Latest News from Brandon Watson

What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:42:16 EDT

I got asked by a young local entrepreneur to be his mentor. He was looking for help in how to think about his most recent pivot, and how to take his newest creation to market. As I started asking some questions about what he was doing and why, I found myself wandering into racing metaphors. [...]

Facebook IPO Food For Thought

Thu, 10 May 2012 07:05:00 EDT

I have been thinking a great deal about what the Facebook IPO means. While reading many posts up at Hacker News about whether we are in a bubble, lamenting Zynga, or skewering Groupon, I am left wondering what will really become of Facebook.

Facebook and Instagram – 37c to $19 Billion

Wed, 09 May 2012 03:00:00 EDT

It seems I can’t have any discussions with entrepreneurs without the topic of Instagram coming up. They all think that now is their time to strike the iron since the valuations are going to the stratosphere. I want to be very specific and clear on this point. Facebook bought Instagram. Instagram was not sold to [...]

Heisenberg’s Cat - Evaluating the Situation with Google

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:30:00 EDT

I was reading an article about how Google is going to change their algorithms to penalize sites which are overly optimized for SEO. It’s no surprise to arrive at an end state where rules of a system are gamed when pecuniary gains are available. The entire SEO industry has grown up around trying to figure out how to optimize sites for Google’s black box. To ensure an improved customer experience, this action was inevitable. Paul Graham recently wrote that building a search engine was a frighteningly ambitious startup idea. He accurately points out that the once spartan design of the Google homepage is now an overly cluttered mélange of links and ads. PG is calling for hackers to build a better mousetrap, but what I thought of when I read his post was about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

An Experiment In Silence

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 19:55:00 EST

As part of my time off between leaving one job and starting a new one, I decided I really needed to get some time away from my daily technology interactions. I wanted to break the annoying habit I have of pulling my phone out of my pocket every 60 seconds to see if a new [...]

Windows Phone Dev Ecosystem – One Year On

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:11:52 EST

The title is a bit misleading as I have been in role for close to two years, but Windows Phone has been in market for a year. During the course of the past year, I learned quite a few things, and have been asked a number of questions from the community. I wanted to take [...]

Windows Phone Is Hiring – On My Team

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:42:41 EST

Subject: Ms. Muffet would run scared from you. Why Miss Muffet? Because we are looking for someone who has unbelievable _web_ skills. Get it? Web…Spider? No? #facepalm Befitting our desire to stand out with our job postings, I give you one rendered in tweets: Our team has a serious bunch of people who take #winning [...]

When Algorithms Attack

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 12:02:39 EDT

I was doing some birthday shipping for my wife a few weeks back. I actually had to hold off on posting this write up because I didn’t want to tip her off to what sorts of things she might expect for her birthday. This post isn’t about her birthday, however, but rather Amazon and their [...]

The Wonder of Living in the Future

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 03:13:25 EDT

So I’m sick. Sick and travel are never fun. Recycled air on the plane is usually the culprit. Sick sucks. In particular, it sucks when you are out of your element. Travelling in the US usually affords you the ability to walk into any familiar looking pharmacy and choose the appropriate cold medicine from the [...]

Thank You Bell Helmets

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:19:39 EDT

This is a video thank you card to the men and women who work at Easton Bell. My goal is to land this in front of Easton Bell President, Chris Zimmerman (I think I figured out his email). I’m using all the tricks in my bag. The tweet went out this morning, some buddy mails, [...]

Happy Developers

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:44:13 EDT

A little nerd humor for the day. I got asked by some executives to “prove” that what we were doing was working. That wasn’t so hard. The next question was “how would you show return on investment for additional budget.” I thought on it for a few moments, and wrote the following on the board. [...]

Crawling the Windows Phone Marketplace

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 15:21:28 EDT

I have been asked by a few people how sites like WP7AppList get their data. The Windows Phone Marketplace, which you access on your PC via Zune software, uses XML to get data over the wire. I wanted to share a couple of code snippets which might help an erstwhile data junkie on their way. [...]

Three Steps To The Developer Heart

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:35:20 EDT

One theme that surfaced for me at SxSW this week was the incredible amount of energy being expended trying to find developers for projects. It certainly is a theme that should help the guys at StackExchange, if only they figure out how to reach this audience. I was in so many rooms where the number [...]

ProFlowers Might Be Harmful To Your Relationships

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:04:52 EST

I normally post about technology here. Business. Entrepreneurship. Customer service certainly has a place. Today gets a personal rant, with lessons applicable to the above. The short story is that I meant to have flowers delivered on Monday to my wife, and only today found out that ProFlowers would not be able to fulfill the [...]

