yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Phone 7 General] arkavat:
they are not difficult, but need server infrastructure. But just step back and think about it. The services from which you need notifications are cloud based services. They already have the foundations for infrastructure. Now they need to add support for push notifications. They will do it. but will take time. it will be difficult for simple stand alone apps.. but which simple stand alone app you think needs notifications?

Android is already on its way to become an OS that needs regular resets to kill services that pile up in the background. (Remember Windows Mobile) Android does not kill an app until its RAM is full. All new phones have 512 MB RAM. it takes quite a few programs to reach a point when Android starts killing services. Till then, it takes a huge toll on battery.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vetvito:
No truth to any of that. But lets stay on topic though.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
Push notifications are a better way for interacting with web services in terms of preserving battery than having a bunch of services that continuously poll servers in background. I think it's hard to argue otherwise. However, push notifications aren't a substitute for multitasking in general, or even local notifications. They are a substitute for one specific use case - alerting users when certain events happen outside the phone.

My question remains, however - why is everybody anxious about it now? What exactly happened between MIX, when all of this became public knowledge, and now?
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
I guess the whole point is that standalone apps don't need push notifications but have to rely on them simply to update homescreen tiles, which is an obvious overkill. I have a couple of apps that use badge notifications on the iPhone currently. One is a Google RSS reader, another is the Read It Later app. They both connect to web services, it's very useful that they show information about unread items on the home screen, but none of them really needs their own server infrastructure. Well, they could use it, but don't have to.
[Windows Phone 7 General] crow26:
I hear bad things about the battery life of WP7 phones... apparently the lack of multitaskung doesn't help at all... Android still provides better battery life, despite that lots of apps can poll and update widgets in the background.

Don't trust the marketing blabla. WP7 will only be a static grid of icons, just like iOS. The only OS that REALLY is "live" is Android.
[Windows Phone 7 General] martoto:
That's simply wrong. WP7 still supports live tiles updatable through push notification, iOS - not. Still, Android would remain most feature rich platform with all advantages and disadvantages that comes with that.
[Windows Phone 7 General] RustyGrom:
The phone can also poll for updates on a scheduled basis (every hour, day, week, or month). They don't have to be push. This will work well for things like weather updates where you don't need instaneous info anyways.
[Windows Phone 7 General] ericc191:
I would ignore him. Mods already closed his other thread bashing WP7 and talking about how amazing Android is. It's clear he has an agenda and nothing of actual importance to say.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vetvito:
Live tile from weatherbug

http://www.wpcentral.com/weatherbug...feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wmexperts+(wpcentral)

Don't know if its Live like MS tiles though.

Push notifications equals bubbles like the iPhone.
[Windows Phone 7 General] AceofSpades25:
I think Microsoft need to make a web service available (perhaps through their Bing domain) that will allow developers to send their notifications to it, and then it could push those notifications onto the phone. Most developers will not have the budget to run their own webservices for notifications.
[Windows Phone 7 General] crow26:
READ the first post cause you didn't understand anything.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
WP7 push notifications are similar to those in iOS, but there are significant differences. Toast and raw notifications aside, WP7 "Tile" notifications allow updating graphics and text on the tile. iOS's badge notifications simply let you update the number in the "bubble. Built-in apps have an advantage in that they can update tiles locally, without a web service, which is a big difference. But otherwise, Tile Notifications do allow to make "live tiles".

An MS-run service would indeed be great, but there are third party services available for iOS, Android and Blackberry developers that offer very attractive and flexible pricing, starting from free service for up to 1 million notifications per month. I'm sure something will pop up for WP7 devs as well.
[Windows Phone 7 General] AceofSpades25:
Microsoft really need to offer these services for free if they want live tile updates to be a great feature of their OS. Many app developers do this as a hoby and so will not afford the hosting required for this "feature"
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
I'll tell Steve Ballmer next time we meet for a beer.
[Windows Phone 7 General] martoto:
I've read the first post. I'm just pointing that the statement "WP7 is the same grid of static icon/tile as iOS" is wrong. Nice example of using live tile is WeatherBug app. iOS cannot do that, Android can do even more. However it is pointless to discuss why MS take the decision for applying these restrictions here, since you obviously do favour Androd OS.
[Windows Phone 7 General] crow26:
You still don't understand anything. The problem is that hardly any WP7 developers will use live tiles, because it's expensive to set up and maintain servers for the push notifications.

