Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone 7 Advanced Training Today!

by Joey deVilla on September 21, 2010

Windows Phone 7 deviceI know that this is incredibly short notice, but I just heard about it myself:

Join us on September 21 2010 at 8.00 am PDT (11:00 EDT) for the first of two Office Live Meeting broadcasts.

The Microsoft Windows Phone 7 marketplace will open in October, and Microsoft wants to help you make your app the best that it can be. If you would like to ensure that you’ve considered key submission criteria and that your app is of the highest quality, this free live training is for you!

Join Rob S. Miles and Andy Wigley once again (both MS Press authors and MVP’s) for an engaging training on advanced topics for Windows Phone 7 application and game development.

We’re also including a session on Windows Phone Design and Designing with Blend, taught by Microsoft SME’s Bryan Agnetta and Jon Harris. Bryan is a Senior User interface Program Manager in the design studio for Windows Phone 7 team. His responsibilities include managing the Design Integration team and Program Manager for Application development in the studio. His 9+ year tenure at Microsoft has all been with the Windows Phone User Experience team. Jon is the Senior Product Manager for Expression Blend and SketchFlow. He joined Microsoft as the first User Experience Evangelist! And now 4 years later, 4 releases of Blend, 4 releases of Silverlight and a new release of Blend 4 for Windows Phone… you get the benefit of his expertise in this session.

The last hour is dedicated to the questions you have. We’ve pulled together a panel of Microsoft SME’s in addition to Rob, Andy, Jon and Bryan. Through the Live Meeting Q&A function, you can get all your Windows Phone 7 development questions answered real time.

Sign up for both Part One and Part Two to get full coverage.

Here’s the agenda:

Part One: Tuesday, September 21, 2010, 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. EDT

Click here to register for Part One.

Time Subject
11:00 a.m. – 11:50 a.m. EDT Panorama and Pivots
12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. XNA Deep Dive (includes a 10-minute break)

 

Part Two: September 21, 2010, 3 p.m. – 7 p.m. EDT

Click here to register for Part Two.

Time Subject
3:00 p.m. – 3:50 p.m. EDT Bing Maps
4:00 p.m. – 4:50 p.m. Planning and Optimizing for Performance
5:00 p.m. – 5:50 p.m. Windows Phone 7 Design and Design using Microsoft Blend
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Live Q&A Panel with Microsoft SME’s

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Upcoming Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Codes / Deployment Clinics

by Joey deVilla on September 20, 2010

coffee and code

Update (Sept. 21 @ 6:15 p.m. EDT): Made some corrections to the schedule.

We’re out there, and we want to help you with your Windows Phone 7 development by giving you a chance to deploy your apps to an advance-release Windows Phone 7 device for testing! We’ll be in the following cities on the following dates:

Wednesday, September 22 in Ottawa (Coffee and Code)

Colin Melia and Rick “Claus” Claus from Microsoft’s Developer and Platform Evangelism team will be at Bridgehead Cafe (224 Dalhousie Street) from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. to host a Coffee and Code there. Drop in, say hi, have a coffee, ask questions and if you’ve got an app, try deploying it to a real live Windows Phone 7 device!

Thursday, September 23 in Toronto (Coffee and Code)

Join Kate Gregory and me as we host a Coffee and Code at the Starbucks at King and Yonge (4 King Street West) from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., where we’ll merge with the Coffee and iOS group who are coming in at 4:00 p.m.. Want to find out more about WP7 or iOS development? This is the time and place!

See Kate’s blog entry about this Coffee and Code.

Wednesday, September 29 in Montreal (Coffee and Code)

Join “les bons gars”, Christian Beauclair and Guy Barrette, who’ll be holding a Coffee and Code at Le Café de la Cité on 75 Queen. They put on a professional appearance, but we all know qu’ils vont ecrire des «fart apps»! They’ll be doing it in both official languages: Silverlight and XNA!

Thursday, September 30 in Montreal (Deployment Clinic)

Deployment clinics are a little more formal than Coffee and Codes. You can book an exclusive timeslot to deploy and test apps to a Windows Phone 7 device, and there’s one taking place all day at Microsoft’s Montreal office (2000 Avenue McGill College, 4th floor) on the 30th. Email Christian Beauclair to reserve a time slot.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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FITC Mobile 2010

by Joey deVilla on September 20, 2010

FITC Mobile 2010: The Windows Phone 7 booth

What is FITC?

What a week! On Thursday, I was in Vancouver at the Take 5 Cafe making an all-too-brief appearance at the Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code, and on Friday I was at FITC Mobile 2010 in Toronto, minding the Windows Phone 7 booth.

FITC Mobile 2010 is part of a larger group of conferences called Mobile Innovation Week, which took place in Toronto last week and comprised:

FITC logoFITC (pronounced “Fit-See” by those in the know) is a descendant of the Toronto Flash user group FlashinTO, which I know from my old days as a Macromedia Director developer working at a little interactive shop called Mackerel. Local Flash/interactive media guru Shawn Pucknell started the group, and from it came a Toronto-based event in 2002 called “Flash in the Can”. Since then, the events have spread all over the world and expanded to cover more topics, so Flash in the Can became FITC. It’s great to see that Shawn’s still directing FITC, and it was good to chat with him – it’s been too long – and we’ve got to talk sometime about how Microsoft can participate in other FITC events.

(And now you know why the FITC logo features an old-school can opener.)

This was FITC Mobile’s second year. Its goal was to cover as wide an assortment of aspects of mobile development and content development as possible, with presentations, demonstration and panel discussions. The schedule was packed with all sorts of useful sessions, which covered:

  • Mobile operating systems: Android, BlackBerry, iOS and Windows Phone 7
  • Tools: Flash, HTML5, Unity and Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone
  • Ideas: Marketing, usability, design, Canada’s place in the mobile world and the current state of Canada’s mobile industry

What I Saw

I spent most of my time at the Windows Phone 7 booth, showing off the phone and the development tools to passers-by. I did manage to get away and take a peek at some of the presentations, including:

Here are the slides from Paul Trani’s Mobile Design That Doesn’t Suck session:

Here area couple of photos I snapped at Mark Arteaga’s Windows Phone 7 presentation:

View of Mark Arteaga's presentation from the back of the room

View of Mark Arteaga's presentation from the front of the room

The “Booth Brains”

Anthony Vranic and Sean Kearney hack away as Barranger Ridler and Cory Fowler demonstrate Windows Phone 7 to a visitor to the booth

On Friday, I minded the booth with my coworkers Mandy Kaur, Yue He, Paul Laberge and Anthony Bartolo, but I was the only one available on Saturday. I put out a call for “Booth Brains” and got a number of responses. In the end, these four local heroes came in for the whole day:

  • Cory Fowler
  • Sean Kearney
  • Barranger Ridler
  • Anthony Vranic

My thanks to you four (and Yue, who showed up for a couple of hours too!) I couldn’t have done Saturday without your help.

Barranger Ridler and Cory Fowler demonstrating Windows Phone 7 to a booth visitor

We had a great number of people show up to the booth, curious about Windows Phone 7. We showed them the development tools – Visual Studio Express for Phone, Expression Blend and the WP7 emulator – and they got to get their mitts on an actual Windows Phone 7 device. Everyone who came by was impressed by the look, feel and responsiveness of WP7; I think we changed more than a few minds there.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Scenes from TechDays Vancouver, Part 4: Go DevMENTAL

by Joey deVilla on September 20, 2010

Go DevMental: Our event for students

What is Go DevMENTAL?

Since TechDays – Microsoft Canada’s cross-country developer and IT pro conference visiting 8 cities across Canada this fall – is a two-day event, we’ve got the venues for the entire 48-hour period, including evenings. Rather than have the session rooms (which are already set up for an audience, complete with A/V and seating) lie fallow, we decided to put them to good use and hold free community events in the evenings. One of these events is Go DevMENTAL, where we show college and university students what they can build using Microsoft’s tools and technologies and give them a lot of free stuff.

Go DevMENTAL is a two-track conference, with one track devoted to web design and development using WebMatrix, Expression Blend and Silverlight, while the other covers mobile development for Windows Phone 7 using Silverlight and XNA. At the end of the evening, we give the students a token for DreamSpark, our program that gives them free Microsoft development tools and operating systems and a DVD full of goodies so they can start coding right away.

If you’re a college or university student and would like to have an informative and entertaining evening where you learn cool new things, get free cool stuff, connect with industry people and get some help with your career, register for Go DevMental!

Where is Go DevMENTAL?

We’ll be hitting these cities on these dates:

City Where When
Edmonton Shaw Convention Centre October 5
Toronto Metro Toronto Convention Centre
South Building		 October 27
Halifax World Trade Centre November 2
Ottawa Hampton Inn Ottawa
(200 Coventry Road)		 November 9
Montreal Palais Des Congres November 23
Winnipeg Winnipeg Convention Centre December 7
Calgary Round-Up Centre
(Calgary Stampede Park)		 December 14

What Happened at Go DevMENTAL Vancouver?

Go DevMENTAL Vancouver took place on Tuesday, September 14th in the West Building of the Vancouver Convention Centre, a gorgeous venue (for more, see this entry).

I was helping out with the Phone track, so I only managed to get photos for its sessions. My colleages in Microsoft Canada’s Developer and Platform Evangelism team, Christian Beauclair and John Bristowe, took care of the Web track, while Mark Arteaga of Redbit Development and I ran the Phone track.

