I took and passed this exam this morning and am feeling quite happy with myself. It is the first of the three exams which are building blocks towards the Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (Windows Store Apps) certification, but on it’s own it does confer Microsoft Specialist (C# 5.0 Programming...

So I've blogged already about my first Windows 8 app and how I got the background task to update my live tiles. But for me one of the coolest things about Windows 8 App development is how amazingly easy it is to integrate with other apps. Some things which would have potentially taken some considerable...

My first Windows 8 app has a "Live Tile". To update this live tile I have a background task. The scenario is as follows: My app "Irish Tides" pulls tide height and time prediction values back from a website. The user can chose between 130 different ports around the Irish coast. It gets values for the...

I'm giving/gave (depending on when you read this) a short talk on building apps (mainly WP7, little bit of Win8) at the Career Zoo event in Dublin on 22nd September ( http://careerzoo.ie) . On the deck I use there are a number of links listed. Instead of either distributing printed sheets, or even just...

Today I used remote desktop to connect to a Windows 8 PC for the first time and this posed 2 small but interesting challenges for Windows users with habits like mine: 1) How do I enable remote desktop on the Window 8 PC? So, as in previous Windows versions this is a property of the computer, but...