The Enterprise Re-Imagined with Windows 8

If your company is currently in the process of upgrading to Windows 8, do they see it as a simple OS upgrade to keep up to date; or, do they see it as an enabler to re-imagine how the business operates?

Windows 8 offers the potential to streamline business processes, lower costs, and offer additional customer service opportunities

With an internal app store, domain-joined tablet PCs and innovative leadership, Windows 8 can offer the potential to streamline business processes, lower costs, and offer additional customer service opportunities.

Multiple Internal Apps

Refactoring Legacy Applications

Most companies without excellent software development practices and management end up with big, kitchen-sink. costly-to-maintain software systems.

Internal-facing corporate Windows 8 apps offer a solution to this problem.

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Getting Ready to Build Your First Windows 8 App

This article outlines an approach to getting started building you first Windows 8 app, but rather than focus on the technology aspects it focus on the pre-coding activities.

The Idea

So you have a few ideas for your first app, but how do you decide which one to build? It depends on what you want to get out of it. If you want to use your first app as a learning experience or to get some app building experience on your CV then you may not be concerned with monetisation.

Monetising you App

If you are attempting app building as a means of income generation then you’ll want to consider what monetisation options Windows 8 gives you:

  1. Paid app
  2. Free app with adverts
  3. In-app purchases*

*You can also use in-app purchases with paid or free apps and with or without ads.

Regardless of app type, you should offer a version of the app without ads for those people who really dislike them.

The Appeal Spectrum

One way of deciding which app idea to build is to think of its potential appeal. If you imagine this appeal as a spectrum from widest appeal (think Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to those with limited appeal (specialist niche apps, etc.).

On top of this spectrum we can add some potential income factors: will millions of people pay hundreds of dollars for the app, or will millions of people pay a dollar for the app?

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What I Learned Building My First 4 Windows 8 Apps

This is a bit of a brain-dump, in no particular order, of things I learned building my first 4 Windows 8 (C# XAML) apps:

- Countdown To

- Big Screen Countdown

- BizBuzBingo

- Code Retreat Countdown

Adding Microsoft Ads to your App

  1. Sign up here: PubCenter
  2. Create a Windows 8 Ad Unit (note the different ad sizes)
  3. Install the Advertising SDK
  4. Add a reference to the ad assembly
  5. Ads the AdControl to your XAML, set the application ID and Ad Unit Id properties to those specified in you ad unit in PubCenter (for testing ads before publication see this DZone article)
  6. Ensure your ad unit control has it’s width and height set to that of your ad unit
  7. Ensure that the app capabilities have Internet enabled (otherwise you wont see any ads show up).

Certification Failure when your App has internet capability

If you app is capable of connecting to the Internet, you must have a Privacy Statement (or link to web based privacy policy) in your app – usually in a custom settings fly-out (from the Settings Charm). You must also have a web-based copy of this hosted somewhere on the Internet as you’ll need to provide the URL to it when you submit your app to the store. If your app has no Internet connectivity enabled, you don’t have to do this.

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