So every year at work, we assign ourselves some goals to achieve to hopefully help us grow and expand our knowledge base.  This year one of my goals was to develop a smartphone app which is something I have never even attempted.  I think it is always good to push yourself a little out of your comfort zone from time to time, and from a development perspective, this was exactly that.  I was not even sure where to begin.

There are so many phone operating systems to choose to develop for, including Android, iOS, Blackberry and Windows Phone.  I did a little research on what platform I should tackle, and ultimately chose Windows Phone because I knew from observing other developers here at Waggener Edstrom that I could download all the software I needed to get started for free.  So I went and downloaded Visual Studio, and the Windows Phone Emulator and got started.

Now what should I develop I thought to myself.  Well, www.waggeneredstrom.com has lots of RSS feeds on their blogs, press releases, and such so I decided to make a news application for my organization.  This is nothing ground breaking or revolutionary, but would be a good first challenge for me making a smartphone application.  Looking online, I found lots of resources that helped outline what needed to be done to pull in an RSS feed.

After a couple weeks of tinkering around with this in my spare time, I was able to successfully create the app, and pull in the feeds.  I was so excited once I finally got the feed working, and the app functioning the way I wanted!  I am still working on the design, and have a few ideas after talking with a few people that I want to go back in and polish up some things, so this is not a finished product but I had to share.

Here are a few screenshots of how it works.

Home Screen

Press Release Page

Blog Post Page

Please let me know what you think. I would love to hear any feedback you have! I will post final screenshots once I am done polishing it up.