Here’s Mark setting up for his presentation, as the students and a number of professors milled into the room. We had some drinks and snacks set up in the back; that’s what the line at the back of the room is all about:

Photo of the session room, with Mark Arteaga setting up his computer in the foreground

And we’re off! Mark did the first presentation, which focused on app development with Silverlight.

The audience in the Phone track at Go DevMENTAL Vancouver

By the end of his session, he had a working, skinnable Magic 8-Ball app that responded to the user shaking the phone. The app was flexible enough so that it would be really easy to repurpose it as a fortune cookie app, the Wisdom of Master Yoda app and so on, without having to touch any code.

Mark Arteaga makes his presentation

Mark’s session was followed by a break, which concluded with a quick accordion performance by Yours Truly:

Joey deVilla plays accordion at Go DevMENTAL

Followed by a quick word from Andrew Gottlieb, a Microsoft recruiter who works the UBC campus looking for the next great Microsofties. If you’re looking for a job at Microsoft and you’re a student in the Vancouver area, you’re going to want to drop him a line.

Joey deVilla plays his accordion at Go DevMENTAL as Andrew Gottlieb stands beside him

Then came my presentation, a live-coding exercise in which we start with “File –> New Project…” and in 45 minutes, put together a game in which you get to smack Justin Bieber around. Let it never be said that I let professionalism stand in the way of a good coding presentation‘

Joey deVilla makes his presentation, holding up a piece of paper

Live coding in front of an audience is not for the weak of heart, and you’d better really know your stuff. But when you do it right, it’s fun for both you and the audience.

In these photos, I’m holding up two pieces of paper as a way of explaining collision detection using bounding boxes. It’s not every day you see some goof in an ironic hipster trucker cap talking about videogame fundamentals!

Joey deVilla makes his presentation at Go DevMENTAL holding up two pieces of paper

After the student sessions, I made my way to the faculty roundtable where we chatted with the professors about what Microsoft could do for them.

It was great meeting the students and faculty – I had a great time, and also learned a lot from them. I’m looking forward to the upcoming Go DevMENTAL cities. See you there!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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I Need “Booth Brains”!

by Joey deVilla on September 17, 2010

you could be here

I need “booth brains” at the Windows Phone 7 booth at FITC Mobile 2010 tomorrow (Saturday). “Booth brains” are like “booth bunnies”, but smarter (and of either gender).

If you’re technically inclined and curious about Windows Phone 7 or a Windows Phone 7 developer who’d like some deployment time with a real Windows Phone 7 device, this is your opportunity! I need to maintain the Windows Phone 7 booth at the FITC Mobile 2010 conference at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre tomorrow from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.. Right now, I’m the only person available to take care of the booth and I need help! You don’t need to know everything about Windows Phone 7 – I can brief you. I need enthusiastic people who can help me run things, and I’ll feed you, too!

(And yes, helping me gets you into FITC 2010, and we can take turns minding the booth so you can catch a session or two.)

Interested in helping me out? Drop me a line – and as soon as possible, please!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Scenes from TechDays Vancouver, Part 2

by Joey deVilla on September 15, 2010

phone1

One of the hot topics at this year’s TechDays conference is Windows Phone 7. With a new user interface featuring a design that isn’t all “me too”, a “glance and go” approach that doesn’t have you riffling through pages of apps and not one but two programming models that meet specific (and very different) needs, it’s a very promising mobile platform. No wonder a lot of developers want to get in on the ground floor with WP7.

phone2

The buzz about Windows Phone 7 translated into a packed room for Mark Arteaga’s session, the first of a two-part series on WP7 development with Silverlight.

phone3

Here’s the room about a minute or so into his session, with all seats taken and the people still filtering in and starting to take “standing room only” spots in the back. The packed room got an intro to WP7 development with Silverlight, input goodies like the virtual keyboard, accelerometer and microphone and APIs to take advantage of internal features like email, phone dialer, contacts and more.

phone4

Later this morning (Pacific time), Mark will continue with Part 2 of his session, where he’ll cover the life cycle of apps on Windows Phone, control templates, themes and web services available to Windows Phone.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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This Week: TechDays Vancouver and Mobile Innovation Week Toronto

by Joey deVilla on September 13, 2010

"What's Up This Week": Map of Canada showing TechDays Vancouver and Mobile Innovation Week Toronto

There’s some interesting stuff going on in the Canadian tech world this week, on nearly opposite ends of the country. I’ll be at both, starting in Vancouver from Monday to Thursday, and ending the back back home in Toronto.

