Beginning Windows® Phone 7 Application Development: Building Windows® Phone Applications Using Silverlight® and XNA®

8

Windows Phone 7 Services and Cloud Services

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• Understanding what web services are
• Using location services
• Understanding cloud computing and cloud services
• Using the range of Microsoft cloud services that are available
• Using the Bing Maps cloud service

One of the most useful and exciting features of Windows Phone 7 devices are that they are (mostly) connected to the Internet. The mostly modifier is included here because, unlike with desktop PCs, the connection on a Windows Phone 7 device may be intermittent (for example, if you're on a train going through a tunnel). Sadly there's not much you can do about that with current technological limitations; even in cities, you find “dead spots” with little or no Internet access. However, even with limited Internet access you can still write mobile applications that communicate with the Internet to send and receive data. You've probably seen plenty of them already, from built-in email to Twitter clients.

In this chapter and the following two chapters, you'll look at how to access remote applications from your applications. This chapter concentrates on using existing services, but don't worry: You'll see how to make your own soon enough. Specifically, in this chapter, you'll look at web services and, later on, cloud services. Web services, as you'll see, are components that exist somewhere on the Internet that your applications can use to add functionality. Cloud services are essentially the same thing ...