Being a successful mobile developer - Windows Phone, Marketing & Xamarin

Why Windows Phone? This is not a new question, but a question or topic that I get involved a lot.  Why do you have a Windows Phone? Why do you build apps for that platform? You should be learning Java and Objective C and putting your apps on iOS and Android; that's where the users are. That is the message from the media, family, tech pundits and co-workers. And the numbers say that as well; the latest report shows that Android holds a ridiculous global market share of 80%, Apple with 12% and Windows Phone at 4% respectively.  So why should I build an app for Windows Phone first? Its...

Read more →

Presenting Azure Mobile Services @ DVLUP Day Tampa 11/16/2013

Nokia, through its DVLUP program, is putting on DVLUP day in various cities from Nov. 16 - Dec 6.  I'll be in Tampa on the 16th of November presenting Azure Mobile Services. I'll give an overview of: Getting Started Push Notifications Visual Studio 2013 Tools for Azure General Q & A I will also be around all day if you have any questions about Portable Class Libraries or Advanced features of Azure Mobile Services such as complex data types, authentication, etc. Event Summary Spend a day with two of our top Nokia Developer Ambassadors, Bill Reiss (@billreiss) and Atley Hunter (@atleyhunter)....

Read more →

Azure Mobile Services & Portable Class Libraries - Part 2 Authentication Cont'd

In Part 1 I covered a simple implementation of the Authentication feature and portable class libraries from the Azure Mobile Services SDK.  However, as mentioned in the "Good & Bad So Far" section; there is not a whole lot of code reuse other than the Azure endpoint and secret key.  Let's refactor a bit by adding some interfaces, conditional compile statements and the MVVM Light Event Bus to help the same solution operate cleaner. The "after" code for part one is available here. Building Our Core PortableAzure.Core is our Portable Class...

Read more →

Azure Mobile Services & Portable Class Libraries - Part 1 Authentication

Azure Mobile Services is undoubtedly one of the best platforms to emerge from the Azure group over the last year. If you are a mobile developer and not taking advantage of it; I encourage you to do so.  There are many video and blog posts available to get you started at http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/ . One of the features you may not be aware of is Azure Mobile Services is a Portable Class Library (PCL) available through nuget. If you are not familiar with PCL's see my "Move Your ViewModels" series. There is a caveat however...

Read more →

Cross Mobile Development with Icenium

I have recently spent some time with Telerik's new product offering for cross mobile development called Icenium and I have to say it is quite nice.  Paired with KendoUI Mobile you can't go wrong with a great set of tools for cross mobile platform development if you are an HTML + CSS + JavaScript developer. Icenium Icenium is a cloud based IDE, there is also a Windows WPF Click-Once app, that allows you as a developer to leverage your existing HTML, CSS and JavaScript skills to develop hybrid cross mobile platform applications.  Assistance...

Read more →

Custom Routing with IRouteConstraint for ASP.NET Web API

I will admit that Regex and I do not speak anymore.  In fact, even when we did it was never a really nice conversation and sometimes ended in me cursing and/or leaving the room. If you have had this same experience when creating custom routes in ASP.NET MVC then you know what I'm talking about. IRouteConstraint IRouteConstraint has been around for some time in MVC, but it is also available in Web API too because of course it is based on the same stack for routing. Undoubtedly, the most difficult part of routes is debugging or getting the Regex right. I recently re-lived this experience...

Read more →

South Florida Code Camp

I will be giving two talks this Saturday at South Florida Code Camp, being held at Nova University in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl.  For directions and more information visithttp://www.fladotnet.com/codecamp/. Schedule for other sessions here. My Sessions Introduction to ASP.NET Web API - Why you should be using it. This is an introduction to ASP.NET WebAPI and how easy it is to get started and use it in your application development when building RESTful services. TypeScript Come see how it can make you a more productive JavaScript developer or even a new one. I'll cover...

Read more →

Develop Windows 8 & Windows Phone Apps and Win Cash!

From February 1 through June 2013, publish a new Windows 8 or Windows Phone app and enter my sweepstakes page to win up to $1000 in cash prizes.  WHAT?!?!   Pretty cool right.  Get extra $$ for what you are already doing.  Publish you app in the store the go to http://spboyer.me/appsforcash and submit your app. 3 Winners each month! $1000 $500 $250 Follow me on twitter @spboyer and let me know when you submit it and I'll personally look at the app and give it a review and let all my friends to give it a look as well...

Read more →

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm...

Over the past month I have had the opportunity to give some thought to what I wanted to accomplish this year in my life, career, and health. And during those times of thought I have often gone back to a speech I listened or re-listened to by the late Jimmy Valvano. Jimmy V was a great college basketball coach and was unfortunately diagnosed and later passed away from bone cancer. But shortly before his death he gave a riveting speech at the 1993 ESPN ESPY Awards. There are some great things he said, but one statement lost in many outtakes that stuck with me was "Nothing great was ever...

Read more →

Portable MVVM Light - Move Your View Models : Part 2

In the first part I covered how to get the initial project setup and share the ViewModels and ViewModelLocator between a Windows Phone 8 project and a Windows Store Application.  In this post, I'll add a DataService and a Model class that will be used to get the most recent posts from the Windows Phone Blog and display the results. Adding DataService and Async to Portable Class Library The purpose of the DataService in the context of this project is to retrieve the RSS feed from the Windows Phone Blog (http://blogs.windows.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/rss.aspx)...

Read more →

Portable MVVM Light - Move Your View Models

Portable Class Libraries  Portable Class Libraries were added as a project type in the interest of creating an assembly that you could use across the .NET Framework, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, or Xbox 360 platforms without modifications.  Well, not really that easy.  There is some work to do and as you get into the development of PCLs you'll find out that there is really a sliver of what you'd hope is supported. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/gg597391(v=vs.110).aspx) MVVM Light Where I have found it for me is in Windows...

Read more →