My Lucky Morning.

I really haven't spoken of this yet, but yesterday (Oct 29th, 2012) I was invited to attend the launch event for Windows Phone 8 here in San Francisco as a "fan" (as opposed to press). From 8:15am to 9:45am, I got to mingle (as much as an introvert can) with many other "fans" (some, I discovered weren't so much fans but people interested to see what Microsoft had to say in person). There were lots of Microsoft employees who worked directly on the platform there to mingle and get feedback from us.

During this time, I had drinks, got a t-shirt and did some talking, including meeting and showing my app to the head of the entire Windows Phone division, Terry M. (can't remember how to spell his last name). Steve Ballmer addressed us in a great and jovial fashion. The alcohol was tasty and so were the mini pancakes.

We were then ushered into the events room and took our seats before the press showed up. We all sat behind the press, but it was still easy to see the stage. Joe Belfiore gave the presentation and it was exciting in person.

Jessica Alba came on stage for a bit to give it a bit of celebrity love. She seemed thoroughly happy to be there, though shy. It certainly gave the whole presentation a great extra love for the product.

Joe B.'s kids came on stage briefly to show the wonderful Kids Corner feature. That is the ability to bypass the locked screen to reach a special area that can have designated apps, games and features accessible to what you want your kids to reach. And in an extra fashion, security-wise, don't include email and other stuff and it can't be accessed either. I will be using this a lot.

Steve Ballmer came on last to give a good delivery (much, much more canned than the very personal and funny speech he gave to the fans before the presentation). Although his presence wasn't diminished in the least.

And then we got our surprise. At the end, after Steve, Joe and Jessica gathered on stage to do a quick end photo-op together, Steve says, "Oh, and I forgot to mention. Everyone here gets one of these phones." The sliding video columns slide away, the back wall pulls up and behind it is revealed to be a full back lounge area with all of the Microsoft employees hanging out and girls with trays full of HTC Windows Phone 8X's walking onto stage.

Needless to say, the fan part of the audience erupted in major applause and yelling.

I spent the next half-hour breaking open my new deep blue 8X, getting it running on a temporary sim card (it's a micro sim, compared to my full size one in the Focus), and then walking around, hitting NFC markers for apps that they had placed on tables all over the venue.

I talked to the woman who emailed me the invite. She helped me get some things set up. I held a Nokia 822 briefly. I seriously considered grabbing a drink and some of the delicious lunch they had put out for us. It included Ahi Tuna sandwiches and a rainbow of cookies and cakes arrayed on a table. I don't know what else there was to eat.

Unfortunately, I had to get back to my children who were being watched by a hotel sitter. So I made my way back through a not-so-great part of San Francisco (which reminded me how much it's suffering from this economy downturn) and relieved the sitter of her duties. Fortunately for my children, she was lovely and they took to her wonderfully.

Regarding the phone, I won't lie. I was hoping to get a Nokia 920. The low-light images and exclusive apps are something to desire. Considering how much I spent on the sitter, I won't be getting one for some time (although I still have a discount upgrade waiting). That said, this phone is, pardon my language, fucking awesome.

The pictures I took have been fantastic. Never perfect, that would be a miracle of any phone, but significantly better than anything I've used EVER. Below is an image of San Francisco City Hall.

Especially compared to my old Samsung Focus, this thing is a polished piece of work. It feels better. It looks better. It performs better. Windows Phone 8 OS is a vast improvement over 7.5. The added features of Kids Corner (already used) is phenomenal. The multiple sized tiles are going to be a good headache trying to figure out how I want it to look. And the OS isn't technically the final product either, since it hasn't been officially released yet.

All in all, the event was a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me. I will probably not ever be able to attend such a spectacle ever again and consider myself exceptionally lucky for doing so. I don't say this thinking it was necessarily better than attending an iOS launch event or anything. But I can say that I can imagine what it would feel like to be an iOS fan attending one of those.

Don't get me wrong. It is just a phone. But in this day and age, it can also be an extension of who you are. It can be an extension of accessing those things that are going on around you and staying connected to it all. And frankly, with experience with iPhone and extremely little experience with Android, I think Microsoft's Windows Phone fulfills that want.

To Tweet or not to Tweet

On October 29th, 2012, in sunny San Francisco, Microsoft will be holding an event for the latest Windows Phone version, Windows Phone 8

I was lucky enough to win a ticket from a contest that Ben Rudolph (of Smoked By Windows Phone fame) and other Microsofties held to allow some Windows Phone fans a seat at the event. I am really, truly excited about this.

