Today I’m gonna talk about a new service I discovered yesterday, bugsense. This free tool is used to report crash of your mobile applications (iPhone, Android, Google AppEngine, BlackBerry or Windows Phone 7) and send to the developer a notification, then a web tracking system will help you to know what is needed to fix. You’ll ask me, why this tool is free? The business model (according to the FAQ) is that some future features will be available only with a premium account.

Let’s talk about features.

From your interface, your dashboard, you can track the number of exceptions raised by your applications every days, weeks, months. You can also track the list of bug you already fixed and the pending list.

As you can see, for an exception, you can see the stack trace, and a lot of information concerning the device, like the OS version, the country, the application version, the application name… A bug has two states, Unresolved and resolved. It allows you to track, filter and sort easily what you have to do for the next release of your application.

You can also invite other developers of your team to track the bugs in the same dashboard.

How to implement it into your applications.

It is very very easy! Do you know NuGet? Just install the package BugSense for Windows Phone into your project.

You’ve first to initialize the service by providing the application handled and your API Key (This key is given when you create a new application on the BugSense dashboard). Update the constructor of the class App.

/// <summary>
/// Constructor for the Application object.
/// </summary>
public App()
{
    // Define the instance of BugSense
    BugSenseHandler.Instance.Init(this, API_KEY);

    // Global handler for uncaught exceptions. 
    BugSenseHandler.Instance.UnhandledException += Instance_UnhandledException;
}

Then we have to modify the way to raise unhandled exception raised by your application. You can remove the line UnhandledException += Application_UnhandledException; from the constructor, and we will create our own handler.

// Code to execute on Unhandled Exceptions
private void Instance_UnhandledException(object sender, BugSenseUnhandledExceptionEventArgs e)
{
    // Use BugSense to report the exception
    BugSenseHandler.HandleError(e.ExceptionObject);

    if (System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached)
    {
        // An unhandled exception has occurred; break into the debugger
        System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();
    }
}

So now, when a unhandled exception is raise in your application, this popup is displayed. When the user click OK, a report is sent to your dashboard, and an email is sent to your mailbox (if you activated the notification). You can, of course, customize the popup and the error message.

So, if you want to try the service BugSense for free, check it out http://www.bugsense.com/

Microsoft published today the RTM of Windows Phone 7.1 SDK (aka Mango). If you already used the RC version to publish your app, there is no need to recompile or resubmit your application on the Marketplace. And as I said yesterday, if you want to make money with your applications, you can now use the Microsoft Advertising SDK which is included in this SDK in 11 more countries.

So, do you see any reason to not develop for Windows Phone 7 Mango???

Download the Web installer for Windows Phone 7.1 SDK, you can also download the full installer (.iso).

Microsoft released today, Tuesday, September 27, 2011 the update of Windows Phone 7: Mango. This update is available for 98% of existing Windows Phone Customers. To see the schedule of the update, look at this website: United States – International.

But the release of the mobile OS does not come alone. They also published the Web edition of the Marketplace. You can view and buy applications and games without using Zune software! You can access to the marketplace here: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/marketplace

Don’t forget to have a look at my other website MaWP7 and to download the last version (Mango ready) of the application Earthquakes.

If you’re a mobile developer, but not based in the USA, you will also enjoy the following news. Microsoft Advertising solution is now available for 11 more countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and United Kingdom.

Microsoft just released the August 2011 version of the Silverlight toolkit for Windows Phone 7. This release is dedicated to Mango developers, so you’ll need the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK Development (Mango) to use it. So first, if you did not do it already, download and install the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK. Then you can download the Silverlight toolkit for Windows Phone via Codeplex.

The new controls of this release are:

• Smooth new LongListSelector designed for Windows Phone 7.1 OS
• MultiselectList
• LockablePivot
• HubTile
• ExpanderView

• LocalizedResources
• DateTimeConverters

• DateTimePickers

• HeaderedItemsControl
• PhoneTextBox

• ListPicker supports multiselect

Do not forget to check the list of my applications available on the MarketPlace. MaWP7 Facebook page, MaWP7 Twitter account.

I released last week, a new web site to present my applications for Windows Phone 7.
I already published 3 applications:

• Earthquakes: List of earthquakes all around the world on your Windows Phone 7 thanks to the data provided by US Geological Survey. An update is published on the marketplace, but still in the certification process…
• Light 7: Turn your phone into a flashlight to find your way in a dark room, unlock your door on a dark night, read a map... This application will also help you to detect dead pixels on your phone!
• Gratuity: Helps you to calculate the tip when you are at a restaurant with your friends. You just enter the amount of the bill and the number people to calculate the price per person.

