VSERV slides from last week

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Save 60% on *all* ebooks from Microsoft Press

 

O’Reilly currently have a special offer on ebooks from Microsoft press.

It expires on Wednesday though so get your 60% off quick.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Upcoming events

In what may strike some of you as a shocking display of organisation and efficiency, we have dates and details of our events for the next few months already organised. Here’s what you can expect.

2014

London March 26th – What Windows Phone developers should know about the changes from Telerik?

London April 2nd – BUILD Keynote streaming

Cardiff April 23rd – Talk Build

London April 30th – RE/BUILD (A recap of the important announcements from BUILD)

London May 28th – Details TBA

London June 25th -Details TBA

You may also want to note that the above London meetings will be hosted by Microsoft at their Cardinal Place offices.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Links from yesterdays meeting

Things you may have missed since the last meeting:

Slides

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Developer Economics State of the Nation report

Our friends at VisionMobile have just published the latest Developer Economics report – the de-facto research in app development. State of the Developer Nation, the 6th Developer Economics report, features in-depth analysis and insights into the key issues in the app economy, including platform prioritisation, going beyond tablets, trending revenue models, and making the right choices in developer tools. The report is based on the largest developer survey, with over 7,000 respondents. You can download the full report for free at www.visionmobile.com/DE1Q14WPUG

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Announcing WPDevWeekly – for all your #WPDev news

As you’re probably aware, we regularly tweet the latest Windows Phone development related news, information and blog posts on our @wpug twitter account. We do this to help share details and help everyone who is interested to be aware of all that’s going on and to enable people be suitably informed to create the best apps they can.

Monitoring all posts on an account can be hard (especially if you don’t want to set up mobile notifications) so to help make the links we share on Twitter more accessible we have a searchable archive of all our past tweets at http://tweets.wpug.net/.

We recognise that this isn’t how everyone wants to receive their news though.

This year we’re adding a new way to help people keep track of all that’s going on in the world of #WPDev.

Introducing WPDev Weekly. A weekly summary email of all the #WPDev news from the last week.

If twitter isn’t your thing or you just want to make sure you don’t miss anything interesting just head on over to the website and subscribe.
Want to see the kind of thing you’ll be getting? Take a look at the archive to see what’s been sent already.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

NDC London #WPDev Quiz Answers

Yesterday we shared the questions from the quiz we ran at NDC London.
Go and have a look at the questions now if you want to try them yourself. (Don’t scroll down yet and spoil it by seeing the answers.)

Here, as promised are the answers, and the winners.

First, our winners.

Liam won the first prize of a £50 Windows Store gift card.
liam

Arpad (& friend – sorry I didn’t get your name) were our runners up and each won gift cards worth £15.
arpad

Answers:

1. How many updates to Windows Phone 8 have there been?

A: 3 – MSDN Ref

2. How many accent colors are included as standard on Windows Phone 8?

A: 20 – MSDN Ref

3. How many different emulator images are currently available?

A: 12 –
emulators

4. What is the recommended control to use instead of ListBox?

A: LongListSelector – MSDN Ref

5. In which namespace are the Launchers and Choosers?

A: Microsoft.Phone.Tasks – MSDN Ref

6. What is the name of Nokia’s developer rewards program?

A: DVLUP – http://www.dvlup.com/

7. What is the internal scale factor used by the OS for 1080p devices?

A: 2.25 – MSDN Ref

8. “Metallic Elect Type” is an anagram of which Windows Phone 8 item?

A: CycleTileTemplate – MSDN Ref

 

How did you do? – Let us know in the comments.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

NDC London #WPDev Quiz Questions

Today at NDC London, as part of the community area, we ran a Windows Phone related quiz.

To allow everyone (you) to take part, virtually, and just for fun (sorry no prizes) here are the questions:

  1. How many updates to Windows Phone 8 have there been?
  2. How many accent colors are included as standard on Windows Phone 8?
  3. How many different emulator images are currently available?
  4. What is the recommended control to use instead of ListBox?
  5. In which namespace are the Launchers and Choosers?
  6. What is the name of Nokia’s developer rewards program?
  7. What is the internal scale factor used by the OS for 1080p devices?
  8. “Metallic Elect Type” is an anagram of which Windows Phone 8 item?

The answers will be posted shortly so you can check your answers.
Or, if you’re being brave, post your answers in the comments ;)

 

Wonder how you did? Check the answers.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

WPUG at #NDCLondon

This coming week (2-6 Dec) sees NDC come to London. Over the week there are a wide range of sessions and tickets are still available.

We will be there on all the session days and you’ll find us in the community area. Come by and talk all things Windows Phone. :)

In the community area you’ll find a range of groups covering a breadth of subjects and interests. They’ll be organising and hosting a number of events between the main sessions, including quizzes and short talks.

At 10AM on Thursday we’ll be hosting a Windows Phone quiz.

First prize is a Windows Store gift card worth £50 which can be used to purchase apps, games and more for both Windows Phone and Windows 8. We’ll have smaller, runners up prizes too.

Additionally, Matt is offering to provide consultation to help improve your apps. Get in touch with him in advance if this interests you.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Leave NDC London with a better app

WPUG will be at NDC London helping support the community area.

At the very core of the reason for the existence of WPUG is the desire to help more people produce better apps and so we wanted to do something appropriate as part of this “festival for developers”.

To this end we’re offering a number of app consultations/reviews to attendees.

These will be, up to, one hour sessions to review existing apps and provide feedback and suggest possible enhancements.

If you’re attending, have an app in the store and would like to spend some time finding practical ways to improve your app then this is an opportunity you won’t want to miss.

Sessions will be conducted with Matt Lacey (WPUG organiser) who has over 3 and a half years of experience working with Windows Phone as both a designer and developer.
Not sure what he can do for you? Here are some comments from others who have had his input on their apps.

“In the early stages of developing and building Foundbite, Matt was a great help. While testing the app he supplied me with a large amount of detailed feedback in many areas, such as design, usability and development. Tapping his extensive knowledge of Windows Phone was invaluable.”

– James Mundy, Foundbite

“Matt’s expertise on the Windows Phone platform has provided us at Pepper with some very valuable feedback.  Whether the feedback is small items such as an incorrect label, a slight misalignment, or even suggestions on how other apps are handling similar scenarios.  Matt’s feedback and reviews of Pepper have been a much needed part of our development process.”

– David Hamilton, Pepper

“The advice I received was thorough and questioned a few decisions I had made without a second thought as to how they affected my User Experience. Matt critiques a design with the benefit of experience built on multiple high profile apps across several years. His expertise and keen attention to even the smallest detail helped me in not only improving the app in question but in training myself to identify important considerations for future work.”

– Jay Bennett, WPCentral

You can also find some, anonymized, examples of specific feedback he’s previously provided on his blog.

Spaces are limited and are available to those who respond first. Please get in touch if you are interested.

What do we want from you in return?

We’d like you to share your experience of the consultation. Initially that can be a quote summarizing your thoughts on the experience. If you end up with an app you’d like to show off to a wider audience we’d love to hear more about your app at a future meeting too.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment