WinMoDevCamp Toronto, the Toronto edition of the workshop for developing applications for Windows Phone, takes place today at Microsoft Canada’s headquarters.

If you can’r make it to WinMoDevCamp in person, you can attend virtually by watching the streaming video feed.

Here’s the agenda (all times are Eastern):

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

WinMoDevCamp Toronto, the free workshop where you can learn about Windows Phone Development, takes place this Wednesday at Microsoft Canada’s offices in Mississauga. Come learn about Windows Phone by participating in a development project, and come meet some of the faces (including me) at the local branch of The Empire! (And yes, we’ll serve snacks and dinner.)

WinMoDevCamp is free of charge and takes place this Wednesday, November 11th, from 1 to 9 p.m. at Microsoft Canada Headquarters (1950 Meadowvale Boulevard, just off Mississauga Road north of the 401). To participate in WinMoDevCamp, please register.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

The New Yorker’s Hallowe’en Cover

I make sure to keep an eye on how technology pops up in mainstream non-geek culture because it’s a good way to gauge the techno-cultural zeitgeist and see how technologies are being received by the public at large. As techies, we’re all too happy to be early adopters and are willing to put up with usability problems, annoyances and extra work just to have the latest and greatest gear for its own sake. We have a tendency to forget that many non-techies don’t adopt technologies while they’re still new and need a techie mindset to use; they’ wait until technologies evolve to the point where the benefits outweigh the annoyances.

The current issue of The New Yorker has a Hallowe’en-themed cover that hints at how much smartphones have worked their way into everyday people’s lives:

Here’s a closeup:

(I’ll bet that at least one of you went out Saturday night trick-or-treating and checked your smartphone.)

The practical upshot of all this: the mobile platform is in your future. It’s the one that people take everywhere and it’s growing in power in leaps and bounds the way desktop (and later, laptop) computers did in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

WinMoDevCamp

Speaking of mobile platforms, we’re holding a full-day workshop on Windows Phone development called WinMoDevCamp Toronto next Wednesday, November 11th  from noon to 9 p.m. at the Microsoft Mississauga offices (1950 Meadowvale Boulevard). It’s free of charge and your chance to learn how to develop applications for Windows Phone.

• For more information about WinMoDevCamp, see my earlier WinMoDevCamp article.
• To register for WinMoDevCamp (remember, it’s free!), visit the registration page.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Yes, you probably went here as soon as you saw the phrase “One-Handed Computing”:

But in this case, I’m talking about what Jason Kottke is talking about — those times when you use mobile technology while your other hand isn’t free because you’re:

• Eating
• Drinking
• Carrying or feeding a baby
• Walking the dog
• Carrying groceries
• “Straphanging” on a train or bus
• Getting by with a broken arm

In the cases above – and I’m sure you can think of many more – you’re accessing computing resources in a very undesktop-like way: with only one hand, and even then, a limited portion of that hand since most of your fingers are busy holding that phone. You’re likely using only your thumb, as shown below:

There are lots of times when users are stuck in “one-thumb mode”. If you’re building mobile applications, you should keep that in mind and make sure you design your user interfaces accordingly. You might need to consider things like:

• The size of touchscreen controls: make them too small and they’re not thumb-friendly.
• The number of controls on the screen; the maximum number is dictated by their size.
• Navigation in your app. Hierarchical arrangements make sense to developers, but lots of user experience people will tell you that ordinary people don’t get hierarchies.
• Which functions will your users use most often? You should make those very easily accessible. Which functions will your users use less often? You might be able to put them on a secondary or tertiary screen.
• Can you get information without making the user enter it? For example, can you infer information based on the user’s location, which you can grab from GPS instead of asking for him/her to enter it? Can your application remember your user’s most often-used data?
• Can you get other kinds of one-handed input, such as from the camera, accelerometer, magnetometer or other sensors?

That’s a fair bit to think about, and I might have to present some ideas at the upcoming Toronto WinMoDevCamp (and yes, I’ll also blog them).

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Are there any computers available today that come in that particular shade of blue, with matching chair?

Click the photo to see it at full size. Photo courtesy of retrofuture.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

On Wednesday, November 11th, we’ll be hosting the Toronto-area WinMoDevCamp at Microsoft Canada’s headquarters! It’ll be the fifth in a series of worldwide “Camp” style workshops focusing on developing applications for Windows Mobile (including the upcoming Windows Mobile 6.5).

