Vegas Baby Yeah!

So I just spoke with Catherine at Microsoft (organiser of Devsta) and it’s kind of official so we can talk about it – Our application has managed to take out overall prize and best mobile device prize!

It’s been such a whirlwind ride and just goes to show that you really can build some interesting applications inside of a week!

I also need to thank a few people without whom this wouldn’t have been possible.  First of all is Michael Minutillo my partner in crime and development – the man really is an indiscriminate information sponge and working with him keeps me at the top of my game!  If you don’t read his blog I suggest you do, he will be an MVP in the near future once he’s “discovered” by the community a bit more.  I should also thank Michael’s wife Barbie as he has 3 young kids at home and she had to pick up his share of the domestic duties whilst we were working on this app.

I also need to thank my boss (Wayne Murphy) from Fujitsu Web Solutions – he supported Michael and I throughout the competition and ensured that when we were too tired to do “real work” someone else would pick up our client commitments!  (This thanks is about all you’re getting though Murph, the TV is mine!)

The Yeah Pants group (My friends) -  I know I missed a few social events (a bucks night), a few card games and one or two other things but it was worth it and remember what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!   Thanks for the encouragement guys!

Of course I need to thank the other entrants – Some of the applications were truly amazing for 8 days duration and I wish you the best of luck in Devsta next year!

Catherine and the team at Microsoft and the Judges – I work with Microsoft products every day, in fact Microsoft are responsible for me being gainfully employed otherwise I’d probably be flipping burgers at McDonalds so I was already a big fan of their products but now even more so!  I’m a bit of an organiser of events myself and I know these things are usually a very thankless job that require a lot of effort so a big THANK YOU to everyone who organised the competition (especially the prizes!) and to the judges for taking time out of their schedules to rate the applications.

Here’s a photo of the judges as they were calling us to let us know we’d won

From Left to Right

Unknown
Catherine Grima (I assume)
Unknown
Unknown
Andrew Coates (Love that guy!)
Unknown

Edit: I feel bad – I should mention Michael Kordahi who is taking the photo!

I only wish we had a photo of our side of the conversation – I got a call from Andrew Coates (he has a very distinctive voice so I knew it wasn’t my boss Wayne playing a prank on me!) so I grabbed Michael and we went in to one of the conference rooms at work.  Andrew announced that we managed to take the overall prize to which Michael and I replied with a stunned mullet look, I’m fairly sure it didn’t translate that well over the phone!

I asked Andrew to repeat what he’d just said to which he replied you’ve won the best mobile prize category and the overall prize it was about that point that Michael and I started screaming, cheering and high fiving to the judges laughter over the phone!

Anyway I have to run, got to get ready for a video interview with Andrew Parsons about our application!

If anyone knows any of the unknowns in the photo please let me know!

Devsta: The Debrief

Well It’s been almost 24 hours since the competition closed and I’m still a little tightly wound / sleep deprived but I’m still excited about our submission. 

Unfortunately it would seem as though no one else is excited by it…well no one on the Internet but people I tell in person seem to think it’s a good idea which makes me wonder have we done a poor job of explaining it or do I just do a good job of selling it.  People seem to be more excited about our Hoff Sidebar Gadget then our main app…damn you Hoff.  There’s a third possibility that people are just too kind but I don’t think it’s that – I was just reading an article that did a pretty good job of trashing the contest and the developers who entered.

The article (http://www.itwire.com/content/view/21016/53/ with a lot of corrections published in a second article here http://www.itwire.com/content/view/21044/53/) seem to think Console Connect is the winning entry.

Personally I thought the article was very negative and well, factually incorrect for the most part (at least until the second article) but quite a few other places (such as Slashdot) have republished the story citing ITWire as it’s source.  It was fairly obvious from the outset that the website hadn’t been hacked and someone had just entered spurious data in to the form but I guess it’s the headline that counts.

Also, I could just be a little bitter that we didn’t even get a mention   I think this comes down to the “Generation Y” thing, I want answers today, right here, right now mentality.  I want some kind of vindication that I didn’t waste 9 days (4 of which were weekends!) working on an application for nothing!

I just want to say thanks to the other developers who entered – it’s not easy working “for free” for a week in the hope of winning something.  I’m sure they all had to make social/work sacrafices to be able to compete and then after that to have someone trash your work (or ignore it) is very frustrating.