That's why WP7 will indeed become a static grid of icons, like iOS, with few exceptions.
[Windows Phone 7 General] AceofSpades25:
I'd appreciate that. He doesn't tend to listen to me.
[Windows Phone 7 General] owenw:
Uh... yes they do. Push notifications must be enabled. As a WP7 user, I can tell you this works. Go check out Alphajax to see it working. My friend developed this app, it's brilliant.
[Windows Phone 7 General] AceofSpades25:
Read the post... they work, but they're expensive and so most people wont use them
[Windows Phone 7 General] owenw:
My friend that worked on this made them no problem with literally no budget. Works perfect, all you need is a basic server. Get your facts straight ;)
[Windows Phone 7 General] AceofSpades25:
The fact that you need a server at all, just to update some tiles on the home screen is precisely the problem.
[Windows Phone 7 General] jimecm:
weatherbug is a live tile

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-WTGT-BYc0
[Windows Phone 7 General] AceofSpades25:
While this may not update your tile with useful data, it looks like it is possible to cycle the image on a live tile without employing a webservice

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff769548(v=VS.92).aspx

Unfortunately the image files can't be contained within the app itself, and have to be retrieved from a single URL online, making it awkward to cycle them :rolleyes:

Glad to see the weather bug app using live tiles. :D
[Windows Phone 7 General] vetvito:
Let me correct myself, Its not animated like the MS live tiles.

Also what I didn't see:

Current location

Update interval times

How many days to show in the Tile
[Windows Phone 7 General] ericc191:
crow, you're an idiot. Stop talking like you've just come from the future.
[Windows Phone 7 General] crow26:
Is it my fault that some people are too stupid to read the first post?
[Windows Phone 7 General] powersquad:
crow gtfo. you are an idiot. no one likes you and your ****ty android OS.
[Windows Phone 7 General] ericc191:
I have to disagree with the second part of your statement. :p
[Windows Phone 7 General] powersquad:
this is the only way he will most likely stop trolling.:D
[Windows Phone 7 General] AceofSpades25:
He's not trolling, he's raising a very important point
[Windows Phone 7 General] Phone Titan:
Well the bigger developers will most likely already have a server and will most likely just add it in.
[Windows Phone 7 General] emigrating:
The problem isnt that they [notifications] are expensive - cause theyre not, you can buy a dedicated server for $25/mnt with more than enough power/bandwidth to provide these to all your users.

The issue is more likely that its not something developers have concentrated on initially. With the update model on the marketplace its real easy to push out upgrades/new features, so once the apps [which would benefit from push] have matured a little more we will get live tiles for them.

Dont forget that while we develop for the phone using preexisting knowledge/tech it is, for most of us, a new experience applying this knowledge in the mobile sector - hence there is some learning involved even for the most experienced dev. Add to this the fact that handsets are only now really starting to become available and its obvious why not everyone has taken advantage of tech not readily/easily testable on the emulator.
[Windows Phone 7 General] AceofSpades25:
LOL.... $25 a month is a lot of money. No hobbyist is gonna fork out that kind of money just to have a tile that may display the odd update if people even choose to pin it to their home screen in the first place. Ideally developers want to write an app where the costs are one off, since most apps will pay for themselves slowly over their lifetime.