TechDays 2010, Vancouver (Tuesday and Wednesday)

Vancouver Convention Centre (West Building) at night

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Microsoft Canada will be hosting the TechDays conference in the new West Building of the Vancouver Convention Centre. TechDays features content from Microsoft’s biggest (and most expensive) conferences, updated and delivered by local developers and IT pros, all at an incredibly reasonable price – a few hundred dollars, as opposed to a few thousand.

TechDays is your best chance to learn how to make the most of Microsoft’s platforms tools and technologies. It’s also a great way to get to meet your Canadian Microsoft team as well as your fellow techies.

If you’re attending TechDays, come say hi! I’m the guy with the accordion, and I’ll be demoing and working on Windows Phone 7 applications in the Collaboration Lounge.

We’ll be devoting a lot of bandwidth to TechDays this week, and I thought I’d point out something else happing at the same time, a continent away…

Mobile Innovation Week, Toronto (All Week)

Logos of Mobile Innovation Week events

If only I could be in two places at the same time! Alas, the complicated business of booking large conferences like TechDays requires us to find venues a year in advance, and certainly well before the dates of this year’s Mobile Innovation Week in Toronto, which takes place all week.

As you’re going to hear me say quite often for the next little while: Canada has always punched above its weight class in tech, and especially when it comes to the phone. After all, this is the home of Alexander Graham Bell, and he has a strong claim to state, as the Windows 7 commercials put it, that the phone was his idea. Since his time, Canada’s been making significant contributions to the telephone, and it’s getting highlighted in Mobile Innovation Week.

Mobile Innovation Week brings together and showcases the leaders in mobile tech, from idea people to developers to designers to institutions, all coming together exchange ideas about the future of mobile. It’s made up of many events, including:

Windows Phone 7 at FITC on Friday and Saturday

FITC logoI’m cutting my Vancouver trip short to be at FITC on Friday and Saturday, where I, along with some other Microsoft developers and evangelists, will be minding the Windows Phone 7 booth. We’ll have Windows Phone 7 devices and developer tools for you to try out, and we’d be more than happy to answer your questions!

We’ll also have a presenter there: Mark Arteaga will be doing two presentations on Windows Phone 7 development. If you wanted to learn how to code for this exciting new platform and you’ll be at FITC, don’t miss his sessions.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Cross-Canada Windows Phone 7 “Coffee and Codes” Start Next Week!

by Joey deVilla on September 10, 2010

cross-canada coffee and code

The idea behind Coffee and Code is simple: I, along with some of my fellow tech evangelists from Microsoft, take advantage of our status as mobile workers and choose a day to work at a cafe. We announce that we’re doing this and put out a general invitation to come join us – perhaps for a few minutes, a few hours or the entire time – to chat, ask questions, tell us what you think and get to know us. It’s us, working out in the open and making ourselves available to you.

With so few pre-launch Windows Phone 7 devices available, Coffee and Code is your best chance to see one up close and personal and test your apps before they hit the stores. Many developers have already joined us for coffee and a chat, checked out the phone and deployed and optimized their apps to an actual phone as opposed to the emulator. While you can get pretty far with the emulator, it’s no substitute for the real thing.

We’re taking advantage of our TechDays travel to hold Coffee and Codes in TechDays cities on the day after TechDays. Join us! Get to know your friendly Microsoft evangelists, find out about Windows Phone 7 and other parts of the Microsoft platform, and if you have Windows Phone 7 apps that you’d like to test on a real device, this is your chance!

We’ve got Coffee and Codes scheduled for the following dates, cities and locations:

When? City Where?
Thursday, Sept. 16
11 a.m. – 5 p.m.		 Vancouver Take 5 Cafe

429 Granville St (at Hastings)
Thursday, Sept. 23
11 a.m. – 6 p.m.		 Toronto Starbucks
4 King Street West
Thursday, Sept. 30
11 a.m. – 5 p.m.		 Toronto Starbucks
4 King Street West
Thursday, Oct. 7
11 a.m. – 5 p.m.		 Edmonton Second Cup

10209 Jasper Ave NW
Friday, Oct. 29
11 a.m. – 5 p.m.		 Toronto Starbucks
4 King Street West
Thursday, Nov. 4
11 a.m. – 5 p.m.		 Halifax Second Cup
5425 Spring Garden Road
Thursday, Nov. 11
11 a.m. – 5 p.m.		 Ottawa Second Cup
World Exchange Plaza
111 Albert
Thursday, Nov. 25
11 a.m. – 5 p.m.		 Montreal Second Cup
2020 Rue University

…and yes, we’re confirming venues for December in Winnipeg and Calgary.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Windows Phone 7 Blogger Night in Toronto

by Joey deVilla on September 8, 2010

Last night, we held a night to showcase some cool Windows Phone 7 apps being written by developers in and around the Toronto area. We invited some local tech and mobile industry bloggers and developers to see these apps in action and try out a late beta version of Windows Phone 7 on the hard-to-come-by advance devices and check out the look and feel of our new mobile operating system on some actual mobile hardware.

