<h3>Shake Gesture Library Now Available</h3> <p> </p> <p><a href="http://techstudio-website-alt.azurewebsites.net/Content/blog/uploads/2011/02/image-thumb27.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="image_thumb27" border="0" alt="image_thumb27" align="left" src="http://techstudio-website-alt.azurewebsites.net/Content/blog/uploads/2011/02/image-thumb27-thumb.png" width="225" height="240" /></a>When developing applications for Windows Phone 7 you have access to vast amounts of information about the device through its sensors. One of these is the accelerometer  which can give you information on where the device is moving within 3D space, this can be utilised in many different ways, the most prominent of these being in gaming. </p> <p>There are however many other ways to use this information, you may want a user to be able to shake their device to update their  twitter list instead of pressing a button, or many other implementations like this.</p> <p>To make this easier to do you can now use the Shake Gesture Library which is available to download from the <a href="http://create.msdn.com/downloads/?id=714" target="_blank">AppHub</a>  and there is also a great overview on the <a href="http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/" target="_blank">Windows Phone Developer Team Blog</a>.</p> <p> </p> <h3>The Magic Eight Ball App</h3> <p> </p> <p>To show how easy this is to use, lets write a simple app, I want to  ask my eight ball a question, shake my device and have an answer appear.</p> <ul> <li><font face="Arial">Create a new Windows Phone 7 project in Visual Studio:</font></li> </ul> <p><a href="http://techstudio-website-alt.azurewebsites.net/Content/blog/uploads/2011/02/newproj.jpg"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="NewProj" border="0" alt="NewProj" src="http://techstudio-website-alt.azurewebsites.net/Content/blog/uploads/2011/02/newproj-thumb.jpg" width="510" height="341" /></a></p> <ul> <li>Create a UI which has an image of an eight ball with a TextBlock hovering over the top to show the answer.</li> </ul> <p> <a href="http://techstudio-website-alt.azurewebsites.net/Content/blog/uploads/2011/02/magiceightball-microsoft-visual-studio-administrator.jpg"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="MagicEightBall - Microsoft Visual Studio (Administrator)" border="0" alt="MagicEightBall - Microsoft Visual Studio (Administrator)" src="http://techstudio-website-alt.azurewebsites.net/Content/blog/uploads/2011/02/magiceightball-microsoft-visual-studio-administrator-thumb.jpg" width="510" height="139" /></a></p> <ul> <li>Add initialisation of a<em> List<string></em> to hold our responses</li> </ul> <p><a href="http://techstudio-website-alt.azurewebsites.net/Content/blog/uploads/2011/02/magiceightball-microsoft-visual-studio-administrator-2.jpg"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="MagicEightBall - Microsoft Visual Studio (Administrator) (2)" border="0" alt="MagicEightBall - Microsoft Visual Studio (Administrator) (2)" src="http://techstudio-website-alt.azurewebsites.net/Content/blog/uploads/2011/02/magiceightball-microsoft-visual-studio-administrator-2-thumb.jpg" width="510" height="116" /></a></p> <ul> <li>In the Loaded event of our page add the handling for the shake gesture using the Shake Gesture Library.</li> </ul> <p><a href="http://techstudio-website-alt.azurewebsites.net/Content/blog/uploads/2011/02/mainpage.jpg"><img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="MainPage" border="0" alt="MainPage" src="http://techstudio-website-alt.azurewebsites.net/Content/blog/uploads/2011/02/mainpage-thumb.jpg" width="510" height="188" /></a></p> <p> </p> <p>That’s our App done, your Windows Phone 7 can now impart you with the knowledge of the Universe. Go Shake!!</p> <p><a href="http://cid-756a9b00ae9a5e3b.office.live.com/self.aspx/Windows%20Phone%207/MagicEightBall.7z" target="_blank">Download the sample</a></p>
