Developer

Microsoft has just published a Dev Center app for Windows Phone which helps developers monitor their apps in the Windows Phone Dev Center. A plethora of information is available, including downloads, reviews, details, and crashes. The information is provided in an extremely easy to read and simple format, with important information brought out front and foremost with highlights to mark them. Graphs are available just like in the web version of the Dev Center which help developers get lots of information at a glance. The app is still considered to be in preview stage but looks pretty complete. Check it out here. ...

The Zombies Strike Again!!! Take part in We Live to Code 2013, that has returned stronger and better with our partner, Samsung! What’s best is that anyone can sign up, whether you are a student, developer or a startup! So, develop a great app and be part of the app revolution! All developers can register individually or as a team, preferably in teams of three or less. If you’re a lone ranger, fret not. On the first day of the hackathon, you can mingle with other participants and identify peeps you want together for the next month. Interested to be part of this awesome experience, yet you feel that lack the skills. Join us for pre-hackathon training on the evenings of 20th and 27th March. These trainings sessions are helmed by in-house Microsoft technical experts and target to equip participants with the relevant training to develop their apps. But, there’s a slight twist. We live to code returns with double pitching session, the first pitch will be held on the last day of the Hackathon (7th April 2013) and the second pitch will be on 5th May 2013. The former will constitute 30% of the team’s score and the latter will constitute 70%. In the one month period, you can then test and refine your apps from good to great. To be part of the this awesome experience, applicants can sign up via http://welivetocode.eventbrite.com/. Successful applicants will then be contacted via email for their personal particulars and their app ideas.

App Reviews are essential to every developer to see how their app is faring in the Store. It tells developers what issues users face when using the app, suggestions on what to implement next, and even compliments on what they’re doing right. If you have created an app for Windows 8, you would have noticed that the current Windows 8 Developer Dashboard doesn’t report ratings in a very efficient manner, grouping it by country and requiring developers to scroll through an entire list to see the ratings for each country. They’ve noted that they are considering consolidating all the reviews so that you can see every country at once, but in the meantime here’s how to see all your app’s ratings. There’s a site called Windows 8 Review that has a service which scans through the Windows 8 Store and reports on app popularity and ratings. The ratings are pulled from every country and not just one, letting you see what users think about your app in a neat list. The site even includes an RSS Feed for your app reviews, so you can check on them easily if you’re using a feed reader such as Feedburner. ...

Sick and tired of testing your web apps on multiple versions of Internet Explorer? Modern.IE is here to save the day! Modern.IE is a new resource for web developers that offers tools to help optimize their sites for modern browsers like IE10. A new code detection wizard to detect common coding issues Developers start by entering a webpage URL that they want to test: In a few seconds, modern.IE reports the webpage results in the below three categories, and includes recommendations on how to update the site: ...

 The Spiffy team is proud to partner Founder Institute to offer 3 scholarships to Windows Developers in their upcoming April Semester 2013! Developers can earn yourself a scholarship through BizSpark Launch Academy. BizSpark Launch Academy is a competition for startups and individual developers based in Singapore who are building applications for the Windows Store, Windows Phone 8 or on Windows Azure. You will stand the chance to receive expert training and feedback to launch startup companies with Founder Institute beginning in April 2013. And… that’s not all! You can also participate in Windows Startup Challenge with the app ideas that you pitch through BizSpark Launch Academy. This could lead you to launch your Windows Store app at DEMO Mobile, a global launchpad for the most innovative mobile startups held in April 2013 in San Francisco, California. So, if you have the ability to prototype a Windows Store app, quickly iterate to design, and bring your app to life, send in an image of the prototype to win8sg@microsoft.com with a quick overview of the app and personal particulars by 8th Feb 2013. More details of how to enter can be found at http://academy.weshipcode.com. You can also tweet about your app building process or prototypes with #app4theWIN. About Founder Institute The Founder Institute is an early-stage startup accelerator and global launch network that helps entrepreneurs create meaningful and enduring technology companies. Through a part-time four month program, existing and prospective founders can launch their dream company with expert training, feedback, and support from experienced startup CEOs - while not being required to quit their day job. Our unique Graduate Liquidity Pool also enables graduates and mentors to share in the equity upside of each class, creating local, teamwork-based ecosystems where great new businesses can flourish. In just over three years of operation, the Founder Institute has helped launch over 650 companies across 37 cities and five continents - making us the world’s largest startup accelerator. Our goal is to “Globalize Silicon Valley” by launching 1,000 meaningful and enduring technology companies per year in over 50 cities worldwide. The Founder Institute was founded in 2009 by serial entrepreneur Adeo Ressi, and is operated out of a small office in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Happy New Year everyone! I’m quite sure a lot of you managed to get your hands on the brand new flagship Windows Phones by Nokia and HTC. If you didn’t because they were sold out, don’t worry! More stock will come soon. To kick start your new journey with Windows Phone 8 and perhaps to inspire you to build new ones, here are some of our top picks! Top featured App Make free Skype to Skype video and voice calls as well as send instant messages to friends and family around the world with this preview of Skype for Windows Phone 8. SKYPE for Windows Phone 8 Preview. ...

