Today I decided to release the libraries I wrote to handle the VNC connection, implementing the Remote Framebuffer protocol, as an Open Source project under the Creative Common license. You can download the library from this page:

http://xamlplayground.org/page/Silverlight-WP7-RFB.aspx

During last weeks I've published a new version of SilverVNC, my popular client for Remote Framebuffer connections, that works on Windows Phone 7.5. After publishing the software as Open Source project on codeplex, for Silverlight 3.0 only, now the marketplace has also a mobile version that you can download for free or buy at these addresses:

Free Edition: view only
http://www.windowsphone.com/it-IT/apps/ef2ef5b9-192c-4d77-a684-c1e69bea24fa

Standard Edition: full control
http://www.windowsphone.com/it-IT/apps/e6c631e6-f6c4-49e5-98a9-d49eea8212cf

Enjoy the library.

Thanks to the new release of Windows Phone 7.1 "Mango", I've finally managed to publish the first release of Silver VNC 1.0. This version is made with the sources I've created for Silverlight 4.0 and published on codeplex at http://silvervnc.codeplex.com/.

On the left side I've posted a short video to show the capabilities of the Free Edition.

With Silver VNC free edition you can remotely view the desktop of a computer with the popular and free RFB protocol. You can easily install a VNC server downloading one of the known free versions like Real VNC, Ultra VNC and so on.

Please enjoy the application for free downloading it from the Windows Phone marketplace. I'm currently working on the next version that allows to send commands to the computer.

Some days ago I released my second application for the Windows Phone. Probably it mean something I had a Windows Mobile device for the last four years and I never tried to write a single row of code and since last December, when I got my brand new HD7, I already wrote and published two applications.

The true story is that the hard part in realizing an application for Windows Phone 7 is to find a good idea. Discarded the possibility of making something unique the sole thing that you can do is try to find something you know well and write it as good as you can. 

So, given that I'm on diet from an unmemorable time it is probably the thing I better know, so I said to myself: why don't write and app to track my weight? I minute after I was head down to write it and I hope someone can find it useful almost the same as I enjoyed to write it.

The application is made of few pages and of a main dashboard that collect all the data you record to display a number of important parameters. I've tryed to imagine what I would like to know: the weight from which I started, the weight I've still to burn and an estimation of when I should reach my goal. You can see these and some other parameters in the figure on the left side.
 
There are two things I really enjoyed: first of all creating the gauge on top of this page gave me a deep respect to Blend that has been my best friend for this purpose. I think I will write a post about how to create a similar graphical element in the next days.

The second have been to create the transitions between pages when you navigate from a page to another. All the application became very dynamic thanks to these animations and for some days I have continuously tryed them on my phone only for the pleasure of seeing them playing.

The software uses Sterling to store the samples you record during the diet. Thanks to it is was very easy to create a log of all the data for the purpose of showing the history. You can also write a comment for each sample to remember something happen during the week.

The application require a regular sampling so the best is to put a recurring alert in the calendar to remember the date. It is a very bad thing being not able to do this from the application itself. I hope in the future this become possible.

Thanks of every comment.

After a huge timeframe I return to my writing activity starting a series of articles about Windows Phone 7 for SilverlightShow website. During this time I've find the time to develop many samples for this device to prepare some speeches and I've created two applications for the marketplace.

The intent of the new series is to collect a number of articles, starting from scratch up to the very complicated subjects and I've started today with the very first and basic article about how to get started. In this article explain the architecture of the phone, and how to startup the development environment to be ready to write your own applications and deploy to the marketplace. Here is the planned table of contents of the series, but keep in mind that if you believe I miss something you can let me know and I manage to extend the series:

Windows Phone 7 Part #1: Getting Started (19/1/2011)
 
Windows Phone 7 Part #2: Your first app
 
Windows Phone 7 Part #3: Understanding navigation
 
Windows Phone 7 Part #4: The application lifecycle
 
Windows Phone 7 Part #5: Panorama and Pivot controls
 
Windows Phone 7 Part #6: Advanced interaction
 
Windows Phone 7 Part #7: Understanding Push Notifications
 
Windows Phone 7 Part #8: Using Sensors

As you can see the road is long, since many arguments are covered by the series. I hope you will enjoy reading them but as I've already said if you think there is something to change contact me or the SilverlightShow website and we evaluate your proposals.

Notice: I've added the new category "WP7 Fast Tips" to collect fast tips I found while developing my Windows Phone Applications. You Don't expect only great tips in this category but also simple things I need fo remember or I found with some difficulties :)

Working on an application I hope to publish soon on the marketplace, I have the need to save an image from a WriteableBitmap instance into a Jpeg file. It was not an easy search but finally I found a couple of methods, added as Extension Methods to the WriteableBitmap class itself. If you need to encode a jpeg to a byte array you can use this code:

   1: public byte[] EncodeToJpeg(WriteableBitmap wb)

   2: {

   3:     using(MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream())

   4:     {

   5:         // this is Extensions.SaveJpeg() method

   6:         wb.SaveJpeg(stream, wb.PixelWidth, wb.PixelHeight, 0, 85);

   7:         return stream.ToArray();

   8:     }

   9: }

The parameters of the SaveJpeg method require a stream to write to, the size of the bitmap to generate and the quality from 0 to 100. The fourth parameter, called orientation, currently is not used and you can set it to 0 (zero).

The counterpart of the SaveJpeg methos is LoadJpeg that you can use to take a Jpeg file and load it into a WriteableBitmap instance. A very useful feature. If you need to write the Jpeg to the MediaLibrary probably the better is to pass the generated stream directly to the Save method.