having just spent the last 3 years getting back into mobile, first at zumobi and then t-mobile, i can definitely say that mobile is my passion and i love this industry.  it’s never a dull moment with the likes of google and apple joining the fray, hp buying palm, rumors of moto starting their own OS, samsung looking at bada, and the list goes on and on.  during my time at both zumobi and  t-mobile i’ve grown a great deal personally and professionally, worked with and for some of the most amazing people in wireless, and go back to microsoft with a wealth of experience and perspective.

once i get settled in my new space (which is actually my old space!), i’ll write more about what i’ll be doing, but i wanted to share the news in a more meaningful way than the random linked-in change in employer update!

now for the folks who say, “but wait!? weren’t you just devoting all your time working with android, blackberry and java developers? how can you go from being such a huge android fan to working on windows phone 7?”  anyone who knows me, knows that i am and have always been an equal opportunity geek.  all advances in technology are exciting to me and i support a thriving, competitive space because in the long run the ones who benefit most are the consumers who invariably see better and better products come to market.  which brings me to why i am excited to join the windows phone 7 team.  i think microsoft is on the right track with their (err, our) mobile strategy and i’m jumping at the chance to be a part of bringing this phone to market.

i’m also looking forward to reconnecting with all the fantastic softies i’ve had the honor of working with in the past; so keep an eye out for me on campus and to quote “revenge of the nerds II: nerd in paradise” which was paying homage to “poltergeist II: the other side”… i’m baaa-aaack!

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love skullcandy.

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Glympse: http://glympse.com/ With possibly one of the best tag lines I’ve heard in ages, Glympse makes it possible to “Share your Where” with anyone who needs to know where you are, and how long you’ll be. The scenario is a familiar one, you’re on your way to pick up a child from school/meet a friend for dinner/an important business meeting or any other situation in which someone might be waiting or wondering where you are. Just fire up Glympse on your G1 or myTouch, open a window of time for your location to be viewable, and choose who to send it to. Say, I’m running late to a friend’s house and she doesn’t want to start the movie without me. I open up a 10 minute Glympse to my location and send it to her; she receives an SMS with a link to a web page that shows a map with my location and a predicted time of when I might arrive based on GPS and average speed. Talk about never having to answer the question “Where were you?” again!

Caller ID: White Pages: White Pages Blog If you are at all like me, you rarely answer your cell phone when a number pops up that you don’t recognize. With there being a 50/50 chance it’s a telemarketer, letting the call go straight to voicemail is how I usually roll. What’s frustrating, however, is to check the voice mail and realize that I really did want to talk to that person and now have to call them back. Caller ID by White Pages has a database of 600 million numbers that can ID who is calling you even if that number is not in your address book. But it’s not just about letting you know who is calling, it’s also being able to then add that number to your address book either by creating a new contact or adding to an existing one and looking up the location of the caller (no more looking up area codes to guess location) and getting directions to that location using Google maps. Finally there is a nifty reverse look up for figuring out who belongs to the number you had scratched on a post-it note a few weeks back.

BrightKite: http://brightkite.com/ Described as a location-based social network, brightkite is similar to the very popular Twitter service. The difference with brightkite is that not only can users post their 140 character missives for all to see, they can also “check in” at a location, post photos, and view various place streams. A place stream is a list of posts and photos from a variety of brightkiter’s who had all at one time been at that particular location. For example here is the place stream for the American History building at the Smithsonian.

Catalista: http://www.mommiworks.com/main.html Do Good. It’s Easy. Available only on Android, Catalista is a location based application that shows volunteer opportunities in your local area. You can browse entries, get more information, look up locations, add to your calendar, and check back in after you’ve participated. With the recent call to all Americans to get out and volunteer in their communities; this application brings those opportunities right to your doorstep.

Tag ToDo: Tag ToDo Features There are quite a few applications in the marketplace that focus on either list or task building and tracking. This one is my favorite because it has some extra little features that make it a fun app to use. Possibly the coolest feature are the “smart actions”; based on the item in your list, the application tries to predict what it is most likely you are trying to do. For example, a task like Call Dad, would open your contact list to the entry “Dad” so you can dial straight away; or say a friend tells you about this great book called “The Art of Racing in the Rain” and all you jot down is “get Racing in the Rain” – the app will open Amazon.com with a lists of results based on the title. The developer has open sourced the application; so it will be interesting to see if the community starts to iterate on more of these integrated features that take advantage of the other onboard Android apps.

Daily Stuff Widget: http://www.androidsx.com/ One of the things I’ve always had on any of the personalized start pages I’ve used over the years are those little factoids that make me look extra cool or smart at cocktail parties. Whether it’s a pithy quote, a historical happening of the day, or a 50 cent word that I finally get to use in a sentence; having a dose of daily stuff widgets on my home screen makes for a great deal of good fun. For example, looking at my home screen today I know now that Disneyland opened today back in 1955, that Eriophora is a species of orb weaver spiders, and that J. R. R. Tolkein once said “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like: and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve” (ouch). The bonus of this application is that it showcases how dynamic and flexible the home screen can be with Android.

Tea Time: Sometimes the simplest of apps can be the most delightful, which is the case with Tea Time. As the name suggests, the function of this application is to help you brew the perfect cup of tea. You first select the type of tea (Oolong for me) and then the strength (middle of the road medium is my taste); and then kick off the timer. A little tea bag icon shows up in your notification bar that “dings” when your tea is ready.