WinMoDevCamp – short for Windows Mobile Developer Camp – was inspired by events like BarCamp, SuperHappyDevHouse and the original iPhoneDevCamp. It’s a free-of-charge get-together where mobile developers, web developers, .NET developers, UI designers, testers, device manufacturers and Canadian mobile carriers gather, team up and work in ad-hoc mobile development projects for the day.

You’ll get to:

• Create new applications for the Windows Mobile Platform
• Meet and work side-by-side with people from the Microsoft Mobile Developer Experience team
• Migrate existing mobile apps from the iPhone, BlackBerry and Palm Pre to the Windows Mobile platform
• Create applications to support Windows Enterprise Applications
• Meet with representatives from Canadian mobile phone companies, including Bell, Rogers, Telus and WIND
• Test and optimize applications for Windows Mobile 6.5

The event is free-as-in-beer (in other words, it costs nothing to attend), and you’ll be able to sign up to attend soon – watch this space!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Here are some photos I took at Monday’s Windows 7 media event showing off the latest Windows 7-compatible computers from six vendors:

The participating vendors were:

• Dell
• Hewlett-Packard
• Lenovo
• LG
• Sony
• Toshiba

The whole day was a non-stop demo from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with journalists both mainstream and tech, associated with an organization or independent, print and television, streaming in constantly to get a look at Windows 7 in action on all sorts of hardware. I was there as the "Microsoft Guy" to answer questions about Windows 7 in general; the vendors each sent a rep to talk up their specific hardware.

I did some demos that will find their way to television soon: one demo for CTV News which should air next week. I also did a demo for the Space channel’s always-entertaining Ajay Fry which will be appearing on Space’s show InnerSPACE (formerly known as The Circuit) tonight at 11 p.m. (Eastern); it’ll repeat tomorrow at noon (Eastern). Alas, there is no accordion playing, but I think I did a pretty good demo of some of the cool multi-touch possibilities with Windows 7. I don’t know if you’ll be watching it, but I certainly will!

My thanks to our friends at High Road Communications and the vendors for making the event both a success and very enjoyable.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection and The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

I’m working out of the building known as “The Richmond” today, participating in a showcase of Windows 7-ready hardware for the media. As of this writing, I’ve done demos of Windows 7 on an HP TouchSmart computer hooked to a Sony Bravia TV equipped with DLNA for a number of journos for various media outlets including ITWorld Canada, Butterscotch and Space.

We’re all in suite 104, which is a loft-ish split-level space where Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, Sony and Toshiba have set up tables to show of their Windows 7-compatible wares. I’m perched near the door, doing demos of Windows 7 features, while the hardware guys are showing off their machines

I’ve been here since 8 in the morning, and the journos will be visiting continuously all day until about 5:30 or so. Most nerds find this sort of dog-and-pony activity excruciating, but I find schmoozing tech and consumer press energizing, so I’m having a blast.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection and The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

Pictured above is a 16GB Zune HD (the accordion’s there to act as a nice stand and prove that it’s actually in our possession). It’s quite nice, the navigation system is both simple and clever, and the browser experience is nothing short of amazing – I spent a little time surfing with it last night and kept saying “If only they had a plan to put this into Windows Phone…”

The Zune HD is not yet available in Canada. We have one because IT Pro Evangelist Rick Claus made a quick run down from Vancouver (where we are for the TechDays conference) into the U.S., where they’re available (although very hard to find – people are snapping them up).

This Zune could be yours. There’s a plan in motion as to how that will come about, so watch this space…

Yesterday, while setting up for the TechDays conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre, my co-workers Rick Claus (pictured below on the left with the red netbook) and Rodney Buike (pictured below on the right with the blue netbook) and I couldn’t resist playing around with the Dell netbooks that we were using to do PowerPoint donkey-work. John Bristowe, who was doing the photography, suggested striking a Charlie’s Angels-style pose and we were only too happy to oblige:

Click the photo to see it at full size.

Last month, I posted a video announcing the launch of the Race to Market Challenge, a competition that challenges you to add some Windows Phone applications to our up-and-coming Marketplace and compete for one of four grand prizes: developer editions of a Surface table.