More Revenues For Windows Phone 7 Developers

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 12:36:27 EST

We’ve made no secret of the fact that we believe we have a great platform for developers. The canvas we have delivered is enabling amazing creativity to flourish. Some developers, however, have taken a wait and see approach to developing for Windows Phone. For those who have taken the plunge, some developers are making more [...]

New Markets Open Up For Windows Phone 7 Developers

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 12:05:59 EST

Today, we posted a new article up at the Windows Phone Developer Blog about how developers are having great results using the Trial API and Microsoft Mobile Ad control. The most astonishing piece of data for me what that more than half of the Trial API apps convert to a sale within one day, and [...]

Developers: Why You May Not Want To Listen To Robert Scoble

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:28:48 EST

I love Scoble. I really do. He’s a great source of content, and occasionally controversy. In a post today, he suggests that developers should build for Android tablets. I am left a little confused as to his overall logic train, so let’s poke at a few of his points. The Bar is Low Really? The [...]

Kryptonite and SAT Analogies

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 15:15:00 EST

I was listening to the most recent TWiT where there was discussion about the recent algo change at Google. During the conversation, there was an off-hand comment about whether or not the following relationship held water. That one kind of bent my mind around a bit. There isn’t any new thought here. Social is presenting all kinds of problems for Google, and despite their success in South America and some other locales with Orkut, they really haven’t made much of a dent in social. A fact made more known by the recent additions of the talents of Marissa Mayer to the task. Some have argued that social isn’t in the DNA at Google, and that’s the source of their problems. It’s not too hard of a stretch to make the same claim about Microsoft: that we never had search in our DNA.

Building the Platform, One Dev at a Time

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 22:47:01 EST

Last week when I read Jamie’s excoriation of the Blackberry Playbook dev platform (so many people forwarded it to me), it made me sad. Sad because a developer was hitting friction on a platform on which he clearly wanted to develop apps. Tyler Lessard from RIM responded to this open air criticism, and I give [...]

Engrish Tradeshow Execution

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 12:17:16 EST

What do you do when you have a large tradeshow presence to plan? Clearly you want to put your best foot forward. If you are going to attend the Mobile World Congress, we’re talking about your absolute best foot forward. Booth space isn’t cheap, and you have 50K people to impress. Sadly, I feel that [...]

Paul Graham’s Dilemma

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 02:45:03 EST

I have to make sure I don’t take 4 months off from blogging again. Having re-read this for editing, I had a lot to say, but more importantly, I enjoyed the mental exercise it put me through. I am not sure that I am going to tread much new ground in simply covering the weekend [...]

Windows Weekly & DotNetRocks

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 19:31:37 EDT

It’s not often I find myself kerfuffled, but that’s what happened when I was permitted to be a guest to discuss Windows Phone 7 on Windows Weekly, hosted by Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott. I’ve been a long time listener of several of the TWiT network podcasts, and fondly remember staying up late in grad [...]

Google Instant – Changing Kids’ Lives

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:30:24 EDT

I have been thinking more and more about the behavior modifications which are likely to come as a result of the new Google Instant. Whereas Google positions their technology as an assistant to the search process, I wonder if it ends up acting as a drain on creativity. The feedback loop which they have created [...]

Did Google Instant Just Blow Up Their Revenue Model?

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:29:34 EDT

I have always heard that Google is ruthless in their testing and use of data to make decisions, so I have every reason to believe that they know what they are doing. However, their new Google Instant is something which is a new animal all together. Steve Rubel posted today that he thinks that SEO [...]

Seattle Area Developers – GDGT Event

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:05:44 EDT

Stop the presses! I’ve got some news. The great team at GDGT is coming to Seattle, and they are having a bit of a party and meetup. There should be a great deal of nerdosity going on there, which is awesome in its own right. This will be further accentuated by the fact that the [...]

Employee Developer Program

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:38:58 EDT

In the last couple of days since Andy’s announcement that all employees would get free Windows Phone 7s, we’ve seen a lot of buzz about the offer, including some around why we were doing it. So why did we do it? Put simply, we did it for the employees. If you speak to any software developer [...]

Windows Phone 7 Developer Preview Devices in the Wild

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 03:20:27 EDT

The first previews of Windows Phone 7 are starting to hit, and they all feel fair and balanced, which is always appreciated. Engadget certainly goes in depth on their preview, as does PC Mag. However, it was this unboxing video which made me smile the most, if for no other reason than it was the [...]

