By Brandon Watson 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 ... May. 10, 2012 02:42 PM EDT |
By Brandon Watson  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 bough... May. 9, 2012 03:00 AM EDT Reads: 807 |
By Brandon Watson  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 ar... Mar. 23, 2012 10:30 AM EDT Reads: 937 |
By Brandon Watson 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 [...] Mar. 3, 2012 07:55 PM EST Reads: 101 |
By Brandon Watson 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 [..... Nov. 14, 2011 04:11 PM EST Reads: 335 |
By Brandon Watson 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... Nov. 9, 2011 12:42 PM EST Reads: 139 |
By Brandon Watson 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 ... Oct. 13, 2011 12:02 PM EDT Reads: 137 |
By Brandon Watson 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 pharm... Sep. 22, 2011 03:13 AM EDT Reads: 155 |
By Brandon Watson 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 m... Aug. 15, 2011 12:19 PM EDT Reads: 173 |
By Brandon Watson 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... Mar. 28, 2011 07:44 PM EDT Reads: 387 |
By Brandon Watson 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 junki... Mar. 24, 2011 03:21 PM EDT Reads: 1,241 |
By Brandon Watson 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 ma... Mar. 15, 2011 02:35 PM EDT Reads: 323 |
By Brandon Watson 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... Mar. 10, 2011 02:04 PM EST Reads: 805 |
By Brandon Watson 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 w... Mar. 9, 2011 12:36 PM EST Reads: 539 |
By Brandon Watson 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 with... Mar. 8, 2011 12:05 PM EST Reads: 367 |
By Brandon Watson 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 poin... Mar. 4, 2011 06:28 PM EST Reads: 708 |
By Brandon Watson  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 n... Mar. 1, 2011 03:15 PM EST Reads: 3,631 |
By Brandon Watson 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 o... Feb. 27, 2011 10:47 PM EST Reads: 480 |
By Brandon Watson 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 im... Feb. 17, 2011 12:17 PM EST Reads: 317 |
By Brandon Watson 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 [..... Jan. 31, 2011 02:45 AM EST Reads: 388 |
By Brandon Watson 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 ... Sep. 21, 2010 07:31 PM EDT Reads: 956 |
By Brandon Watson 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 feedbac... Sep. 14, 2010 01:30 PM EDT Reads: 965 |
By Brandon Watson 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 h... Sep. 8, 2010 04:29 PM EDT Reads: 1,036 |
By Brandon Watson 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 t... Jul. 27, 2010 11:05 AM EDT Reads: 389 |
By Brandon Watson 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 s... Jul. 26, 2010 01:38 PM EDT Reads: 481 |
By Brandon Watson 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... Jul. 19, 2010 03:20 AM EDT Reads: 434 |
By Brandon Watson  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 bringin... Jul. 14, 2010 11:39 AM EDT Reads: 2,482 |
By Brandon Watson 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 ... Jun. 24, 2010 11:22 AM EDT Reads: 423 |
By Brandon Watson 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 ... Jun. 18, 2010 04:55 PM EDT Reads: 613 |
By Brandon Watson  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 mobil... Jun. 17, 2010 08:58 PM EDT Reads: 2,665 |
By Brandon Watson  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... Jun. 8, 2010 04:07 PM EDT Reads: 3,504 |
By Brandon Watson 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 hou... May. 24, 2010 05:21 AM EDT Reads: 464 |
By Brandon Watson 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. May. 20, 2010 02:31 AM EDT Reads: 416 |
By Brandon Watson  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... Apr. 30, 2010 02:15 PM EDT Reads: 3,306 |
By Brandon Watson 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 t... Apr. 7, 2010 01:16 PM EDT Reads: 587 |
By Brandon Watson 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... Mar. 24, 2010 12:44 PM EDT Reads: 996 |
By Brandon Watson  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 ... Mar. 17, 2010 09:00 AM EDT Reads: 2,811 |
By Brandon Watson 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. H... Mar. 15, 2010 05:09 PM EDT Reads: 741 |
By Brandon Watson 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... Mar. 10, 2010 08:45 PM EST Reads: 419 |
By Brandon Watson 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 tele... Mar. 5, 2010 03:04 AM EST Reads: 435 |
Brandon Watson is Director for Windows Phone 7. He specifically focuses on developers and the developer platform. He rejoined Microsoft in 2008 after nearly a decade on Wall Street and running successful start-ups. He has both an engineering degree and an economics degree from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as an MBA from The Wharton School of Business, and blogs at 