GphoneManager: http://sites.google.com/site/gphonemanager/ Similar to Toggle Settings which I mentioned in my previous list; Gphone Manager is application about pure utility. It lets you check the state of your onboard memory, shut down individual running apps, and manage the content on your device including the SD card. It is one of those applications that is not necessarily for the masses, but for the power users in the house who like to be able to manage all aspects of their G1 or myTouch, this app will hit the spot.

Abduction! World Attack: http://abductiongame.wordpress.com/ On the cute, charming, brings a smile to your face every time scale this game is an 11! Why 11? Because everyone knows 11 is better than 10. This delightful game involves moving a cow up to a waiting alien spaceship by bouncing your phone back forth taking advantage of the onboard accelerometer. As you succeed at each level you unlock new animals (penguin, anyone?) and new settings (think Mt. Fuji or an African Savannah) all of which have the same cool cartoony feel as the original cow you start with.

Alphamixr: http://alphamixr.net/ I hesitate to recommend this game because it has become somewhat of an addiction for me. It should really be called alphafixr because I need to play at least two or three times a day to get my alphamixr fix. Similar to some of the casual games that have become so popular on facebook, this simple word game challenges you to make as many words as possible from 6 random letters. Each level is set on a timer so you have to think quick and to move to the next level you have to get either a minimum amount of points or at least discover the longest word possible. What’s fun and clever is there is a silly yellow face that lets you know your progress, smiling widely when you get a viable word, giving you a whoops look if you try the same word twice, and a big frown if you happen to try a combination that would maybe work if the game accepted Swahili, but unfortunately it’s only US English.

Applause: This little fun application does exactly what it says; plays various types of applause at the touch of a button. Whether you are celebrating the end of a very productive meeting or encouraging a friend who accidentally sat on wet paint; having a hall of clapping hands makes for an easy way to let someone know you care.

E! Online and USA Today: Both of these news applications keep you up to date and in the know on everything from world affairs to who is Paris Hilton’s new best friend (well for today at least). What’s cool about these apps is they take advantage of multimedia by having video clips just a button press away as well as using the on board gps to give you local news and weather.

I Tweet!: http://www.multiplefacets.com/application_twitter.html I Tweet, You Tweet, We all Tweet for Twitter… Hands down I Tweet is the best twitter client on the android platform. Providing an up to date view of your friends stream, personal messages, replies and what’s going on in the twitterverse, you’ll never miss a tweet when your out and about.

nuTsie: http://www.nutsie.com/ An anagram for iTunes, nuTsie is essentially a “soft iPod” for your android phone. After creating an account with nuTsie you can then access the music available from your iTunes playlist; imagine having access to 40 gigs of music without ever having to connect your phone to your laptop. The application isn’t literally pulling from the music files on your computer; instead it takes your playlist and then serves up the music from servers (similar to Pandora or iMeem). There is a music recommendation system called the “serendipity slider” which lets you set how often you’d like to hear a new song not on your playlist that matches your tastes. For example set to half, you will hear one recommended song for each of yours that plays. Finally, there is a social networking element, that lets you access your friends iTunes playlists (if they opt in of course) and add the songs you like from those to your own playlist. Then if you decide to purchase; just press a button and you are whisked away to e-commerce land to buy the song and send it to your library.

Toggle Settings: This application represents pure functionality as it enables you to manage on device settings from a touch away. Whether it’s turning on Bluetooth, GPS, Airplane mode or wifi to making the screen brighter or volume louder, Toggle Settings is essentially “command central” for your android phone. The neatest feature is the ability to create profiles that can make a number of different settings change with just one touch. You could have a “Movie” profile, which dims the screens, makes the phone silent, and toggles vibrate so once the lights go down you are guaranteed not to aggravate your theater neighbors.

The Cash You Could Be Saving: Although I’m not usually a fan of “adverapps”, this one is just silly enough that I can’t help but show it off. This makes it that perfect “cocktail party” app that one-ups all my friends as we try and outdo each other on who has the coolest app. Simply put, this app plays the music from the Geico commercial with the eye-ball topped stack of money staring at you. If you don’t know what I’m talking about; check it out here… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsHXMxoCXeU

Open Home and Better Cut: http://betterandroid.wordpress.com/ The one-two punch of Better Android’s Open Home + Better Cut makes for my personalization nirvana. I currently have the Open Home Scully skin with the Picnic Icons and a series of Better Cut shortcuts that have me surfing Seattle Traffic or Weight Watcher’s point lists from my home screen. I think there’s a debate about which is better Open Home or A-Home and I’ve decided it’s akin to the Tomatoh Tomahto debate, and we should just call the whole thing off. Go with the one that puts a smile on your face and your personal touch on your phone.

the topic of the talk is below and you can get all the info you need at : http://www.igniteseattle.com/

see you there!

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Beth Goza (@bethgo) – Knitting in Code
Remember the joy of writing your first Hello World application? Do you still have a copy somewhere so you can gaze upon your coded baby steps into the world of binary goodness? In knitting, creating something beautiful is just like binary, with a series of knits and pearls you can dream up the most sophisticated of patterns. In the spirit of hi-tech meets hand-tech, I will show you how to convert your binary Hello World app into a pattern of stitches (think kint =1 pearl = 0), so that you can create, mount, frame and hang your Hello World genius for all to see.

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Gamasutra – Dungeons & Dragons: The Pen and Paper Video Game

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Etsy :: NeedleNoodles :: Fighters Crochet Pattern Collection PDF