This month we're excited to have presentations from two companies who will be showing new ways we can enhance our programs. Cortexica will be showing their image recognition technology and how we can embed it in our own applications. Red Badger will be showing their new XNA layout framework: XPF.

Cortexica

Cortexica Vision Systems are the creators of a bio-inspired vision system enabling intelligent image recognition using principles derived from the human visual cortex. We provide a patented platform for radically new Visual Search products that deliver exciting new experiences and value for consumers and businesses.

We have showcased our technology with the launch of two wine label recognition apps, the Tesco Winefinder and Cortexica’s own Winefindr. Now, we are opening up access to our technology with a brand new API. We will describe how easy it will be to sign up, upload images, and connect your Phone 7 apps to your database on our Vision System. We will share some of our experiences creating an image + product database and cover a few exciting use cases for this technology. Finally, to make it even easier for busy developers, we will release a self-contained app that includes the image acquisition and communication modules.

Red Badger : XPF

XPF is a layout framework for XNA on Windows & Windows Phone 7 (and hopefully Xbox 360 in the near future).  XNA and Silverlight can’t be mixed on WP7 and XNA only provides the most basic support for performing 2D layouts – you get an X and a Y and you’re on your own.  This often makes creating common 2D layouts (HUDS, menu’s etc) quite painful.  XPF solves this problem by bringing the Silverlight/WPF development experience to XNA; Grid, ScrollViewer, Data Binding – it’s all there.  Stuart Harris and David Wynne from Red Badger will give you a complete overview of what XPF has to offer and walk you through building an application using it, deploying to a WP7 device.  XPF recently went into public beta, more information can be found here: http://red-badger.com/Blog/post/Introducing-XPF-e28093-A-Layout-Framework-for-XNA.aspx

Mackrell Turner Garrett : Software licensing

Selling applications, via the marketplace, is going to be something new for a lot of developers. Beyond the marketplace registration process there are still other software licensing and legal issues that developers need to be aware of. To help us out, we'll be joined by Tony Kent & Rebecca Howlett (Solicitors from Mackrell Turner Garrett) and Robert Deacon (Barrister at 11 Stone Buildings) to discuss some possible issues and answer any questions you may have.

Demos

And we may even find time to squeeze in some demos, if anyone has an app they've written which they'd like to give a 5 minute overview of.

Directions:

Room 228

Building: Royal School of Mines

How to get to South Kensington http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/campusinfo/southkensington

Campus Map (Building 9) http://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/campusinfo/public/sthkencampus.pdf

Entrance is on Prince Consort Road, first door on the left coming from Exhibition Road

Lift is on the left after the reception desk.

Also this month:

On October 7th in Manchester there will be a full day Windows Phone 7 development event.

The day will feature detailed technical talks from numerous MVPs and a XAPathon to allow you to test your apps on actual devices. There's also the chance to win fabulous prizes and best of all it's all free!

More details & registration at http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/wp71/