Mohammed Alani

The Agony of Dealing with YallaApps

Posted on December 11, 2012 by My Rants WP7 0

Before the Dev center registeration was open in Oman, I registered through Microsoft Publishing partner called YallaApps (Paying the same 99$/year). That was about a year ago. I published many apps with them and the process in overall was nothing less than agony. Very slow responses, and most of the time wrong responses an I have to repeat what I need many many times.

Anyway, I felt so happy back in August when I knew that the Dev center is opening in the country I live in. YallaApps informed all their subscribers that they need to register for new accounts in the dev center and pay full and then in November Microsoft would refund your subscriptions. They said if you like to keep the rating and reviews (which are many for my apps) you need to file a request on a specific online form. Which I did very early once they announced it. They also said if you don’t need to keep your ratings and reviews, you can send us a request for deleting the apps from our side and you submit them again with your account.

So, after registering and finishing all their requirments, I waited. And waited some more. I wrote to their blog as a comment and the comment is still waiting moderation for about a month now.

I wrote on their facebook page asking about the migration and no reply for about a week.

I wrote to their support email and I received an auto-reply saying that we received your email, and we’ll respond to you within 48 hours. And for over a week now, nothing.

I received an email three days ago from Microsoft Global Publishing Partner Program saying that a refund will be issued for you dev center subscription and they mentioned nothing about the apps migration. I replied to their email asking about an ETA for the mogration of apps and they replied to me saying that the app migration has already been done. We did not receive a request from Yalla to transfer any apps to you account. No further migration is possible now..!!!

I do not know specifically whose mistake is this, but I am very sure it is not mine and I do not want to pay for the mistakes of Microsoft and/or their partners.

So I looked-up YallaApps and their mother company “Prototype Interactive” in Dubai Media City and I called their phone number many times and all I get is voice mail.

Me and all other people stuck with YallaApps would like Microsoft to take action and protect our rights from a bad Microsoft partner. How can you ask for more devs to come in when the ones you already have are jumping out?

* Update 11-Dec-2012: Someone actually answered my 5th or 6th phone call and I re-explained the issue and they said they will look into it and get bak to me TODAY.

* Update 11-Dec-2012: I received an email from YallaApps asking for details and acknowledging that the migration was finished and my apps we not migrated.

* Update 21-Dec-2012: I received and email from Microsoft (replying to my email on Dec. 10th) saying that there will be a second batch of migrations and they do not guarantee that it will be successful nor they can give a time line.

Number System Converter

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Apps 0

I have stopped developing for Windows Phone – This app is no longer available

 

This is a simple app that performs conversion of numbers between different numbering systems; Binary, Octal, Decimal, Hexadecimal, and Binary-Coded Decimal (BCD). Starting from v1.1, the app supports fraction conversion also with accuracy of up to 12 binary digits.
More systems will be supported in the upcoming versions.
If you would like to suggest a feature for the next version or you have found an issue in the app, contact me on info (at) mohammedalani.com
This app supports Windows phone 7.5 and 8.

Winodws Phone store link:

http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=6ede0b59-f2dd-4022-bba2-db0ae14c0aa4

Changlog:

* v1.1: (Expected publishing date: Dec. 12th, 2012)

  • added BCD conversion.
  • added fraction conversion.

* v1.0:

  • published on Dec. 5th, 2012

WP7NUMConvert

Posted on November 24, 2012 by WP7 0

Earlier this year I published a small library that performs multiple tasks of number system conversion on this post. As some fellow devs were a bit skeptic about the code and demanded to see the source code, I have created an open-source project on Codeplex with the name WP7NUMConvert and included the conversion library in there.

The link to the project is:

http://wp7nc.codeplex.com/

If anyone would like to particpate in the project, be my guest.

