Today we chat to Martin from slimCODE, with some great apps in the Marketplace under his belt. We look at his apps and how he got motivated to develop for Windows Mobile. His thoughts about Marketplace and what slimCODE has in store for us in the near future. :)
SlimCode
Tell us a bit about yourself and slimCODE.
It all started on a Vic-20, when I was 14. A few months later, I was already making programs too large for the wobbling 3.8 kb of RAM available for programs. After a brief Apple II+ era, I moved to a PC running MSDOS. It’s all been Microsoft since then, an attachment strongly linked with the quality of development environments available for their platforms.
After graduating in Computer Science at university, not before some wandering in Chemistry, I became a software consultant for Hydro-Quebec, then moved to work with friends who had started their own company three years before: Xceed Software. They were making a Zip compression library, selling to other developers. I worked there for 9 years, having the chance to learn and work with many development languages. Xceed was part of the .NET early adopters, so I had the chance to visit Redmond regularly to participate in the beta programs and ask questions to the same people who conceived the .NET Framework. Clearly, my years of C++ and COM programming were getting to an end. I’d become mostly a C# and .NET developer from now on.
Three years ago, I left Xceed and founded slimCODE. My goal was to develop Windows applications for the general market, and complete my revenues with consultancy projects here and there. But the reality struck me hard. My main software, slimKEYS, wasn’t popular enough to pay for the hosting alone. Web development for customers kept me alive, but that’s not what I wanted to do for a living. Then, my presence became more and more required at home (personal reasons) so you could say I’m now a part-time software developer and full-time dad/husband at home.
I was developing some hobby software for an old HP Jornada for some time now, but the purchase of a new Windows Mobile cell phone (an HTC P4000, or “Mogul”) convinced me there could be some potential on that platform. That, and the crazy idea the popularity that some iPhone apps had on the AppStore could be translated to the Windows Mobile platform. That’s why I moved almost all my development time to the Windows Mobile platform.
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Windows Mobile
We recently informed you guys that
WM7 is delayed and might only be released in Q4 of 2010 and with the
Q1 HTC Road map we learned there are some amazing android powered HTC devices coming out early next year. We wanted to know who all will stick with Windows Mobile when these new android devices will hit the market, there was mixed reaction from you guys. But one particular Comment caught my eye.
The comment was by Mort ( the developer of Mort-Script )
Just got my Milestone (=Motorola Droid for Europe). Though I sometimes miss the precision and reliability (sometimes a tap is recognized twice) of the resistive displays, I don't think I'll switch back.
I also thought I might miss the freeware customization of WM, but the notification bar (top line with battery level, time, etc.) is pretty flexible and doesn't take much screen estate. The home screen can be replaced with alternatives like Home++, Open Home, etc., and thanks to documented and working(! unlike WM...) interfaces and Open Source original launcher, all Widgets ("Today plugins") are working there as well. Most of the other default apps usually are as good or way better than WM replacements (like all the contact managers) anyway.
So far I'm only missing a nice and easy to use music player, which surprised me because it's way more easy to develop one than for WM. Well, maybe I'll try to reprogram MortPlayer for Android, just with less historical bloating...
And being at development: Woohoo, no propietary shit, free development tools, debugging doesn't crash all the time, easy to design dialogs for all screen sizes, ... Feels like switching from Notepad to OpenOffice.
Which brings me to HD2. Yes, it's cool that it's possible for HTC to reprogram WM so far. Too bad that makes HD2 a device that can execute either crippled old WM apps or propietary HD2/HTC apps which use all the sensors, power, etc. but run nowhere else. That's not what portable platforms like WM where meant to be. It's more like a HTC OS with WM compatibility mode.
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Ageye
We were surprised to see that the
Ageye Apps did not have their apps in the Marketplace. So we asked them why their apps like G-Alarm, G-Weather did not appear in the Marketplace. Here is a short interview with Jörg.
1800PocketPC : Why are your apps not in the Marketplace ?
Jörg Michel : As we heard from the Marketplace we didn’t want to put our apps on it at the beginning as the conditions were horrible (e.g. registration fee, per-cab fees, restrictions for the applications -> no today plugins were allowed, no registry changes in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and so on. Simply: many functions of G-Alarm to be a reliable alarm clock were not allowed).
A few weeks/months later they loosened those conditions (but not the fees) and also started a competition in Germany: The best German Windows Mobile app listed on the MP gets 20.000 EUR :-). That’s why we decided to register at the MP one month ago. As some of you may know / see we’re still not listed… Why? We don’t know :)
Microsoft employs an agency which verifies that the companies are valid which are listed on the MP. It seems that this agency only acts if you call or live chat with them. After many calls we finally received a positive feedback that we’re good to go (that was about 10 days ago) … but still: nothing. Again after some live chat sessions we only get following response: “we have technical problems, there is no ETA when it will be fixed.”
