I had a great time last night at the Windows Phone Meetup in Silicon Valley.  Many thanks to all that attended and thanks to the Nokia folks for hosting the event.  There were a ton of great questions and comments.  I hope you all go out and start localizing your apps for the 63 consumer...

I spent the last 2 weeks traveling through various countries through Europe talking to developers of all kinds.  The whirlwind tour through 7 countries in 14 days gave me an opportunity to hear many ideas and concerns and to learn about what developers are out there building.  If you attended...

View or download the video on Channel 9 (includes higher quality video) Bad stuff happens!  There is no way around that.  It’s a fact; your apps, out there in the wild on consumers devices, will crash.  This in itself is ok but only if you can get the information about those crashes and...

Misaligned elements is probably one of the most common issues I see with apps in the marketplace.  In this episode of Top Ranked, I delve into why this is an issue and how easy it is to check for that and fix it.  Alignment is a part of the overall Metro design language.  I’ve even seen...

The About page is usually one of the last things you think about when building an app. It’s just not core to the whatever it is you’re trying to build. And yet, you’ll soon find that it’s pretty much a necessity for most apps. Not only is it something you can use to help build...

In this episode, I focus on another small tweak that developers can add to their apps that will help make those apps look a lot more like native apps.  I’m referring to the addition of the Tilt Effect to controls.  By default, when you add controls to the canvas in Visual Studio or Expression...

In this episode we talk about pricing and more generically about market testing. I know, I know, marketing is probably not every coders favorite subject. I bring it up as I’ve noticed many apps in the marketplace that are underpriced. Apps that are cool, differentiated or do something of great...

In this episode of Top Ranked I explore Trial mode. Trial mode is one of the most important features available to you as a developer if you’re building a paid app. By implementing Trial mode in your app you give consumers the opportunity to take your app for a spin while ensuring that you’ll...

Note: This video is the first in the series so I spend some time at the beginning introducing myself and the goals for the series.  To get directly to the content in this episode skip to about the 4:00 mark.  When we launched the Windows Phone platform we released initially for the EFIGS (English...

With this post I’m introducing a new series of videos I’m producing which called Top Ranked.  In this series I’ll present various topics that will be of interest to developers building on the Windows Phone platform.  My aim is to provide short videos on topics that will help you raise the quality...

As part of our efforts to help developers get started with building their applications and games on the Windows Phone 7 platform we’re planning a couple of events in Redmond (May 18-19) and Silicon Valley (May 25-26).  If you’re interested, be sure to register using the links below. Abstract Get...

I’ve been thinking a lot about Windows Mobile lately (more on that, a lot more, later).  As I looked at the device I’ve been carrying for the past year or so ( Samsung Blackjack II ) I’ve found a few things annoying so I recently set about fixing things.  I’m sharing the solutions here for...