We wanted to let you know that there has been a change regarding acceptance of applications with adult content for the Vodafone Shop. Unfortunately, until further notice these will now no longer be accepted for publication. If this changes in the future, we will post another update letting you know straight away.

We've just done this week's draw for the Vodafone Android app upload contest and the lucky winner is Alex Paraschiv from Advanced Mobile Applications (AMA) with their IQ Booster app. Congrats to Alex, your HTC Legend will be on its way to you shortly!

With this draw our Android apps competition now comes to a close. We'd like to congratulate again all our winners from the seven weekly draws, all of whom earned themselves an HTC Legend (winners gallery here). And many thanks also to everyone who has uploaded their native Android apps over the last few ...

We're delighted to have now launched our developer discussion forum. This is the place to go, to start, or join discussions around all Vodafone developer-related topics. Here is a list of some of the cool features of the new forum:

• Search your answer by tags - Fast topical access
• Tag your questions - Influence the direction of the community
• Get votes for your answers - Become visible as a valuable resource
• Earn reputations points for being active in the community - Quality over quantity
• Get more functionality with more points - It becomes visible that you are the go-to guy
• Get digest mail updates ...

We've been delighted to see the ever increasing momentum around the widget platform, which is highlighted by the announcement and formation of the Wholesale Application Community (WAC), enabling global market reach for your apps.

And to ensure we are providing the best market reach for your widgets we wanted to let you to know about some changes that are currently underway to our systems that will enable you to upload your widgets for publication through WAC. Whilst our systems are being updated there will be a number of changes regarding widget submission - these are:

• You will continue to be ...

We've just done this week's draw for the Vodafone Android app upload contest and the lucky winner is Ralph Wijngaard from Shinycore Software with his PicSay Pro app. Congrats to Ralph, your HTC Legend will be on its way to you shortly!

There is now only one week left if you want a chance to win a HTC Legend! So don't delay and upload your Native Android app and enter our last draw next week! Details here.

Last week Andreas Breitschopp was our lucky winner,

This is what Andreas had to say about his App:

Do you ...

We've just done this week's draw for the Vodafone Android app upload contest and the lucky winner is Andreas Breitschopp from ab-tools with his Energy Costs Calculator app. Congrats to Andreas, your HTC Legend will be on its way to you shortly!

There are now only two weeks left if you want a chance to win a HTC Legend. So don't delay and upload your Native Android app and enter next weeks draw! Details here.

Last week Tom Henne was our lucky winner (and thanks Tom for the picture, I see you are having fun with the ...

Geolocation sample widget

The latest in our Widget Samples series is the Geolocation sample widget, which demonstrates how to use the JIL geolocation API.

Location-awareness can add a unique dimension to your mobile apps, enabling you to create presence-based services and include geotagging, mapping, and navigation functionality. The JIL geolocation API is easy to use, does exactly what it says, and makes it easy to give your apps that mobile edge. You can use this sample widget as a starting point for own widget projects.

The sample demonstrates:

• How to make a location request and handle the asynchronous result
• How ...

We've just done this weeks draw for the Vodafone Android app upload contest and the lucky winner is Tom Henne from eSymetric with his Run, GPS Trainer UV app. Congrats to Tom, your HTC Legend will be on its way to you shortly!

There are only three more weeks left if you want a chance to win a HTC Legend. So don't delay and upload your Native Android app and enter next weeks draw! Details here.

Last week Henrik Mandal was our lucky winner,

This is what Henrik had to say about his App:

Our app, Kyoogi SportsBET ...

We've just done the draw for the Vodafone Android app upload contest and this week's winner is Henrik Mandal from kyoogi. Congrats Henrik your HTC Legend will be on its way to you shortly!

If you want a chance to win a HTC Legend then don't delay and upload your Native Android app and enter next weeks draw! Details here.

Earlier this month Mohammed El Batya was one of our winners,

This is what Mohammed had to say about his App:

My app is a timetable app for German public transport called "Pendel Panda".

Key features include ...

Yesterday 100+ developers from Germany, Holland, UK and Canada attended Mobile Unconference Dusseldorf, the Vodafone developer team were also there. Here are my thoughts about the event from a fog bound Dusseldorf airport lounge.

Although situated in Dusseldorf the event encouraged developers from Rotterdam to also attend, which was a nice touch. These developers were bused to the event in style, like rock stars, unfortunately a number of traffic jams meant they had a longer journey than expected, but all arrived happy to get the day started.

The event was run in a bar camp style that also included a ...

We've just done the draw for the Vodafone Android app upload contest and this week's winner is Torsten Fischer. Congrats Torsten your HTC Legend will be on its way to you shortly!

If you want a chance to win a HTC Legend then don't delay and upload your Native Android app and enter next weeks draw! Details here.