I’m currently working on the next version of each applications, and on some new projects.
So check it out here: http://www.mawp7.com

Also, I created a new Facebook page, and a Twitter account to follow the activity of the development.

Earthquakes was my first application published on the Microsoft Marketplace for the Windows Phone 7, and like all first things, it is not perfect. I didn’t think about my dear friends in France and in all other countries with a non English Windows Phone 7 OS on their phone.

When you code an application which can be published all around the world, you must think Globalization and Localization!!! (Shame on me, it was my job at Microsoft) So would like to use my blog to share with you my experience on the development for Windows Phone 7 and other technologies of course.

My first advice is to be very careful when you try to parse numeric values like Double. In my application I get the magnitude of a earthquake in a String value, and I parse it with the function Double.Parse(magnitude) where magnitude is a String and contains something like “5.2”. For an English OS, no problem, but for a French OS, we don’t write “5.2” to represent a decimal, but “5,2” so the Parsing function doesn’t understand and raise an exception. So to fix this issue, you must use the function Parse with a IFormatProvider parameter. Double.Parse(magnitude, new CultureInfo(“en-US”))

So please now, download the application Earthquake v1.1 on the marketplace.

Yesterday I published my first application on Microsoft Marketplace. This application named Earthquakes lists all recent earthquakes all around the world, and display them on a map. This kind of application is very interesting, especially if, like me, you live in a seismic area like San Francisco in California. You can download it for free with the Zune software: http://twlr.me/B5P

Here are some screenshots of the application. I’ll add later new features like more details about the event, a button to publish on Twitter / Facebook…

A last post about how to use tasks in Windows Phone 7. The previous was on how to use the PhoneCallTask task to dial numbers with your phone. Let’s do a quick demonstration on the EmailComposeTask task. It allows to create an email and fill all fields (To, Cc, Subject, Body). It is very easy to use it!

/// <summary>
/// Send an email.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="to">To.</param>
/// <param name="cc">Cc.</param>
/// <param name="subject">Subject.</param>
/// <param name="body">Body.</param>
public void SendEmail(String to, String cc, String subject, String body)
{
    // Create the task
    EmailComposeTask emailComposeTask = new EmailComposeTask();

    // Fill all fields
    emailComposeTask.To = to;
    emailComposeTask.Cc = cc;
    emailComposeTask.Subject = subject;
    emailComposeTask.Body = body;

    // Display the mail application
    emailComposeTask.Show();
}

You can call this method like this:

SendEmail("fabien.lavocat@blablabla.com", "windows@blablabla.com", "Your blog", "Nice blog!");

So easy! I can’t show you what is displayed on the phone screen when you use this task because you need to create an email account on the phone, but it is not possible on the emulator… If you try anyway, you’ll see this screen:

The previous post was a quick presentation of all tasks available for the development on Windows Phone 7. Now I’ll focus on the specific task PhoneCallTask. You can use this class in your development to call someone directly without having (for the user) to enter the number. Of course you can’t press the button “Call” by code…

Let’s use only one short method:

/// <summary>
/// Call the specified person.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="name">Name of the person to call.</param>
/// <param name="number">Phone number of the person to call.</param>
private void Call(String name, String number)
{
    PhoneCallTask phoneCallTask = new PhoneCallTask();
    phoneCallTask.PhoneNumber = number;
    phoneCallTask.DisplayName = name;
    phoneCallTask.Show(); // Display the dial screen
}

And when you call it, you should see the result:

First blog post from San Francisco, CA. I didn’t publish a lot of content here because I still don’t have a computer at home (yes, it’s weird). BTW, I’m working a bit on a Windows Phone 7 project, and I had to use several Tasks from the namespace Microsoft.Phone.Tasks. Let’s see what kind of tasks we can use:

• CameraCaptureTask: Capture a photo using the camera.
• EmailAddressChooserTask: Obtain an email address by the contact book.
• EmailComposeTask: Prepare an email to send.
• For the Market Place:
  • MarketplaceDetailTask
  • MarketplaceHubTask
  • MarketplaceReviewTask
  • MarketplaceSearchTask
• MediaPlayerLauncher: Launch the media player.
• PhoneCallTask: Ask the use to call a specified number.
• PhoneNumberChooserTask: Choose a number from the address book.
• PhotoChooserTask: Choose a picture from the photo album of the mobile.
• SaveEmailAddressTask: Save an email address to the address book.
• SavePhoneNumberTask: Save a phone number to the address book.
• SearchTask: Launch the web search application.
• SmsComposeTask: Compose a new SMS.
• WebBrowserTask: Launch a web browser.

To use any of this tasks you must import the namespace Microsoft.Phone.Tasks. Then you have to create an instance of the task, set values to the different properties and call the function Show().