The Windows Phone Developer team has updated / added new samples to help developers making great applications for Windows Phone. Each sample contains enough information for you to start learning a new feature or just get a idea for a new application. Open your Visual Studio and start downloading the samples. Here is the list of the last updated samples:

• Stored Contacts Sample
• Basic Storage Recipes
• Trial Experience Sample
• Windows Runtime Component Sample
• Company Hub Sample
• Image Recipes
• Azure Voice Notes
• Kid’s Corner Sample
• URI Association Sample
• Speech for Windows Phone: Speech recognition using a custom grammar

Source of the article Windows Phone Developer Blog.
All the Windows Phone samples can be found at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wpapps.

The Oscars are over, I was playing with my application Earthquakes for Windows Phone and I noticed a bug in the map control. The problem is very simple, but I’d like to share it here with you Windows Phone developers so you don’t make the same mistake.
Like a lot of application that use the Map control, I have two buttons in the ApplicationBar that allow me to zoom in and zoom out.

So, when you use the Map control for Windows Phone 7 or Windows Phone 8, you can use the property ZoomLevel to zoom in or zoom out. On the click of the button I was simply increasing or decreasing the value without doing any control. I know that’s bad… Apparently, there is a limit for the zoom level that can be apply to the Map. Which is 1 to 19 for Windows Phone 7 and 1 to 20 for Windows Phone 8.

For Windows Phone 7 you can use the following code to change the ZoomLevel property:

private void BtZoomMore(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
   map.ZoomLevel = Math.Min(map.ZoomLevel + 1, 19);
}

private void BtZoomLess(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
   map.ZoomLevel = Math.Max(map.ZoomLevel - 1, 1);
}

And for Windows Phone 8:

private void BtZoomMore(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
   Map.ZoomLevel = Math.Min(Map.ZoomLevel + 1, 20);
}

private void BtZoomLess(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
   Map.ZoomLevel = Math.Max(Map.ZoomLevel - 1, 1);
}

Back from Microsoft BUILD in Redmond, WA, Microsoft released the newest version of its mobile operating system: Windows Phone 8. You can download the SDK right away: Windows Phone 8 SDK. In order to use (and abuse) of all new features of this OS, I recommend you to watch the videos of the BUILD sessions about Windows Phone 8 on Channel 9.

To run the emulator you’ll need those two requirements:

• Windows 8 Pro edition or greater
• A processor that supports Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) (which my computer doesn’t have because it seems too old, only two years old)

See what’s new in Windows Phone 8. I’ll publish some article soon about how to use the new features like the NFC.