Canadian Tips Calculator - Approved and in the Marketplace!

Finally my first app (very simple app) is approved is now available for a low low price of $1.09. My main goal for writing Wp7 is first and foremost to have some fun and learn something new (I am a Windows developer) and do something that's my work doesn't let me do. Secondly, it would be great to be able to recover my Zune Marketplace access fee ($119 + tax) per year but honestly, I am not holding my breath :)

You can of course try this out here (opens zune). I have included a trial mode for this simple tips calculator. Only difference is that the paid version saves your provincial tax/regular tip rate and reloads it. Comments are welcome of course.

Next update...

will probably include more features like getting the provincial tax using location-based APIs as I dive more and more into the Wp7 APIs.

By submitting this app, it did give me a chance to see how quickly the Zune Marketplace team in Redmond can process applications. And I came away very impressed. I submitted my App wednesday night at around 10pm PDT and the next morning I got an emailing telling me my App was rejected. I was quite surprised as I had tested my app pretty thoroughly through the emulator and on my own Wp7 device.

The information given was quite clear of how I sucked (no, really, I sucked) as I had read the marketplace certification document but I completely forgotten about it. Only thing I was missing was a version number and support information (duh!). Being at work I could not fix the problem. I was able to fix the problem and resubmit my App around 8pm PDT on Thursday.

Around 2pm Friday, I received an email telling me that my App is going into the Marketplace.

I was a little bit confused about some of the status AppHub was displaying about the status of my App. AppHub information wasn't very help but I did find this very helpful page.

It appears that it does take sometime for the app to show up in the marketplace (and searchable)

All in all I am very satisfy with the ease and speed of the approval process but do keep in mind that it's a stupid Tips Calculator so it is probably pretty easy for them to test.

Think I'll go get that US tax ID now...