The business case for adding live tile updates is poor, unless as somebody mentioned, a larger company already had a web server with all the admin overhead that entails.
[Windows Phone 7 General] powersquad:
you see how business works? alphajax is selling the game for $6.99 is the marketplace. it's a bloody well written/designed game. it's really popular. $25/month in expenses considering the amount of revenue alphajax is making is nothing
[Windows Phone 7 General] AceofSpades25:
The point is... many developers will reason that the expense (and ongoing effort) of having live tiles does not justify the advantage they may bring to the application, since most users will not choose to have your app pinned to their home screen.

If Microsoft implemented a simpler/free solution which did not hog resources (which they could) many more users (including hobbyists) would make use of this feature making it something that really makes the WP7 platform stand out from the rest
[Windows Phone 7 General] bean_ian:
is google app engine a possibility for hosting your live tile webservice?

I'm currently developing an app and was hoping to have a live tile but haven't gotten to the implementation stage yet.

I have worked with GAE before and it's pretty easy to use and best of all free.
[Windows Phone 7 General] AceofSpades25:
An interesting idea... it seems GAE make you choose between JAVA or Python though. I'd be interested to see if this works. Keep us informed
[Windows Phone 7 General] N8ter:
Let me guess...

Linux and/or Android user?

Even 50 cents would be too much for you people.

P.S. Microsoft has push servers, just like Google has servers for c2dm.

90% of the people in this thread don't know wtf they're talking about.

Trolling platform-bashers usially don't, though...
[Windows Phone 7 General] emigrating:
A lot of money? I bet you spend more than that on cups of coffee a month. Sure, it's a cost that you have to take into consideration as a developer but as you'll see below it's a cost most professional (and yes, hobbyists can be pros also) developers already have.

That's not the point as most developers will not have a problem justifying this expense. Firstly, if you are a developer with an app in the marketplace you have already paid $99 for the privilege of uploading apps (unless you are a student). Secondly, as a developer, even a hobbyist one, you already have a website up and running, in most cases these websites are already running on a VPS or dedicated server - hence adding a webservice on said server to update your live tiles will cost you nothing but a little time writing code. There is no cost overhead as the server is already there and paid for. There is no administrative overhead as once you've written your webservice you don't need to update it - it works and does what you need, i.e. push information. There are no bells and whistles to be added at a later date (unless the push system changes, in which case I'm certain the old way of doing things would be deprecated and finally removed over a number of months or even years).

If the concern is that users will not pin your app to the homescreen your app does not need a Live Tile, so that argument falls flat.

There are simpler solutions already - you could have the tile update by timer. Sure, this would still require a server on your end but in most cases this could run on a free webhost. Create a quick PHP or ASP page that returns the correct information based on a user token or whatever.

Ok, so you are a student - i.e. you have no vested economical interest in the app marketplace. Here's a thought, get together with another handful of people in your exact situation and share the hosting costs. Heck, if you're so inclined you could create a website/host/service yourself and sell computing time/bandwidth on this for $.99 a month to students. If your server is hosted on a $25 plan you would only need 26 subscribers to actually break even - 26 webservices will not even make your server break a sweat.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vetvito:
Its funny how you guys come up with all these creative and easy solutions. Funny thing is, why haven't Twitter or Facebook used these easy solutions.
[Windows Phone 7 General] AceofSpades25:
Actually I am a Microsoft developer and am currently trying to fight the many obstacles that Microsoft has put in fron of us with the new WP7 platform.

ps. Please point me to these free Microsoft push servers.. clearly you're the one who has no idea what you're talking about.
[Windows Phone 7 General] AceofSpades25:
OR... why be bothered with any of this rubbish... it's not going to affect your sales in the app store anyway. So we'll all just do what most developers will be doing and forget that live tiles ever exist.

I'm not bothered at all about using live tiles in my apps. It think they're nice but not a necesity. I only pitched in to this thread because I find it funny that Microsoft is touting this technology when really, they have made developers jump through so many hoops it will hardly be used.

