Once again, I’m very excited to announce that I’ve finished porting my digital pitch pipe application, “Pitch Perfect” from its original Windows Phone 7 incarnation to Android, and it’s now available for free (ad-based) from the Android marketplace!  I hope you’ll give it a try.  I got some great feedback on Tag Master, and I hope to continue to get great feedback on Pitch Perfect.  I hope you’ll give it a try, and tell me what you like and what you don’t!  I know I’m not the best in the world when it comes to app aesthetics, but I hope it’s pleasant enough to use and functional.  It’s been a nice little personal side project for me, and hearing about people using these apps is a blast!

For me, this app is particularly useful because I struggle to remember the mapping from key signature to key note (what is 3 flats again?  A?  E flat?  I can never remember!), so having that built right into the app keeps it at my fingertips.  In addition, I’ve added a feature to the Android app that allows you to keep a list of songs and their keys, so you’re never stuck trying to remember what key that song you’re about to start rehearsing/performing was in.

Again, thanks to my friends in Voices in Harmony for helping me do some light testing of the application.  I’m sure I’ll discover things worth changing, but it’s immensely helpful!

Anyway, as always, I’ll leave you with the goods.  You can find the details here:

http://www.davidpoll.com/applications/pitch-perfect

Or get it directly from the Android marketplace:

https://market.android.com/details?id=depollsoft.pitchperfect

I’m very excited to announce that I’ve just finished porting my Barbershop Tag application, "Tag Master" from its original Windows Phone 7 incarnation to Android, and it is now available for free from the Android marketplace!  I hope you’ll give it a try — tell me what you like and what you don’t, and who knows, maybe it’ll end up in the next version!

I know for me, having one of these apps for my phone (originally a Windows Phone 7 device, which is why I built for that platform first) is extremely useful when singing at afterglows or just for browsing tags.  It’s been awesome seeing all of these other developers building apps for the various smartphone platforms and truly bringing a modern edge to barbershop.  It doesn’t hurt that it’s a real opportunity for me to "geek out", both on Barbershop and on software!

A huge thanks to the folks at barbershoptags.com for running an incredible service to our community, and to the small set of friends in Voices in Harmony who’ve been helping me beta test the application.

Anyway, you can find more details here (also includes information about the Windows Phone 7 app, which I hope to update soon):

http://www.davidpoll.com/applications/tag-master/

Or go directly to the android marketplace:

https://market.android.com/details?id=depollsoft.tagmaster

Hey folks!  For those of you who were trying to access my blog in the last 3 or 4 hours (or more, I’m not 100% sure when it started), you were probably not met with much success.  Unfortunately, my server’s ISP had been hit with a DDoS attack, bringing down my server’s internet access.  I just finished working with my service provider to get things up and running again.  In the meantime, my sincere apologies!  I hope it didn’t leave folks in the dark for too long!

Hiya, folks!  Welcome to my brand new blog.  My name is David Eitan Poll, and I’m a recent addition to the Application Framework (AppFx) Program Management (PM) team.  I’m a Southern California native, and until my move up to Redmond, I called the O.C. my home.  After high school, I scurried up to the Bay Area to work toward a degree (or two) in Computer Science at UC Berkeley (Go Bears!).  Between years at Berkeley, I continued my trek up the west coast to Redmond to do not just one, but two PM internships with my current team.

Well, now I’m back in full force, and I’m excited to be sharing my blog with you, “the public”.  I’m thrilled to be working on Silverlight – there’s lots to be excited about.  On the eve of MIX ‘09 in Vegas, there will doubtless be plenty to talk about when it comes to Silverlight and business applications.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with an obligatory snippet of Silverlight XAML:

<UserControl x:Class="SimpleApplication.MainPage"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    Width="400" Height="300">
    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
        <TextBlock Text="The David says: Hello World!"
                   HorizontalAlignment="Center"
                   VerticalAlignment="Center" />
    </Grid>
</UserControl>

Ok, it doesn’t do much, but it’s an opportunity to post a first snippet on my blog.  Don’t be mad!

Happy trails – I’ll see you soon!