Many of you waste the time between work and sleep by watching the idiot box. It’s known as that due to the nature of it’s passive, 1-way distribution. While you may learn some things from TV, its an incredibly inefficient method to do so. Why not take a night out to do something productive with your time and check out a new course on building great mobile apps.
Hardcore Developer and IT training site Pluralsight have just released one of their better offerings. As a Windows Phone developer, I was particularly keen to check this one out. Building Windows Phone Apps that Stand Out is a course that takes a entry level app and makes it awesome by leveraging everything the platform has to offer. Live tiles, lock screens, toast notifications, Skydrive integration, In app purchasing, location services and much more. One of the forgotten features that almost no Windows Phone apps take advantage of is the Wallet and we rarely see NFC, both of these are also covered in the course.
Building an app is one thing, but building an app that will impact people’s lives and have them handing over their credit card is another. This course is just over 3 hours long and Klint packs a lot into that time. Naturally you’ll want to re-watch the videos to make sure you’re implementing everything correctly and that the knowledge is actually comprehended and not just repeated.
As with all Pluralsight courses the base subscription level gets you access to the content, while the higher tiers will get you the exercise files. These are great if you want to avoid typing code from scratch and simply copy and paste. While this is definitely faster, I find writing code by hand often allows it to register mentally a lot better.
Background on Lars Klint
Lars is a passionate programmer using the Microsoft Stack through .Net and C#. As a software developer for Kiandra IT, he develops some of the best software applications in Australia, including developing Windows Phone Apps for both clients and for his own small software company. He is a stickler for best practices and using industry standards to produce awesome, robust and maintainable software. Lars recently participated in the Nokia Future Capture hackathon in Sweden, developing cutting edge prototypes for the Nokia Lumia phones and won the Melbourne AppFest for his Image of The Day Windows Phone Application. He continues to develop Windows Phone apps. As a frequent blogger, Lars has contributed several articles to the Kiandra IT Blog and his own at klint.co, often presenting arguments that are not quite main stream, but with a dash of humour and a smidgen of cheekiness. Lars is co-founder of the DDD Melbourne community event with over 300 participants, now in its fourth year running and has presented at various technical events, as well as being an experienced member of the Toastmaster community.
Check out the Course at http://pluralsight.com/training/Courses/TableOfContents/building-windows-phone-apps-stand-out