Mark my words, they will hardly be used. They're not used for twitter clients or facebook (2 of the most obvious uses for them) So far only a weather app has implemented them.

Here: http://pocketnow.com/windows-phone/where-are-the-third-party-live-tiles-for-wp7 Read what other devs are saying (scroll down for comments)
[Windows Phone 7 General] RustyGrom:
Give them some time. Honest question... how does facebook on iPhone do it? They have a similar push methodology, except theirs is actually harder. I don't honestly know how twitter would even implement it in practice. When would you want live updates? Every time someone you follow tweets? When you get a DM? When you're mentioned? There's no good way to do it really and that has nothing to do with the way Microsoft implemented live tiles. I could easily see Facebook adding notifications. WP7 isn't even out yet in the US!

I disagree that it won't affect your sales/downloads. The other weather apps will get blown away by Weatherbug if they don't add tile updates. I know that's what I'll be downloading. It's a good differentiator against competitors if your app offers it and theirs doesn't. I've got my web service hosted for like $6/month for "unlimited" bandwidth. Push/tile notifications simply call a tiny web service and downloads a super small PNG that my server generates on the fly. The only reason you'd need to go to expensive hosting is if your app really takes off and is getting millions of users in which case you should be making enough money to cover the costs.
[Windows Phone 7 General] AceofSpades25:
I was under the impression that facebook on the iphone doesn't use push notifications, but instead the phone itself checked for facebook updates periodically.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
It does use push notifications. It's quite buggy, by the way. There's a considerable lag between reading something and getting the badge get a decrement in the number, and sometimes the number is completely random.

I don't know why Facebook doesn't use PN on WP7 but I can think of a few damned serious reasons. First, they won't want to use a temporary solution but will need to integrate the service into their very complex infrastructure. They have clusters of front-end servers serving cached content, clusters of databases, clusters of servers between those, clusters of servers that correct errors in realtime etc. etc. etc. You don't just plug one Linux machine into this whole thing to start sending random stuff to a version 1.0 of your new app for a new platform, without having any clue how big the solution will be - you need to plan it, add it to budgets for purchasing hardware and so on. Second, you need to do some testing before you roll out a feature. The Facebook app wasn't even done by Facebook I'm sure, it was some contractor. And how many phones did this contractor have? One? Two?

So, if I were Facebook's CIO, I would definitely think twice before rushing anywhere. You're saying it's difficult for indie devs. I don't think it's any easier for mammoth structures like Facebook, although for different reasons. Yet it's absolutely clear that push notifications work, and aren't something prohibitively expensive or difficult to do. These things just take time.
[Windows Phone 7 General] RustyGrom:
iPhone apps can't run in the background for things like that I don't think. Just VOIP, Nav, music streaming, and IM. Maybe they could make the facebook stuff work under the IM umbrella but it would seem to be overkill (except for facebook chat).

Great post. I would guess that they would integrate it into their iPhone push system since they're similar enough from an infrastructure standpoint, just different methodologies.
[Windows Phone 7 General] emigrating:
Like someone else already posted; the reason the big players haven't implemented it yet is because they don't roll out new srrvices on a whim. It's planned long in advance of it going live. Also, I'm not sure Twitter is a great candidate for Live Tiles, I don't follow many people but still get at least one new tweet in my timeline per minute. Not sure I would want my Twitter tile update this often - there would be no ponit. Facebook on the other hand could roll out a live tile displaying, in numbers, the amount of requests, unread messages and notifications.

It is going to affect sales once one of the apps implements it. Take any two or more similar apps, the one utilizing a live tile to give information (if warranted) will quite obviously sell better (as long as the apps offer the same featureset otherwise). I reckon we will see more apps leveraging live tiles than the somewhat unnecessary toast notifications.

As for hoops. What hoops are you jumping thru (other than setting up the notification service)? It's easy as hell actually implementing live tiles. If the hoops are cost implications for you, perhaps take a look at Azure thru BizSpark or any of the partner programmes (if you are eligeble).
[Windows Phone 7 General] crow26:
Live tiles are completely useless. They add costs for developers and don't bring any benefits at all.

