Today, a bunch of SG developers registered in AppHub got their Mango Beta 2 Connect invite so they can update their WP7 devices to Mango.  You can refer to this blog post titled “Developers Get Goody Basket Full of Mangos” from the Windows Phone Developer Blog to find out more about why developers are getting this update.  If you’re too lazy to read, here’s the summary towards the end of that post:

1. 1. First go get the tools
2. 2. Second, update your retails phones to Mango.
3. 3. Go rub it in your friends’ faces that you have Mango and they don’t.
4. 4. Start building your Mango apps using some of the cool new functionality like fast app resume, updated Live Tiles, Motion Sensor, Live Agents, sockets, background audio, or raw camera access.

Start coding!

I’m building some of my own Mango apps, like an “Around You” app (someone already built an Around Me hehe) which lists Foursquare nearby locations with little arrows beside each location pointing where you should walk to get to the venue (compass), or this other app which does OCR and detects phone numbers and email addresses (raw camera access) so you can call/email directly.  I’m also trying (…”trying” is the keyword here) to create an app that can captures real-time Kinect joint coordinates and display it on the phone (Sockets).  Shank is also teaching us how to create our own AR apps for Mango.

I’m sure you all have cooler ideas than these! 

Thankfully, we don’t have to start from scratch.  Check out these Mango sample source codes to get you started with the basics:

DOWNLOAD THE CODE SAMPLES

• Multicast Sockets Sample
• XNA Trial Sample
• Silverlight Trial Sample
• Contact and Calendar Sample
• Basic Camera Sample
• Camera Grayscale Sample
• Search Extensibility Sample
• Local Database Sample
• Silverlight/XNA Framework Sample
• My Little Teapot Sample
• Ringtones Sample
• Background Audio Player Sample
• Tic-Tac-Toe Over Sockets Sample
• Shake Gesture Library Sample
• Tile Sample <————————–   POWERFUL!
• Shell Tile Schedule Sample
• Tile Notification Sample
• Toast Notification Sample
• Raw Notification Sample
• Reminder Sample
• Background Transfer Service Sample
• Execution Model Sample
• Raw Sensor Data Sample
• Simple Motion Sample
• Augmented Reality Motion Sample
• Background Agent Sample

These samples are F5-ready so just download and run!

One last thing, I’ll be doing a Mango session at the Developer Garage Meet Up on July 29th.  More details from the sgentrepreneurs site.  Hope to see you there, and your apps!

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