[Dev] Unlocking the Windows Phone 7 legally with #ChevronWP7

Yesterday I finally unlocked my HTC HD7 Windows Phone 7. The reason I had to do this was because I wanted to run my own developed software. Possibly when this works as expected I can buy the license to also publish them to the marketplace.

For now it just for hobbying and thus the Chevron WP7 single phone license is good enough and it's not too expensive ($9). It is endorsed by Microsoft and so I do not have to be afraid that the phone can not be upgraded. It is possibly to pay via paypal or creditcard and it's an easy process. In total it took me less then 10 minutes to pay and too unlock my phone.

The nice thing is that I can now develop my own software and put it on the phone. Homebrew software you can find from other developers can now also be put on the phone without having to resort on the Microsoft Marketplace.

Some nice apps:

Mango Battery Status - Shows the battery status on a live tile, also shows a graph of the battery level in time when clicked.

Hub folders for Windows Phone 7 - Enables the possibility to have a tile which leads to a set of tiles when clicked. This really reduces the enormous quantity of tiles on the main screen.

Development tooling:

Download the SDK from Microsoft

Windows Phone 7 development for absolute beginners, a video series which will help developers to get started.

[Diving] #Diving in a #Cenote in Playa Del Carmen, #Mexico

Last October I went diving for the first time in a cenote. A cenote is a deep natural pit filled with fresh water and most of the cenotes are part of quite extensive cave systems. The nice thing of the cenotes is that the water is very clear due to the natural filtration through the ground. This gives a surreal effect of floating through the caves since the presence of the water is not visible.

In some of the pictures a halocline effect is seen, this is due to the mixture of fresh water and salt water. This also indicates that the cave system is quite extensive since we were more then 4 kilometers away from the sea !

This was the first holiday that I used my new combination of the Canon 60D and the Ikelite underwater housing so I had to experiment a lot. So some of the pictures could be better ... The Ikelite strobe/videolight was perfect and gave more light then any of the divelights I have seen down there.