Android has a task scheduler, that means apps don't have to be running to update widgets and that means they don't impact battery life.

If an Android widget updates every 20 minutes, it just needs to create a scheduled task and only run every 20 minutes. WP7 tiles additionally need a push service that's running all the time and causes battery drain in addition to the 20 minutes update cycle.

There's no need for a push service. There are much better solutions that don't impact battery life.

Microsoft's implementations are mostly complete crap. The idea behind WP7 is good, but most things in WP7 must be implemented a lot better.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Sir. Haxalot:
Microsofts PN service won't affect battery life much more than listening for incoming calls or texts, so that argument fails.
[Windows Phone 7 General] crow26:
That's plain wrong. In fact for most "normal" users PN has a bigger impact on battery life than several apps running in the background.

You can't have a badly written app drain the battery, that's all. Apart from that, the WP7 implementation only has disadvantages (costs for developers, shorter battery life, limitations).
[Windows Phone 7 General] lqaddict:
-1

+100
[Windows Phone 7 General] AceofSpades25:
Microsoft PN requires a constant connection to be maintained to the mirosoft push service. This means your wifi or 3G is permenantly on. Also, maintain this connection it has to send a stay alive request every few minutes.
[Windows Phone 7 General] dgaust:
There are ways of providing push notifications to tiles that mimic the live tile function, and for free. Of course that depends on how your app is designed to work but it is possible.
[Windows Phone 7 General] arturobandini:
Yes indeed, even the Microsoft Weather app doesn't have live tiles.

So what's the use of this style of Metro interface if even MS doesn't care ? ? ?
[Windows Phone 7 General] dgaust:
I don't believe that's a 'native' app, but one created by a MS employee as part of their internal competition.
[Epic 4G General] Eazail70x7:
I moved the apk's I wanted to install into the system/app directory, changed the permissions, pushed the r/w button to remount the system and then tried installing the apps.

Here is where I'm at now, magic smoke live wallpaper installed fine but when I try to select it as my wall paper, it force closes. Not sured if I need another file. I then tried to install ocean waves, dandilion, and luminescence live wallpaprs but the installation failed on all 3 of those...

Any help is appriciated, thanks
[Epic 4G General] mattallica76:
Usually for me, I just copy the apk's into system/app, change the permissions, and reboot. Which apps are you trying to install?
[Epic 4G General] lviv73:
Some apps will install im /system/app folder some will het fc's,and some apps will get fc's in regualar install but install fine in /system/apps folder.A tip:Sometimes an app gets fc when in system app folder however if you mod that file(change icon color,etc.) It will work fine!I dont know why that is maybe something to do with signature.
[Epic 4G General] pulser_g2:
Moved to general as not development
[Epic 4G General] Eazail70x7:
Magic smoke live wallpaper from the vibrant dump and sprintandroidextention (sp?).
[Epic 4G General] mattallica76:
Make sure you change the permissions of the files to match the permissions of other files in the system/app folder.
[Epic 4G General] Eazail70x7:
ive done that. The wallpaper is installed but when I try to view it in the wallpaper selecter, it forcecloses :(

Do I need an extra file?
[myTouch 3G, Magic Apps and Games] jjennings089:
Where can I find the New and Weather APK from the Nexus One?

All I find in the forums are ported to 1.5/6 and don't seem to work on the newer Froyo from TMO.

Thanks in advance!
[myTouch 3G, Magic Apps and Games] jjennings089:
Never mind I solved it. Downloaded a nexus one rom http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=7655349&postcount=443 and pulled the GenieWidget.apk from the zip file.

Adb install and it runs just fine.
[myTouch 3G, Magic Apps and Games] aquaboyin:
Was searching for this for such a long time... thanks for the post and link :)