I gave a talk to the Chicago Windows Phone Developer User Group on April 16, 2012 on how to use the Windows Phone Local Database. As promised, I’m linking the presentation as well as a link to MSDN resources:

Presentation

MSDN Local Database Overview and Examples

I’ve just downloaded the Skype Beta for Windows Phone and have been playing with it for a few minutes. I haven’t had a chance yet to use it for video calls (it’s still early here!) but I had a couple of thoughts on the interface that I wanted to get down.

1. The contact filtering (all/online) is not intuitive. There is a small text notice underneath the contacts pivot item that you have to tap in order to change it. This should be an application bar icon in my opinion.
2. The contact list does not show the current status of a user (online/offline/away) … it should.
3. There is an icon in the upper right corner that seems to just take you to the recent pivot item … seems strange to me when you can just swipe for that. I must be missing something as to its funtionality … but that’s kind of the point. It’s not very clear what it does.
4. Why can’t I pin individual people to my start screen?!?! That is very simple functionality to include and seems like a big miss to me.

I will say that Skype for Windows Phone looks very nice and is very smooth when navigating the interface. It is a beta, so hopefully we’ll see some of the things I’ve mentioned above cleared up in the final release.

I’ll update this post after I’ve had an opportunity to test the video calling and IMing features.

Mary Jo Foley posted an interesting tidbit in her Microsoft could charge for Skype video archiving and authentication article today:

Songhurst told attendees that Windows 8 was the topic he could say the least about “because we’re very careful in what we say about Windows 8.”

“(W)e really don’t talk about Windows 8,” Songhurst repeated when asked another question which touched on the topic.

It instantly brought to mind the 1999 Film Fight Club and its rules and generated an instant chuckle.

Just a quick note to let everyone know that version 2.1 of Network Dashboard has passed certification and has been published to the Windows Phone Marketplace. It usually takes about 24 hours from this point until it’s available to everyone.

For more information on what’s included in this update, see this post.

Network Dashboard version 2.1 has been submitted for certification testing for the Windows® Phone Marketplace. If everything goes according to plan, it should be available in the marketplace in a few days.

Version 2.1 brings the following changes:

• NOTE: To properly support multiple locales, we have changed how reminder times are stored. This may have caused your reminders to become disabled. Please check your settings.
• NEW: Added new language support. This release contains English, French, Italian and Spanish. You will need to launch Network Dashboard to make any pinned tiles update their language.
• NEW: Added a new Live Tile style called “Text” … it is a scaled down live tile with the status in the upper right corner in text.
• NEW: Added an “Other Tiles” settings option to give users the ability to change the Bluetooth and Airplane Mode tile styles.
• NEW: Added a toggle to the live tiles pivot item in the settings screen to allow users to configure whether the background sync task runs or not.
• FIXED: If the background agent was disabled Network Dashboard would not start properly.
• FIXED: Network Dashboard was not properly reading in the current setting of Live Tile style, so if the user accessed the setting screen it would not show the current setting properly.