Understanding the "second screen"

Recently I've heard a few people talking about mobile devices (primarily phones and tablets) becoming the "first screen" and televisions becoming the "second screen".

I think this based on a misunderstanding of what is meant by a "second screen" experience.
It's not about the amount of time that a person spends with a specific screen it's about the screen that provides the primary output and which screen supplies secondary data.
The screen supplying supplementary, extended or additional information about what is being watched on the primary screen.
For example, if you're watching a program on TV and also reading tweets about it on tablet, the TV is the first screen and the tablet is the second screen.
If you watch programs mostly on a tablet and only occasionally on a TV, the TV doesn't become a second screen.

Don't believe me? Ask wikipedia

Get rewarded by Microsoft for building Windows Phone, Android or Asha apps

Microsoft (the bit that was formerly Nokia) have a program called DVLUP that rewards developers for releasing and updating apps to meet certain challenges.

As of today it's now available to developers in 178 countries.

If you're a developer and haven't already, you should register now and start getting rewards for the apps you're building. Especially if those apps are for the new Nokia X2 devices.

What apps could we create if....

The apps we consider building, consider are possible and consider as viable are determined in part by the current limitations of hardware.

In the future though many of those limitations may be gone.

What if we start building apps that ignore those limitations so they're ahead of the curve when those limitations go away.

Go back a few years and the thought of watching live TV on your mobile was crazy. But now it's commonplace. (at least in some parts of the world.)


So, what apps would you want (or want to build) if:

• battery life wasn't an issue?
• we had high speed connectivity all the time?
• all devices had more disk space than you could ever fill?

Some settings that may be useful if you let StyleCop dictate where to put your using directives.

If you run the default StyleCop rules against your C# code you'll know that it wants you do different things with the order and location of your using directives than Visual Studio does by default.

Having recently discovered that some of the people I've been working with were manually making these changes every time, I highlighted the settings that will do this for you.

Hopefully documenting this here will help other too.


To have Visual Studio put “System” using directives first:

Tools > Options > Text Editor > C# > Advanced > “Organize Usings” > “Place ‘System’ directives first when sorting usings”

To have ReSharper (if you’re using it) put new using directives inside the namespace:

ReSharper > Options > Code Editing > C# > Namespace Imports > “Insert using directives when necessary” > “Add using directive to the deepest scope”

Shut up and ship: A basic app

A couple of weeks ago I was helping out at the //publish/ event where the aim was to finish off (and publish) an app currently in development.
The following week, over lunch, I was talking with a bunch of people at work about how we all have half started apps that never seem to get finished.
Unsatisfied with this as the status quo, I endeavored to publish something new. And to do it as soon as I could.

With demands on my time as they are, it's taken me 3 weeks to find a total of ten hours to get it done, but get it done I have.

I'd had an idea for a game kicking around and decided that would be what I'd finish.

In the interest of time I distilled the concept of the app down to it's most basic form. The graphics are basic and there are no sound effects but, hopefully, the essence of the game is there.

I'ts a very simple concept. From the store description:

Touch the screen and your score goes up.
The longer you keep touching the faster it goes up.
Let go and your score goes down.
Touch any of the moving elements and the game is over.

Score over 20,000 and you're doing well.
Score over 100,000 and you're doing really well.

It looks like this:

Why it should work:

• It's really easy to pick up and play
• Really easy to learn
• Games are short so can be played any time
• It's deceptively simple
• There's a lot more going on in terms of scoring and strategy than may appear at first look
• To get a really high score requires both luck and skill

Will it be successful?
We'll see.
Let me know what you think.

It's public but hidden in the store so you can find it here.

Any and all feedback appreciated.