Vipul Patel

Introduction At Build 2014, the annual conference for Microsoft platform developers, Microsoft announced Windows Phone 8.1, the newest mobile operating system from Microsoft. This is a special moment, not just because it marks the introduction of the newest shiny object from Microsoft, but because it finally brings convergence of the desktop and mobile operating systems. […]

Introduction Today’s compilers are magical beings. They transform human written source code into binaries that computers can execute. What happens once the compile command is given at the command line or via the IDE is a mystery to everyone besides the compiler developers. Developers have gotten used to smart features offered by the IDE like […]

Introduction The first version of Windows Phone platform did not support recording video for non-native applications. However, with Windows Phone 7.1 onwards, Microsoft has provided platform support for capturing video. This has enabled application developers to integrate video capturing capability with their applications. Before we dive into how we can capture video in a Windows […]

Introduction Windows Phone platform supports the ability to have tasks running in the background. This enables applications to play music in the background while the user is using another application in the foreground. In this article, we will explore how to build a simple Windows Phone application that can play audio tracks in the foreground […]

Introduction Windows Phone 8 supports different means of communication – sockets, Bluetooth and proximity. In fact, chat-like applications are readily supported using sockets that reside in the System.Net.Sockets namespace. Sockets can be used for a variety of communication modes – FTP, email, chats, and streaming multimedia. With sockets, Windows Phone applications can create rich client […]

Introduction One of the biggest features of the .NET platform is the support for type safety. This means that the Common Language Runtime – the engine of .NET – guarantees that there will not be any type errors  (issues which generally arise because of discrepancy between different data types for an application’s constants, variables and […]

Introduction Since the 1995 paper published by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber describing Scrum methodology, Scrum has taken software development by storm, with tech firms increasingly adopting the Scrum/Agile mantra as their development paradigm. Scrum is very different from the classic waterfall model and while it has its upsides, there are a few things to […]

Introduction Typical programming constructs require the use of non-scalar data types.  In C#, the non-scalar types can come in two types: arrays and collections. Arrays are a collection of objects of the same type. There is no limit to the number of elements you can store in arrays, however, arrays need to declare their size […]

Introduction Mobile computing is here. We cannot ignore the fact that more mobile computing devices sell than the classic PCs and hence mobile developers need to understand how to leverage the benefits of cloud computing for their mobile applications. Basics of Windows Azure Mobile Services To help developers easily offer the power of cloud computing […]

Introduction Microsoft offers a varied range of services under its cloud computing banner. With the rise of media content, there is a very high demand for services that can help with media content. Microsoft’s Azure platform offers services targeted for media content under the banner of “Windows Azure Media Services”. These services offer Platform-As-A-Service (PAAS) […]

Introduction “Power to the users” – That is the mantra application developers should have in mind when they build the next Angry Birds or Evernote. Users increasingly demand the ability to tweak the applications they use to suit their taste and usage pattern. Windows 8 provides the ability for developers to handle application settings through […]

Introduction Windows Store applications are required to provide a splash screen, which is displayed when the application is first activated. In fact, every Windows Store is mandated to display a splash screen that consists of splash screen image and background color. This is meant to allow the application to provide the user immediate feedback about […]