So here is my question, provided I get told not to divulge anything I see at the event, would my twitter followers like to see me live tweet from the event? And not just speaking of items that will be replicated across the techno-journalism sphere, but from a fans perspective? Maybe include a hashtag like #wp8fan

I love Windows Phone 7. I think the whole new UI interface (Modern? Microsoft Design Style? or the old Metro?) is a bold risk that I happen to enjoy over others. It's certainly not without its faults, but the few of those are almost entirely in the app ecosystem which is slowly but surely being whittled away as more appear. So what they are doing with Windows Phone 8 is taking that a step further and going all out on this design choice that could be a part of the make-or-break future of Microsoft.

Let me know if people will enjoy this live tweet from a fans perspective. Thanks!

Soooooo...what is wrong with My Animal Age?

I was thinking about the performance of my only app on Windows Phone 7 and why it doesn't seem to have gained any traction whatsoever. It is sitting just under 180 downloads (including trials) with 15 users actually purchasing it.

Couple that with some analytics that I put in, I see some users have used the Dog and Mouse over 50+ times on the same device. The majority are down around 1-2, and that is fine. But there are a large amount that have 10-20+ uses of the trial animals. And only 15 purchases?

What is wrong with it?

I can only speculate until the end of time. On top of a couple of 5 star reviews, it's received one 3 star review that simply said, "Too few" and another I just found from Brazil, translated from...Portugeuse(?) that...well, translated says "A drug is not worth" but I'm thinking that means it's not worth the $.99.

WHY?

I get "Too few" and it's something I would rectify if I knew it was worth the time and effort. But without any additional reviews or more in depth feedback, I'm not sure if its simply worth it.

If you've used my app and enjoyed it or hated it, why not review it with maybe more that 3-5 words? How about hitting the email link in the app and sending me something more substantial? I would love to make this fun for kids and maybe even adults...but I need to know HOW it can be better.

Images of the app are in the link here. Is it not pretty enough? Does it not jump and dance around like the others? How about the top animal noises app that has about 3X as many animals but does nothing else?

I get the feeling I'll never know. But if you do, I would appreciate being told!

MVC3, ActionLinks and Virtual Directories

In my day job, my team has been slowly transitioning to MVC3 from Webforms. With some of the normal transitions of learning the nuances of MVC3 (strict mapping of parameter variable names on posts and gets for one) there have been others that I have come to learn even over a year later after starting.
In particular, I am going to point out extensionless URL's and virtual directories in IIS 5.1. And yes, I said IIS 5.1. Unfortunately our servers are running 2003.
Something that had been bothing me for some time was the problem that when you had a site in a virtual directory, none of the links worked with a simple @HTML.ActionLink(...) call. In general, within a View, if you wanted a simple url link you could do "@Html.ActionLink("LinkName","ControllerName","ActionName") and it would automatically map the URL relatively. The above would turn into "/ControllerName/ActionName".

If the site was hosted in a virtual directory (call it "testSite"), then the above ActionLink would resolve to "/testSite/ControllerName/ActionName".

But after publishing to it, even after adding the Extensionless effect, it would always fail on me. And I always had to resort to other means.

Until today.

Note the Checkbox on the bottom left "Check if file exists". Admittedly I don't know why, but having that checked will create 404 Not Found errors on ActionLinks within virtual directories. Unchecked that and BAM! They are found now!

Changing focus

My current app in progress was moving along just fine for Windows Phone, but I came to a realization. Windows 8 is right around the corner. I need to focus on the Windows 8 version!

So consider this my official change. Windows 8 app development in full swing!

Barely a conversion to be had.

Been watching my downloads on My Animal Age and Free and have noticed that I have not had a single person pay for My Animal Age since the 16th of July. And before that? 19th of June.

So one has to wonder a few things. Is it the app? Is it the marketplace and lack of desire to pay for apps? Is it just not that kind of app that receives tons of attention? What could it be?

Paying attention to the twitter stream, I see plenty of people talking of thousands of downloads, a good conversion rate and really decent money being made. Nothing spectacular, but the returns they receive would have paid for my tools and time investment.

I think it's time I take a look at the trial and see if something is wrong but nobody wants to tell me. And if you happen to be one of those that have tried my app's trial and would like to let me in on a secret I don't know, drop a comment. :)

Integrating with Facebook.

Well, I'm happy with my first app (and it's free version) and now it's time to officially move on.

Actually, I already did, I just haven't said it yet. :)

So, no reveal yet but I am working pretty heavily on it's Facebook integration. In particular, getting the users name and stuff and to access their photos for the apps primary usage.

I am using the not-so-well-documented Facebook C# SDK and so far, so good. The really hard part right now is deserializing teh JSON. This is all new to me, so I'm having fun here.