Cheeky
Microsoft has bolstered its API mapping tool, designed to help developers migrate applications created for other platforms, to support Android, in addition to iOS. The mapping tool won't actually migrate your application for you, but rather offers a comprehensive list of the various functions available in iOS and Android, and their equivalents - if there is one - on Windows Phone 7.
The goal is simple: by offering developers guidance on migrating their applications from rival platforms to its own, Microsoft hopes to encourage the creation of cross-platform applications. In order to encourage this, Microsoft has also produced a 90-page PDF, the logically named 'Windows Phone 7 Guide for Android Application Developers,' aimed at helping developers better get to grips with the process of porting their apps from one platform to another.
In addition to the mapping too, Microsoft is also promoting the "App Guy" who, Microsoft says, will be trawling various developer forums looking for developers in need of help, and offering it. Currently the App Guy is only monitoring the ever-popular Stack Overflow and Microsoft's own forum, but suggestions of other developer communities worth interacting with are encouraged.
Microsoft's next step will be to add all the features that Mango adds to the WP7 platform to the API mapping tool, delivering many of the abilities that rival platforms currently offer that Windows Phone 7 doesn't.
