Hello everyone, I am Daniel Sullivan, a student programmer
attending Drexel University. During my
first year at Drexel, I competed in the Microsoft Imagine Cup (http://www.imaginecup.us/) with my team
the Drexel Dragons. We worked with an
organization in Sierra Leone, Africa to better their community worker
program. They have members of the
community go out to see their patients every day, to administer medicine and
see how they are feeling. These are amputees and very ill people who can't walk
the 10/15 miles it takes to get to the clinic.
The problem was that these workers were using paper surveys and they
weren't able to be accounted for, nor was the data of very much use. The clinic didn't have the time to transfer
all of their data into a digital medium.
My team and I created a three piece platform to solve these
issues. First there was the mobile
portion, built on Windows Phone 7. This
application had a few constraints: 1) There was no using wireless networks
(WiFi, GSM, etc) 2) It had to be as simple as possible, so that the workers
could use it (they are mostly illiterate) 3) It had to track what the workers
were doing. For #3, we leveraged the
fact that every WP is required to have a GPS unit in it, and used that. For #1, we had to look at using a local
storage mechanism. At the time, WP7 did
not allow SQL Express, so we had to resort to object storage, using Perst.Net (http://www.mcobject.com/perst). As for the UI, we used simple words and
leveraged the fact that the Metro UI is already beautify simplistic. The other
components of the app were a desktop application for managing the questions for
the survey, along with uploading the results from the phones to the last
component; a Windows Azure website. This leveraged Windows Azure SQL as well,
for storing the data for the entire organization.
We were very proud of the work we had done, and were
delighted to have been chosen as US Finalists, competing amongst the best of
the best in Redmond this past April. While
we didn't make to the worldwide competition, it was an experience I won't soon
forget, and one I am very happy I did, especially during my freshman year.
As for my future, I have recently had the pleasure of
meeting Mahesh Chand, the head honcho here at C# Corner. He's asked me to build the site a brand new
Windows Phone application, and share my progress with you guys here. I was delighted to be given the opportunity,
so coming soon are semi-daily updates on the status of the project. My goal is that new comers and veterans alike
can gain some perspective into how to build a Windows Phone application, start
to finish.
Feel free to ask me any question down in the comments,
~Dan