00aKing Street East, looking west from George Street (just east of Jarvis).

Rather than hold it in some bland “multi-purpose room” at the office, we chose to hold the event at Kultura, a nice little tapas restaurant on King Street, a short walk east of Toronto’s financial district, yet worlds away at the same time.

00bThe front room of Kultura’s second floor.

We held the event in the back room of Kultura’s second floor, a lounge area with enough space to do a big presentation followed by a number of small hands-on sessions with the apps:

00cThe back room of Kultura’s second floor.

Practice Run

Sure, seeing Steve Ballmer run around shouting “Developers, developers, developers, developers” is funny, but it’s also the truth. We’re a software platform company, and we know that a software platform ain’t nuthin’ without developers building apps for it. Windows Phone 7 is our newest software platform (coming soon!) and we want developers to build for it, so we decided to inspire people by showcasing local developers building apps for our phone and making them rock stars.

A well-run show requires a practice run. We asked the developers to come early and do a practice run through their presentations, and while they did that, I snapped some photos:

01Alexey Adamsky shows off his 3-D Sudoku app while Barranger Ridler waits his turn.
This looks like an album cover.

02Barranger Ridler demonstrates his “Where’s Timmy?” app,
which guides you to the Tim Hortons locations closest to you.

03Shawn Konopinksy shows us his social music app, “Songbuzz”.

04Mark Arteaga shows us his open data app, VanGuide.

05Mike Kasprzak demos his match-the-objects-to-eliminate-them game, “Smiles”.

The Real Thing

With the practice run done, I had a little time to grab a drink and chat with some of the guests as they arrived:

06Steve Syfuhs, Todd Lamothe and Colin Melia.

And soon after, it was time to start the presentations. I did the “opening monologue”, a quick three-minute overview of Windows Phone and what it means to both users and developers:

07“…and the Twitter hashtag for this event is #WP7dev…”

08“It’s like having an Xbox in your pocket.”

09“I’m never without my Windows Phone and my Microsoft Office ironic hipster trucker cap.”

10“Ever since Alexander Graham Bell, Canadian techies have always punched above their weight class.”

The audience sat in rapt attention, bedazzled by my scintillating oratory:

11Must…hang onto…every word…

And then came the developers, showing off their Windows Phone 7 wares running on the emulator, which made it easy to show apps on the phone to an audience.

First up was Alexey Adamsky, who with Alex Yakobovich, built Sudoku 3D, which literally adds an extra dimension to the popular puzzle game.:

12[3]Alexey Adamsky and Sudoku 3D.

Alexey and Alex work out of Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone, an incubator where Ryerson students and alumni with a technical bent and entrepreneurial ambition can work on their projects, start companies and take their ideas to market. Sudoku 3D started off life as a game for the Xbox 360 written using the XNA framework, but when they heard that Windows Phone 7 was going to be XNA-powered, they knew their project could be turned into a mobile game.

13Sudoku 3D, running as both a phone app (in the WP7 emulator) and a Windows application.

XNA lets Alexey and Alex target Windows, Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7. Alexey says that most of the code is the same across all three platforms and that porting Sudoku 3D from the original Xbox version to the phone was very easy.

After Alexey finished, it was Barranger’s turn:

14Alexey Adamsky, Barranger Ridler and Shawn Konopinsky.

Barranger Ridler is an indie developer who’s done some work for utility companies, and this work sometimes took him to small towns. One of the questions he often asked when arriving in a small town was “Where’s the nearest Tim Hortons?” His app, “Where’s Timmy?”, answers that question:

15Barranger Ridler demos Where’s Timmy?

Luckily for Barranger, Tim Hortons publishes their store location data as a static file saved in a number of formats. He took this data and put it into a database on a server that Where’s Timmy? can access. Where’s Timmy? uses this data, the user’s location (determined via the phone’s GPS) and Bing Maps to tell the user where the nearest ten Tim Hortons branches are and even provide step-by-step directions:

16Where’s Timmy? shows us the way to the nearest Tim Hortons.

Next up was long-time Windows Mobile developer and MVP Mark Arteaga, who showed us a couple of his apps, including VanGuide. Mark is one of my “go-to guys” for Windows Phone, and he’ll be sharing his knowledge in two Windows Phone sessions at the TechDays conference, which will take place in eight cities across Canada.

17Mark Arteaga shows the crowd his apps.

After Mark came Shawn Konopinsky of Nascent Digital, a Toronto-based company specializing in building applications based on touch technologies:

18Shawn Konopinsky and Songbuzz.