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Gil Bouhnick
Today we chat with Gil Bouhnick the developer of
SpoonTools, you all must know him from the
SpoonTools blog, he is also a regular @ some of the other well known WM sites like
MobilitySite and
FuzeMobility.
Tell us a bit about yourself?
My name is Gil Bouhnick, I’m 33 years old and I’m currently a Product & Engineering Group Manager at ClickSoftware. In my spare time I develop some Windows Mobile freewares (SpoonTools) as well as writing in my blog The Mobile Spoon and other sites as well.
Tell us a bit about SpoonTools?
I actually never planned to create SpoonTools. It all started as some personal tools I built for myself. I needed a quick easy way to personalize ringtones (SpoonRing), I looked for a way to write notes quickly using the stylus, and of course, the SpoonAlarm: I tried using the default WinMo alarm, but after I missed a few wake up calls, I decided I need a better alarm with real snooze and louder sounds, so I created an alarm fits exactly my needs: simple to configure, finger friendly, with MP3 and snooze.
Some of my friends started using it as well, and suggested that I should place it on a website. This is how it started.
I was amazed to see how fast it became popular. I reached more than 50,000 downloads in few months, without counting the downloads made from sites that took the CAB files in their own servers.
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APBilbo
Today we chat to Alfonso Presa who has given us some great apps like ThrottleLauncher, ThrottleLock, etc. People who are in to customizing the look and feel of Windows Mobile would have definitely come across ThrottleLauncher. You can find all his apps on his website : throttlelauncher.com. Thanks for chatting with us mate.
Tell us a bit about yourself ?
I’m Alfonso Presa (aka. APBilbo) from Madrid, Spain. I’m 27 years old and I work on IT. Currently I’m on a project in a multinational bank working on web development over Fatwire.
Tell us a bit about Throttle Apps?
To be honest I never intended to start a “big” project like ThrottleApps… It most of happened on the run :-). It all started one day when I was trying to customize my Herald (around December 2007)… I was searching for the perfect freeware UI and I realized that there where lot’s of great apps out there but none of them was complete. rltoday was customizable but very hardly and themes where fixed to the point that you have to change the files to suit it to your needs, MortButtons was a perfect launcher but it was fixed to some buttons in a grid layout, the cube was very cool but very limited in space (only 9 contacts, only 9 apps, etc), HTC Home was good but functionality was fixed. I thought, hey I just want a simple kinetic scrolling row of icons… what a good chance to learn C#! Then I released a proof of concept app on XDA and people started asking for clocks, registry info, etc… An that’s how ThrottleLauncher was born :).
About ThrottleLock, I seen someone’s post at XDA asking if it was possible to make something like the Android lock for Windows Mobile… I though… “Hey! that can be funny!!”… and there it is!
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AGEye
We had to chance to chat with Jörg Michel the developer of apps like G-Alarm, G-Profile, G-Invaders and more. Jörg has created some great apps with beautiful UI that is finger friendly too. You can find all his apps at his website http://ageye.de. I want to thank you for taking the time to chat with us here at 1800PocketPC.com. Well lets get in to it…
Tell us a bit about yourself
First of all: Hello to everyone who takes the time to read about my thoughts… It may not be worth it so please don’t blame me :)
My name is Jörg Michel, I’m currently living in Ulm/Germany but have grown up in the near of Oettingen/Bavaria where the good beer comes from (I really like it). I’m 24 years old and I’m currently studying medicine in my 10th of 12 terms.
Tell us a bit about your apps ?
My first apps were the games Caver and G-Invaders… Nothing much to say about them. These are very basic and poorly designed games with an online high score feature which is probably the best of it :)
G-Alarm is an alarm clock which has probably more features than any other alarm tool and is also one of the most reliable clocks. It still has some problems on old devices which quickly run out of memory but I’m currently developing a new graphic engine which hopefully improves the memory usage.
G-Watch should combine three different aims: a stopwatch, a countdown timer and a GPS tracking function. Of course you don’t need a GPS device or have to use the stopwatch if you just want to have a countdown timer in the kitchen.
G-Light can help you to decrease battery consumption by dimming the backlight according to the ambient light. Of course you need a supported device which owns a light sensor (HTC Diamond, Touch Pro, etc.)
G-Profile is my newest tool which can manage your device (e.g. set the volume and ring tones, turn on/off phone radio, wifi, or bluetooth, and so on) according to your needs. It can activate the profiles by time, when an appointment occurs, when you connect something to your device (e.g. headset, ac power), when your phone is in a specified cell and so on…
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Xmel
antslava
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