Archives for February 2011

Wait, what’s going on again?

It’s all around Windows Phone 7 application development and the submission process to the Windows Phone Marketplace. Microsoft is on the hunt for app devs to build apps for Windows Phone 7. Of course they are, right? You need apps to make the platform more enticing for users to buy, to build a marketplace, for apps to be developed, and round-and-round.

I’ve built a bunch of applications for Windows Phone 7. Some for me, some for friends, some for Microsoft, some of other companies, etc. Originally, each developer was allowed 5 free application submissions. If an app was rejected, you could fix it, and resubmit, and that counts two submission points. Because the platform is new, and I’m still learning the ins-and-outs, I’m not afraid to admit I’ve had a few rejections. Some I agree with, and some I don’t, but that’s not the point of this post. After your 5 app submissions (pass or fail) the submission price is $20USD.

Since the beginning of WP7, I’ve been telling Microsoft Rep’s that the $20 hit is hurting more than helping them. Most seemed to agree, and as of today, the free submission count, per developer account is raised to 100.

WooHoo – Thank you Microsoft for listening!

This past week, I hosted another bootcamp @Gangplank in Chandler, AZ. This was done in conjunction with AZGroups.org, our local Microsoft Evangelist Michael Palermo( @Palermo4 ) and a few rock solid guys in the community. Namely, Andre Wilson (@awilsong), and Chris Coneybeer (@coneybeer).

We had 31 people in attendance, who all left happy, and more knolwedgebale about azure.

Goal.Accomplished = True;

We ran the full day event in two halves, first half Learn, second half Do. The “Do” part was made possible by the Azure Bootcamp team, supplying us with 30 day free/trial Azure accounts. These were pre-provisioned Azure accounts that were associated with LiveIDs. Ready to log into and start using. Andrew started with a Basic intro to what is Azure, then @coneybeer did a bit on Azure storage (table, sql, blob, and queue), and Andrew finished up the learning section with Deployment.

The second half of the day was spent building a project that was a basic shopping cart. One team built the order entry system, and posted orders to an Azure queue. The other team monitored the Azure queue, and processed the order. Pretty simple, and we finished the day with an ordering system that was pretty cool. I hosted the code in my DiscountASP.net Team System TFS account. This made it easy for the two teams to work on the same project.

In wrapping up with @coneybeer and @awilsong, we chatted about a better way for next time. Like life, things evolve, and sometimes you don’t know the best way, until you’ve done it once or twice. Remember the first half of the day was Learn? We had labs for people to do, and everyone finished the labs. So our “better idea for next time” is to build the labs, so they support the beginnings of the project that will be used/built later.

So in stead of the labs being throw away learning, they would actually be the foundation of the application that would later be built. This is slightly different than the Windows Phone 7 bootcamp we did where we had a contest for users/teams to build a better application than everyone else.

I like the one big project as a team better, and the idea that it’s all in my TFS (on DiscountASP.NET) means that the learning / project doesn’t have to stop at the end of the day.

Hey @coneybeer and @awilsong THANK YOU for providing the content, funding, and general fun.

Hey @Palermo4 THANK YOU for the funding you provided from Microsoft for Food and Beverages.

Hey @Gangplank THANK YOU for the facility.

@ScottCate