People and Me 0.1

Here’s a first peek at the People and Me chapter for Windows Phone Book. In this early version of the chapter you’ll find a rough layout of the expected tasks and just a few completed sections.

This chapter won’t be a straightforward or short as the last few, due to the ways in which different accounts interact with the People hub. So we’ll see how long it takes to write, and how long it gets.

From a rough layout perspective, I originally had Me first, followed by People. But the Me tile is really something that comes out People (it’s just your own contact card, pinned), so as I worked through the tasks list, I eventually decided to reverse the order (and the name of the chapter).

(Speaking of which, I’m probably going to change all the instances of “and” in chapter titles to “+” in keeping with how Windows Phone names things. So this chapter will likely be renamed again, to People + Me.)

For the People section, the big bits will be the many tasks related to both contact interaction and seeing what’s new with your contacts. Me is a lot more straightforward, though the tip about reinstating a deleted Me tile is probably useful enough I’ll publish it as a Tip article on the SuperSite soon as well.

So far, I’ve only written a few sections: Find a contact (quick navigate, Search, from other apps), View a contact card, pin a contact, and link and unlink contacts. Early days on this one.

Feedback is always appreciated.

Download People and Me 0.1

Download Windows Phone Book 0.030

Games Chapter is Complete

The Games chapter for Windows Phone Book is now complete in first draft form. This version of the chapter adds several additional sections, while reordering some of the previous sections.

This update adds the following sections: Intro and Understand Xbox LIVE, Find games in the Xbox Games Store (launch the Games Store, Understand the Games Store layout, Search, Find Xbox LIVE games, Explore a game), Play Games (send and receive game requests, earn an achievement), Pin a game to Start, and Uninstall a game. I also moved a few things around, nothing major.

As promised, a pretty short chapter overall: its 32 page length is due partly to the number of images. Looking at just the text, it’s only 12 pages long. There’s only so much you can say about game-related functionality.

Feedback is always appreciated. Another chapter soon.

Download Games 0.3 (32 page PDF, 3 MB)

Download Windows Phone Book 0.029 (346 page PDF, 19.5 MB)

Games 0.2

Here’s a second look at the in-progress Games chapter for Windows Phone Book. This version of the chapter includes several additional sections and is about two-thirds complete.

As noted earlier, this chapter should be very short—though the number of screenshots is making it appear otherwise; the actual text parts are short—and should be done by the weekend.

This update adds the following sections: Tour of the Games hub, View and configure your online persona (which includes sub-sections about having fun with the avatar, viewing your profile, viewing and editing your bio, customizing your avatar, and viewing your achievements), and the rest of Interact with your Xbox LIVE friends (including see which friends are online, view a friend’s profile, send a message, read, respond, and delete a message, and remove a friend).

Just a few bits are left: Find games in the Xbox Games Store and Play Games, plus the introductory material, which will describe Xbox LIVE and which LIVE features are available on Windows Phone (and which require a Gold subscription). That last part is the wild-card, from a length perspective. I’m going to try and keep it short.

Feedback is always appreciated.

Download Games 0.2 (21 page PDF, 1.64 MB)

Download Windows Phone Book 0.028 (335 page PDF, 18.13 MB)

Naming the Books

I think I’ve finally settled on the brand I’ll use for the books and book series I’m writing and will continue to write going forward. That said, I do need a bit of help clarifying the exact names.

I mentioned previously that I liked the notion of “pocket” and “guidebooks,” and the general travel theme, using the Rick Steves series of travel books as an obvious inspiration. With that in mind, I looked at whether terms like “Field Guide” (for full length books) or “Pocket Field Guide” (for “mini-books”) were in uses as series names for major tech books. After all, I also don’t want to step on any traditional publishers’ toes and use terms like “Secrets” or “In & Out”.

They’re not. So my basic plan is to use “Field Guide” for the full-length titles and “Pocket Field Guide” for the mini-books.

The question is what form this would take.

Using three representative books as examples—Amazon Cloud Player Book, Xbox Music Book and Windows Phone Book—I started looking at how these might fit into the brand names and what the actual book titles would be.

One obvious approach is to use my name in there, though I’m worried that makes the titles too long and puts the topic too far back in the title:

Paul Thurrott's Field Guide to Windows Phone 8
Paul Thurrott's Pocket Field Guide to Xbox Music
Paul Thurrott's Pocket Field Guide to Amazon Cloud Player

(Here, “to” might be replaced with “for,” as in “Paul Thurrott's Field Guide for Windows Phone 8.”)

Two obvious shorter variants emerge as well:

Field Guide to Windows Phone 8
Pocket Field Guide to Xbox Music
Pocket Field Guide to Amazon Cloud Player

Windows Phone 8 - A Field Guide
Xbox Music - A Pocket Field Guide
Amazon Cloud Player - A Pocket Field Guide

(You could tack “by Paul Thurrott” on to the end of any of these if the absence of my name bugs you. But I think I prefer shorter over longer titles.)

Anyway, that’s where I’m at. Thoughts and feedback are appreciated. 

Update: I’ve gotten enough feedback about the brands to reconsider the use of my name in the title.

Maybe…

Paul Thurrott's Guide to Windows Phone 8
Paul Thurrott's Pocket Guide to Xbox Music
Paul Thurrott's Pocket Guide to Amazon Cloud Player

Games 0.1

Here’s a first peek at the Games chapter for Windows Phone Book. In this early version of the chapter you’ll find a rough layout of the expected tasks and a few completed sections.

As with the previous two chapters, Email and Internet Explorer, this one looks to be quite straightforward and should be completed very quickly and with little effort. My guess is that this will be one of the shortest chapters in the book, too, since it deals mostly with peripheral material related to gaming, and not to game-playing.

One thing I’m not sure about is how to handle Xbox SmartGlass. From a gaming perspective, it seems that most of SmartGlass’s usefulness is related to Xbox 360 games, and not Windows Phone games, so perhaps only a cursory overview is required. On the other hand, if anyone knows about any excellent two-screen games that work on both Xbox 360 and Windows Phone and interact in some amazing way, I’ll consider adding information about that.

So far, only a few sections are done: Find and launch the Games hub, Tour of the Games hub, Send and respond to friend requests, and Customize the Games hub. But given the size of topic list, this chapter is possibly one-third complete in first draft form. (That said, it’s possible the introductory material about Xbox LIVE and accounts will be lengthy, and I may need to add a section at the end about managing your account online. We’ll see how that goes.)

Feedback is always appreciated.

Download Games 0.1

Download Windows Phone Book 0.027