Everyone likes to pass first time - exams, driving tests etc etc! And I'm sure getting your apps through QA first time is no different.

Well the good news is that we have a number of resources to help get you ready just for that.

Our Content Standards Guidelines will help you ensure that your application complies with all applicable laws and regulations. Please make sure to check this carefully as it covers topics such as use of competitive services and non-Vodafone billing solutions.

Our QA Check list provides guidelines for elements and features that we check for when testing ...

Next up in our Widget Samples series is the Basic Application sample widget. It's a simple but complete example that demonstrates basic widget structure and behaviour including:

• Essential contents of every widget .WGT package file
• config.xml essentials
• Simple HTML document structure using a fixed-position header and footer, with scrolling page text
• CSS styling including using media queries
• Simple JavaScript structure to encapsulate your code

If you are new to widgets, this simple example is good place to start.

The screenshot below shows the widget running on Android on the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini:

Read the Code Notes ...

We’ve just done the first draw for the Vodafone Android app upload contest and this week’s winner is Mohammed El Batya. Congrats Mohammed your HTC Legend will be on its way to you shortly!

If you want a chance to win a HTC Legend then don't delay and upload your Native Android app and enter next weeks draw! Details here.

We're keen to help you get your apps into the Vodafone Shop as easily as possible so we're offering a service where we can create the images you need for your app to be featured in the Shop.

More specifically, we will create three images (max 500KB size) for the promotional elements within the Shop. These images drive the visibility of your app to the end user through a number of promotional slots within the Shop environment.

Image 1 - 204 x 136 (W x H) - .PNG

Image 2 - 480 x 120 (W x H) - .PNG

Image 3 - 85 ...

After a very busy couple of days DroidCon London is still in full flow, but we wanted to give a quick update before it comes to a close. This year the event format consisted of a bar camp day on Thursday and today a more traditional approach with a packed agenda of sessions.

Aside from the team manning the Vodafone developer booth, @johnwyer took to the stage during the bar camp as part of the non Android Market App Store panel and discussed the benefits of the Vodafone Shop. Later today Aaron Johnston from the team will be taking part ...

Earlier this week the Vodafone developer team travelled to Athens to speak with an engaging crowd of around 60 developers at the Vodafone Dev Days Greece event. And with what seems to be becoming a tradition after the Madrid event, the football theme continued with the event being held at the Olympiacos Football stadium.

During the event the following sessions were covered (the presentations will be made available here),

• @sanjmatharu presented a session covering "What can Vodafone developer do for you?", including how developers can get to market and monitize their Native Android and Widget apps.
• @vgholkar presented the JIL ...

Our Widget Samples series kicks off today with the Accelerometer sample widget, showing you how to use the JIL 1.2.2/WAC 1.0 accelerometer API.

The Accelerometer sample is a simple widget that demonstrates how to map sensor values from the accelerometer into motion on the screen. In this example, tilting the phone moves a puck over a hockey field. As well as demonstrating how easy it is to use the JIL APIs, the code demonstrates widget coding techniques that will help ensure your widgets scale for different devices with different screen sizes and resolutions, and that your ...

Developing widgets to run on mobile phones requires more careful attention to network latency, since unlike the desktop connected environment, the mobile data connection speed can vary and fail. Also, widgets are different than mobile web sites since they will launch even when the phone is completely offline.

Three general rules when performing network calls from a mobile device are the following:

1. Always let the user know that there is a network call being made, perhaps with an animated gif with explanatory text. See: http://ajaxload.info
2. Never block and freeze the user interface with a synchronous call, all network ...

Today the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), an alliance of telecommunications companies committed to building an open applications platform, announced that 32 new organisations from across the mobile ecosystem, including operators, vendors and OEMs, have joined the initiative.

WAC today also announced the availability of the WAC 1.0 spec following the completion of the WAC and JIL merger at the beginning of the month. WAC 1.0 is based upon JIL 1.2.2 and is available to download at http://www.wholesaleappcommunity.com.

“WAC now has 48 members committed to building open platforms, simplifying the application development process for ...

The GSMA mWomen Program announces the launch of the mWomen BOP (Base of the Pyramid) App Challenge, sponsored by Vodafone.

This exciting challenge aims to leverage the significant demand for innovative App design and provide original and fresh customised App solutions targeted at the specific needs of women in developing countries.

This global challenge is two tiered: Tier 1 will be an App for a low-­-end device or feature phone and Tier 2 will be an App for Smart Phones.

The winners will be announced at the 2011 GSMA Mobile World Congress, the mobile industry’s premier event, hosted ...

Earlier this week the Vodafone developer team attended Future of Web Apps (FOWA) London. The team manned a very busy booth and also presented a couple of sessions during the event.

