August 27th 2010, Singapore Management University hosts Microsoft’s Overview of Windows Phone 7 session. Within this two-hours session, Microsoft introduces the usage of Visual Studio and Expression Blend to students with working-through demo. Meanwhile, a lot of existing Silverlight and XNA applications are introduced to illustrate new level of functionality Windows Phone 7 could achieve . Most of students saw Windows Phone 7 for the first time and they checked it out after the session.
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With Windows Phone 7 Series, Microsoft takes a fundamentally different approach to phone software. Smart design begins with a new, holistic design system that informs every aspect of the phone, from its visually appealing layout and motion to its function and hardware integration. Microsoft showed in the session that on the Start screen, dynamically updated “live tiles” show users real-time content directly, breaking the mold of static icons that serve as an intermediate step on the way to an application. Create a tile of a friend, and the user gains a readable, up-to-date view of a friend’s latest pictures and posts, just by glancing at Start.
Speaker coded a application from scratch till deploy to windows phone 7 device, within 20 minutes. Throughout the whole process, only three lines of codes are needed to add in. It is an application called call-a-cab, simply providing all the singapore local taxi companies number for people to call in rush hour. 
You can check out detailed implementation and tips below if you are interested in:
1. Building the logic by using Visual Studio step-by-step
2. Style application by using Expression Blend
3. Sample code
From the show case of this application, it is truly easy to use Visual Studio (functions implementation) and Expression Blend (visual design) to achieve your goal. Regardless you are a developer, designers or buiness idea contributor, you will have the right tool to use and contribute your ideas to the team.
There are things you should know as a student:
1. Microsoft DreamSpark Program provides students with Microsoft Professional Development tools for free!
2. Students can build and deploy apps to Windows Phone Marketplace for free through DreamSpark. Yes. Singapore is one of the selected countries.
3. Students can distinguish themselves by mentioning it on their resume!
And more interestingly, students at UC Berkeley save time with Windows Phone 7 development (3 weeks vs 3hrs). Check out the interview here:
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/13693106[/vimeo]
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