Xamarin Blog

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Integrations - Xamarin Blog

Using Object Detection from inside your Xamarin app

September 6, 2018 Sep 6, 2018 09/6/18
Jim Bennett
Microsoft Cognitive Services provide a great way to get started with AI without being a machine learning or data science expert. A common favorite of cognitive services is the Custom Vision Service. The first version of this service allowed you to easily build an image classifier model that you could access either via a REST API (with an SDK available for Xamarin apps), or by downloading a model that can be run on your device using either CoreML, TensorFlow or WindowsML (we looked at using TensorFlow in an Android app in an earlier blog post).

Export To Application Insights With AppCenter Continuous Export

July 9, 2018 Jul 9, 2018 07/9/18
Mayur Tendulkar
Five-star mobile apps have one special feature: they don’t let go of their users. This can be achieved by understanding your app, the app’s users, and how these users interact with your app. The deep customer insights offered by AppCenter's Continuous Export provide a better understanding of your customers and help boost retention. By default, you receive information about your active users, their active sessions, top devices, country, language, and more!

More Cross-Platform APIs with Xamarin.Essentials Latest Preview

June 14, 2018 Jun 14, 2018 06/14/18
James Montemagno
We announced Xamarin.Essentials, a core set of cross-platform APIs to help developers build native apps, at Microsoft Build 2018. Xamarin.Essentials gives developers access to over thirty platform-specific APIs that can be accessed from their shared code, including geolocation, secure storage, sensors, device information, and many more. Best of all, Xamarin.Essentials can be used in any iOS, Android, UWP, or Xamarin.Forms app, regardless of how you create the user interface. Feedback on the first preview from developers has been fantastic, with praise of a simple and straightforward way to access these native features.

Xamarin.Essentials: Cross-Platform APIs for Mobile Apps

May 16, 2018 May 16, 2018 05/16/18
James Montemagno
When developing iOS and Android apps with Xamarin, developers can access every native platform API using C#. These bindings not only expose the platform APIs in C#, but add powerful C# features, such as async/await, events, delegates, and more. This is a huge advantage for developers, because they never have to leave C#, whether they're writing shared business logic, user interface, or accessing native features. One key feature developers often look for when developing cross-platform apps with Xamarin is a way to access common native features from their shared code without having to write their own abstractions or find an open source plugin created by the community.

The C# Developer’s Guide to Shipping Better Apps with Visual Studio App Center

January 16, 2018 Jan 16, 2018 01/16/18
James Montemagno
At our annual Microsoft Connect event in November, we announced the General Availability of Visual Studio App Center, combining our best developer services, incuding Xamarin Test Cloud and HockeyApp, into one free, easy-to-use cloud service to help you ship better apps, faster. From building in the cloud to automatically testing on thousands of real devices, distributing to testers and app stores, and monitoring real-time crash and analytics data, Visual Studio App Center fully supports Xamarin apps.

Fast & Simple Android Location Updates with Google Play services

August 24, 2017 Aug 24, 2017 08/24/17
James Montemagno
Starting an Android application that relies on device location can be overwhelming. The classic way of getting location is with Android's core APIs, which have been around for a very long time and can be confusing to use. To simplify this process, we developed the Geolocator plugin, which enables developers to get the location from shared code on iOS, Android, and Windows from a single API. There are times when you may want or need full control over the API, however, and that's where the new Google Play services location APIs come in. These APIs simplify location awareness with multiple sensors on the device to help determine the location of the user. This means that, when using these new APIs, querying for location updates is faster and more accurate and, with the most recent update (11.0.4), it's never been easier to get started.