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Part 35: Where to go from here

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Congratulations, you made it to the end of another video series. That's no small task—it took a lot of commitment to do that, not to mention time and attention, but hopefully you enjoyed the series and were compiling ideas for building your own apps and gaining confidence—not to mention the knowledge of the API, the techniques for working in the Visual Studio IDE and the Phone Emulator, and so on.

Moving forward, I recommend a few things ...

  1. Stay on top of updates with the Windows Phone blog: http://blogs.windows.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/   ... I just realized I hadn't been there in a few days and there was a great promotion that I'm going to take advantage of when I finish recording this video. It contains the news and updates you'll want to know about straight from Microsoft.

    Also, the great WPCentral site: http://www.wpcentral.com/  ... will keep you abreast of new devices and apps that come out for the platform.

    Also, more pertinent to this series, the Windows Phone Developer blog: http://blogs.windows.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/
  2. To continue your learning, check this out:

    What's new in Windows Phone SDK 8.0
    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj206940(v=vs.105).aspx 

    It gives a great overview of many of the new and advanced features.
  3. If you haven't already, you'll want to get a Phone Developer Center Membership. It will take a while for verification through Symantec, even longer if you're like me and have a tiny business with no history with Dun & Bradstreet or a phone number you want made public.
  4. If you haven't done so already, you'll want to get a Windows Phone 8 device. I highly recommend the Lumia 920 ... I've been using mine for about a month. And I'm just an individual here—I don't speak on behalf of Microsoft when I say that I'm no stranger to the devices of other manufacturers and platforms of other companies—but this phone and the ecosystem around it, including the apps, the Surface, and my new over-powered Windows 8 computer have been a blast. I love pinning tiles and seeing them update with new information. I love the built-in Skydrive support, especially in OneNote and Office for the Windows Phone 8. And the camera is awesome.  And I've never owned a Nokia product before, but I'm really impressed with the phone itself and, moreover, with the dedication to the Windows Phone 8 platform.
  5. So, my last recommendation is the dvlup.com program at Nokia.  http://www.dvlup.com 

    They are incentivizing developers to create apps and register them on the site to win prizes through a currency called DVLUP Reward Points. You can trade them in to get free phones, advertisements, or special placement in the store. They also have challenges ... at this moment, they have 42 challenges running. Complete the challenge and depending on the complexity of the challenge you earn points.

I want to sincerely thank Randy Arnold, who is a Nokia Developer Ambassador in my area, for taking me under his wing and explaining Nokia's strategy, showing me how DVLUP works and why it's a great opportunity for developers as well as how it supports the Windows Phone 8 platform.

I want to thank Larry Lieberman and Desiree Lockwood for their support in getting me the assets I needed for this series.

As always, thanks to Golnaz and Dan Fernandez because they're always awesome.

And most of all, thanks to Clint Rutkas who is "the man". Not only did he do most of the heavy lifting up front by building these great apps, which we had the pleasure of learning from, he also patiently answered over a hundred emails from me asking for help and guidance as I was learning the new features of the Windows Phone 8 as well as his approach and thought process as he set out to build these apps. It was a valuable learning experience for me, and hopefully for you, too.

If you like what we did here and want more like it, make sure you let Channel 9 and Microsoft know. They will get you the resources you want.

And if you liked this series, there's plenty more where this came from. Please take 3 minutes to check out my website:

http://www.LearnVisualStudio.NET

... where I have tons of video training just like this on a wide variety of .NET topics.

Finally, thank you for your kind attention and as we part ways I sincerely wish you the best. Let me know what you've built—I'd love to check it out. If I can ever help, email me at: bob@learnvisualstudio.net

Thank you.

Source Code: http://aka.ms/absbeginnerdevwp8
PDF Version: http://aka.ms/absbeginnerdevwp8pdf


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