Windows Phone's Metro UI is a very sleek and attractive design approach. However, the user can only choose between two color themes (dark and light). Our newest tutorial explains how to brand your app while at the same time respecting the user's decision regarding the system theme and accent color.

Windows Phone developers are invited to take part in a short 5-minute survey by the Windows Phone Developer Experience team. It shall serve to improve services provided by Microsoft for WP developers.

To make a radio app is simple – you create an app that plays the radio stream of one or multiple stations. But what is the true advantage of a mobile app? Being able to combine the content with web and social features to really enhance the mere listening experience. An example of how to take advantage of the online and mobile aspects is our feature app of the month. The Radio FM4 app for Windows Phone accompanies the popular Austrian radio station.

Every now and then we stumble upon apps of our members and find them quite interesting. This time we thought our member Aleš Rosina deserved a mention, since his entry to the Lumia 800 giveaway was quite interesting. Ales talked about handling error reports and we decided to have a look how it worked in his "Ljubljana Bus" app. Unfortunately we could not get the app to crash, but found it interesting nonetheless.

If you're a developer, you're familiar with user reports as "your app just crashed." And before you can find out what the user was doing, it can last for a few hours or even days. Our latest Windows Phone tutorial shows you how to get an error report via email right away.

According to recent numbers, over 80,000 apps have been uploaded to the Windows Phone Marketplace. This means there are more Windows Phone apps than Symbian app or BlackBerry apps (both about 70,000). The largest category is Entertainment (over 15,000 apps). The high activity of developers leads to delays in publishing of submitted apps.

A few days ago, the Windows Phone Marketplace was brought to 13 new countries, including Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia. This way you can target users in these countries even better. A new official blog post describes how to globalise and localise your Windows Phone app in a simple, but in-depth way.

Nokia and Microsoft will invest up to 18 million Euro to set up an AppCampus program at the Finnish Aalto University. Developers will get support, training as well as funding. The focus will be on Windows Phone, but Symbian and Series 40 projects will also be supported. Ideally, this will strengthen both, the mobile ecosystems and the real world economy of the region.

The Creating Apps team got a visit by a happy member of our community today: Kariem from Vienna got a free HTC Surround to start Windows Phone development. He is one of three lucky guys receiving this audio-strong WP7 phone.

Have you ever watched "Who wants to be a millionaire?" Making fun of the intellectually underperforming candidates? Ever imagined how you would fly through the questions to win the ultimate prize? Well thanks to thoughtful developers you can re-live the experience yourself. The "Who wants 7 millions" app is a conversion of the quiz to the Windows Phone platform. Bring your Slumdog-Millionaire-like knowledge along and sit on the famous chair in the spotlight. Only without the spotlight. A chair is also not required. Just your Windows Phone device.

Are you interested in doing WP7 development? Do you need a testing device? We've got three HTC Surround you can borrow. If you successfully program two new apps and publish them in the Marketplace, you can even keep it!

The Windows Phone Marketplace has grown by 10,000 items in the last 25 days, reaching a total of over 60,000. These are numbers published by All About Windows Phone, indicating that the growth of WP apps has accelerated compared to the months before.

Our member Martin Suchan has recently been developing an application for automatic photo shooting in Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. He shared with us an article describing the most interesting challenges one will most likely encounter when creating apps for WP7 and how to solve them successfully.

Nokia's new Windows Phone flagship Lumia 800 does have bright sides, but also a few hick-ups. Especially the battery led to some unhappy faces. After a first update improving charging, another is announced to fix a battery status bug. Meanwhile, a Nokia press event for CES was scheduled.

The Microsoft cloud storage service SkyDrive just got enriched by two apps making it easier to access your documents. A brand new iPhone app has hit the Apple App Store and of course the Windows Phone Marketplace got a new Windows Phone version of it. SkyDrive lets you upload, store and share documents over the cloud.