The folks behind Nerd Merit Badges have come up with their second badge, Inbox Zero (pictured on the left). You qualify for this badge if you maintain an empty inbox at least 71.4% of the time.
If you’re not familiar with the “Inbox Zero” concept, it’s covered quite thoroughly in 43 Folders, the personal productivity blog started by Merlin Mann, where the term was popularized.
I covered the first Nerd Merit Badge – Open Source Contributor, which features “Octocat”, the mascot for the Git distributed version control system, back in January.
Nerd Merit Badges are 1.5 inches in diameter and are velcro-backed so you can stick them to your clothes, a scouting sash or even any of your gear. They sell for US$3.99 (plus US$1 for shipping and handling within the US) and are sold on the honour system – you should order a Nerd Merit Badge only if you’ve earned it! Any karmic payback accrued from ordering an unearned Nerd Merit Badge is your problem.
If you’d like to keep up with what the Nerd Merit Badge folks are up to, be sure to follow their Twitter account.
In case you don’t recognize the photo on the right, it’s the “Sad Darth Vader” photo from my earlier article titled This is How the Current State of Windows Mobile Makes Me Feel. I posted it in response to The Empire’s seemingly directionless efforts with its phone platform, Windows Mobile. Or, as it’s called now, Windows Phone. Or, as it used to be called, Windows CE. Or was that Windows Embedded?
Therein lies the first problem as far as developers are concerned: finding documentation on the subject of developing for Windows Whatever-it-is-that-runs-on-phones. It’s confusing because it’s hard to even figure out what the name of the SDK you’re supposed to use is – they all sound applicable. Is it Windows CE? Windows Mobile? Windows Embedded?
(By the bye, for current phones, it’s Windows Mobile, which is based on Windows Embedded CE. Now that this new brand, Windows Phone, is kicking around, there’s a chance that it’ll get filed under that name soon.)
As an evangelist for The Empire, it’s my job to help developers figure their way around our various platforms, and I’m hard-pressed to think of a platform that appears more shrouded in mystery and confusion than Windows Whatever-it-is-that-runs-on-phones. Over the next little while, I’m going to post pointers to existing Windows Mobile/Windows Phone development articles as well as articles based on my own experiences developing for the Windows-based phone I picked up while at the recent TechReady 8 conference in Seattle. It’s a Palm Treo Pro, pictured on the left, and I chose it because out of all the mobiles at the Expansys booth (they always have a booth at the big Microsoft developer conferences), it was the one with the best “feel”.
My first pointer is to Microsoft’s own Windows Mobile 6 Documentation, located a couple of levels into the MSDN site. The main page for this section presents a giant point-and-click map of key topics for developers who want to write apps for Windows Whatever-it-is-that-runs-on-phones. I’m going to try out some of the exercises on that site and report back with stories of my experiences of getting started with Windows phone development, and whatever tips and tricks I pick up along the way.
If you’ve got any questions about developing for Windows Whatever-it-is-that-runs-on-phones, feel free to ask me, whether in the comments or via email. I may not have the answers myself, but since I’m on the inside at Microsoft, I can say that “I know a guy who knows a guy,” if you get my drift.
The User Angle
The upcoming 6.5 version of Windows Mobile – or more appropriately, Windows Phone – was announced earlier today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It features a user interface that’s considerably more finger-friendly than the current 6.1, whose stylus-reliant design seems stuck in the era of the Palm Pilot. Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz seems to really like it, as evidenced in the video he shot for his article titled Windows Mobile 6.5 Hands On: The New Interface Rocks:
Diaz ends his article on a positive note, a rare thing for a writeup on Windows Whatever-it-is-that-runs-on-phones:
From this first touch on, it looks like Microsoft is back in the game. They don’t have the upper hand yet, but they are clearly waking up. We will see what happens and how deep these changes really are once it gets released.
The Developer Angle, Once More
The apparent improvements in 6.5 and promised continued improvements in Windows Whatever-it-is-that-runs-on-phones version 7 are a good sign, but a lot of the success story I’m hoping for rests with applications for these phones. For that, there has to be a developer community that has the tools, resources and encouragement to develop for Windows Whatever-it-is-that-runs-on-phones. Building that community is a challenge that I’m taking up. What can I do to help?
For those of you who love both martial arts and comic books, here’s a desktop that you might like: Green Dragon, featuring Bruce Lee as a Green Lantern…
Click to see it at full size (1600 by 1200 pixels).
In brightest day, in blackest night, No evil shall escape his sight Let those who worship evil’s might, Get their asses kicked by Bruce, a’ight?
If it weren’t for the fact that the 0 isn’t at the end of the sequence, this Sesame Street video with The Count and Patrick Stewart would be perfect for celebrating Unix time 1234567890, the number of seconds since January 1, 1970. This numerically perfect moment takes place tonight at 23:31:30 GMT (in my neck of the woods – Eastern Standard Time, that’s 18:31:30).
Before I begin, let me show you the official banner for EnergizeIT, the upcoming cross-Canada expo featuring Microsoft’s up-and-coming technologies:
It’s fine and dandy, but I thought that the image below might better illustrate EnergizeIT’s awesomeness:
The Force is strong in this band! Click the image to see it at full size.
I tried running this suggestion by the legal department, and wouldn’t you know it, they put the kibosh on that idea in no time flat. Leave it to those buzzkills to harsh on my mellow.
But seriously – EnergizeIT is coming soon. It used to be a single-day conference, but we’ve decided, like that awesome band pictured above, to take our show on the road. We, the folks in Microsoft Canada’s Developer and Platform Evangelism group, will be going across Canada and showing off up-and-coming Microsoft tools and technologies including Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Azure and Visual Studio 2010. Yes, the current state of Windows Mobile has me less than pleased, but I’ve been enjoying these other parts of the Microsoft technology stack.
The five big things that the people at the Publishing Trends Blog took from the session are summarized below:
Teens grind through many different technologies quickly, not as a “life event”. They use tools and tech for a specific need and move on.
Teens concentrate on the tool’s immediate outcome rather than the tool itself. The example used in the article is that they don’t ask “How do I use Photoshop’s masking tool?” Instead, they ask “How can I create a cool rain effect?”
Teens learn by asking for help from their more skilled peers and observing and emulating them. They’re asking for help, but from their own community rather than from the adults.
Any niche site can become a social hub. It’s not just Facebook – any sites whose topics are focused around a specific interest provides a place to craft an online persona and get a sense of belonging.
They’re not using the newest, fanciest technology. Most of the teens surveyed were using older machines and software – probably “hand-me-downs” from their parents.
While the presentation was aimed at publishers looking to reach teenagers, I’m presenting this article to you because I think that the lessons from the presentation are equally useful for anyone who’s trying to design software for teens and young adults.