The event had an amazing buzz about it with plenty of interest in our Vodafone developer program and specifically widgets. The web developers at the event were really keen to see just how easy it is to develop mobile apps using their current development knowledge and to then bring those to market through the Vodafone 360 Shop. The Perfecto Mobile Vodafone Handset Cloud also saw plenty of interest and ...

As some of you may know, Vodafone offers you 100% free access to the Vodafone Private Handset Cloud. This innovative service, powered by Perfecto Mobile's™ mobile application testing solutions, allows you to test your widgets, applications & content on REAL live Vodafone devices. The Vodafone Private Handset Cloud significantly evolved during recent months, to include new handsets and many exciting features that can really make life a whole lot easier for all you developers out there. The Vodafone Handset Cloud lets you test and monitor your apps on multiple devices, in various geographies and thus significantly shorten your application's ...

We are delighted to announce the winner of Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010, the biggest competition of its kind, aimed at identifying and developing the best, most innovative mobile internet start-ups. Cardmobili, which describes itself as 'consumer loyalty going mobile and social' was awarded the title today at PICNIC festival in Amsterdam and will receive the €100,000 1st place prize fund.

Fending off competition from 159 other entrants, Cardmobili won the top prize for its intuitive application that allows consumers and retailers to share the latest coupons and reward vouchers entirely via mobile handsets. Users can also pass on special ...

In the mobile phones context, PPI (pixels per inch) is a measurement of the resolution of devices screens. A higher PPI means better/clearer images. PPI can also be used to identify devices.

The following Javascript code presents a method to calculate the PPI and to identify the device:

function getPPI(){
  var DOM_body = document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0];
  var DOM_div = document.createElement('div');
  DOM_div.style.width = "1in";
  DOM_div.style.visibility = "hidden";
  DOM_body.appendChild(DOM_div);
  var ppi = document.defaultView.getComputedStyle(DOM_div, null).getPropertyValue('width');
  DOM_body.removeChild(DOM_div);
  return parseInt(ppi, 10);
}

var ppi = getPPI();
var device = '';
switch(ppi) {
  case 265: device = 'Samsung ...

Last Saturday 18^th Sept Vodafone hosted a full one day event, the 'London Ajax User Group Happening: JavaScript MiniConf'. The event was co-ordinated by Dylan Schiemann, London Ajax User Group organiser and one of the creators of the Dojo toolkit..

Around 45 keen developers attended from across the board including professional developers, hobbyists and newcomers to JavaScript. With some attendees travelling in from as far away as Ireland and Portugal.

The day consisted of an array of highly informative presentations (from the meetup site):

• James Thomas (IBM): "Browser Data Stores"
• Andrew Betts (Assanka, Meteor): "Ajax Navigation: pitfalls and best ...

If you are building data driven apps then you might want to take a look at NextDB.net a hosted 'cloud' database for JavaScript programmers, which offers a simple, lightweight JavaScript API for performing safe and secure read/write operations to a hosted database server. All of the design and management of the database is done through a simple web based admin interface, requiring no software installation. The impetus for NextDB.net was the understanding that front-end widget developers need a simpler way to design and interact with server side data, without all of the hassles and upfront costs of ...

We’re delighted to announce that we have launched the capability for you to upload your paid and free Android applications for the Vodafone 360 Shop on Android devices.

Through the Vodafone 360 Shop you can bring your apps to market with Vodafone and reach consumers in 8 EU countries: United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Netherlands & Greece.

Submitting your app only takes a few simple steps, find out more here - http://developer.vodafone.com/develop-apps/android

The Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010 competition moves into its next phase today with the announcement of its four finalists.

With 20 excellent nominees (5 for each competing country), the jury had a lot of difficulty to decide on the four finalists that will be invited to represent their country in a live final at PICNIC Festival, which will be held in the Netherlands on September 24th.

The four finalists that are still competing for the €150,000 total prize fund represent companies working on field-worker remote reporting; mobile loyalty cards; mobile application lifecycle management and ‘2nd screen’ gaming.

The four ...

Today Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010 moved into its second phase with the announcement of the 20 second round nominees.

Overall the competition had a stunning total of 160 competing mobile startups. This made it a big challenge for our jury and it was a close call on many occasions, which really shows the quality of this year’s entries!

The jury selected the very best entries based on the 5 criteria mentioned below:

• Originality, creativity and innovativeness
• Technical and operational ability
• Economic and financial viability (business case)
• Use case and end-user value
• The quality of the members of the (management ...

Are you looking to publish your application to the Vodafone 360 Shop? Then before you do, please check out the Vodafone 360 Shop Image Style Guide here.

The Vodafone 360 Shop Image Style Guide is a document for anyone that wants to submit content to the Vodafone 360 Shop. The guide contains information regarding the necessary imagery that is required when submitting content to the Vodafone 360 Shop.

