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Windows Phone News: Life of the Party, Petzold’s Book Updated, Glow Air Hockey

The Life of the Party

life of the party

Last night, I attended my friend Alexa Clark’s photo exhibit, which took place at Camaraderie, a downtown Toronto coworking space for indies and entrepreneurs. This sort of event at this sort of location tends to bring out techies with an interest in design and designers with a technical bent, and they all came up to me with the same question: So, do you have one of those Windows phones?

I pulled out my Samsung “Taylor” phone, let people take try it out, and here were the responses:

  • “I like the main screen. Less cluttered than my iPhone’s.”
  • (Flipping through the People hub) “That’s a great way to organize pages!”
  • (Seeing my wife’s tile on the Start screen, pinned to the top) “So people can have their own icon right on the home page? That’s great!”
  • (Seeing the way pages animate as you navigate) “That’s a nice touch.”
  • (On the overall design) “This is a Microsoft phone?”
  • “Love the clean look.”

Here’s what Wayne Lee, one of the people behind Camaraderie, tweeted about the phone:

bunnyhero tweet

Programming Windows Phone 7 Updated

programming windows phone 7

Charles Petzold – the guy who literally wrote the book on Windows programming – is working away on Programming Windows Phone 7 and has released another free preview version of the book. The first preview had 6 chapters; this latest version weighs in at 11 chapters and 265 pages.

Here’s the current table of contents:

  • Part I: The Basics
    • Chapter 1   Hello, Windows Phone 7
    • Chapter 2   Getting Oriented
    • Chapter 3   An Introduction to Touch
    • Chapter 4   Bitmaps, Also Known as Textures
    • Chapter 5   Sensors and Services
    • Chapter 6   Issues in Application Architecture
  • Part II: Silverlight
    • Chapter 7   XAML Power and Limitations
    • Chapter 8   Elements and Properties
  • Part III: XNA
    • Chapter 20   Principles of Movement
    • Chapter 21   Textures and Sprites
    • Chapter 22   Touch and Play

This preview is free-as-in-beer, and the final ebook, which comes out October 28th, will also be free-as-in-beer!

Get your hands on the book and associated downloads:

Windows Phone 7 Game: Glow Air Hockey

Glow Air Hockey is a game Social Indulgence that lets you play air hockey game against the phone or a friend. There’s a little more information about the game at Glow Air Hockey’s page.

(In the video above, the red dots are the players’ finger positions as shown in the emulator; you won’t see them when you’re actually playing the game on the phone.)

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.