Windows Phone 7–App hub Issues

All started once I got my windows phone, I had some trouble trying to connect my account on App hub, in the end all worked out, I have my account setup and everything is set.

Now this post is more of a tale of what happened and the things I had to do to be able to use it.

The particular setup associated to my account is different to what you normally see, or so it seemed to be.

The account setup is fairly simple and easy to follow

• You login with your windows live account
• Create an app hub account
• Pay 99 dollars and you are set.

Right?

Well it seems not, for some of us, there are issues that are different per account.

For me, the main problem was related to the credit card validation

Every single time I added my credit card information (no matter which one) the application will come back telling me that is not valid.

There were several links and recommendations on how to fix this issue, but they were not working. (the forum I was directed to)

One of the suggestions is go to https://billing.microsoft.com/home.aspx  and add your credit card information in there

Well, there were no options for doing that (I tried a couple of accounts, and had the same issue)

Later on (from a reply from the tech support team on the app hub) I had to go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/default.aspx to add my credit card information.

I’m a developer, so my train of thought was:

1. Set everything up, so you have the account ready
2. Download the resources and set your Dev. environment
3. Finally pair your device with the above already setup.

What happened every time when I was trying to add my credit card information was that there was no phone attached to my account.

And non of the emails related to the support ticket I was following told me anything about that, I had my phone (I got it from the evangelist on my area, see this post), I had a windows live id, but, I did not associate my live id with my phone.

The issue starts from the app hub having problems with the credit card validation, but if the workaround is there, well, is not so big of an issue, right?

We Devs. tend to think like that, but as consumer it’s not a good response.

Anyhow back to were we were.

I had to create a different account, in this case a Hotmail account (against my will since I wanted to use my own domain/email address) but in this case this will have to do.

Then you would ask, why you didn’t try pairing your domain/email again with a windows live id?

For a simple reason, I was hosting my custom email with: http://home.officelive.com

But I received a note that they will pull the plug on it, and I will be forced to move to Office 365 if I want to keep what I have, but obviously costs will be higher (but this is a story for some other time)

And that seemed to have trouble with my windows phone, since it was unable to authenticate my account. (good thing it failed, #Fail on the reporting why it failed)

After all the setup and the new live account added:

So, in the end here are my recommendations to create an app hub successfully and painless.

1. Make sure the live account you are using is valid
2. Check your billing address in three different locations:
   1. https://live.xbox.com/
   2. https://billing.microsoft.com
   3. and finally: https://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/my
3. Pair your windows phone and setup your ZUNE account on your local machine before attempting anything.
4. Be patient when contacting app hub, the volume of requests must be really high, understandable, but not likeable

And now, once you are set, happy coding!

Check this post for Windows phone Development resources
and this post for initial setup of a development environment

Last but not least here is how to unlock your phone once all the above steps are completed

Later!

Developing on Windows Phone – Set the environment

As I mentioned in a previous post you can setup your development environment pretty much for free.

If you are starting your development right out from school you can take advantage of https://www.dreamspark.com/ it will provide the tools for you to be successful building windows applications, its free and is really useful, I wish I that program had existed when I was studying in Mexico.

Now, you are no longer a student you can use the : BizSpark in a similar way, start ups and small business get some love from Microsoft too, if you register your company you can access lots of useful resources (and software) to be able to reach that dream you are pursuing.

So, back to the environment.

As lots of people did before me, there are tons of blog posts about how to setup your environment and where to get all the tools, perhaps after this link you will stop reading, don’t blame you, is a lot of things to know to do this (but is really worth it, at least so far it has been for me) without further adieu here is the link

Now after you install all the goodies that you can find in that location what to do?

Well you can start developing,

But how do I do that? Well, I can’t provide all the answers, right? right (well not that much, I will be adding more posts about it as I go along), so for that we have more resources so you can get training on how to do stuff for the windows phone here (training) and some more information here

now for some questions:

• And what about the device you got for free?
• How do you use it?
• Where can I get one?

About the device I got for free, I posted it earlier today here

How do you use it? I will get to that in an additional post later.

Where can you get one? uhm, this is a tough question since there are lots of options and you will only get it if you really want it.

What you can do: follow @DanielEgan, @UserCommunity, also try this URL: http://www.30tolaunch.com/ (free phones are being offered now for  contest)

and finally try all the user groups in your area you can find try this

http://windows-phone.meetup.com/

You should be able to find one or two near you

So, I will be posting more information on the setup for the Windows Hub Account and some hurdles you may have to jump over.

(BTW.. I really dislike my Android now, so unstable.. cool platform but the OEM just messes up with the core a lot)

Update –

Just as I was installing the Azure framework, more dependencies showed up, well, there is a lot of utilities there that will definitely save me some time later on.

So on to the next post

Get your Phone Dev on!

I’m a developer, as the world is moving forward I decided to start building apps for mobile devices, there are so many things you can do and there are so many things now possible thanks to the power of the smartphones.

While making the decision of which platform to use as my first development area I reviewed Android and Windows Phone platforms, and due to the abundance of tools and information on how to develop for windows phone I decided to use that as my launch pad.

The first thing you have to do is get a phone, or so I thought, since I need a place where I can test all the things I will be building, therefore the first step was to get the hardware.

Fortunately here in California Daniel Egan (@DanielEgan) is the Evangelist that is in charge of that, and he happened to be giving away some windows phones for free, (well, you have to be a developer and must be doing something for the platform), so I reached out to him after seeing this tweet:

And after a couple of emails describing the apps I want to build, he sent me the phone, pretty cool!

So I was in my merry way ready to deploy a test application I created, but for to do that you have to have an App Hub account.

More on that coming up in some posts.

BTW, this is my phone: