 5.0.

Silverlight is a cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in for Windows and Mac. It is relatively small size – less than 7MB according to Microsoft, though the Mac version seems to be bigger, with a 14MB compressed setup .dmg and apparently over 100MB once installed:

Never

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Windows Runtime must come to Windows Phone

By tim, on September 29th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

I’ve been trying Windows Phone 7 in its latest “Mango” version over the last couple of days and mostly enjoying it. One thing I am not impressed by though is the range of apps available. Have a look at the Marketplace – Microsoft may claim 30,000 apps, but given how unexciting even the “top”

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Reflections on Microsoft BUILD 2011

By tim, on September 17th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

I’m just back from Microsoft’s BUILD conference at Anaheim in California, which lived up to the hype as a key moment of transition for the company. Some said it was the most significant PDC – yes, it was really the Professional Developers Conference renamed – since 2000, when .NET was introduced; some said the

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A few facts about Microsoft’s new Windows Runtime

By tim, on September 14th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

I’ve just come out of Martyn Lovell’s talk on WinRT internals here at BUILD in Anaheim, California.

Make no mistake: Microsoft has re-invented the Windows API in WinRT. Just to recap, WinRT is the API for Metro-style applications, the touch-centric, app-centric API for tablets and, one presumes, eventually for Windows Phone (though Microsoft has

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PhoneGap comes to Windows Phone

By tim, on September 10th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

Nitobi has announced PhoneGap for Windows Phone 7, nicely timed just before the Microsoft BUILD conference next week.

PhoneGap is a cross-platform mobile development tool that uses the HTML and JavaScript engine on the phone as its runtime, supplemented by extensions which give access to other device features:

After unpackaging the contents of the

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Windows Phone 7 apps, stats and future

By tim, on September 7th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

Justin Angel, a former Microsoft employee who worked on Silverlight, has posted his analysis of the 24,505 apps he found in the Windows Phone 7 marketplace, exploiting a loophole that lets you get the download links. A few highlights:

97% of the apps are not obfuscated, meaning that it is trivial (with easily available

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Adobe says role of Flex and Flash has changed, makes play for mobile

By tim, on August 26th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

Adobe’s Andrew Shorten has posted on the future of Flex, the developer-oriented tool for building applications for the Flash runtime.

This is one of the clearest statements I have seen from Adobe that recognises that the role of Flash on the web is diminishing:

There are countless examples where, in the past, Flex was

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Microsoft releases Visual Studio LightSwitch: a fascinating product with an uncertain future

By tim, on July 26th, 2011 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft has released Visual Studio LightSwitch, a rapid application builder for data-centric applications.

LightSwitch builds Silverlight applications, which may seem strange bearing in mind that the future of Silverlight has been hotly debated since its lack of emphasis at the 2010 Professional Developers Conference. The explanation is either that Silverlight – or some

…continue reading Microsoft releases Visual Studio LightSwitch: a fascinating product with an uncertain future

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