Could a mobile app help boost your new venture?

Are you planning on building a business around a mobile app?

Do you have application ideas but don’t know where to start?

The upcoming AT&T Mobile App Hackathon, sponsored by AT&T and held at their Gravity Center in Plano, is an event geared towards getting your app, business or idea venture to market! The kinds folks at the Gravity Center will provide on-the-ground technical support, known as “senseis” [look for them wearing orange shirts with the word "sensei" on the back], from AT&T, Microsoft (guess who? ), Amazon, HTC and others to help you accelerate the execution of your ideas/business, rapidly kickstart a prototype mobile application and spin-off a successful venture.

Learn more and sign up today by visiting their Eventbrite registration page.

Based on the excellent feedback over at http://wpsk.uservoice.com, I’ve launched a new Windows Phone Starter Kit for RSS-based applications!  The kit, like the others is REALLY simple to use – just download the source code, change the settings.xml file to include the RSS feeds you want displayed, and run the application!

The Starter Kit can be downloaded directly from the MSDN Code Gallery at http://aka.ms/wpskrss

The Source Code is also available from my GitHub repository at https://github.com/ChrisKoenig/Windows-Phone-Starter-Kit-for-RSS. You can download the source package by clicking on the ZIP button, or use your favorite Git client to clone the source to a local repository.

As with all the other Starter Kits, we’re encouraging people to contriute back – if you see places for improvement, let us know via the issues list on GitHub, and make sure to contribute any fixes or additions back by sending me a Pull request.

I’m pleased to announce the release of Version 2 for the Windows Phone Starter Kit for Schools!

Thanks to some AWESOME help and source code changes submitted by Rudy Hyun, I was able to incorporate a bunch of new stuff into a new version of the Starter Kit.

• added localization support (fr and en included)
• switched to Google Weather service (previous service was US only)
• merged map panorama items
• added a popup to select contact method on the contact pano (previous was hard to select)
• added a campus view to navigate to the image (pinch/zoom/translate, etc)
• improved the MVVM implementation
• some refactoring of the data files and codebase
• added club tab (item data + subtitle – can be removed if unwanted)
• various code and performance tweaks

You can download the starter kit at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Windows-Phone-Starter-Kit-c3b8b2d2 or http://aka.ms/wpskschools and let us know what you think.

I’ve also just created a new User Voice website to track ideas for future starter kits – you can find this at http://wpsk.uservoice.com. Feel free to add your own ideas, and vote on other ideas. As of this writing there is only 1 idea in the list, so be sure to add some new ones!

If you do, we now have a place for you to submit your ideas for others to see and vote on!

This morning I established a User Voice site for Windows Phone Starter Kit Ideas – you can find it at the following url:

http://wpsk.uservoice.com

User Voice is a great feedback system that allows companies (or initiatives, like this one) to capture feedback from their customers in a prioitizable way – each suggestion can be “up-voted” by others as well as commented on. I have put one suggestion out there, based on some emails I’ve already received, but I need your help to populate this list with more ideas for future starter kits. I can’t guarantee that we’ll build them all – but you can! If you’re really passionate about your idea, then we can work together to get something built and deployed as part of this initiative.

Keep the lines of communication open, and building applications for Windows Phone will contiue to get easier and easier

Don’t miss out on these great session with Markus Egger in the Dallas and Houston offices!

Where: Microsoft Houston Office – 2000 W Sam Houston Pkw S, Houston, TX 77042
When: Thursday, December 8, 2011 – 1:30 – 4:30 PM
Signup for this FREE event in Houston

Where: Microsoft Dallas Office – 7000 SR-161 (George Bush Turnpike), Dallas, TX 75039
When: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 – 1:30 – 4:30 PM
Signup for this FREE event in Dallas

Join Markus Egger, Microsoft RD and one of the longest running MVPs, for an afternoon of free information. CODE Magazine and EPS Software are in a unique position to share information based on real world experience in projects that are either our own or one of the many projects we get to see in our role as mentors, trainers and consultants, as well as feedback we receive from CODE Magazine readers. This is NOT marketing hype! We will tell you which information you should invest time and money in, and which ones to avoid.

Topics Include:

• Windows 8
  • Metro” Development
  • The impact of Windows 8 on today’s development effort
  • The future of C# and VB
  • The future of HTML and JavaScript
  • The future of C++
• WPF, Silverlight, and other XAML technologies today and tomorrow
• Architecture to serve the needs of modern applications
• The need for SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) today and tomorrow
• HTML 5, CSS3, and JavaScript
• ASP.NET MVC, Razor and jQuery
• “Visual Studio Async”
• Windows Phone 7 and other mobile devices
• and more!

Attendees of this free event will come away with a clear understanding of which technologies to use for various technical challenges. Questions? Please e-mail info@eps-software.com or call 832-717-4445 x32. For additional information, please visit www.codemag.com/training.

Note: This event is co-hosted by EPS Software Corp. and Microsoft Corporation. EPS is responsible for all content presented at this event.

