In its infinite wisdom, Apple decided to omit a full size USB port from their new MacBook Airs. This resulted in the gentleman sitting two chairs to my left charging his iPhone off his colleague’s Microsoft Surface Pro 3. Beautiful.
#NerdHumor
Rant: The Burden of Being a Windows Phone User
I’m a fairly big advocate for the Windows Phone platform. But that’s not to say that there aren’t frustrations that come along for the ride. Some incompatibilities are understandable, but others seem to have no reasoning whatsoever. The most frustrating example is the Personal Capital dashboard when I try to log in to their portal. Ugh.
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Learn to Develop for Windows Phone 8.1
I’ve found a couple of great resources for those interested in learning to develop for the Windows Phone 8.1 platform. My goal was to actually TRY these sites and then report on my impressions, but this has proven to be a bit too ambitious for my schedule. See more information about these sites after the break.
Windows Phone 8.1: Leaps Forward
Thanks to their “Developer Preview” program, Microsoft is allowing a wide array of users access to its latest version of the Windows Phone OS: Version 8.1. This release is greatly anticipated by the Windows Phone community and is widely regarded as an important step in bringing Windows Phone into alignment with what competitors are offering. With a milestone as great as this one, I though that it would be a good time to dust off my Windows Phone 8 Gripe List and see how Microsoft has done in addressing my own concerns.
Meet my new app: SAP SD Reference Guide for WP8
Announcing one of the latest additions to the Windows Phone Store: the SAP SD Reference Guide. This is an app that I made using the App Studio (detailed on my blog here). As of this afternoon, my app officially gained certification and is now available in the Windows Phone Store. For more information, please visit my Apps page.
Windows Phone 8: Microsoft App Studio Impressions
In an effort to bolster its volume of Windows Phone 8 apps, Microsoft has introduced a web-based front end to help prospective app developers fasttrack their application development. The Windows Phone App Studio offers beginners a selection of templates to hit the ground running. Slightly more experienced users can start from a (nearly) blank slate. Point-and-click setup allows you to link your application with several pre-defined data sources like HTML5, static content, streaming web content, RSS feeds, and Bing content. Application design is as easy as selecting a color pallet and background images from either a selection of delivered options or your own images from your local system or SkyDrive. In the rest of this article, I’ll introduce some of the features and provide some of my impressions.
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Plex Media Server, Thecus N4200, and Windows Phone 8
I never thought I would be called “old fashioned” — at least, not THIS soon — but that’s pretty much what happened. In a time when a small monthly fee can get you access to stream countless audio files with Spotify and the like, I suppose it could seem a bit old fashioned to have an extensive MP3 library sitting in your living room. My old fashioned-ness seems especially egregious considering that my phone, a Nokia 920, is limited to just 32 gigs of data. I can only enjoy a small fraction of that library when I am on the go. But the Plex Media Server is putting an end to all that by creating my own personal media cloud.
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From iphone to Windows Phone 8: The App Hit List (Part 2)
It’s been about three months since I released my original App Hit List — a cursory look at whether the apps I had become accustomed to on the iPhone exist (or have replacements) in the Windows Phone 8 ecosystem. At the time, I was a bit surprised to find that many of the apps that I found to be critical had identical or good replacements. After three months, I want to revisit the list to see how things have changed.
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How Apple Can Win The Enterprise
‘The early bird gets the worm,” according to the old proverb. Fortunately for Apple, this applies well to the current offering of SAP mobility options. As an SAP consultant, I have been witness to (and facilitated) a number of SAP mobility demos — ALL of which have featured Apple iOS devices. As the company which first made tablets attractive to the enterprise, this honor is well deserved. But seeing this trend got me to thinking… With the past proliferation of Microsoft as the enterprise toolset of choice, how did this come to be?
Windows Phone 8: Areas for Improvement
As you may know, I have already taken the plunge into the world of Windows Phone 8 with a recent purchase of a new Nokia Lumia 920. After a few solid weeks of use, I have made a small list of gripes areas for improvement regarding the Windows Phone 8 OS (and none of them are related to app availability).
