I’ve been so busy for the last several months that I haven’t had the chance to appropriately geek out about a recent change in my cable modem. Because of increased bandwidth needs for my work-from-home job, I upgraded to RCN‘s Docsis 75 service. That’s a blazing 75Mb download and 10Mb upload. I’d still love FiOS, but this is perfectly fine for now.
Here’s a nifty summary from Speedtest.net. Sorry to gloat, but I’ll do it anyway. 
I may not have been dilligent about blogging in February, but I did do my fair share of tweeting! In case you’re not following me, as you should be, here’s a recap of my five favorite tweets:
Scott Hanselman has a great post about his spare time project with Windows Phone. He details the entire process of creating a simple app from scratch (and some helpful open source libraries) in six hours.
This is so inspirational! I’ve been meaning to do a “Windows Phone Weekend” newbie project myself, but I’ve been a little preoccupied with more pressing — and exciting — matters. (More on that later!) When I finally get my weekend, I’m definitely going to use Scott’s article as a guide.
Blog Post: From Concept to Code in 6 hours: Shipping my first Windows Phone App
I have two favorite seafood restaurants in the Lehigh Valley. My top choice is Henry’s Salt Of The Sea in Allentown, and my very close second choice is Beck’s Land & Sea House. Bonus: Beck’s is literally just up the street from where I live in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.
With seafood-loving family visiting from the Philly area today, we went to Beck’s for dinner. My father-in-law and I indulged in Maker’s Mark Manhattans, and the table shared incredible clams casino and fried calamari appetizers. My dinner selection, Pasta Calabria, was a fantastic blend of sausage, shrimp, cavatelli, and peppers. And don’t get me started on the peanut butter silk pie and liquored coffee dessert!
Yet another awesome meal at Beck’s — none of us left disappointed. If you’re in the area, I highly recommend it!
We’re but a week into the new year, and my head’s already spinning. Here’s a short list of awesome things that have already brought me joy:
Lots of very cool happenings about to, um, happen. Stay tuned!
I’ve been trying out the HTC Trophy for a little over a month, and I’m happy to say that I love it. Windows Phone 7.5 runs smoothly on the hardware, and its Metro interface suits me just fine. While there are fewer WP7 apps than iOS and Android at the moment, I’ve never had any trouble finding suitable apps to meet my needs. One of the phone’s most pleasant suprises for me is its Xbox Live support. As an avid gamer and Xbox 360 owner, I find the integration flawless.
Microsoft appears to be committed to making Windows Phone a success this year. There’s talk of a big marketing blitz and all sorts of industry speculation about new hardware partners, LTE devices, and superphone support. Of special interest to me, however, is what Microsoft is doing for the developer community.
Last December, Microsoft and PhoneGap announced full support for Windows Phone. PhoneGap is one of those technologies that I’ve wanted to learn, but I was waiting until my big leap from feature phone to smartphone. It would seem the planets and stars have aligned; I will be able to learn a cool mobile technology with the cool mobile phone I just got!
To get started, I’m tinkering around with Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone and the Windows Phone SDK 7.1. Again, hats off to Microsoft for making the IDE and phone emulator freely available — and for providing boatloads of online resources and tutorials. Assuming I get to a point where I want to test an app on my phone or *gasp* submit one to the Marketplace, I’ll gladly pay $99 for an App Hub membership. Maybe then I could publish a few Xbox 360 indie games, too.
I’ll be sure to post here about my journey into the realm of C#, Silverlight, and XNA as often as possible.