I’m excited to announce the release of a new Starter Kit for Windows Phone! Officially titled the Windows Phone Starter Kit for Podcasts, this kit makes it really easy to turn your Podcast into a branded Windows Phone application.  I helped with a little bit of the code, but the vast majority of the work was done by Microsoft Developer Evangelist Dani Diaz - my peer in Philadelphia.

For more details on the Windows Phone Starter Kit for Podcasts, check out the following resources:

Official Site on MSDN Code Gallery
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Windows-Phone-Starter-Kit-620904d6

Dani’s blog post about the Starter Kit
http://smallandmighty.net/blog/introducing-the-podcast-app-starter-kit-for-windows-phone

As a reminder, the goal of the Starter Kits for Windows Phone is to make it really easy to develop Windows Phone applications by providing a set of Visual Studio project templates that allows the developer to dig into the source code and customize it as they see fit before releasing it to the marketplace. The release of the Windows Phone Starter Kit for Podcasts marks the third Starter Kit released – the previous two kits include the Windows Phone Starter Kit for WordPress and the Windows Phone Starter Kit for Schools.  All of the source code for these Starter Kits are provided for you to customize, theme, monetize and depoly!

If you have suggestions for other Starter Kits, please let me know via this blog, or send an email to msnextde@microsoft.com.

Thanks to everyone that joined us last week for the Windows Phone Camp in Minneapolis. It was great seeing so many Windows Phone developers come together to talk about building cool applications. I was very excited at how many people attending had already spent some time with the tools, and especially how many had already built and deployed applications to the marketplace! No other city I’ve been to has had *that* many developers with that level of experience – rock on MSP!

As promised, here is my deck and demos from my sessions.

http://chriskoenig.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/MSPPhoneCamp.zip

The app we built together – the EZ Grade application – is hosted on GitHub at the following address:

http://github.com/chriskoenig/ezgrade

As always, if you have any questions about this content or developing applications for Windows Phone, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

The guys in Baton Rouge have scheduled the first meeting of the Windows Phone user group. They don’t yet have their own web site, so I’m going to try to help out by blogging the mailer that just went out. For now, head over to their Google Group site to keep up on all the latest details.

Baton Rouge Windows Phone User Group Meeting – November 9th

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, November 9th, 2011, and for this month, we will be running in conjunction with the .NET User Group, the SQL Server User Group and the IT Pro User Group.  The meeting is on LSU’s campus at Tureaud Hall, which is north of our previous meeting place, Taylor Hall (CEBA). Tureaud Hall is adjacent to the Dairy Science Building/Ice Cream Shop. See this link for an overhead map to Tureaud – http://g.co/maps/xb5pf

When arriving on campus, park in any of the available spots in the parking lot to the northwest of the building or on Stadium Drive. Alternatively, you can actually park in the same lot as before, to the west of Taylor Hall, and walk north on the sidewalk. 
 
Our meeting begins in room 204 at 6pm with food and announcements. 

Room 204 – BR .NET User Group and food
Room 206 – SQL Server User Group
Room 211 – IT Pro User Group
Room 221 – Windows Phone 7 User Group
 
Topic:   Pocket Brewer – Show and Tell

See what went in to creating a simple Silverlight based Windows Phone 7 beer brewing app and the support structure that supports it.    Wayne will talk about the process from File->New Project, app construction, building the supporting website, the submission process, marketplace issues, revenue and in general dealing with the app over the past few months.

About Wayne Odom:

Wayne is a Software Development Project Lead for Turner Industries Group, a large heavy industrial construction company based out of Baton Rouge.   After graduating from LSU with a computer science degree in 2002 he has continuously been developing a variety of software solutions for Baton Rouge businesses, including construction, health insurance, advertising and SEO.    He also maintains a small client base (jerryodom.net) and a couple of pet projects including a personal blog(wayneodom.com), a beer brewing app (pocketbrewer.com) and an informational Baton Rouge website (bestofbatonrouge.com).

As always, stay after the meeting for a developer garage where you can work with other Windows Phone developers to add polish to your app ideas, or to help you out of a development rut. 

Finally, let everyone know that these meetings are open to the public, especially to students! 

Hey students! ​Do you think that you could be a Microsoft Student Partner?

​As a Microsoft Student Partner, you’ll be challenged to use your enthusiasm and knowledge to lead the technology discussion on your campus. You’ll demo the latest and greatest technologies, host events, and connect with other students and faculty to inspire them to create what’s next.

Application Process – DUE NOW!

1. Fill out the online application at http://bit.ly/USMSP12. There are only 25 questions and it should take you about 30 minutes to complete.
2. Create a YouTube video and submit the link at the end of the application.

We want to get to know you and discover your passion for technology and how it could help solve the world’s toughest problems. Create and submit a one-minute YouTube video telling us about your favorite experience with a Microsoft technology and why you want to be an MSP on your campus.

Your entry has to be compelling. It has to be stimulating. So if you’re ready, produce your video and get noticed!

Once your video is posted to YouTube, be sure to share with your friends to drive views and comments!

Feel free to reach out with any questions to usmsp@microsoft.com.