My wife came across this mysterious "Netflix Error Code N8156-6013" today and let me tell you - she was not happy. Netflix player keep complaining about DRM and date (which was correct). It took me a good 20 minutes to find a solution. Credit goes to Chad (read his post here). I'm reposting to give the solution more exposure.

I was checking up on Mo Calc over at Windows Phone 7 marketplace today and I came across an interesting finance app.

It's called Loanster. Check out these screenshots below:

Despite drawing inspiration from Mo Calc, I am assured that Loanster is a completly legit and independently written app. Its author Tony was nice enough and agreed to tweak the UI in the next version in order to differentiate Loanster from Mo Calc a bit more.

The weather was lousy today, so I couldn’t mow the grass. A shame, since I wanted to do something useful. I decided to get artsy while staying inside, so I entered the MonoGame logo contest.

Mono + Game = MonoGame

For the MonoGame logo I wanted to use good visual associations so that the picture adequately describes the nature of the framework. Of course everyone knows the white monkey, which is synonymous with the Mono project. But when I think of the word "game", a single image comes to me immediately. A single image which brings back a lot of memories from the good ol’ days. The long nights spent playing… Pac-Man! (oh, yeah baby!) This is where I drew my inspiration from.

All versions of the logo feature a slightly rotated Mono monkey with its mouth wide open in the tribute to the well-known arcade character. In front of the monkey are four circles, each one containing a letter from the word "game" (Monospace typeface). The circles are meant to represent the food balls from Pac-Man. Not the small, normal ones. Oh no. These are the "power pellets" which give Pac-Man super powers!

Version 1 – Black and White

I am a fan of minimalism, so the first logo is black and white. It should nicely match the original Mono project logo.

Version 2 – Yellow Pac-Man Monkey

This version of the logo features the yellow color, which brings it closer to the popular arcade games character.

Version 3 – White Monkey, Color Pellets (my favorite)

This version of the logo is meant to express the affiliation of the MonoGame project as well as to underline the cross-platform characteristics of its framework. The Monkey is white to make strong association with the Mono project, while the pellets feature colors which are prominent in logos of popular operating systems:

• Green – Android
• Blue – Mac/iOS
• Red – FreeBSD
• Gold – Linux (Tux’s beak)
• All colors – Windows

There are lots of other really awesome contest entries, so please keep your fingers crossed and wish me luck :)

Version 1.4 of Mo Calc is now available in the Marketplace. It's just a minor release which improves the scrolling of amortization table. Get it while it's hot.

Microsoft finally approved version 1.3 of my mortgage calculator for Windows Phone 7.

This version fixes the pie chart bug. Enjoy!

I finally had some time to release a much-needed update to my free mortgage calculator for Window Phone 7. Mo Calc 1.2 sports a new payment summary page with pie charts to better visualize payments structure.

I also revamped the comparison page. I decided to hide the detailed numbers and only display the monthly and total payments, in order to fit more items on the screen. The details are still available - just click "show details" to expand them.

I felt that the amortization table was pretty useless in the previous version. Who wants to scroll through 360 months of rows to see just a bunch of numbers? My plan is to gradually start improving it and making it more user-friendly. Version 1.2 has a "quick jump" capability (alike the people hub in Windows Phone 7) allowing quick hop to a designated year. Click on the year header to activate it.

There were also other miscellaneous improvements that made it to this version. Here is the list:

Version 1.2

• Improved payment summary page
• Added pie charts
• Improved amortization table
• Using large numeric keyboard for number input
• Added collapsible details for mortgage comparisons
• Performance improvements and bug fixes
• New icon and splash screen
• New About page

Another weekend, another project. My parents asked me for help getting their website up and running. They finally decided to share our tradition of making paper snowflake cut-outs with the world. It was a neat little project.

My sister digitized all snowflake patterns in SVG format using Inkscape. I wrote a simple script that "stitches" pages together and outputs PDFs. Pretty soon we created several awesome-looking eBooks. Then it was just a matter of putting together a website with a simple store. I used ASP.NET MVC along with a cloud-based eCommerce basket called Cashie. It was super easy - basically a copy-and-paste of a few HTML lines. Cashie still needs to add some features (for example, there is still no way to know that the purchase has been completed), but overall it was a good experience.

But enough about technology. Let's talk about snowflakes. Making cut-outs is really a great passtime, especially for those cold winter evenings. It's also easy to get the kids involved. Snowflakes make neat holiday decorations and gifts.

Try it yourself - Visit http://FunSnowflakes.com and download a free sample.

Yesterday Microsoft finally reactivated my App Hub account so I was able to publish a long overdue Mo Calc update. It did take them a whole week and I still don't know what the issue was in the first place. I guess at this point I don't really care. To sweeten the deal Microsoft reimbursed my money and pre-paid the $99 for a yearly App Hub membership. That, plus my app was approved after only a few hours. Call me satisfied.

Bing offers a nice way of searching for Windows Phone 7 apps, called "Visual Search". I have noticed that the results are a little bit outdated compared to the Zune client but, nonetheless it's a cool tool for browsing.

Here's a link to the Finance apps.

Note: The problem is that Marketplace search only includes titles! The descriptions and metadata are not searched. Sounds like another glitch to me.

As you undoubtedly heard from my posts on Twitter, I have published my very first Windows Phone 7 app. Yes, you guessed it right - it's a mortgage calculator called Mo Calc.

Dev Experience

I wanted to see if Microsoft's promise of reusing existing Silverlight code on the phone was true. Indeed it was, but mainly for the business logic. The unique space constrains of a phone screen pretty much required a brand new UI. I was glad my old code followed the MVVM pattern - I was able to quickly use databinding and get the new UI of the ground.

I really enjoyed styling the interface in Blend. Microsoft did an awesome job on this front. Visual design makes writing apps much quicker, even quicker than on Android. You don't have to deploy to the device/emulator to see how your UI will look like.

The APIs feel fine as well - every .NET dev will be at home. That said, I must say I personally like the "intent" model of Android better that Silverlight's web-like "navigation" model. But that's just my personal opinion. I'm still giving WP7 dev experience very high marks.

Below are some screenshots from version 1.0.0.0 of Mo Calc.

Marketplace Experience

Unlink Apple, Microsoft has published clear guidelines of what is allowed and what is not. It was nice to be able to read a document outlining all the things that are considered during the certification process. I chose to make my Mo Calc free and make money from ads. Microsoft allows 5 free app submissions.
Publishing Mo Calc through the website was very easy; a typical "wizard" experience. I was told the approval may take as long as five days, but my app got into the market just after 18 hours. Nice! 

The Bad and Ugly

While the quick submission turnaround time was certainly impressive, Microsoft managed to frustrate the heck out of me.

Right after my app made it to the market, I received a confirmation email stating that my marketplace account had been cancelled. Wait, what?
You read it right. The money was refunded to me, and I can no longer log in. Why did this happen? Nobody knows.

I have been calling MS tech support every day since, but was told that it may take more than a week to get my account reinstated. Very, very frustrating!

Meanwhile, my app is available in the marketplace. I have since found a few bugs and issues (ex. the ads are not showing, so I am not making any money) that I would like to fix, but I cannot access my account. Thanks Microsoft. I just hope that no one gives my app negative feedback for the glitches.

I'm really hoping my account gets reinstated soon...