I’ve spent the last few weeks watching Windows Phone training videos (via learndevnow.com) and reading all the great Microsoft articles on WP7 development and finally writing my own application. I started with the idea that there was no convenient place to get a date sorted list of new titles available on Netflix Instant Streaming and add to your queue and decided this would be a useful phone application and a fantastic learning experience. I really believe in having hobby projects you can work on in the background to learn new skills and keep things fun and interesting.
I can’t say it was entirely easy or straightforward to learn Silverlight programming, MVVM patterns, OAuth security, WCF data services, RSS feed parsing, or the quirks of working with third party API’s (Netflix and Rotten Tomato) but I think the end result is simple, easy to use, and useful. It’s been submitted and will hopefully be available in the marketplace soon…I’ll update as things progress. During this process I also moved my website from GoDaddy to WinHost, and am much happier at WinHost. The site runs much faster and has more flexible policies for .NET developers all the while charging about the same prices. Sold!
Trev's Tech Tidbits 