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 raci... (more)

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. The tl;dr version is that I can’t si... (more)

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 I... (more)

I was reading an article about how Google is going to change their algorithms to penalize sites that 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 u... (more)

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 email h... (more)

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 this ti... (more)

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 se... (more)

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... (more)

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 ... (more)

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, thi... (more)

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 follow... (more)

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... (more)

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 r... (more)

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 o... (more)

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 t... (more)

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 wit... (more)

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 i... (more)

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: Google:Social as Microsoft:Search That one kind of bent my... (more)

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... (more)

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 impres... (more)