I was lucky enough to get to present at the Atlanta Mobile Developers Group earlier this week where I talked about sketching, wireframing, and other user experience and design subjects relative to turning your mobile app idea into a fleshed out app ready to be developed. I've uploaded this slide deck to SpeakerDeck.com, you can find it here or via the image below.

Thanks to everyone who sent in kind words or stayed after to talk. If you're looking for help with the strategy of your mobile app, or help turning your mobile app idea into a reality, check out my mobile app development company All Mobile Everything.

I had a great time this weekend at the Atlanta Code Camp where I had the opportunity to give a talk on Monetizing Mobile Games. I've just uploaded this slide deck to SpeakerDeck.com, you can find it here.

Thanks to everyone who came out and chatted afterwards. Building up an app network is a lot easier when you know other folks also trying to get started in mobile games - so stay in touch!

Announcing Line Diet for iPhone - huzzah! Find out all the details at LineDietApp.com. Below is some background on the project for those interested in those sorts of things..

Get Line Diet for iPhone now!

It's always exciting to get to announce a new product. This one was a fun one that was born out of a personal desire for an app. My buddy @thinky told me about something called a "Line Diet" several years ago. It's also known as the bang bang diet, the Steve Ward diet, or Bang-Bang Servo Diet. You can find a few articles on the web about it, but the simplest summary is something like this:

• Set a goal weight and date
• Graph a line from your starting weight to the goal date/weight
• Weigh in daily to see if you're on target (the line)
• If you're under the line then eat normal, if you're over the line then diet/exercise harder to catch up

Ever since Zach brought it up to me I've been interested in the concept. It's a crazy simple scientific approach to dieting that makes your dieting as simple as a yes and no (or a 1 and 0). You're either on a diet that day, or your not - and it depends on if you are staying on your target line. It solves the issue with folks getting burned out on diets because you can get ahead of your goal and then enjoy yourself on the weekend for example - so long as you are staying on track with your longer term weight loss goals.

(hit 'read more' below..)

If you live in the Southeast and are a coder (or interested in being one) then hopefully you already know about Codestock hosted annually in Knoxville, TN. Codestock is awesome because it has been community driven from the start, so it isn't tied to any specific development stack. You'll find everything code related from web to mobile to desktop across a plethora of coding languages and technologies being discussed as well as a lot of surrounding topics like GTD, careers, etc.

I have submitted two talks to Codestock this year - both are mobile related (surprise!). I spoke at Codestock a few years ago, and after looking through all of their submitted sessions I realized that Codestock is going to be much more massive this year than ever, and I have little to no chance of my sessions being selected without your help!

So, here are my two proposed talks - sign up to go to Codestock, and vote for my sessions pretty please!
Getting Started with iOS Development with MonoTouch
Mobile Game Monetization and Promotion Strategies

Hope to see you at Codestock 2013 this year!

FOLLOW UP:
I had a great time at Codestock this year presenting on Xamarin.iOS. Thanks to everyone that voted for my talk!

You can check out the slide deck of the Codestock 2013 presentation on Slideshare here:
Getting Started With Xamarin.iOS

This is just an early heads up that I'll be launching a new mobile-centric podcast later next week called the All Mobile Everything Podcast. The podcast will be hosted on the All Mobile Everything site starting the third week of April. I'll be releasing the podcast every 2-4 weeks, and will be covering a lot of topics relative to mobile strategy and mobile development.

Until then, I am headed out to the Xamarin Evolve conference in Austin, TX. You can expect some coverage of that event in next week's [the] first episode of the All Mobile Everything podcast. Stay tuned!

Update: I've been second guessing starting this podcast until after I release my next app. Please check back again in the coming weeks or let me know on Twitter what you think.

I am very excited to announce that Imagewind has been released today for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. You can download Imagewind from the iTunes App Store, or check out Imagewind.net for more details. Imagewind in the iTunes App Store is rated for ages 17+.

This is essentially the re-birth of Imagewind. After Imagewind was banned from Windows Phone I became quite disheartened that it would never again see the light of day in today's marketplace-based distribution networks. You see, Imagewind is a bit risque - it displays unfiltered images from Instagram, Twitter, and Flickr - and some people post some crazy things to those social networks. What's neat about this sort of re-birth of Imagewind is that it largely shares a similar code base to the original Silverlight and Windows Phone versions - thanks to Xamarin MonoTouch. Given how intense this app is in it's processing and image displaying, I think it is quite a testament to that platform.

What I like about Imagewind isn't the bad things you may see, but the real-ness of what you see. There is nothing closer to reality-TV in an app than Imagewind. You can see what people are eating for lunch, while at the same time see photos from sporting events or war-torn countries. I actually found out about the earthquake in Japan in 2011 while watching Imagewind at 1am. That's also how I found out about Brittany Murphy's death in 2009. It becomes obvious when world events are happening, because that's what people are sharing photos of on social networks. Good recent examples to watch have been Obama's inauguration and the Super Bowl a few weeks ago.

There's something special about being able to visually watch world events unfold through photos people share. Some people when they see Imagewind for the first time say "hrm, that's cool", and then move on. While others watch it, and can see how engaging visualizing social exchanges around the world can be. I hope you'll try it out! Find download links and more at Imagewind.net.

I just posted a copy of the deck I presented at the Windows Apps Meetup last night onto Slideshare. The talk was broken into two parts. The first part covers various approaches to game development, and how those approaches can be leveraged on Windows 8. The second part covers strategies you can use to create successful mobile games and covers app promotion, driving reviews and social sharing, and monetization.

Thanks to everyone who came!

Sorry for the late notice, but I'll be presenting Monday at the Atlanta Windows Apps Meetup in Alpharetta. You can find out more about the meetup (which is Monday February 4th, 2013) here.

Synopsis:

Have an idea for a casual game? Not sure where to start? In this session we'll discuss two of the main ways you can create casual games today for Windows 8. We will review how the game Word Search Little Books was built for Windows 8. We'll also talk a bit about how parts of that same source code was leveraged for an iOS version as well. We will also review the MonoGame platform and other ways to create games for Windows 8 and other mobile platforms. If you've created games for Windows 8 already, then please come and join in on the conversation!

My presentation will be largely focused on various ways to get into mobile game development, and will talk a good bit about cross-platform solutions and monetization. Hope to see you there!

I've been heads down coding the last few months. From writing Word Search Little Books for Android, Kindle Fire, Windows 8, and iPad/iPhone, to now porting an old personal favorite to iOS (more on that soon enough) - I've been too busy doing to share how I've been doing it.

After spending some time last year looking at cross-platform mobile solutions, I decided that Xamarin's MonoTouch was the best route for cross-platform mobile development - and it has been great. I wanted to take a few quick minutes to show my fellow .Net devs that they can (and should) develop for iOS/Android using their existing C# knowledge (and code) with MonoTouch and Mono for Android.

Please let me know if this video was useful to you. I'm considering doing a larger more in-depth series on MonoTouch development if there's any interest - I would love to share more with others who might be interested.

I'm very excited to announce that Word Search Little Books is now available on iOS! I ported the Windows 8 version to iOS using Xamarin's MonoTouch - and it worked out great. Both the iPad and iPhone versions support landscape and portrait, and include the same in app purchases and puzzle books found in all the other versions.

This is the first app I've released on every major platform. I learned a lot doing it. You can now get Word Search Little Books from the iTunes App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, and Windows Store. It took around 3 working months to get it all done - and next time it will take half that.

Word Search Little Books supports the iPhone 5 screensize

In case you missed it, I started my own consultancy for mobile development - All Mobile Everything. Get in touch if you need help getting your apps and games on every platform that counts.