Shawn demoed Songbuzz, a social music app that allows users to share what they’re listening to, find out what their friends are listening to and discover new music:

19Songbuzz, close up.

20The audience, still captivated.

Closing the demos was Mike Kasprzak, creator of the puzzle game Smiles:

21Mike Kasprzak shows us Smiles.

22The Jedi Mind Trick doesn’t work on games.

It’s a really cute game with gorgeous graphics and great animations featuring several modes, from a full-on arcade mode to a more relaxed “zen mode”:

23A close-up of Smiles in action.

The Party

24Everyone to the bar!

With the demos done, it was time for mingling and socializing. The audience could talk to the developers and get personal demos of their Windows Phone apps, grab a drink and some tapas, and work the room.

25Everyone to the bar….again!

I got to chat with a number of guests, including Valerie Fox, Director of Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone, Emil Protalinski, who write for Ars Technica’s column One Microsoft Way and Nitin Bharti of DZone.

26Mandatory arty shot.

I had my hands full chatting up guests, doing video interviews and answering technical (and some non-technical) questions, so I’m glad that my fellow evangelist Ruth Morton took most of these pictures. Also present was another evangelist on my team, Barnaby Jeans, who held court at a banquette as people came to him to find out more about Windows Azure:

27Barnaby Jeans and Michelle Michalak.

31Barnaby Jeans and Todd Lamothe.

It was a full and lively room…

28Everybody to the tapas!

…with some of the brightest lights in our local tech scene…

29Sandy Kemsley, Leigh Honeywell and Valerie Fox.

…and these guys, too! (I kid because I love, gentlemen!)

30Colin Melia, Steve Syfuhs, Jean-Rene Roy, Mark Arteaga and a guy I can’t identify.

I’d like to thank:

  • The developers: Alex Yakobovich, Alexey Adamsky, Barranger Ridler, Mark Arteaga, Mike Kasprzak and Shawn Konopinsky, for building those apps and showing them off so well.
  • Our PR company, High Road Communications, and especially Chantelle Bernard and Allison Colalillo for organizing the event. I always say: if you’re ever invited to an event held by High Road, you must RSVP “yes”.
  • Ruth Morton for helping me out by taking pictures and directing me to people who wanted to ask me questions or look at my Windows Phone.
  • The people at Kultura, who were gracious hosts and made great food and drinks!

This is Only the Beginning

For the developers who showcased their apps, this is only the beginning. They’re going to continue polishing them, and soon the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace is open up and they’ll submit them for approval. For them, the next few weeks look something like this:

  1. Register at the marketplace today.

  2. Finish their application or game using the Beta tools.

  3. Download the final Windows Phone Developer Tools when they are released on September 16th.

  4. Recompile their app or game using the final tools.

  5. Have their XAP ready for ingestion into the marketplace in early October when it opens.

For the Developer and Platform Evangelism Team at Microsoft Canada, this is only the beginning. We’ve got a cross-Canada conference starting next week, and Windows Phone 7 is going to be one of the big topics. It offers the most bang for the tech conference buck; if you haven’t registered for it yet, do it now!

We’re also looking for more Windows Phone 7 developers and their apps, and we want to showcase them! Do you have a Windows Phone 7 app that you’re working on? Drop me a line and tell me about it!

download wp7 dev tools

For you, this can be the beginning. The mobile platform is still new ground, and Windows Phone 7 is a great mobile platform for both developers and users. Download the developer tools today, check out some tutorials and make your mark!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Test Your App on a Real Windows Phone in Toronto, Calgary and Montreal

by Joey deVilla on September 2, 2010

coffee plus windows phonePre-manufacturing Windows Phone 7 devices are incredibly hard to come by, but we’re working on ways for you to test your WP7 apps on the real thing. One way we’re doing this is by holding “Deployment Clinics” all over Canada.

Today (Thursday, Sept 2): Toronto

  • If you’re in downtown Toronto, I’ll be holding a Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. today at the Starbucks at King and Yonge (northwest corner, right above King subway station). We’ll be at the big table in the back. Bring your Windows Phone 7 app and see how it runs on a real phone!

Friday, September 3: Calgary and Toronto

Next Week: Montreal

It doesn’t matter if you’re a Francophone, Anglophone or allophone: we want you to come see and deploy to Windows Phone!

Thursday, September 9th

A Microsoft Canada event: Windows Phone 7 Night in Montreal (featuring a developer device!)
5:30 – 8:30 p.m. at the Microsoft Montreal office (2000 Ave McGill College, Suite 450, Montreal)

Join Christian Beauclair from Microsoft Canada, along with Colin Melia from DreamDigital, for an evening about Windows Phone 7 in the flesh.  That’s right, they’ll be there in person, oh and so will a real developer device!

In October, Microsoft will start accepting application submissions on the mobile marketplace for Windows Phone 7 applications, with devices being available at retail shortly thereafter.

Will you be one of the first developers selling a cool application? Are you an IT Pro that wants to figure out how these devices fit into your organization?  To get to grips with this new mobile platform and build on your existing .NET and infrastructure knowledge, you’ll need to know the features of the new phone platform.

Visual Studio 2010 together with the WP7 tools make building applications a delightful experience. During this evening event, you’ll have the opportunity to see the phone in action, learn about the tools and understand how the phone integrates into your enterprise.

You absolutely must be registered to attend.

Register for this event

Friday, September 10th

Deployment clinic at the Microsoft Montreal office (2000 Ave McGill College, Suite 450, Montreal)

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Windows Phone 7 Goes RTM

by Joey deVilla on September 2, 2010

Gone RTM

I [heart] Windows Phone logo: OMG WP7 RTM FTW

That’s right: the last touches have been put on the Windows Phone 7 OS and it’s now in “RTM”, Release to Manufacturing. Here’s what Terry Myerson wrote on the Windows Phone Blog:

Windows Phone 7 is the most thoroughly tested mobile platform Microsoft has ever released.  We had nearly ten thousand devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes.  We’ve had thousands of independent software vendors and early adopters testing our software and giving us great feedback. We are ready.

Next Up: Developer Tools

Set of wrenches: Tools

We’ve had over 300,000 downloads of the Windows Phone Developer Tools in their CTP (Community Technology Preview) and Beta states, and we’re racing towards RTM. The final version of the tools will be available on Thursday, September 16th, and yes, they’ll be available free of charge.

In the meantime, download the tools and start working on those apps!

Click here to download Windows Phone 7 Tools beta

And Then: Marketplace (and App Certification)

Windows Phone 7 Application Certification Requirements

Windows Phone Marketplace is where users will buy your apps, which means that once you’ve written and tested your apps, it’s time to submit it for certification. The requirements for getting an app certified for Marketplace, including what’s allowed and not allowed in an app, are clearly specified in the Windows Phone 7 Application Certification Requirements [PDF, 513K]. Download it and get familiar with the Marketplace policies.

Your Turn: What Should You Do?

I’ll close with the words of Brandon Watson, Director, Developer Experience and one of the guys on the WP7 team:

  1. Register at the marketplace today

  2. Finish your application or game using the Beta tools

  3. Download the final Windows Phone Developer Tools when they are released on September 16th

  4. Recompile your app or game using the final tools

  5. Have your XAP ready for ingestion into the marketplace in early October when it opens

The final tools will likely have some minor breaking changes from the Beta tools, so developers may have to fix some bugs that arise. The final tools will also include several highly requested Silverlight controls which will make it even easier for developers to deliver high quality Windows Phone 7 experiences. Also in the September 16th final release, the panorama, pivot and Bing maps controls will all be available to drop into applications.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Windows Phone 7 App: Rubik’s Cube

by Joey deVilla on August 31, 2010

Hoem screen for Magmic's "Rubik's Cube" game

I was a teenager in the 1980s, which meant that along with watching Knight Rider, going to Depeche Mode concerts and playing blocky games on an Atari 2600, I had a Rubik’s cube. These puzzle toys were such a big craze at the time that toy and game stores couldn’t keep them on the shelves. I’m told that even decades later, it’s still considered to be the number one-selling toy of all time.

It’s nice to see that Ottawa-based developer Magmic, who specialize in mobile casual gaming, are bringing Rubik’s cube – the real officially-licensed thing – to Windows Phone 7. Naturally, you can try solving the classic 3 * 3 * 3 cube that we all know and love…

Game screen for Magmic's "Rubik's Cube" game

…but the game lets you go beyond the classic with:

  • Four different sizes of cubes
  • “Free play” or the more challenging “Timed mode”
  • A timer to keep track of your best solution times
  • Variations like “CRAZY cube” and “Picture cube”
  • A solution guide to help you learn how to solve the puzzle
  • Anaglyphic 3-D mode (3-D glasses not included)

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Windows Phone-a-Palooza [Updated]

by Joey deVilla on August 29, 2010

Update: Please note the changes to the Toronto-area deployment clinic locations!

The "Windows Phone Canada" LinkedIn Group

"I [Canada] Windows Phone" logo

If you’re not a member of LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals, you should join it now! It’s a great place to keep in touch with your network of working peers, post and maintain your resume, find people in your industry and be found yourself, and take part in professional discussions in LinkedIn groups.

