The Windows Phone Controls project has been updated to run with the April Refresh of the Windows Phone Developer Tools. This project currently includes the Panorama and Pivot controls along with sample projects demonstrating the controls.

Pivot Control (pic from CodePlex)

Panorama Control (pic from CodePlex)

This project could become a great repository of Windows Phone controls. So far, the project has one contributor to it. I’m not sure how he’s running the project, but if you want to contribute controls it wouldn’t hurt to try. Besides, he has the best url: phone.codeplex.com.

Next week I’m going ReMIX Atlanta to attend the Windows Phone 7 track. I want to be ahead of the curve on this one, as I feel that Microsoft finally has a phone that can compete in the mobile market. Of course, I’m not depending on one conference to make me a Windows Phone 7 expert, but the tools I previously downloaded stopped working when I installed the RTM of Visual Studio 2010.

Via Tim Heur, I’ve discovered that a compatible version of the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP has been released! It includes XNA Game Studio 4.0 CTP. Having the tools doesn’t do you much good without a training kit, so it would be wise to download it and go through it. There’s even a handy programming guide when you get stuck.

If you’re a designer, you should check out the Expression Blend SDK Preview 2 for Windows Phone and the Expression Blend Add-in Preview 2 for Windows Phone. You need Expression Blend 4 RC for these to work. Check out the Application Bar Icons for a consistent look and feel.

It appears as though the Reactive Extensions will be useful for Windows Phone. There are two articles on MSDN right now on using Rx: one on using the accelerometer data and another on the location data. LINQ to Events is pretty useful when you want to react to your device.

Roger Peters has a series of screencasts on Creating a Windows 7 Metro Style Pivot Application. No phone is complete without a twitter application, and the man in red shows us how it’s done.

The Metro UI seems to be pretty popular; someone even created a Firefox theme based on it.

There are tons of resources for us developers to jump in and make some awesome apps ahead of the release of the hardware. The marketplace is wide open… happy coding!

I’m sure one of the most tedious tasks for any conference organizer is to give away hundreds of swag at the end of the conference. By that point, you’re tired and you’re ready to go home. But it’s an essential closer for many people, so we do it any; drawing ticket after blue ticket. There must be another way.

There is. CodeMash 2.0.1.0 solved this problem with a cool app called raffleboard.

Since we’re doing a Code Camp on January 30th, I really wanted this application to help me give away prizes. I checked the web and found that the source code was released. I found it was written in Ruby, which I’ve never actually used before. Luckily, it only took me a few minutes to get everything running: download Ruby, download Sinatra with RubyGems, compile.

I’m a .NET guy though… I wanted a .NET version of this I could play with. I couldn’t find the license, so I emailed Adam (listed right in the application) and he was cool with me branching it. So now, Code Camp Raffleboard is born. It runs on ASP.NET MVC and uses the Spark View Engine.

If you’re a Code Camp organizer, or organize other types of conferences, it will make your life easier. Download Code Camp Raffleboard today!

One warning: neither version runs in Internet Explorer. I will see about fixing this in CCR for a future release. There are problems with the style sheets (too advanced) and jQuery.

Microsoft has launched a one-stop shop for developers seeking to enhance their careers through skill-enhancement, community-involvement, or a new job. It’s called Thrive for Developers, and it appears to be an offshoot of another site of theirs geared toward IT and Business users called, predictably enough, Thrive.

Thrive is really just a collection of links to other resources. Being an active participant in the .net development community, I was already aware of these resources. However, It is really nice to have them in one place.

Next time a developer is asking you for help connecting to the community, skill improvement, or job hunting; you can send them to Thrive For Developers. It beats going through all your bookmarks to compile a list of links for an email.