 

Book: Guide to Cisco Routers Configuration

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Publications
  • Provides a guide to the configuration of Cisco routers
  • Presents detailed and easy-to-follow “how-to” instructions
  • For beginners and advanced users alike

This work provides a guide to the configuration of Cisco routers, from tasks for beginners to advanced operations. A collection of detailed “how-to” instructions are presented, which will be of use to all professionals and students who engage with Cisco routers in the field or in the lab. The guide starts with the simple step-by-step task of connecting the router and performing basic configuration, before building up to complex and sensitive operations such as router IOS upgrade and Site-to-Site VPNs.

Published: August, 2012 by Springer

Guide to Cisco Routers Configuration

Guide to Cisco Routers Configuration

A Gathering of Small Number Systems Conversions and Operations for WP7

Posted on February 6, 2012 by WP7 0

* UPDATE: I have found many bugs and issues with this original code of this library. For an expanded (and working version) you can look at WP7NC.

I know its not too much but I gathered about 16 number-conversion operations and few logical operators in a small DLL for Windows Phone devs who might need it. The functions are:

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Shared Function Dec2BinStr(ByVal Dec As Long) As String[/crayon]

Converts a decimal number into a binary number in the form of string  (ex: 10 becomes “1010”)

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Shared Function Dec2BinAry(ByVal Dec As Long) As Integer()[/crayon]

Converts a decimal number into a binary number in the form of an array of ones and zeros.

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Shared Function BinStr2Dec(ByVal Bin As String) As Long[/crayon]

Converts a binary number in the form of a string into a decimal number.

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Shared Function BinAry2Dec(ByVal Bin() As Integer) As Long[/crayon]

Converts a binary array into a decimal number.

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Shared Function HexStr2Dec(ByVal Hex As String) As Long[/crayon]

Converts a hexadecimal number int he form of a string into a decimal number.

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Shared Function Dec2HexStr(ByVal Dec As Long) As String[/crayon]

Converts decimal number into a hexadecimal number in the form of string.

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Shared Function HexStr2BinStr(ByVal Hex As String) As String[/crayon]

Converts a hexadecimal number in the form of a string into a binary number, also in the form of string.

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Function BinStr2HexStr(ByVal Bin As String) As String[/crayon]

Converts a binary number in the form of a string into a hexadecimal number, also in the form of string.

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Function BinStrAnd(ByVal Bin1 As String, ByVal Bin2 As String) As String[/crayon]

Perform bitwise AND operation between two binary numbers in the form of a string.

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Function HexStrAnd(ByVal Hex1 As String, ByVal Hex2 As String) As String[/crayon]

Perform bitwise and between two hexadecimal numbers in the form of a string.

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Function BinStrOr(ByVal Bin1 As String, ByVal Bin2 As String) As String[/crayon]

Perform bitwise OR operation between two binary numbers in the form of a string.

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Function HexStrOr(ByVal Hex1 As String, ByVal Hex2 As String) As String[/crayon]

Perform bitwise OR operation between two hexadecimal numbers in the form of a string.

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Function BinStrXOR(ByVal Bin1 As String, ByVal Bin2 As String) As String[/crayon]

Perform bitwise XOR operation between two binary numbers in the form of a string.

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Function HexStrXOR(ByVal Hex1 As String, ByVal Hex2 As String) As String[/crayon]

Perform bitwise XOR operation between two hexadecimal numbers in the form of a string.

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Function BinStrNot(ByVal Bin As String) As String[/crayon]

Perform bitwise NOT operation to a binary number in the form of a string.

[crayon lang=”vb”]Public Function HexStrNot(ByVal Bin As String) As String[/crayon]

Perform bitwise NOT operation to a hexadecimal number in the form of a string.

* UPDATE 02-12-2012: I have found out many minor mistakes in some of the conversion function. Thus, I have removed the file and re-written the library as an open-source project. More details can be found here.

Here is the download link:

NumberSystem.DLL v1.0 (10 kbytes)

 

If you have a suggestion to expand this library, please write it down in the comments or tweet it to me, and I’ll try to include it.