Windows Phone 7 Beta Tools

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:39:00 EDT

I cannot believe I have only been working on the Windows Phone 7 team for three months. So much has happened, it feels like a lifetime. What’s been most impressive to me has been the pace of the engineering team. Considering how many technologies from across the company we are bringing to WP7, it’s absolutely amazing what they are doing. This week, during Andy Lees’s keynote at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, we announced that the Windows Phone Developer Tools have gone BETA. Beta means that we have a near final version of the tools for building apps and games for Windows Phone 7.

Marketplace Value Add For Devs and Customers

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:22:00 EDT

There was a story which surfaced yesterday about vulnerabilities exposed in a wide swath of Android apps. SMobile Systems conducted research in the Android app space and found that some 20% of the apps allow third-party apps to gain access to sensitive or private information. It would be easy to dismiss this article by pointing out [...]

XBox Live on Windows Phone 7

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:55:09 EDT

Inspired by the always entertaining Mike Klucher, I snapped this pic of my own avatar on my daily use Windows Phone 7. He talks about the very way I felt when my avatar showed up on my phone this week. It made me smile. I even went into the XBox Marketplace to change around [...]

Windows Phone 7 Device Requests

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:58:00 EDT

Well, there’s an old adage that you should be careful what you ask for because you might just get it. The avalanche of emails and phone calls looking for developer devices was a welcome development. There are some out there who think that we might as well pack it in on this whole mobile thing. Developers, however, know better. New markets = new opportunities for big ideas to break through. I personally have seen, erm, a surge in the amount of email I get on a daily basis, thanks in no small park to Long Zheng.

Windows Phone 7 Devices

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:07:00 EDT

It’s been an interesting handful of weeks. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the field with our country managers as we get ready for the coming launch of Windows Phone 7. That’s a post for another day. I’m here at TechEd, and there’s a lot of talk about Windows Phone 7 devices and when they are going to be made available. One cool thing that the team is doing is handing out coupons to event attendees redeemable for general availability devices when they start shipping. We’re only handing out around 50 or so of these coupons, so it’s definitely not a broad distribution. It’s meant for people who are attending sessions or wearing Windows Phone hats around the show floor.

Windows Phone Backstage Conversation

Mon, 24 May 2010 05:21:27 EDT

This past week, I participated in a backstage conversation with the community interested in Windows Phone 7. It a very strange experience for me, which you will understand when you watch the video. Between lights going out, phones ringing, and talking to a screen for an hour, it was most certainly novel. I enjoyed it [...]

TechDrawl Windows Phone 7 Interview

Thu, 20 May 2010 02:31:43 EDT

Courtesy of the fine folks at Remix Atlanta, I found myself being interviewed by the very Southern-courteous Celia Dyer for TechDrawl. They’ve finally posted it. The audio was best we could manage given the space we had, and the impromptu recording. Enjoy.

Signed Assemblies Bug in the Windows Phone Tools CTP Refresh

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:15:00 EDT

One of the hardest things about shipping software is shipping software. During the final testing phases for our Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP refresh, we discovered a bug that will impact developers using some existing “transparent Silverlight” assemblies (Microsoft & 3rd party) in their Windows Phone applications. So we had a choice to make: 1) pull back the release to fix the underlying problem (which may have taken up to two weeks given where the actual problem exists and how the engineering & test work required to validate the fix didn’t cause other regressions), or 2) shipping what we had with relatively simple work around. I like to tell everyone who will listen to me that my job is to be the number one and loudest advocate for our Windows Phone developer experience. Since so many of you have already updated to the recently released Visual Studio 2010 final release, I didn’t want our community to wait any longer for access to the updated Windows Phone tools. We feel confident that this issue impacts only a small subset of Windows Phone developers, but we want to be as transparent as possible about this issue, and get the word out about the work around as quickly as possible.

iPad User Experiences

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:16:59 EDT

Does anyone know what this screen cap is from? If not, you can watch this video clip here. This one movie scene sums up my experience with the iPad. Awkwardness. I want to love the iPad. I do. I love the idea of the simplicity of it. I smile when I think about the potential for [...]

Windows Phone Job Awesomeness

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 12:44:55 EDT

It’s very rare that Passion, Talent, and Opportunity line up. When it does, you ring the effing bell. Starting next Monday, I am going to be moving over to the Windows Phone 7 team, working on the developer experience. The common theme in all of my work to date in my return to Microsoft has [...]

