I’d like to provide a somewhat comprehensive resource of resources. If you are looking for help, looking for support, or looking for some camaraderie in your fight to get an app in the store and claim your fame and fortune, then look no further.

My whole job is staying plugged in with you – the developer community. Some work for large organizations as a cog. Others are at start ups and your pretty much the whole machine. Whether you’re a contributor, though, or going it alone, you can’t go it alone. You need good involvement in your local developer community. I have prepared a lot of course material, presentation outlines, and book content, and I learn a lot in the process. So volunteer to present at a local user group even if it’s a bit daunting. If all you do is fight one fire at a time at work using what you already know then you may not stretch or stretch quickly enough. You may not be as agile as you can be.

Resources

• Official Developer Forums on the Dev Center
  http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/windowsapps
  These forums are frequented by Microsoft experts, so you’re likely to get some good answers to your tough questions.
• Stack Overflow
  [windows-8] and [winjs] tags: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/windows-8+winjs
  Everyone knows that Stack Overflow rocks and that most of us are more tuned in to our SO reputation points than our boss’s annual review. There are a growing number of Windows 8 devs hanging out at SO asking and answering great questions.
• Meetup
  http://www.meetup.com/find/?keywords=windows+8
  If there’s not already a Meetup in your area that focuses on Windows 8 development than by all means – start one!
• Developer Camps and Workshops
  http://www.devcamps.ms/windows
  It’s always better in person. These Microsoft events will spring up pretty frequently in your area, and they’re usually free so keep an open eye.
• Blogs
  http://codefoster.com
  Windows 8 app developer blog
  Windows Store for developers blog
  Building Windows 8 blog

That’s it for now. Keep plugged in. Keep coding!

This may be obvious to many, but as we all know what’s obvious to us is not necessarily obvious to a billion others. So we may as well throw it out on a blog for the betterment of mankind. Actually, that may be a lofty expectation for my next tip, but here goes.

If you use an internet site like Meetup or Facebook to manage calendar appointments and you want to see those events on your Windows Phone, do it like this.

1. Go to calendar.live.com and log in with your Live account. If you don’t have a Live account, you can obviously get a free one and hopefully you know that this doesn’t mean you have to get a @live.com or @hotmail.com email address. Even if your email is george@joescrabshack.com, you can sign up for a email address.
2. Now click subscribe on the top
3. Keep Subscribe to a public calendar selected
4. Now go get the URL to the .ics file published by your site and paste it into the Calendar URL
5. Give it a name
6. Choose a color and a charm if you’d like
7. Click Subscribe to calendar

Now you can see this calendar on your Windows Phone if you go to the calendar settings.

This is making my life a lot easier. I hope it enriches yours as well.