the next door (so called) geek @rakkimk | your next door geek | friend | blogs mostly on technology, and gadgets.

New look of my webtechnews app showing you all the latest microsoft /web news

You can download it from here. And, it looks like below now. Good thing is, I fetch the list of the blogs from a WebAPI I’ve hosted in my Windows Azure Website, so I can modify the list whenever needed. I fetch these colors as well from the WebAPI, so I could even change the look and feel of the app without submitting an update to the app in the Windows Store! Do you like it? Let me know if you have more blogs to add. When I find time next, I’ll perhaps update this with sorting the articles by date, so that you could see what’s the latest, instead of a grouping by the blog author. May be, a read/unread status too. Honestly this app is my playground where I’m trying to implement some of my learning. Hopefully I won’t break anything with the updates. If I did, let me know. Your feedback is very important to me.

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NASA Image of the Day App – yet another one, but it’s different

I don’t have an app that would generate a billion dollar in revenue, but perhaps be useful to atleast a few that I know of, including me. Here is one more - NASA Image of the Day IOTD app.

This app fetches the NASA Image of the day from their RSS feed, and shows you just 1 image per day. However, it puts the last 6 images that you viewed using this app to the localstorage. You can share the picture, set as your lockscreen right from the app itself. Give it a try, and let me know what you think.

Download it from here.

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webtechnews – my first windows 8 store app

This is my first windows 8 app has been published to the store, and you can download it from here. It’s a very simple HTML/JS app that I wrote, perhaps in a week or so. Design took a bit longer, refreshing all my CSS skills again. Not a great app I know, but just a starter for me.

If you are using Microsoft Web Platform for your development, this app of mine might be useful to you. This aggregates a few important blogs together, and gives you a way to share with others using the share charm. Give it a try, and let me know. A few UI tweaks, ability to add your own custom feed URL are the ones you should expect in the next update, and offline reading in the later.

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I spent more time in getting the vibrant color right, and the CSS shadows right. Here is what the landing page looks like, give it a try if you are interested. I still remember my early days of HTML/CSS with notepad, and IE6. I felt the same excitement in writing this app, in a nutshell there isn’t much I spent time to read with my existing HTML/JS skills, except understanding WinJS, and few controls. There are tons of articles available in Channel9, and MSDN.

What are you waiting for? If I can, you can too. Bring your HTML/JS skills back to life.

Windows 8 rocks!