How to enable Internet Tethering on a Samsung Omnia 7

I recently received a Samsung Omnia 7 and I think it's a pretty awesome phone. But, Windows Phone 7 in general lags behind with a few things, one of these things is a built in internet tethering feature (like in the iPhone for example). Since I'm going away for a few days I don't intend on going around with a 3G modem (my laptop doesn't have a built in 3G modem), neither am I to keen on switching back to my iPhone. So I searched for a solution and stumbled upon a hack to enable launch the Omnia 7 Diagnostic Menu and the Micro USB Test.

Here's what you need to do

• Open the phone application
• Dial  # # 634 # and press Call
• This will launch the diagnostic menu
• Enter  * # 7284 #
• If the code above is entered properly then the Micro USB Test app launches 
• Select Modem, Tethered Call
• You are prompted to restart the device
• Connect your Omnia 7 to your computer via USB

In my attempt I was prompted to install the Samsung USB Driver and Windows 7 provided me with a link. Try it out :)

Chris' Puzzle Game on the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

I got my first application published on the Marketplace. The process was surprisingly fast, took overnight to get it certified and another day before it appeared on the Marketplace. I have a video demo of the game here and I demonstrate how parts of the game was built in an article called Writing a Puzzle Game for Windows Phone 7 using XNA. Try the game out, I'd love to get some feedback. It's a game made over a weekend and the main purpose was to experience the publishing process. If you have some comments, suggestions, or questions on the game then please send them to me and I'll see what I can do.

How to launch the Marketplace in the Windows Phone 7 Emulator

You probably noticed by now that the default Windows Phone 7 emulator only contains Internet Explorer and the Settings. I stumbled upon a tip from Daniel Vaughan about Launchers and Choosers today and I learned about a task that can start up the Marketplace Hub. Unfortunately you will have to create an application that calls into the Launcher API to accomplish this.

Here's what you need to do:

1) Create a new Silverlight Windows Phone Application
2) In your MainPage.cs and add a using directive to the Microsoft.Phone.Tasks namespace.
3) Add the following in the constructor of MainPage.cs after calling the InitializeComponent() method:

var task = new MarketplaceHubTask();
task.ContentType = MarketplaceContentType.Applications;
task.Show();

4) Launch the application and you should be good to go.

Here's how the Marketplace looks like on the emulator:



Click here to see a list of supported launchers and choosers for Windows Phone 7. You can read more about Launchers and Choosers here.