It’s really easy to vibrate a phone from your code. You can do it whenever you like, just don’t overdo it.

VibrateController vibrate = VibrateController.Default;
vibrate.Start(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(1000));

That’s all you have to do if you want to vibrate the phone for a second. But, what if you want do vibrate several times, with pauses? For example, vibrate for 100 ms, then pause 100 ms, then vibrate again for 200 ms etc? Send yourself a SMS – they don’t do a single vibration, that’s not fun or fancy.

The first idea that comes to mind is to use DispatcherTimer. Vibrate once, start a timer. When it ticks, vibrate again. But that quite annoying, especially if you want to do a short vibration three or four times.

So, here is an idea:

public static void Vibrate(params double[] intervals)
{
    System.Threading.ThreadStart vibrateJob = 
        new System.Threading.ThreadStart(() => _vibrate(intervals));
    System.Threading.Thread vibrateThread = 
        new System.Threading.Thread(vibrateJob);
    vibrateThread.Start();
}
private static void _vibrate(params double[] intervals)
{
    VibrateController vc = VibrateController.Default;

    bool vibrateOn = false;
    foreach (double interval in intervals)
    {
        TimeSpan i = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(interval);

        if (!vibrateOn) vc.Start(i);
        Thread.Sleep(i);
                
        vibrateOn = !vibrateOn;
    }
}

I’m putting a vibration in a separate thread and using Thread.Sleep to produce a pause. Usage syntax is pretty straightforward: when calling a method, use as much as parameters you want – even ones will define a vibration time (in seconds) and the odd ones will be transformed to pauses. For example, if you want to vibrate for 0.2 secs, than have a pause of 0.1 secs, and then vibrate once more for 0.3 secs, call the method like this:

Vibrate(0.2, 0.1, 0.3);

A few notes about vibrating:

• the shortest vibration / pause is 0.1 seconds
• the longest is 5 seconds, but please don’t use it
• there is no sense in having more than 4 vibration in one sequence, 3 is optimal
• 0.1 seconds in nice for taps
• 0.2 and 0.3 seconds are good choices for an alert

I have developed and published four Windows Phone applications up to date. Three of them are in Croatian, and the last one is in English. All of them are free.

CroParking
In Croatian. Simple application for paying parking in all towns in Croatia. Application uses geolocation to determine in which town you are located and offers only available zones. You can save as many cars as you want and easily switch between them. Includes a map showing your car location compared to your current position. Download.

CroAutoInfo
In Croatian. Enter the license plate number and find out all public data about that car. Download.

CroWeather
In Croatian. This application is in Croatian language. Detailed 7-day weather forecast for your favorite city in Croatia and Europe! Enjoy table view, map view (just like on the TV!) and live tiles telling you should you bring an umbrella or a hat. Local data provider ensures the best forecast. Download.

Find a number
In English. Search your contact list by a number. It searches all your contacts, including Facebook ones. If you have received a call or SMS on other phone, this simple app can help you find the name behind the number. This application requires a Mango update. Download.

To make the long story short – it is not possible to access user’s Mobile Country Code from Windows Phone Application. Not even in Mango.

There are two places where MCC is used on a mobile phone. It is part of a International Mobile Subscriber Identiti (IMSI) and it is stored on SIM Card. It tells us where the user is from.

The other MCC is the current MCC – the country in which the user is now. Those two are the same if user is at home, and different if user is roaming.

Since we cannot access MCCs, we should use other ways to access the same info. It’s not as precise as a MCC but it could be goo enough for some scenarios.

Current Country – you can use GPS to get geolocation, and then resolve it to country name. The whole process is nicely explained here.

User’s home country – this one is harder, but if you assume that a user has a right regional settings set, you can use System.Globalization.RegionInfo.CurrentRegion.TwoLetterISORegionName property to get the region. If you need a MCC code, you can map it by using this XML file.

I agree – MCC would be easier, nicer, simpler and better – but this is all we can do for now. I hope this API will be available in the next update.

I’ve just submitted a Mango app to the Marketplace. Of course, it is not available yet, since it has to go through the certification process, but I believe it will do just fine, since it’s so simple.

Basically, all it does is enable you to search your phone contacts (all of them, including Facebook) by – a phone number. Simple as that. This functionality was not possible before Mango, and it is not possible in People hub either. I’ve been testing this app for a two months now and it has been useful on several occasions, especially for answering my wife’s questions like “somebody called me, do you know whose number is this…”.

I’ll let you know when the app becomes available on the Marketplace, and if anybody wants a XAP file, just let me know.

Update – application has passed the certification – download it here (direct Zune link). You will need Mango update for this.

There are 62 different keyboard layouts supported in Windows Phone. They’re enabling a great user experience for a user, but it’s really hard to choose the best one for a developer. So I’ve prepared an overview of all available input scopes.

First screen shows default one, and the second screen shows a view that user gets pressing abc or 123 button on the left side. Some keyboards have first letter uppercased by default and after that they switch to lowercase.

Input scopes are used like this:

<TextBox Name="myTextBox" InputScope="ENTER_SCOPE_NAME_HERE"/>

For a list of input scopes with their respective descriptions check MSDN.

If your WP7 is developer unlocked, you can download and deploy the application made for this article and view all input scopes on your phone. Please contact me if you need the source code.