So there was a lot of chatter online on whether the windows mobile 7 platform, soon to be released will support multi-tasking. The answer is yes and no.

Multi-tasking is a feature by virtue of which multiple applications can run on the device simultaneously sharing the platform compueting and other resources. For example, a user may wish to load a webpage in the browser application, while they read their email in the mail application.

The answer to whether the OS supports multi-tasking, is yes - in that it does natively support running multiple applications simultaneously. This will be seen out of the box for applications that ship with the phones. For example you will be able to use your mail application while a webpage is loading in the browser or be able to listen to music or watch videos, while browsing the web.

However, Microsoft is being careful about how the multitasking features are exposed for third party applications that don't ship out of the box with the phone. This is necessary for a number of reasons. If a platform allows all 3rd party code to run in the background, the users may face degraded performance of the app in the foreground, depending on what resources are being hogged by the application that is running in the background. Also badly written applications can cause wasteful usage of the platform resources in the background thereby causing unpredictable battery life performance etc.

The platform does allow the running 3rd party applications a grace period after the user has switched away from the application, during which the application may save state, handle closing events and do some background operations before it is shut down. All written applications will be able to hook onto this event. The platform also allows push notifications to be sent for applications to their users. The users will see these notifications, even if they are not using the applications and can then go into the applications to do more.

Another feature that is exposed to 3rd party applications is that they recieve notifications of system events such as for example a call coming in while the application is being used. Because of this, the users can switch away from the application, take the phone call and then return to the application and continue using it in the state that they left it.

Ok, I added another one. This one is a great app that allows you to find almost any guitar chords by name. Not only that, it allows for finding many variations of the same chord, left handed and right handed chords, different tuning scales etc. the url is http://www.iphone.vishalseth.com. I just submitted it on Apple's website and will post a link to the listing when it shows up.

This iPhone development thing is addictive. seriously. It's hard for me to have a little time on my hands and not want to write another fun app that shows up on my home screen. This one just pulls and displays the Photo of the day from National Geographic Magazine's website. It's something I have on my google home screen and just like to look at daily and thought it would be fun if I could have it on my phone as well. The url is http://www.iNGPOD.vishalseth.com. You can see it published in Apple's web application directory by clicking here 

 Update: The application is offline for now due to problems with making httprequests in my medium trust hosting environment.

I created a new app this weekend because I had a little bit of time. My wife likes to check her daily horoscope on astrology.com and I thought it would be cool if I could make an app that shows the daily horoscope. Whats even better is that they have daily horoscopes in many different categories like for example, general, health, couples, singles, home & garden, work and even a baby, dog and cat horoscope! Now I can just pull up the daily horosocopes anytime; kind of fun. I just submitted the app on apple's iPhone webapps directory so I'll post a link to the listing when it appears. Meanwhile, the link to the app, if you want it on your phone is, http://www.iSigns.vishalseth.com. For now its only customized to the apple mobile safari browser.

Update: See the application published in apple's web app directory by clicking here.

 Update: The application is offline for now due to problems with making httprequests in my medium trust hosting environment.

Long story short; I bought an iPhone, saw that apple had a webkit for building web apps and wanted to experiment with creating a web application in ASP.Net to run on the iPhone & iPod touch. Also extended it recently to work on a desktop browser so if you navigate to it using a desktop browser, you'll see the desktop version. To see the mobile version navigate to it using an iPhone or iPod touch.

I submitted it to the apple mobile web apps directory; you can see it published here.

Its a nifty little app; simple but seems to be quite popular ;) Basically its just a database of online cocktail recipes accessible on the iPhone & iPod Touch. It also has a nice little icon that you can add to the home screen of your mobile device to start it up automatically when you click on it.

The url for the app is http://pocketbar.vishalseth.com

Here's a screen shot of what it looks like on the phone.