So I’ve been working on a generic news reader to hopefully put the BBC News Mobile code base to a good use.

Have a play and let me know what you think. It’s no where near finished yet so lots of room for tweaking, new features and changes.

Let me know what you want via comments, @lawrencegripper on twitter or email phonesupport[at]grippers.co.uk  and I’ll try and make it happen.

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=D11EE8A531F0B903!10018&authkey=!AAQqOr4r6I9Dlqs

PS. I’ll be putting this through the portal as a full beta today, if you want in can you send me your live id on twitter or email and I’ll post a link back here this evening.

Edit: Private beta link, if you’ve given me your Live id is here – http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=808bfc1f-5121-42d0-b293-5394e73f39d1.

If you want to get involved tweet or email me your live ID and I’ll add you on.

Following the removal of the BBC News Mobile apps from the store I will be removing the service supporting the live tile functionality on Windows Phone 7.x and Windows 8.  This will be completed in two phases.

1. To avoid confusion, on these platforms, users will receive the following in place of the live tile.
   
2. The service will be disabled and no further updates will be delivered to the live tiles.

If you have received this message please remove the live tile from your home screen and  disable the background task to avoid unnecessary data and battery usage on your phone. 

This is being completed as, on the older versions of the phone application, the live tiles are downloaded from a web service which I host. As part of the apps removal this service will be taken down. I have included the message to allow users time to remove the tile before the service is turned off.

This does not affect Windows Phone 8 as the tiles are generated by the app on a background service.

Lastly I’d like to say thanks to all those who have contacted me with your comments, support and jokes –  they are all much appreciated.

For reference:

http://gripdev.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/removal-of-the-bbc-news-applications-for-windows-phone-and-windows-8/

These have been a labor of love for me since the launch of Windows Phone in 2010 and it is with great sadness today that I removed both applications from the store.

I do not wish to comment any further on the matter except to thank the over half a million people who downloaded the application and all those who have supported, tested, rated and emailed over the years.

P.s.

Please feel free to leave a comment to cheer me up, jokes would probably help my mood.

I was looking at doing a rough draft (think POC) for an app and wanted to use WebAPI for the back end. Azure hosting came to mind so I had a play creating a cloud service. Unfortunately my azure bill, mainly from the beeb live tile’s using up bandwidth, is already more than enough.

This was when I realised that you can host MVC 4 projects in Azure Websites and the shared instances allow 10 free sites. This means I can quickly setup a simple Web API, that isn’t going to see huge traffic or require gigantic resources, for free and use this to build out the app!

*Quick note – Azure Websites are in preview so the usual caveats apply*

Another cool feature that I’ll cover in another post is that you can set it up to publish from TFS by integrating with tfs.visualstudio.com to get a completed continuous integration solution.

Simple Guide:

Detailed guide – http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/tutorials/get-started/

1. Setup a new shared website through the azure portal.

1. Download the publishing profile and save it to you disk

1. Create your WebAPI Project in Visual Studio

1. Add in some code, this is the default controller you’ll get with the project.

   

2. Right click the project and select publish then import the publishing profile you downloaded.

1. Click publish and your site it live, for free and hosting a nice Web API.
2. Just to prove it the values controller returns as expected.

More info – http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/scenarios/web-sites/

For all those who’ve been in touch recently thank you for your feedback and support. This is a  brief note to keep you up to date.

Currently all development and improvement of the BBC News Mobile application is on hold and has been for sometime.

I will update you as soon as I am in a position to share more information about the future of the application.

Kind regards,

Lawrence

I’ve just put the finishing touches to a weekend project I started a couple of weeks ago.

If you’ve got Win 8 and you regularly talk to an audience this is hopefully going to be useful!

Site:

http://audiencer.cloudapp.net/

App:

http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/app/audiencer/70837431-cb37-47ca-92d7-f8d6243cb463

It’s a really simple audience feedback system with no registration requirements, so you can get up and running on the spot then quickly start quizzing your audience.

Technically I had lots of fun with this one, it was my first go with Bootstrap to create some lovely, hopefully pretty, responsive HTML5 (just about there).

Secondly I took at crack at creating an interface for Azure table storage using generics and the repository model.

Thirdly I’ve used MVC Razor for the web front end and WebApi for the apps API and hosted it all on Azure.

I’m planning to do a nice tech write up when I have some free time, been bogged down with some nasty admin lately so haven’t had time to finish it off yet!

This is a bit of an odd one but today I got one of the most abusive support requests I’ve ever received and realised I’ve never really talked about these.

To clarify I’m all up for criticism of the app and suggestions on improvements, here I’m referring to out right abuse with terrible language and personal insults. While they’re actually quite rare you’d be impressed that they do come through and they aren’t pretty.

I bring exhibit A – This guy emailed me on Tuesday and having not received a reply by Wednesday sent this:

Thank
you for your reply…. Oh wait, you did not. You are a lazy f**k and
should pull this app off the marketplace, 7.8 has been out a while and
you do not bother.. THIS APP DOES NOT
F**KING WORK YOU LAZY FAT C**T! Clear enough?

The really sad thing is that I’m working on a fix and I now know that this guy will benefit from It, despite being intensely abusive, its really frustrating!

Really quick update, from the emails I’m getting it looks like the livetiles aren’t behaving well after users update to windows phone 7.8.

This problem seems to be experienced by others, I’m trying to work out whats going on!

http://forums.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-7/214957-3rd-party-live-tiles-stuck-since-7-8-update.html

• Improved the visuals – header space shrunk, overlaps fixed and nicer pics.
• The return of the small live tile – too small for me but people wanted it!
• Offline access – In testing at the moment.
• Swiping to move to next story.
• Minor Bug fixes.
• Clearer disclaimer .

Think this is very nearly there, if you see anything that you don’t like/is a bug/shouldn’t happen let me know! Looking to publish in the next couple of days.

What’s Changed:

• Voice. I made it chatty - say “BBC News read top news” and it will.

Get the XAP here.

Fixes:

• Settings page failed to save – Fixed – Thanks @mrlacey
• NEW – Settings page font size setting @mrlacey
• Live tile update issue – Fixed – Meee
• NEW – livetile text wrapping issue thanks Mark Osborn & Jay bennett
• NEW – offline run crash thanks Jay bennett
• Also thanks to Mark Osborn and Ed Harrison for their feedback

What’s Missing:

I plan to get most of these features back in the app, I’d really appreciate your help in prioritising.

• NEXT RELEASE – Offline reading mode
• DONE – “Next story” button when reading story (first on my hit list)
• DONE – Share story
• NEXT RELEASE – Secondary live tiles for sections

Known issues:

• DONE – Icons, when static, are defaults
• DONE – No Welcome experience. User must use app bar to access settings & sections to setup live tiles, lockscreen and select feeds.
• STAYING – Wide livetile contains full string date, this is just to help debug
• TESTED – Suspend behaviour is untested.
• STILL FORGOTTEN – Lots I’ve forgotten