Hello NZ Developers!

A quick introduction – I am a part of the Developer & Platform Evangelism Group at Microsoft New Zealand, where I mainly work with developers, students and software vendors. One of the things I have seen over the past four years is that developers do a lot of interesting and intriguing stuff! No matter the platform, technology or language, there is always something creative happening, in the ever-evolving field of software development. With all this great innovation, we should be proud to share what’s being created. So here's a way to get inspired to create the next big thing - Introducing: “Start Something!”

What is Start Something?
Start Something is a new channel that aims to intrigue, inspire and educate developers to start something new and creative. Start developing that app you’ve always dreamed of, or that killer app idea that’s going to change the game. You’ll find the “Inspire” Tab on the MSDN Homepage with stories and articles of developers around the world creating exciting apps.
Here are some of my favourite videos:

• How Curse.com makes an addon client for World of Warcraft 1:23min
• Building Cloud-based Apps Becomes a Perfect Life Style Choice for this "Entre-veloper" 3:51min
• Soundtracker makes it easy to discover and play the music your friends and neighbours like 2:24min
• Mobile Technology Takes the Lead 6:41min

Also check out:

• WePlayFM helps to bring the garage bands out of the garage 2:25min
• Graphic.LY builds an online community around digital comic books 1:54min
• Tickets to Brazil’s hottest concerts on your cell phone 2:27min
• What would the world be like if everyone had a serendipity engine? 2:33min

And of course, great HTML5 articles:

• Leave No Browser Behind: An HTML Adoption Strategy
• Learn HTML5 in 5 Minutes!
• HTML5 Gaming: How to animate sprites in Canvas with EaselJS

We’ll be posting more stories and articles throughout the year – across Windows, Web, Phone and Cloud topics. Have you started something cool and intriguing, here in New Zealand? Please get in touch – we would love to know what you are doing!

As if you needed another reason to get started, you can win one of four Samsung Focus Flash Windows Phones by developing a Windows Phone app!

Interested to Start Something in mobile development? We’ve worked with Geekzone to launch a competition on the recently-revived Visual Studio Blog. Be in to win one of four Samsung Focus Flash phones - simply build an application and get it published on the Windows Phone Marketplace by the end of January 2012. Every app goes in a random draw to win a phone - so the more applications you publish, the more chances you have to win. The first 50 ready-to-publish apps can also get a free marketplace account. So what are you waiting for? Head over to Geekzone now, check it out.

Thanks for reading,

Can't wait to see what you come up with!

Daryl Ooh
Developer & Platform Evangelism Group
Microsoft New Zealand
Blog | Twitter | Email