How to Handle the User’s Refusal of the License Agreement/Privacy Policy in WP7 Apps

Posted on February 3, 2012 by WP7 0

Its a good idea to put the apps privacy policy, or license agreement or whatever you need the user to agree on before using the app, in a separate page and navigate to it in the first run.
There are two scenarios to do this, you either set the privacy policy page as the default and check if the user agreed on it on every run using the IsolatedStorageSetting. If the user did agree, the app navigates to the MainPage. Personally, I do not prefer this way because the privacy page is loaded on every run.
The more feasible scenario is to load the MainPage and during its loading, check if the user have agreed on the policy or not. If not, the app navigates to the policy. Sounds simple, doesnt it? No its not.
What should happen if the user reject the agreement? The app should close itself, right? Sorry, this can not happen in Silverlight apps (its possible in XNA though). There is not single command in Silverlight that gets the app to shutdown.
There is a possible solution to go around this. First of all, we will be using the second scenario where the app’s MainPage is loaded first and after checking the IsolatedStorageSettings, the app navigates to the privacy policy page. If you are not familiar with IsolatedStorageSettings, there is a very simple tutorial that was put together by the good folks at WindowsPhoneGeek.

You can create a setting called “AgreedToPrivacyPolicy” and assign to it a “TRUE” value after the user agrees to it. The main trick here is that on the policy page you should put only one button “I Agree”. Do not put an “I Don’t Agree” button because there is no command to handle it straight forward. To facilitate the use of the IsolatedStorageSettings in the application, identify the settings in the “Partial Public Class MainPage” like this:
[crayon lang=”vb”]Partial Public Class MainPage
Inherits PhoneApplicationPage
Private appSettings As System.IO.IsolatedStorage.IsolatedStorageSettings = System.IO.IsolatedStorage.IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings
‘the End Class comes at the end of the app code
[/crayon]
In the MainPage_Loaded sub put the code:
[crayon lang=”vb”]
Private Sub MainPage_Loaded(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As RoutedEventArgs) Handles Me.Loaded
If appSettings.Contains(“AgreedToPrivacyPolicy”) = False Then
NavigationService.Navigate(New Uri(“/PrivacyPolicy.xaml”, UriKind.Relative))
GoTo Jumpiiii ‘Yes I love to use GoTo in VB
End If
If NavigationService.CanGoBack = True Then NavigationService.RemoveBackEntry()
Jumpiiii:
End Sub[/crayon]
Line 6 is very important, and I will explain to you why later on.
After navigating to your privacy policy, the user clicks on I agree and in the button_click sub you add the lines:
[crayon lang=”vb”]
appSettings.Add(“AgreedToPrivacyPolicy”, “True”)
appSettings.Save()
NavigationService.Navigate(New Uri(“/MainPage.xaml”, UriKind.Relative))
[/crayon]
If the user wishes to reject the privacy policy, the user will hit the back button. This would navigate the app to the MainPage and the checking that we added earlier will be invoked again, and again this will navigate the user to the privacy policy page, where it should in fact take the user out of the app. This can be easily achieved by adding the following code to the PrivacyPolicy_Loaded sub:
[crayon lang=”vb”]
Private Sub Page1_Loaded(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As RoutedEventArgs) Handles Me.Loaded
NavigationService.RemoveBackEntry()
End Sub[/crayon]
Line 2 here removes the MainPage from the back list such that when the user presses back, the user goes directly out of the app without invoking an exception. This is, in my opinion, the best way to exit and application.
One more thing is the case where the user accepts the agreement and then the app navigates to the MainPage. What happens if the user presses back from there? Will the user be navigated back to the PrivacyPolicy page? The answer is NO. Because we covered that already in line 6 in the first code snippet in this article. We told the MainPage to check if there is a previous page in the Back Stack and if there is, erase it.

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