There’s a new video out, and I’m posting it as a little reminder for you would-be mobile developers, Windows Phone is a great way to get in on the ground floor of the world of mobile application development and win prizes at the same time:

I’ll be posting articles about how to access useful data and features on Windows Phone, including the Pocket Outlook Object Model (POOM, which gives you access to things like contact information) and using the GPS to get the user’s location.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

While I do hope and believe that Microsoft can get their mobile strategy right, there are days when I worry that Windows Mobile 7 is going to be like this:

Two things we need to bring back into style: go-go boots and multi-coloured keyboards.

Alternate titles for this ad: 150 Receding Hairlines! 150 Giant Foreheads!

Click the ad to see it at full size.

Here’s the text of the ad:

150 Extra Engineers

An IBM Electronic Calculator speeds through thousands of intricate computations so quickly that on many complex problems it’s like having 150 EXTRA Engineers.

No longer must valuable engineering personnel…now in critical shortage…spend priceless creative time at routine repetitive figuring.

Thousands of IBM Electronic Business Machines…vital to our nation’s defense…are at work for science, industry and the armed forces, in laboratories, factories and offices, helping to meet urgent demands for greater production.

For more comics like this, see www.slowwave.com.

The Windows Mobile Blog points to an MSDN article covering how Amplitude, an application for the iPhone, was ported to Windows Mobile.

Here’s a quick description of Amplitude, which is developed by Gripwire, a mobile and social app company based in Seattle, courtesy of the Windows Mobile Blog:

Amplitude picks up any sound in a user’s surroundings through the microphone and then amplifies the sound, rendering it into a rich graphical representation on the device. Amplitude can be used to amplify any sounds, such as human or animal heartbeats, that usually wouldn’t be picked up by the human ear. Amplitude provides a cool user interface featuring an oscilloscope that allows users to view and visually quantify, signal voltages, as you can see the volume of the sound that you are listening to.

The MSDN article on the Amplitude porting project covers a lot of ground, including:

• A brief overview of Amplitude, Gripwire and Luke Thompson, the developer who ported Amplitude to Windows Mobile
• A run-down of developer resources, such as the Windows Mobile software development environment, MSDN Virtual Labs, Windows Mobile for Developers site, Getting Started with Windows Mobile Application Development, Windows Mobile Developer Center and the documentation for Windows Mobile 6.
• Graphics and asset layout
• Connecting to the mobile device
• Audio and sound manipulation
• Animation and visualization
• Polishing the app

Whether you’re thinking of expanding your iPhone application to other platforms or starting a new Windows Mobile app project, you’ll find this case study packed with useful information and links. I’m going to expand on some of the topics covered in the article in future posts on this blog.

And don’t forget – there’s the Race to Market Challenge, in which you’re automatically entered whenever you submit a mobile app to Windows Marketplace for Mobile. Here’s a quick reminder of what Race to Market is all about:

Here’s a thought experiment for you Windows developers out there: the fact that Apple pretty much owns the $1000+ computer market is in fact an opportunity. Discuss.

(This article appears with slightly different wording – to try things from a different perspective – on the official Microsoft Canada developer blog, Canadian Developer Connection.)

If you’ve worked with CSS and multiple browsers long enough, this mug will make you laugh (or cry):

At US$12.95 (available at Zazzle.com), it’s a pretty good “Secret Santa” gift for the web developer or designer on your team.

(Click the image to get the story.)

Here’s an idea sent to me by a friend of mine who’s not a computer programmer, but a “suit” working at a Bay Street firm in Toronto (for those of you not from Canada, “Bay Street” is Canadian for “Wall Street”).

Consider two systems, with specs as shown below:

Although the systems are quite similar, they are from two different generations of portable computer:

• One is an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T42 laptop from 2005 (pictured below and to the left), and
• The other is a Lenovo S10 netbook from 2009 (pictured below and to the right).

Which one is System A and which one is System B?

It turns out that System A is the current-model netbook and System B is the 5-year old laptop.

My friend writes:

Netbooks are nothing other than stripped down laptops stuffed into smaller boxes. You wouldn’t buy a 5 year old notebook with the expectation that it would perform like a new one, would you?

The analogy I used when I bough a netbook is that it is like the second vehicle. I use it to run around town and do the small errands. It’s small, convenient and easy on gas but for the heavy lifting or processing, I use my laptop SUV/Minivan.

Previous entries in the Netbooks Suck series of articles:

• Fast Food Apple Pies and Why Netbooks Suck
• Like I Said, Netbooks Suck