Windows Phone – One App a Month with the Kids

Over the past few months I have dug into Windows Phone and published 10 applications to Windows Phone Marketplace.  This started as a fun project for me and the kids on the weekends.  They would storyboard ideas and then we would collectively rank them based on simple concepts such as “Easy”, “Medium” and “Hard”.  We would then prioritize the ideas and build them.

The first storyboard was an elaborate game totally designed by my son Matthew (9 years old) and daughter Charlotte (7 years old).  They got printer paper, crayons, markers, and pencils and came up with a 12 page storyboard.  It is amazing.  Hopefully we will be able to build it soon!  Unfortunately it fits into the “Hard” category.

Of course several of the successive ideas were much easier.  Some of them are already built and available on the Windows Phone marketplace.  A great example of this is Halloween Sounds.  It took the kids and I six weeks to built this application.  The biggest challenge was the content.  Fortunately there are a ton of websites offering up graphics and sounds, both paid and free.  Finding the content was not enough.  You had to enhance the content.  That took time to make sure the content quality was there.  We have an application after several rounds of testing by both me and the kids.

As I mentioned, we now have 10 applications in the marketplace all in a 17 week span.  If you do the math, that is 2 to 3 applications per month or 30 applications per year.  Not bad for a guy and two kids doing work on the weekends.

Mutant EightBall for Windows Phone

Mutant EightBall is what happens to a Magic EightBall after going through a nuclear explosion.  This ball is not only warped, but alive.  Ask this Eightball questions and you may not want to know the answers.  Have fun shaking your way to fun answers.  More than 20 answers in all.

Divide and Conquer for Windows Phone

Having trouble learning division?  Check out Divide and Conquer a fun math game for Windows Phone.  Five different levels to make it as easy or as hard as you want.  Challenged yet?  The more you answer, the better your score.  Find out how many division problems you can answer in 30 seconds.  Come back and try and improve your score over time.