For people who want to know more about our app I suggest reading Michael’s blog, he’s no where near as bitter/jaded as I am and has posted a nice little write up

Devsta – GPS Tag Game Submitted!

So its 4:20 AM and I’ve finally just hit the submit button on the Devsta website, thank god!

Still talking to Mike on Skype, we’ve been fixing bugs like crazy all night and morning and we both have morning meetings today so no sleep in.

Anyway will post more of a debrief later but for now read up about our entry at http://devsta.microsoft.com.au/submissionDetails.aspx?submissionId=30

Good Night (or Morning)

PS: Vegas Baby Yeah!

Fire ze missles!

But I am le tired!

Sorry, I just had to do that…Mike and I have been spurring each other on by placing random pieces of the Internet like Magical Trevor and End of Ze World.

Things are really starting to come together now – Michael and I are working on bridging what he’s written and what I’ve written (he did services I did UI) I just hope we don’t end up looking like this;

Anyway I’m having some trouble testing at the moment as it seems as though the Virtual Earth API (at least in Staging) is experiencing some kind of technical difficulties

Hopefully it’s back soon, it’s eating in to my development time!

Cheers,
J

108 hours down, 100 to go

So we’ve chewed through 108 hours of the allotted time and well I don’t think we have a lot to show right now but a half a dozen concept projects that individually prove each piece of our project will work, it’s the threading them all together and applying the “business” logic which is proving to be time consuming.

Michael organised to come over to my place after work on Thursday night so we can bounce a bunch of ideas of each other and then spend the night, I then organised for the both of us to take Friday off work so that we could focus on this a little more without those pesky work distractions

I think by the end of the day (well COB) we should have the better part of the application complete, or at least I hope that’s the case!

I don’t want to mention too much of what I’ve done as I think it will kind f give our app away, even though Michael has listed the three major technologies I’m using on his blog (damn you Mike) so no real technology updates.

What I learnt yesterday was that LINQ is supported on mobile devices, I’ll never cease to be amazed at the .Net framework, good job CF team!  It’s funny coming in to this I thought we were going to have to write a lot of stuff ourselves – I figured the Compact Framework was just going to be a really crippled / cut  down version of the regular framework and don’t get me wrong – there are some things missing (GDI+ for one!) but 90% of the functionality I’ve needed has been there and I thought it was going to be a lot closer to say 50%, I’m pleasantly surprised.

Anyway got to run, got to get some code done whilst Michael is still asleep

Devsta: The Start

Well I’ve had a blog for a little while but it’s a mix of “my life” and Tech related stuff so I’ve decided to finally split them up and just have two blogs.

So I’m working on an application for Devsta at the moment which I can’t say a whole lot about, at least not for another 170 hours

At any rate I’m pretty excited by what we’re doing, it’s something a little different and fun – not the type of app I’d get to write normally.

So why am I here?  Well I guess I just want to chronicle this journey – I think it’s going to be a few very interesting (and sleep deprived) days ahead.  Also my colleague/friend/partner on this project, Michael wrote this post and well I feel very humbled and somewhat obligated 

Further to Michael’s post I’m a long time user of Skype (I use it a fair bit especially SkypeOut as I have family in the UK and my old man works overseas a fair bit) and I’m a huge fan.  Sometime the quality is less then awesome but I knew it’d be okay between us as we’re both on broadband and no SkypeOut required.

OneNote is a tool I’ve been trying to get in to for a while and like Michael said it was pretty awesome as we could talk find a couple of problems/theories and we’d each research it whilst “on the phone” and just update the plan as we found new information / links.

Also the highlighters are pretty fun, you’ll understand what I mean if you try it…Turns out my ability to colour in between the lines hasn’t really improved since I was about four or five!

Currently I’m having problems with the Windows Mobile emulator, it doesn’t seem to be able to talk to the host machine when I use the Ethernet Network Card, when I hit up the wireless it’s all good.

It’s very strange because the host machine (Vista) can ping the Windows Mobile IP but the Mobile can’t ping the host or anything else.  It’s also odd because the Mobile is getting an IP address from the DHCP server here which is actually another machine completely.

I’ve spent an hour or two looking in to, think if I can’t get it fixed in the next 10 minutes or so I’ll move on to another part of the app and just do those pieces at home where things work.

Anyway got to get back too it, only 170 hours and 40 minutes left