Preface

We’ve come from different backgrounds and locations to write this book—Michael is a Silverlight MVP who lives in Singapore; Massimo lives in Europe and worked at Microsoft on the Windows Phone team; and Timothy lives in the United States and was the technical proofreader for other Manning books on WPF and Silverlight. Against all this diversity, our shared passion for Silverlight and mobile applications brought us together to produce this book.

In 2011, nearly half a billion smart phones were sold worldwide. The world is quickly moving to a fully connected society, and smart phones like the Windows Phone are positioned to play a major role in how we access data, connect with our family and friends, and generally interact with the world around us. Smartphones are almost always with us, know where they are located, and are connected to the internet.

Our job as application developers is to create applications that can interact with our environment, sift through the data, and present a simplified view of the world to users overwhelmed with the complexities of the fast-paced, high-tech, digital world. We hope our book gives you the knowledge you need to determine location, process sensor input, capture audio and video, and scrutinize data to build killer Windows Phone applications that integrate nicely with the operating system and native applications.