Once you’re a member of LinkedIn, you should join the Windows Phone Canada group. It’ll have links to the latest Windows Phone articles, host discussions about all aspects of Windows Phone development, from coming up with ideas for apps to writing them to selling them in Marketplace. You’ll also get to network with Windows Phone developers across Canada, and as I’ll tell you over and over, that’s where opportunities are born.

Join the WP7 discussion – join the Windows Phone Canada LinkedIn group!

Windows Phone Deployment Clinics

7 LG Windows Phone 7 phones charging

Pictured above: some of the phones we’ll be using in our deployment clinics.

Anyone who’s built apps and tried them out on an emulator and then deployed to the real thing will know what Jan van de Snepscheut was talking about when he said “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”

To support you in your WP7 development and help you make the leap from theory to practice, we’re starting our deployment clinics this week! It’s your chance to deploy your app to a real WP7 phone and see how it works. This week’s are being held in:

There are also some events being planned for next week:

(I’m working on Toronto dates for next week…watch this blog!)

We’re working on ways to hold deployment clinics in as many places across Canada, as often as our schedules and pool of phones will allow. For those of you out west, we’re working on getting clinics out your way – watch this space!

Windows Phone Bootcamps

Photo of Windows Phone 7 bootcamp Montreal attendees sitting at a boardroom tableDevTeach’s Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp – a four-city, two-day, hands-on intensive training course taught by Colin Melia – started off quite nicely last week in Montreal (pictured left).

This week, the Bootcamp comes to Vancouver on Monday and Tuesday (August 30 – 31) and Ottawa on Thursday and Friday (September 2 – 3).

Next week, Yours Truly sits in on the Toronto Bootcamp, which happens next Tuesday and Wednesday (September 7 – 8).

Want to sign up for the Bootcamp? Register here, and save $100 when you use the discount code WP7BOOTCAMP.

Windows Phone Training and Deployment Clinics at TechDays

"Microsoft TechDays 2010" logoTechDays, our cross-Canada conference on how to make the most of Microsoft’s tools and technologies, is just over two weeks away, starting with TechDays Vancouver on September 14th and 15th. We’ve got two 65-minute breakout sessions on Windows Phone app development being presented by Windows Phone MVP Mark Arteaga and a half-hour “Turbo Talk” by Windows Phone MVP Anthony Bartolo on distributing your apps through the Marketplace. To find out more about TechDays, visit the TechDays site.

We’ll be running deployment clinics in the TechDays cities when we’re there (those cities, in order: Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, Halifax, Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary), in the TechDays lounge, as well as outside the conference. Watch this blog for details!

Windows Phone Training for Students at Go DevMENTAL

"Go DevMENTAL" logoJust as TechDays is a cross-Canada tour for working developers and IT pros, Go DevMENTAL is a cross-Canada tour for post-secondary students who’d like to learn more about the coolest apps and platforms, get connected with people in the software industry and get help in pursing a career. To find out more about Go DevMENTAL, check out the Go DevMENTAL site.

One of Go DevMENTAL’s tracks is dedicated to creating Windows Phone apps. It’ll have two sessions: one on building Silverlight apps for WP7; the other on building XNA-based games for WP7.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Join the “Windows Phone Canada” LinkedIn Group

by Joey deVilla on August 23, 2010

windows phone canadaIf you’re on LinkedIn (and really, you should be) and are interested in developing for Windows Phone 7, you should join the Windows Phone Canada LinkedIn group! It’s a place for Canadian WP7 developers, enthusiasts and users to connect, share news, links to articles, exchange ideas, look for work and projects and get to know each other. You’ll also be able to start your own discussions, ask questions and point people to your WP7-related projects.

Those of you who know me well know I keep saying it over and over again: community and connections is an important and underappreciated element of your career. Join Windows Phone Canada, start some discussions and make those connections!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Windows Phone 7 Montreal Bootcamp on Monday!

by Joey deVilla on August 19, 2010

In case you hadn’t yet seen Windows Phone 7 in action, here’s a video that was shot recently:

I get a lot of questions about Windows Phone 7 development, and of these, the most often-asked one is “How do I get started building apps for Windows Phone?” My answer is always the same: take a guide or tutorial that suits you, learn how the example program works, and then start experimenting!

bootcamp

If you really want to dive into the world of Windows Phone development, you should check out DevTeach’s two-day intensive bootcamp hosted by Colin Melia, who’s presented at TechDays, wrote the Silverlight demo app that we used for the EnergizeIT tour and is one of our go-to guys for Windows Azure – simply put, the guy knows his stuff. If you’re looking to kick-start your WP7 development, there isn’t a course more hardcore than this one.

save100withWPBOOTCAMPcode

The first bootcamp takes place next week in Montreal at the Microsoft offices on Avenue McGill College. The registration fee is $999, but you can save $100 with the discount code WP7BOOTCAMP. Register today!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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