Developing XBOX 360 Games for the Live Marketplace

"Once you’re ready to begin developing Xbox 360 games, you will need to sign up for an XNA Creators Club Premium membership.

A Premium membership enables you to create and debug your games on Xbox 360. Also, it allows you to submit your creations for distribution on Xbox LIVE Marketplace.

If you want to create games for Xbox 360, you will also need a computer running XNA Game Studio, an Xbox 360 console with hard drive, and an Xbox LIVE Gold or Silver account. The computer and the Xbox 360 console must be on the same network.

Once you sign in to the XNA Creators Club Online Web site, browse to the Membership page to sign up for a Premium membership, and, if necessary, an Xbox LIVE membership. You will be prompted to sign up for either a four-month Premium membership (49 USD) or annual (99 USD) membership. "

nuff said

http://creators.xna.com/en-US/create_detail#tour_three

Migrating to Visual Studio 2008

I wanted to take a look at the XNA Game Studio 3.0 - and it turns out it requires Visual Studio 2008. Since all of my current code is based on 2005 projects I've been avoiding the upgrade - no it looks like its time to take the plunge.

There is good news, apparently you can run multiple versions of Visual Studio side beside:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms246609.aspx

And more good news - XNA also works with C# 2008 Express. It looks like Microsoft has made things easy this time around.

Visual Studio 2008 Express: http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/#webInstall
XNA Game Studio 3.0: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=7D70D6ED-1EDD-4852-9883-9A33C0AD8FEE&displaylang=en

Happy Coding

Redfly Smartphone Terminal

This is an interesting idea. Essentially its a bigger, hires screen and keyboard for your Windows Mobile device.
http://www.celiocorp.com/

You connect it to your smartphone and it displays your smartphone screen on the Redfly's WVGA screen and allows accessing programs and documents through the Redfly. The first thing to wonder with this device is - will your applications scale correctly to 800x480? Fortunately there are a few WVGA devices already on the market so the answer: with most newer applications should be "yes".

This is a very similar idea to the Foleo for Palm devices. The Foleo never made it to market - likely due to the decline in Palm market share and the high price point of $499. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Foleo

As someone that enters a lot of data into my phone I could see the use in this. But really - I think I'd rather get a mini-notebook like the Asus Eee PC and use Dashwire's software (athough that requires an active internet connection).

I imagine the Redfly is a product you'll have to try before passing judgement. If its extremely easy to use it might justify the $200 US for the entry model. But at that price I'm not quite interested enough to find out.

I do love products like this and I hope they have a market. Less tech savy road warriors might find this indispenable (again - if its dead simple to use).

And finally a link to back to My Today Screen who posted the first article I had read on the Redfly.

Panoramic Calc Pro 2.0.2 released today.

Calc Pro 2.0.2 contains a few minor bug fixes and improves compatibility with WVGA devices like the HTC Touch HD, Sony Experia and the Toshiba G900.

Grab it from the Panoramic Software Inc website here:
http://www.panoramicsoft.com/

This version is compatible with all Windows Mobile 5, 6 & 6.1 Professional and Classic devices (ie Pocket PC).

Intel Core i7 Processors now for sale

I haven't been following the PC hardware market as closely as I used to now that my Xbox 360 has taken the gaming duties away from my PC.

So when I saw NCIX announce they had Core i7s for sale I did a little research.

Here's a little information for those of you that don't want to wade through pages and pages of tech reviews.

Intel Core i7 is a Quad core processor similar to the previous Core 2 Quads. The big change is it also supports SMT (Symmetric Multi Threading) - it was that quirky feature Intel brought to the Pentium 4s that made your computer think it had 2 processors (but rarely improved performance).

Well now your system is going to think it has 8 (yes eight) processors and SMT might be a whole lot more useful now that a lot of processor intensive applications and games are being designed for multi core and multi-processor systems.

The new processor from Intel also has some other tech improvements including a 3rd level of cache and support for SSE4. The final big improvement is the integrated memory controller that should greatly improve memory bandwidth.

Too bad it still won't help me get my work done any faster.

Google for more information.

iSS Essentials Update

It was time for an update to iSS Essentials. This brings it to version 2.0.0.

The updates are:

iSS SciCalc 3.0:

This is the biggest update. Calc Pro 1.0 and SciCalc 2.3 have been merged and will now be known as SciCalc 3.0. This adds constants, unit conversions and graphing along with the easy to use interface of Calc Pro. The Calc Pro name will now be carried on by Panoramic Software which has done an impressive job of improving the look at feel of Calc Pro as well as adding a ton of features.

iSS Notepad 1.1.0:

Fixed the italic font bug
Added Document Info showing the word count, character count and full file name and path

iSS Task Manager 1.1.0:

Added "Smart Shut Down" and "Smart Soft Reset". These two features are almost the same and I've wanted them ever since we released Essentials. If you reset or turn off your device using these options in the menu - Task Manager will try to gracefully close all running applications first. What this means is - you won't lose changes to documents or settings of programs you left open. A much nicer way to reset your phone.

iSS Task Switcher 1.1.0:

I noticed a drawing error on my iMate JAQ3 on the menu. I couldn't reproduce it on any other devices but I thought it was worth fixing anyways.

I also added the above mentioned "Smart Soft Reset" to iSS Task Switcher on the quick launch bar (its the pretty new blue icon).

As always - you can buy iSS Essentials or any of the individual applications from Wireless-Apps: http://www.wireless-apps.net/

If you already have the full version and would like to upgrade - simply download the most recent trial version and re-install the software. It will retain the "full version" status along with your current settings.

Grab the latest demo from http://www.wireless-apps.net/ or http://www.implicitsoftware.com/

Panoramic Hexegems for Windows Mobile Pro/Classic finally released

Panoramic Software Inc has finally released Hexegems for Windows Mobile Professional / Classic devices.

Hexegems will work on all Pocket PC 2003 devices, Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC devices, and Windows Mobile 6 & 6.1 Professional and Classic devices.

A smartphone (non-touch version) should be released before Christmas 2008.

Its currently selling for $9.95 and you can buy it from the Panoramic Software website here:

http://www.panoramicsoft.com/mobilegames/hexegems/HexeGems.php