Preface

We authors come from different backgrounds and locations, but we came together 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; Adam lives in Canada and has published several applications in the Windows Phone store; and Timothy lives in the United States and has worked as technical proofreader for other Manning books on WPF and Silverlight. Amid this diversity, our shared passion for XAML and mobile applications brought us together to produce this book.

In 2012, nearly 700 million smartphones were sold across the globe. The world is quickly moving to a fully connected society, and smartphones like the Windows Phone are already playing a major role in how we access data, connect with our family and friends, and interact with the world around us. Smartphones are almost always with us, know where they are located, and are connected to the internet.

Your 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.