Wednesday, May 18, 2011

embeddedSPARK Challenge 2011 Finalist!

EmbeddedSpark2011_logoYesterday evening contest finalists have been announced. I’m very glad to be one of them: KitchenPal entered the final round! Many thanks to the people who helped me to obtain this result: Anna, Alice, Antony.

Congratulations to the other two finalists and… see you soon in Redmond, Seattle.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Working on Phone 7

While waiting for the EmbeddedSpark 2011 Challenge results, in the last two weeks I started working on two Windows Phone 7 applications, just to put in practice what I learned during the Windows Phone 7 workshops I attended last month. One will help you with car fuel management, while the other one is for Italian people who like playing SuperEnalotto lottery. Here some preview screenshots:

The applications will be available on Marketplace for free, soon.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

embeddedSPARK Challenge 2011 – Round 2

IMG_0536Here we are! Finally, after more than three months of hard work, KitchenPal prototype and its Mobile companion apps are ready.

You can see them at the official challenge entry page.

This time I made it. It's been hard but really fun and interesting. Results will come soon…

Windows Phone 7 Workshops

Microsoft Innovation Center Torino - ISMB organized in March and April a series of events dedicated to the new Windows Phone 7 platform. An introductory day to the platform at the beginning of March, two Hands-on-Lab days on March 22-23 and a Windows Phone 7 Proof-of-Concept on April 19-20.  All the events were conducted by two expert speakers from DevLeap, Luca Regnicoli and Katia Egiziano. I had the possibility to attend to all the events: very interesting and technically exceptional.

The last event was the most interesting one and consisted of a two-day instructor-led workshop aimed to create a real-world skeleton for a Windows Phone 7 app, with the help of Luca and Katia. Some companies participated at the event and proposed a couple of ideas/architectures to be implemented.

Katia assisted each of us with practical user interface design and suggested how/when to use Panorama and Pivot controls, how to create compelling, usable and good-looking views with Blend, marked the importance of Metro interface principles (typography, motion, content not chrome, honesty) and showed us sample UIs she made for ThinkAhead Phone 7 applications.

Luca, instead, helped with development issues, suggestions, practical problems and taught us the basics for a real-world, modular, loosely-coupled N-layered architecture: the key concept for successful applications!

Really interesting. If you have a chance to follow such kind of events, don’t miss them!