Below are a couple of examples from the guide,

A JIL/W3C mobile widget can run in one of the 3 modes: full screen, floating, docked. All runtimes (Samsung, S60, Android) support the full screen mode, but the floating mode is supported only by Samsung (H1/M1) and docked mode is supported only by S60.

The floating mode is that state where the widget runs on the home screen, in a square container, the size of 4 widget/application icons. Multiple widgets can run in floating mode at the same time.

In order to enable floating mode for a widget, the following setting is required in the config.xml ...

Registration for Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010 ends at midnight on August 22nd, 2010, don’t miss out! Find out more here www.vodafonemobileclicks.com and follow the news via the Twitter tag #vmc2010.

On Saturday18^th Sept we’ll be hosting the London Ajax User Group Happening: JavaScript MiniConf at our offices here in London.

This is a great opportunity to network and learn from likeminded JavaScript developers.

The current schedule looks like this:

• 9:00am: Meet & Greet, Introduction
• 9:30am: Talks about Client-side JS
• 12:00pm: Lunch
• 12:45pm: Talks about Server-side JS
• 2:30pm-4:30pm: Talks about Mobile JS
• 4:30-5:00 Wrap-up
• 5:00-? Union Bar

Find out more about the event, see who's attending and sign up here.

Directions to the Vodafone Paddington offices can be found here ...

Hola todos! Vodafone's Mobile Clicks competition is now well underway with registration open until August the 22nd. For those of you who are unaware, the aim is to find the best mobile internet startup from participating countries, with entrants competing for a total prize fund worth 150,000 euros! The winners from each country are invited to the PICNIC event in Amsterdam in September where the overall winner and runner up will be selected.

After last year's success in the Netherlands and United Kingdom, the competition has been extended to include Portugal. Now seeing the interest generated among ...

This is the first in a series of posts that will attempt to address building mobile widgets that will scale properly between multiple devices. We will look at how we can deal with multiple screen resolutions, varying screen PPI (pixel per inch) densities, as well as gracefully switching between portrait and landscape modes.

This article is going to build on the concepts that were introduced in the “How to really cope with varying screen sizes and pixel resolutions in Vodafone Widgets”. Here we will actually build a sample widget that scales dynamically.

This post is going to set the stage ...

The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), an alliance of telecommunications companies committed to building an open applications platform, today announced its formation as a corporate entity, as well as the organisation’s leadership and board of directors. The company also announced that it will join forces with the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL), accelerating the commercial launch of WAC-enabled application stores.

At launch, WAC will allow operators to distribute applications through their respective application storefronts and charge users through their existing phone bill.  In this model, developers will set the application price and will receive a revenue share for the transaction. The ...

Vodafone launches Mobile Clicks 2010, an international contest to find the best mobile internet startups. After last year’s success in the Netherlands and United Kingdom, this year's event will also be open to startups from Portugal. The best entrants from each country in the competition will compete for a total prize fund of 150,000 Euros! Finalists from each country will go to the PICNIC event in Amsterdam, September 24th, where the winner and runner up will be selected.

Registration for this contest will start on July 27th, 2010 and end at midnight on August 22nd, 2010. Find ...

This months Vodafone developer newsletter is due to go out next week, aiming for Wednesday 28th. If you want to get our monthly summary of developer news, events and app / developer spotlights etc, then please sign up here.

The sizing of text and graphical elements on different displays is a fairly complex problem in Web development. It is different to what you simulate when you drag your browser window to different sizes – because it is more about the pixel's physical size. A working solution to this is built into the Vodafone Widget Manager and it's only based on standards: CSS, CSS Media Queries and JavaScript.

Pixel-Density

Displays have two obvious characteristics: The sheer physical size and the number of pixels they are made of, often called "resolution". However these two are actually combined into a third ...

Many thanks to everyone for the feedback regarding the Vodafone Apps Manager for Android (Developer Version). We wanted to let you know that we're now updating this tool based on some of the feedback we've received so please consider this and future releases a BETA until we announce a final version. We of course want to make sure that we deliver the best tools for you so please keep that feedback coming in!

And we also wanted to take the opportunity to highlight all the available channels where you can publish your widgets below,

Targeting high end handsets ...

The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) is looking for your feedback so that it can support developers in the best way it possibly can and they’d like to get your input during this formative stage in the creation of WAC. The WAC team have created a survey which can be found below and would very much value your input. Many of the questions are multiple choice, but there are plenty of opportunities for you to provide more detailed comments and feedback. The WAC team will also randomly select two people from the entries who will win a phone each.

Access ...

If you’re in the Porto area on 8^th July, why not drop by the Talks 2.0 Dinners 2.0 event. At the event you'll get a chance to hear about "Development of Mobile Experiences in Portugal" and a chance to hear from the Vodafone App Star winner Pedro Campos, who will also be speaking there.

Find out more about the event here.

Talks 2.0 is an initiative that brings together a series of conferences/workshops/rendezvous where the professional and academic technological communities are invited to share information, coach and support entrepreneurship.

Dinners 2.0 ...

Join the Vodafone & JIL Developer team for a FREE two day event of training and hands-on development fun!

Whether you're an existing widget developer or completely new, we'll have sessions that'll guide you through the steps of development, testing and publication to market of your widgets through Vodafone and JIL

Get up to speed and ready for the event at developer.vodafone.com and JIL.org

Location (Google maps link ) -

HOTEL NH ALCALA 4*
Calle de Alcalá, 66
28009 Madrid

How do I sign up? - Click here to register

Event agenda -

Monday 12th July

Develop [12pm – 2pm ...

We’re busy building out our plans for the technical content & tools we will have on developer.vodafone.com, and we’d like your input so we can deliver, to you, the best resources for your widget and native app development. Below is an example of the types of resources we are looking to cover,

• Getting started (including - API's / reference, Tutorials, Code snippets, Best practice, Localisation info for markets)
• Tools & Resources (including - SDK / Packager / Emulator, Signing, Testing, QA)
• User Experience Design (including – Guidelines, Patterns, Showcase apps)
• Publishing (including - How to guides, Vodafone 360 Shop guidelines)

To enable us to ...

Tomorrow sees the Vodafone Developer Team head out to Mobile 2.0 Europe in Barcelona. The event is coined as “a one-day event for developers exploring the future of mobile” and includes 16 different workshop sessions, 14 sessions on the app economy with panels and talks from thought leaders, and rounding off the event is the App Circus where 10 finalists pitch their app for fame.

Our developer team will be around all day at the event to chat to you about developing for Vodafone, you'll also be able to catch some of the team presenting at the following ...

If you are lucky enough to be in Lisbon at 6.30 pm this Wednesday (16^th June), then why not attend the 6^th Ignite Portugal event. Especially as we will have the participation of Vodafone Portugal, represented by Nuno Inácio, who will be addressing the audience with a presentation of what has been done by Vodafone to energise and encourage the Portuguese mobile developer community to participate on their recent projects.

Nuno will also be discussing the fact that all the great work that has been produced by Vodafone Portugal on their Apps project is due to the ...

Download and install the Vodafone Apps Manager software for Android and Symbian S60 to test widgets on your phone.

See the final presentations, overview of each start up and general info about last weeks Launch48 event.

For those not familiar with the concept, the idea is to form start ups which launch a product/prototype in 48 hours.

We're pleased to announce the release of version 2.7 of the Vodafone Widget SDK. Highlights of this release include:

• Create and import JIL 1.2 format widgets
• Convert between Opera and JIL 1.2 format widgets
• Emulate JIL 1.2 format widgets
• Test your widgets in Android device configurations
• Deploy widgets directly to Android phones via USB

Adding support for the JIL 1.2 format makes it easier to package widgets that are ready to upload on JIL.org for distribution to Vodafone 360 customers across Europe. The conversion feature should be particularly useful since the widget run-times ...

Vodafone are sponsoring Launch 48, a weekend based event that runs on Friday June 4th to Sunday June 6th, 2010

The Launch48 Weekend is about building web businesses with a group of people from a range of backgrounds and different sets of skills.

Why not sign up or drop by, and chat to one of our team who’ll be attending?

You can find out more about the event here.

The wait is finally over, all the public votes are in and we’re delighted to announce the final 1^st and 2^nd place winners of the Vodafone App Star competition.

Pedro Campos, an independent mobile developer, takes first place and a grand prize fund of €100,000 for his FlickrShow application.

Beating off competition from seven other country winners, FlickrShow was awarded the top prize for its innovation and the great user experience it offered. FlickrShow accesses Flickr in an unprecedented way, offering stunning slide slows and allowing you to search photos by keyword, username, colour and even ...

Looking to make your widget available to Vodafone customers with Android phones? Below are a few key questions, with answers, that you need to ask yourself before you get started:

Is your widget optimized for finger touch interaction?

• All Android phones Vodafone will offer this year have touch screens
• Some also have 5-way navigation hardware

Does your widget support correct screen sizes?

• Suggest following fluid layout principles to design UI that scales across many resolutions, pixel densities - details here
• Target resolutions for Android phones:
  • Low: 240x320 (Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro)
  • Medium: 320x480 (HTC ...

The votes have been coming in thick and fast and we've only a few days left of the public vote phase of Vodafone App Star. The eight country finalists are getting nearer to finding out who will become the our first and second place Vodafone app stars, so take a look at the apps and vote for your favourite here!

Are you a mobile widget developer or tester looking for new and better ways to test and debug your mobile widgets?  Have you been struggling with testing on multiple devices and across multiple platforms?

