I buy a lot of music. I am not a hoarder like some, but I have 100GB’ish of MP3s. I don’t go around and ‘borrow’ friends collections just to up my count. What I do is buy music…just not at brick and mortar stores.

So the Windows Phone Marketplace hit 40K apps. What does it mean to the platform? There are a number of articles out there that talk about the 40,000 apps and compares them to other platforms but I think they are missing a key differentiator.

As many of my readers know, I’ve been neck deep in the Windows Phone. More recently, I’ve been digging into Windows 8 development as well. On my most recent trip, I spent quite a bit of time with the BUILD tablet. Good news is that it’s a pretty good piece of hardware. Even though it’s not ARM, I am still getting a good four hours of battery life. This version of Windows 8 is early but I do think there are some things that Windows 8 should learn from what they’ve done with the Windows Phone. Here is a short list of what I think the team should look at on the phone:

If you're a XAML developer and have proudly stated that you hand-code all your markup, it’s time to learn how to be more productive. I’ve authored a new course for PluralSight. If you have a subscription, you can view it my new “Blend for Developers” course now:

My new article disruptive technologies is now available on Software Quality Connection.  If you’re an organization or developer who are worried about what is coming next, my “Which Platform is Next: All of Them” may be a good read for you.

After my recent post on Periodic Agents, I had a number of people react to specific parts of the API. Let’s discuss each of these separately.

I am happy to announce my new online course on using Silverlight Server Communication is now available on Pluralsight. This course covers the basics of using services from with Silverlight projects. The course covers:

AgiliTrain has partnered with the excellent Wei-Meng Lee (author of several books on iPhone, iPad and Android development) to provide three new courses this winter. He’s coming to Atlanta to teach both iOS and Android development. The courses include:

I spent this week at Build and was interested in both the XAML and HTML/JS part of the Metro story. I am in the middle of converting GooNews into both HTML and XAML Metro apps to test out the new APIs.

I am headed to Build Windows next week and I have a lot of hopes for the conference. I haven’t been to a conference as an attendee alone in quite a long time. I am anxious to see what the v.Next is out of Redmond.

I talk to a lot of people about what people call “design”. There are developers who are great at design but many are worried about not having ‘design’ skills. But I don’t think design skills are nearly as important as usability skills. Shiny buttons, rounded corners, and lovely gradients are great, but if I am guessing on what the app is doing, we’re all doomed.

https://agilitrain.com

I am looking for a great designer/UX person. I am in the middle of a rather large project that I can’t talk about…but I need that great designer-minded person. I am more interested in your sense of usability and flair for great looking apps. The person should be familiar with web and mobile applications and have helped out with consistent look and feel through a full project.