We know how important it is to connect like-minded people with each other, so we’ve created 2 new developer communities. Within these Facebook groups you’ll find the latest news, events, resources and a whole bunch of other cool stuff! It’s a pretty awesome place to meet new people! If this sounds like something you want to be involved in, go ahead and join us! Windows 8 Singapore Developer Community Windows Phone Singapore Developer Community See you on there! P.s. MSDN Singapore ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-sg/aa497440.aspx) is still alive, check it out here if you aren’t already familiar with the awesome resources on there!

So you’ve developed an Android, iOS or Web App and are thinking about porting it over to Windows 8. Perhaps there’s too many resources out there that’s gotten you confused. Well, here’s a good resource list to take a look before you go ahead and plunge into code. [caption id=“attachment_12983” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“The design differences between an iPad app vs a Windows 8 app”][/caption] Porting Android App to Windows Store App http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/10/15/port-android-application-to-windows-store-ui.aspx Porting Apple iOS App to Windows Store App Part 1: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/11/14/porting-ios-apps-to-windows-8-1-introducing-windows-8-platform-to-ios-app-developers.aspx Part 2: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/11/16/porting-ios-apps-to-windows-8-2-user-interface.aspx Part 3: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/11/20/porting-ios-apps-to-windows-8-3-developer-and-designer-tools.aspx Part 4: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/11/20/porting-ios-apps-to-windows-8-4-application-lifecycle-differences.aspx Part 5: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/11/22/porting-ios-apps-to-windows-8-5-storing-data-and-preferences.aspx Porting Desktop App to Windows Store App http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/12/20/porting-desktop-apps-to-windows-store-apps.aspx Using HTML5/Javascript in Windows Store apps: Data access and storage mechanism Part 1: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/12/19/using-html5-javascript-in-windows-store-apps-data-access-and-storage-mechanism-i.aspx Part 2: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/12/19/using-html5-javascript-in-windows-store-apps-data-access-and-storage-mechanism-ii.aspx Remember, porting an app to a different platform is meaningless if you don’t customize for it! Read our interview with local game studio Tyler Projects to find out how they made their games special to the Windows Store. ...

Watch all videos from Build 2012 here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012 Build is Microsoft’s annual developer conference. This year’s Build on October 30 - 2 November in Redmond was especially memorable because of the key consumer product launches such as Windows 8, Surface, Windows Phone 8 and Office that represent a huge developer opportunity. Tickets were sold out within the first hour of sales, which is not surprise considering the great content and the fact that attendees were treated to a free Surface RT and 100GB of Skydrive storage! We know it’s pretty late, but we’ve spent some time sieving through the many videos and here are some of the key talks that stood out for us! ...

Join the Big Nerd Ranch and Microsoft for this free, two-day training designed to jumpstart your Windows Store app development. You will learn the ins-and-outs of the Windows platform from iOS developers who are now building Windows apps. Sessions will follow a low-key, interactive format where iOS terms and concepts will be mapped to Windows alternates. You will also get hands-on time to apply what you’ve learned. Event Date Time zone: (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada) Thursday Dec 13, 2012 - 9 to 5 PM Friday Dec 14, 2011 - 9 to 5 PM Event Location Live Stream: here You can register for the live stream here, then just point your browser to Channel 9 or to our registration site on the day of the event. You can also tune in at the Verge to watch the live stream. ...