Introducing the Ripple Emulator (Beta version)

tinyHippos Inc. has just released the Beta version of The Ripple Emulator and is offering it for FREE during the Beta period.

Ripple is a cross platform emulator, currently supporting the JIL 1.2 API and Opera Widget platforms as well as Mobile Websites. Ripple has been built by developers for developers, therefore; providing a highly customizable environment. You can ...

We've just uploaded a number of new resources on our developer.vodafone.com website.

The key updates include new content for JIL 1.2 spec and also support for Android devices. Below is a list of the new resources and where you can access them,

• Updated API reference document covering JIL 1.2 API supported in Vodafone devices that will become available this summer. The updated API document can be found here
• A set of Adobe Illustrator templates enabling you to quickly start designing your widget, with exact viewports for your widget icon, extended mode (if supported), and fullscreen ...

Many thanks to everyone who completed our recent developer survey. This information is invaluable in helping us deliver the best possible developer experience.

I’d also like to congratulate Tobias Sasse who was randomly selected to win the Samsung NC10 Netbook PC.

Please remember to regularly check our developer website for all the latest resources and tools.

The wait is finally over and today we announced the local winners of the Vodafone AppStar competition. The list of the eight mobile apps that will now fight to become the best app in Europe and claim a share of the €1 million Vodafone AppStar prize fund can be seen below.

But now we need your help to select the final two winners. From 29 April to 21 May you can view the entire shortlist and vote for your favourite HERE. Voters will automatically be entered into a prize draw to win one of ten Samsung H1 devices. The results ...

Remember to take our developer survey and have the chance to win a Samsung NC10 Netbook PC.

Through developer.vodafone.com and other developer engagement activities we want to deliver the best possible experience for developers going forward. But we need your feedback to help us achieve this. To gather this feedback we invite you to take our developer survey, which should only take a few minutes to run through. To encourage you, will be selecting at random, from the completed surveys one lucky winner on 30^th April 2010 who will win a Samsung NC10 Netbook PC.

Looking to publish your widgets on JIL.org for distribution in the Vodafone 360 Shop? Attend this webinar to learn how.

When: 4pm (GMT) Wednesday 14th April 2010

How to register: Click here to register. Please note, places are limited and released on a first come first served basis, so don’t delay. The session will be recorded and made available on the web as soon as possible after the presentation.

Speaker: Jon Price

Webinar details:

Following the recent announcement that you can now publish widgets to the Vodafone 360 Shop through the JIL.org website, we invite you to ...

Heads up, we’ve just launched our new developer website developer.vodafone.com. Please go here to find all our developer related guides and tools for Vodafone’s developer programs.

Through this website and other developer engagement activities we want to deliver the best possible experience for developers going forward. But we need your feedback to help us achieve this. To gather this feedback we invite you to take our developer survey, which should only take a few minutes to run through. To encourage you, will be selecting at random, from the completed surveys one lucky winner on 30^{th ...}

Today we're excited to announce that you can now publish apps to the Vodafone 360 Shop through the  JIL.org website. The announcement marks the next milestone in the progression of the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) partnership, enabling you to use open Web technologies to create, monetise and distribute apps to customers with JIL-enabled handsets.

Through the JIL.org website developers can publish apps to selected Vodafone operating companies in Europe. Developers can choose to select from one, some or all of the selected markets for each app they publish.

Vodafone offers developers a number of compelling features, including ...

Don’t worry if you missed the last couple of 'Testing on the Vodafone 360 Handset Cloud (Perfecto Mobile)' webinars. We’ve scheduled two more, details below,

April 1^st at 1 pm GMT - click here to register

April 7^th at 12pm GMT - click here to register

Remember the Perfect Mobile service enables you to test your widgets on REAL mobile handsets working in the Vodafone networks in Germany and in Italy. And as a Vodafone 360 widget developer you can use this service FREE OF CHARGE.

Heads up everyone, you’ve only got one more day to submit your widget for the Vodafone App Star competition and gain your chance to win up €100,000.

Make sure you enter by end of day 31st March! Find out everything you need to know about the competition here.

We've been seeing a lot of widgets coming into the Vodafone 360 Shop app review queue recently that have incorrect config.xml files. Some of the widgets work OK (some of the time), but many do not. Here are some quick tips for avoiding issues now and in the future:

Tip 1

To create a valid config.xml that will work across all of our 50 widget-enabled phones, use the Vodafone Widget Packager GUI (available for Windows, Mac and Linux). If you prefer to do this by hand, follow our tutorial or refer to section two of the Compatibility ...

In partnership with Screen Yorkshire, Vodafone visited Electric Works in Sheffield on March 3rd to discuss the 360 Apps Platform. The Vodafone AppStar developer day included a day-time and evening event, providing commercial and technical education, guidelines, Q&A and expert panel sessions around the Vodafone 360 mobile apps platform. Around 80 developer companies and content providers attended the day, along with Vodafone and 4 of their certified apps partners (CAPs).

Speaking about the event, host - Paul Amery, Apps Commercial Manager for Vodafone UK said, “UK Developer out-reach tends to be London focused, which is fine, but tends to miss ...

Looking to create a dazzling widget user experience and stand out from the crowd, then attend this webinar to hear just how from our experts.

When: 10am (GMT) Wednesday 24^th March 2010

How to register: We're sorry but the webinar is now fully booked. We will be recording and making it available after Wednesday, and will announce it on our blog, so stay tuned.

Speakers: Martina Joisten and Russell Sese

Webinar details:

This session is all about how to design your widget with your users in mind. By delighting your users, they will want to keep on using ...

Reminder to register now for the "Testing on the Vodafone 360 Handset Cloud" webinar, run by Perfecto Mobile. The webinar runs on Tuesday 16th March at 11am (GMT), you can register here http://bit.ly/coQh3B

Sanj Matharu and Jon Price from the Vodafone 360 Developer Team talk to Ian Williams of the Inquirer.net about Mobile App Development and the Joint Innovation Lab. See the interview with Ian here.

Are you developing a cool new mobile widget? As a developer, you probably know how important it is to make sure that your widget works properly and displays correctly not only in a simulator environment but also on real mobile handsets. Obtaining a variety of devices, though, can be quite difficult as well as expensive.

Did you know that you can test your widget on a variety real Vodafone 360 devices over the web and FOR FREE??

We are offering widget developers a new service called “The Vodafone 360 Handset Cloud”. This service enables you to test your widgets on ...

Don't forget, there are only a couple of days to go before the Vodafone 360 App Star Developers Day in Sheffield, UK, so register for FREE now!

About the event - Vodafone in partnership with Screen Yorkshire will host an afternoon and evening event, providing commercial and technical education, guidelines, Q&A and expert panel sessions around the Vodafone 360 mobile apps platform.

On the day you will learn about JIL, Apps of interest to Vodafone UK customers and win hardware, software and cash prizes at the evening Hackathon.

Find out more about the event and register for your FREE ...

Mobile World Congress was indeed a very busy time for us all here in the Vodafone Developer team but we're so excited by all the amazing feedback and questions we've received we thought it would be good to share some of the other things we're doing.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I was at Imperial College in London where we are working with the department of Social Computing to talk about something called the Imperial Challenge. It's a widget creation competition for any student at Imperial where the prize is a summer internship at the Vodafone Group ...

The Vodafone 360 Developer Conference came to a close yesterday following two breakout sessions, these covering topics on how to build a great user experience, delivering compelling graphics and guidance on publishing your widgets for market. We were delighted to have seen such an interesting crowd, with some excellent discussion about cross platform development and opportunities regarding monetizing applications.

If you didn’t get a chance to attend the show we’ll be making all content available on our developer website.

But if you are still at the show, don’t miss your chance to win an F1 jersey, signed ...

Congratulations to yesterday's Vodafone App Star Auditions winners. The  finalists who made it past the first panel round were Mobnotes, SmartRunner, MiroTele.com Mobile, WeatherBug and InfoBus Sevilla Mobile. The apps were then presented in front of our live audience in the afternoon.

The  final winners selected by the audience (votes collect by Twitter) were:

1^st place went to SmartRunner,

2^nd place went to Mobnotes and in 3^rd was InfoBus Sevilla.

Thanks to everyone who took part, it was a really fun session, showing off some very interesting and cool apps.

Lee Epting Director of Branded Content Vodafone Internet Services and Peters Suh CEO of JIL (Joint Innovation Lab) are now on stage talking through Vodafone 360 for developers.

Peters Suh just announced Vodafone 360’s new upload process for developers which will launch on JIL.org in March this year. This will not just give developers the ability to charge for apps but actually tailor their pricing to local markets, placing the control firmly in their hands about how much they charge consumers.

Did you know the most popular application category across all markets is Lifestyle & Entertainment (with Travel & Navigation ...

Mike Butcher from TechCrunch just welcomed everyone to the Developer Conference. Pieter Knook, Director of Vodafone Internet Services is now on stage introducing Vodafone 360 and giving an update on progress since launch.

Did you know, in first half of 2010 we will have shipped 2 million devices incorporating 50 different handsets that are capable of accessing the Vodafone 360 Apps Shop? In just three months since the launch of Vodafone 360, over 7,000 apps have been made available for download from the Vodafone 360 Apps Shop across eight European markets.

It’s a packed crowd here and the conference just kicked off with a welcome message from F1 star of Vodafone McLaren Formula 1 team, Lewis Hamilton who’s talking cross platform apps, API’s and coding - cool!

