For the last couple of months I’ve had my head down writing a WP7 book. Entitled Windows Phone 7 Unleashed, it will be published though Sams Publishing. I’m pouring lots of tips and techniques into this book, along with the requisite WP7 development info. The book will lead you through end to end production of WP7 apps, from developing Silverlight and XNA apps, through to certification and publishing on the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Figure 1. Windows Phone 7 Unleashed cover (may change)

There are also many sample applications for just about all the main topics. One such sample, in the chapter on Push Notification, demonstrates toast, tile, and raw push notifications using a stock ticker app. It allows you to register to receive stock price updates, for a particular stock symbol, via a cloud service. The cloud service periodically sends real stock prices to the device, as you can see in the following screen shots.

Figure 2. Raw notifications are received in the Stock Quoter screen.	Figure 3. Toast and tile notification are received showing updated stock market quotes.

It’s just one of many apps in the book.

I’m very excited about WP7. I really like the simplicity of the geo location API, and how social networking is integrated into the OS. There are many reasons why WP7 will transform mobile development. I still have a long road ahead of me with the writing of the book. I’ll be posting more about phone development in the coming months.