They have been talking about it for a while and it has finally hit the market place.  Tango, the Video Chat application for WP7.  It will obviously work better with the new phones with front facing cameras… but it also works on my Samsung Focus… Check out the video below.

It of course works best over wifi, but will also work over 4G and 3G

Learn more at http://www.tango.me/ Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TangoMe Follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/tangome Watch us on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/TangoMe Need Help? Visit http://support.tango.me

If you have ever tried to debug a windows phone application that uses the Media Library, you have come across the following screen.

This is because the phone will not let you browse to your Media Content while you are connected to Zune……

On the other hand, Visual Studio will not let you debug if you are not connected to Zune….

So what are you supposed to do???

WPConnect.exe will solve your problem.  It is a tool that you can download that will allow you to debug while Zune is NOT running.

To get the tool, go to http://create.msdn.com and click on the Download The Tools link.

IMPORTANT NOTE :  This assumes you have already installed the Windows Phone Developer tools. If you have not, download and install them first.

From here, you can download the October 2010 update to the Windows Phone Developer Tools 

This includes (among other things) the WPConnect tool.  Once this is installed, open up a cmd prompt and navigate to

%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Tools\WPConnect     (for 32 bit os)

or

%ProgramFiles (x86)%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Tools\WPConnect (for 64 bit os)

Leave the window open, don’t run the WPConnect.exe yet.

Connect your phone to your computer and make sure that Zune launches and sees your phone.

Once Zune is launched and connected,  CLOSE the Zune software

Go to the command prompt and type WPConnect.exe and hit enter

It will read:

       Connecting to Device ‘Your device name here’

       Connection Established

It will now allow you to navigate to your Media so that you can test applications that work with the Media Library.

I hope that helps.

Happy Coding – Daniel Egan – DotNetDoc

  So I went to the OCDotNet user group meeting last night to see Paul Sheriff. Paul is a great speaker and it was a packed room. He was doing a talk on debugging, which is something that absolutely EVERY developer needs to master. 

Now I will get some grief for saying this next statement, but be that as it may, I think that if you show me a great debugger, I will show you a great developer.  Joel Spolsky. from Joel On Software wrote a book called  “Smart and gets things Done”, and while it hits on the core of my statement in a broader sense, he describes the developer that you WANT in your shop.  It is amazing how many times you run across a developer\coder\engineer\architect (whatever they want to be called at the time) who is so smart, that they make your head spin, but when it comes down to shipping a product they just can’t get it out the door because they are ALWAYS looking for a better way to refactor their code.  They burn through endless cycles on the smallest parts of the code as you watch your deadlines slip past and disappear in the horizon. 

Now, one of the most time consuming tasks for (most)  developers is not  writing the actual code,  or creating the documentation ( um yeah.. we all fully document our code right?), but figuring out what went wrong when your code does not work.  I don’t care how phenomenal of a coder you are or what patents you have pending for your work, ALL of us have spent hours trying to track down a bug in our software. As a matter of fact, I think debugging is an art form for developers. It takes a very keen eye to look over someone's shoulder and pick out a bug in 50 lines of code that the poor developer has been staring at for an hour. When I was teaching at CSUF, I loved leaning over and saying: “Oh, you are missing a semi-colon”, and then watching as their shoulders drop and they let out an audible sigh (part frustration, part relief). 

So make sure you take the time to build up the valuable skill. Go see one of Paul Sheriff’s or John Robbins’ talks, or read that chapter you skipped past in your C# book of choice, it will save you time in the end, I guarantee it.

Paul Working his Magic at the OCDotNet User Group

View Full Album

Paul will be doing a number of talks in the Southern California area on WPF. These are FREE two 1/2 day events. You don’t want to miss them.

8/24 LA – MSDN Presents : Fundamentals of WPF - http://bit.ly/147fCd

8/25 LA – MSDN Presents : WPF in the Real World - http://bit.ly/sDCxF

9/1 LA – MSDN Presents : Fundamentals of WPF - http://bit.ly/1v8HZS

9/2 LA – MSDN Presents : WPF in the Real World -  http://bit.ly/ivtZl

9/23 LA – MSDN Presents : Fundamentals of WPF - http://bit.ly/JpuO7

9/24 LA – MSDN Presents : WPF in the Real World - http://bit.ly/xKGwg

So I have mentioned before that LADotNet.org runs a Masters Series on Saturdays and this Saturday is no different. This week it is being presented by Ken Getz. Ken is a great presenter and we are glad to have him back in California (Sorry Florida). Anyway, as he was going through delegates and events and he covered something I was not aware of.

Anonymous Delegates. Whenever I used delegates in the past, I aways had a method that could be passed that would handle the call. You can also pass a proceedure or "Block of Code" instead of passing a pointer to a method like below. (Both C# and VB)

Setting up membership for your ASP.Net website is pretty simple. All you need to do is:

1.  run the scripts using the aspnet_regsql.ext tool (C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regsql.exe    your version number may be diferent) to set up the database tables.
2. Add a membership section to your web.config. Making sure that you add the <clear/> tag since you need to override the machine.config.
   
   

      41     <membership>

      42       <providers>

      43         <clear/>

      44         <addname="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider"

      45                   type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider,
                            System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
                            PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"

      46                   connectionStringName="LocalSqlServer"

      47                   enablePasswordRetrieval="false"

      48                   enablePasswordReset="true"

      49                   requiresQuestionAndAnswer="true"

      50                   applicationName="/"

      51                   requiresUniqueEmail="false"

      52                   minRequiredPasswordLength="1"

      53                   minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0"

      54                   passwordFormat="Hashed"

      55                   maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5"

      56                   passwordAttemptWindow="10"

      57                   passwordStrengthRegularExpression="" />

      58       </providers>

      59     </membership>

      60   </system.web>
   
   

3. Add a connection string once again using the <clear/>  tag to clear out the machine.config settings. (I will tell you why soon) 
   
   

      16   <connectionStrings>

      17     <clear/>

      18     <addname="LocalSqlServer"connectionString="Data
                Source=xxx;Initial Catalog=xxx;Persist Security
                Info=True;User ID=xxxx; password=xxx" />

      19   </connectionStrings>
   
   
   

4. Then load up the Web Site Administration Tool by going to Website\Asp.Net Configuration in VS2005.

5. You will then be about to configure your membership using SQL2000/2005 using this tool.