Did you know, Vodafone 360 cross-platform proposition allows developers to publish apps for multiple devices all from one simple system at JIL.org – reaching customers from across the globe via the JIL operators (Vodafone, China Mobile Limited, Softbank and Verizon Wireless)? Once an app is submitted, it takes only up to 10 working days for it to go live in the Vodafone ...

The Vodafone dev team is in town here @mwc and we’ve been busy getting set-up for tomorrow’s conference. There’s a real buzz here already, the presentation rooms have been a hive of activity, sound test engineers blaring rock music, felt like a Barcelona club in here today. The exhibition area is looking really vibrant with some great stands, plenty to see here over the coming week.

Make sure to follow the blog to keep up with the Vodafone developer announcements through the day, you can also catch the team using hashtag #vf360 on twitter, John Wyer (Dev ...

We’re delighted to announce that Mike Butcher will be the MC for the Vodafone 360 Developer Conference at App Planet. Mike is one of the most influential Britons in technology and will be sure to generate a fantastic buzz for the event. More about Mike below,

TechCrunch Europe is edited by Mike Butcher (FRSA). As well as editing TechCrunch Europe, Mike is involved in a project to bring European technology entrepreneurs and investors together in a club environment called TechHub (@TechHub), in London initially. A long time journalist, Mike has written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The ...

As Mobile World Congress is just around the corner, we wanted to say thanks to everyone who has registered to attend the Vodafone 360 Developer Conference at App Planet. We're really looking forward to welcoming everyone in sunny (fingers crossed) Barcelona on Monday 15th Feb.

We wanted to also give a quick reminder for attendees to arrive and register at 12:15pm in Auditorium 1, Hall 7 (download floor plan). And don't forget - this registration will also ensure all entrants get full four day access to MWC.

And as a final reminder, alongside the main conference sessions we ...

This session at the Vodafone 360 Developer Conference, App Planet, MWC is all about how to design your widget with your users in mind. By delighting your users, they will want to keep on using your widget, they will recommend your widget to friends and they will demand more from you. We show how to include user research in your development process, introduce you to available user experience resources especially created for widget developers and explain how to use them effectively.

For more hands-on experience, AccuWeather, who have created successful widgets for different platforms, talk about their widget development experience ...

This session at the Vodafone 360 Developer Conference, App Planet, MWC will take a look at Vodafone 360 as a cross platform environment, introducing the key technologies & API roadmap, distribution and how you can make money with Vodafone 360. You will also be introduced to the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL), its developer resources and publishing process.

Speaker profiles:

Lee Epting, an Executive with over twenty years experience in the technology sector, was Vice President of Forum Nokia from 2003-2008, Nokia's global developer support community. In this role, Lee was responsible for driving the business connections between Nokia and more ...

Pieter Knook (Vodafone), Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner (Opera) and Peter-Paul Koch (mobile platform strategist) line up at the Vodafone 360 Developer Conference, App Planet, MWC to discuss with you, the challenges of developing for mobile.

Panel experts:-

Pieter Knook

Pieter Knook, a former senior vice president of Microsoft, was appointed to the newly formed role of Director of Internet Services in  March 2008, Vodafone Internet Services  leads the development and delivery of Vodafone’s current and future consumer propositions for the internet, and focuses on the provision and delivery of distinctive consumer web services such as IP communications, mobile internet ...

We’re delighted to have Wolfram Kriesing present the Cross Platform Development story at the Vodafone 360 Developer Conference, App Planet, MWC. Wolfram has more than twelve years professional experience in IT. The early involvement in web technologies provides him with deep knowledge and experience for designing and implementing stable and scalable architectures. With two equivalently experienced experts he founded uxebu, a software consulting company focused on mobile cross platform solutions and web2.0, AJAX-oriented front-end engineering. He has been an active open source contributor on multiple projects and is currently a member of the Dojo Toolkit project.

Session details ...

On Wednesday March 3rd in Sheffield, UK, Vodafone in partnership with Screen Yorkshire will host an afternoon and evening event, providing commercial and technical education, guidelines, Q&A and expert panel sessions around the Vodafone 360 mobile apps platform.

On the day you will learn about JIL, Apps of interest to Vodafone UK customers and win hardware, software and cash prizes at the evening Hackathon.

Find out more about the event and register for your FREE entry ticket by visiting:
http://vodafonedevdaynorth.eventbrite.com

Are you a web developer wondering how you can use your industry skills to take on the mobile revolution? Or a mobile developer looking for a quick and clear route to market? If you are either or both then why not kick start building Mobile Widgets for Vodafone 360 with a FREE entry ticket to App Planet.

On Monday 15th February 2010, during Mobile World Congress 2010, Barcelona, Vodafone will host our 360 Developer Conference at App Planet, an “event within an event”. Come along and find out all about Vodafone 360 for developers, tools and tips for developing across ...