Vipul Patel

Introduction At Build 2013, Microsoft announced Windows 8.1. Windows 8.1 introduces more than 4000 new APIs to allow developers to achieve even more than what Windows 8 offered. One of the new Windows 8.1 APIs is the set of APIs in the Windows.ApplicationModel.Appointments namespace. The APIs under the Windows.ApplicationModel  namespace offer a Windows application access […]

Introduction During the last week of June in San Francisco, Microsoft officially announced a preview version of Windows 8.1. Windows 8.1 (or Windows Blue, as it has been code-named) is the next version of Windows (after Windows 8) and introduces support for many new features, as well as fixes bugs present in Windows 8. What’s […]

Introduction Windows Phone 8 introduces some very hot features from Common Language Runtime that provide tremendous benefits to Windows Phone application developers. Here is the list of top 6 Common Language Runtime features that were introduced in Windows Phone 8. 1. Faster Code Generation Windows Phone 8 has enabled optimization for code generation by the […]

Introduction Microsoft introduced support for Bluetooth in Windows Phone 8. Bluetooth is a technology that involves devices communicating with each other in the proximity of 10 meters or less wirelessly. The Bluetooth APIs in Windows Phone 8 support app-to-app communication as well as app-to-device communication. Bluetooth Basics The first scenario for Bluetooth is called discovery/inquiry, […]

Introduction There are cases when Windows Phone developers need to retrieve device information so that they can author their applications to draw the maximum possible juice from the device.  They can also use this data to see what hardware their customers use and optimize their application to provide a better experience for the most popular […]

Introduction Windows Phone platform supports applications that run in trial mode. This ability can be used by Windows Phone developers to get users hooked on the application, which provides an opportunity to convert these users to paying customers. Building applications that support trial mode is very easy with Windows Phone. Moreover there is no need […]

Introduction Knowing the nature of an internet connection is important for application developers. People usually have limits on the amount of data permitted as part of the data plan and application developers should be respectful of limiting data their application consumes. However, when the application is connected by Ethernet, such limits might no longer be […]

Introduction An accelerometer can report the direction and magnitude of the force being applied to it. The force is represented along three dimensions – ‘x’ is horizontal, ‘y’ is vertical, and ‘z’ is perpendicular to the plane. Every dimension value can range from ‘-2’ to ‘2’. When the phone is on a flat surface, the […]

Introduction Windows Phone supports standard gestures like flicks, pinch-and-stretch zooming, and rotation. This brings Windows Phone platform support at par with competitors like iOS and Android. Processing FrameReported event to handle these gestures will be an enduring task. Fortunately, Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit’s gesture listener makes this task a breeze. We can get the […]

Introduction Windows Phone platform offers rich APIs to capture user input. Not only does the platform offer input via keyboard, but also in the form of touch. Developers can use this ability to create drawing applications using touch inputs. In “Understanding Touch Support in Windows Phone“, we learned about the touch support available on the […]

Introduction Like other prominent touch aware phone platforms, Microsoft’s Windows Phone “Mango” offers a rich framework for capturing touch and multi-touch activity on Windows Phone devices. In this article, we will learn the underlying APIs that developers need to work with to leverage the true power of the Windows Phone platform. Touch Support The touch […]

What is Node.js Node.js (also called Node) is an event driven platform to develop fast, scalable network applications. It is based on JavaScript runtime (the same engine that powers Google Chrome).    It was created by Ryan Dahl in 2009. It is available for free under the MIT licensing agreement. Node.js received the InfoWorld Technology of […]