A couple of weeks ago, I took a four hour drive to visit Tampa where I got to meet our Microsoft Developer Evangelist Joe Healy (aka. Devfish). Present were (in alphabetical order) Scott Dorman, Nikita Polyakov, Bill Reiss, Ken Tucker, and Kevin Wolf.

 

If you have been following Windows Phone 7 news lately, you will notice the names above being quiet familiar. Joe Healy was recently featured in a Jessie Liberty YapCast discussing WP7 and the important role Florida plays in evangelizing the value this new mobile OS brings to developers.  Furthermore, Scott, Joe, Nikita and Kevin are writing a book to teach us Windows Phone 7 Development in 24 hours (I would however strongly suggest you take a little more than 24 hours to read it). Additionally Kevin and Nikita are 2 of only 22 worldwide inaugural Windows Phone Development MVPs.

 

With all that love of Windows Phone 7 in the air, I got to play with at least 3 different prototype phones, two of which had QWERTY keyboards (one with the keyboard behind a sliding front panel and another with the keyboard on the front panel), while another device had a touch-screen keyboard. One prototype phone had an expansion SD Card Slot which cleared my initial misconception as I realized that WP7 can handle additional memory beyond the capacity of the built-in memory a phone ships with if the hardware supports a MicroSD Card.

 

I look forward to completing at least one WP7 application very soon, that of course if by then no similar application exists on AppHub :)

 

--Sam Abraham