What Do You Call One Search Result From StackOverflow?

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EDT

I checked with the Windows Phone 7 team before putting this post out, and got the OK to write about it. I hit this bug when building out my FriendLinks Windows Phone 7 application, and was surprised to find it was a bona fide bug and not a problem with my coding skills. If there was a default value in the constructor for any new project I start, it would look something like. In any event, here’s the cruxt of the bug. If you are using HttpWebRequest developing on Windows Phone 7, and you get a 301 redirect returned from the web server, and that web server sets a cookie, the current build (as of 03/16/10 at Mix10) of Windows Phone 7 will throw an exception. In the case of my applications, I was trying to determine the title of the page as defined by the “” tags for a given URL.

Windows Phone 7 App Deployed

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:09:25 EDT

It’s pretty exciting to be at Mix10 right now. There’s a ton of buzz around Windows Phone 7. I got a chance to hang with some of the team (thanks AI), and they let me load my FriendLinks application onto a working phone, and it worked straight away. Very cool. Here’s a link to [...]

Windows Phone 7 Series Developer Experience

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:17:00 EDT

Today at Mix10, Microsoft released the developer tools for Windows Phone 7 Series. I’m excited about seeing what apps will get built now that there is general availability of the Windows Phone dev tools. That’s general availability, as in for everyone! Charlie Kindel (if you aren’t, you really should follow him) was nice enough to get [...]

Epic Book Fail

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:45:52 EST

I was watching Colbert the other night, and caught the very tail end of an interview with author Annie Leonard. She was promoting her new book, “The Story of Stuff.” I didn’t catch enough of the interview to know if I wanted to buy it, but did catch enough to grab my Kindle to order [...]

Modern Family Awesomeness

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:04:03 EST

ABC has an awesome hit show on their hands with Modern Family. While there isn’t anyone who can hold a candle to the sheer personality awesomeness of NPH on How I Met Your Mother, the cast and writing on Modern Family are genius. It’s very rare that I laugh out loud at television, certainly not [...]

Hacking The NY Times Best Seller List

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:05:29 EST

There’s a great podcast I have been listening to since 2006 called Keith and the Girl. The content is most definitely NSFW, but discovering this gem was like finding Howard Stern before everyone knew about it. It’s a fantastic show, and they have also done a great job of building community around it. As of [...]

Simple Tax Idea For Students And Businesses

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:36:20 EST

I have long held that our current system of taxation is a bad one. It’s oppressive, is changed too often, and encourages cheating. Further, the more complicated the tax code, the more likely you are to have to spend more time, and in many cases money, sorting out what you do and don’t owe. It’s [...]

Broken Tablets

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:49:14 EST

Apple released their iPad today and lead with this claim: There are more than enough bloggers looking to give their opinions on the topic, so I will avoid that morass. I want to reserve final judgment until I play with it, but I did come away feeling like this scene from History of the World was [...]

Reality Distortion Explained

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:14:00 EST

The rumor mills and speculation are running at fever pitch. I really should have predicted that 2010 would be the year of the tablet. With bloggers falling all over themselves trying to get the scoop on the Apple table, it seems that the bloggers are trying to call a tablet from Microsoft to be announced tonight, though Mary Jo says “I don’t think so.” With all that in mind, I was trying to figure out how to explain the world of tech in which we live.

My Personal 2010 Predictions

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 09:30:00 EST

In an effort to save a lot of pain and suffering for those people who don’t want to read an incredibly long blog post, I have a nice little summary table. The predictions run the gamut of my personal and professional interests, so they may not be 100% interesting to all people.

Crunchbase Data Mashed Into Microsoft Pivot

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:09:00 EST

About two weeks ago I had the good fortune to spend some time at an offsite where I met Gary Flake. I remember reading the Wired Magazine cover piece on Gary a few years back, but didn’t didn’t have any idea who he was when I was introduced to him at the offsite. As [...]

Introducing Windows Server AppFabric

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:02:00 EST

About one year ago I was fortunate to be working on the launch of Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. With the start of our new fiscal year, I was asked to take over a team which was responsible for the technical marketing for our developer platform product management team. It’s been quite a [...]

Write.NET Code? There’s A Big Prize For That.

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:29:41 EST

Here in the developer platform product management team, we have kicked off a new campaign about the .NET Framework. There are so many people doing so many amazing things with .NET, and we want to hear from you. The site linked to above has stories from some of our customers doing some very unexpected things [...]