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Editor’s note: This is a contributed post by Marcus Austin. Marcus has over 25 years of experience in tech and the business sector. He currently works for Firebrand Training as a Technical Author.

The Windows 8 app market is booming, according to MetroScore Scanner there are now more than 100,000 apps in the Windows 8 app store, twice the number of apps that were available just a mere three months prior. A great catalyst to the fast growth was probably due to the reward systemlaunched by Microsoft to entice developers to submit good apps to the Windows Store.

While far from the 700,000 apps in the Play Store and 850,000 iOS apps in the App store, 100,000 apps in the Windows Store means your Win 8 app stands a great chance of standing out. There’s never been a better time to create a Windows 8 app. Plus, it’s also a lot easier to do than you think, and you don’t even have to know how to code.

To Build A Windows 8 App

If you’re a Windows developer then you’ll already have everything you need to create a Windows app, which means there’s no steep learning curve, and there’s no need to spend a fortune on new coding tools.

If you’re not then you’ll need a copy of Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8 it’s free and available to download from Microsoft. And a of course you’ll need a copy of Windows 8.

If you’re a Mac user then you’ll be pleased to hear that you can build Windows 8 apps on Mac. Microsoft is so keen for everyone to produce Windows apps that they’ve created a helpful page to show users how to build Windows 8 apps using a Mac.

Coding Skills Required?

If you want to write your own code, then you’ll need knowledge of either a web development language like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, or a conventional programming language, such as C++, C# or Visual Basic (VB.NET) and XAML.

If you’re unfamiliar with any of those languages then there’s a free ebook Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript from Microsoft Press, that covers everything you need to know to build a Windows 8 app. There are also a handful of sample apps and chunks of code that you can download and cut and paste to make things easier.

How To Build A Windows 8 App Without Coding Skills

If programming isn’t really your thing and you want to create a simple information app then theZipapp web site is just for you. Zipapp will let you create an entire app without you having to produce a single line of code. With this, one can create apps with static pages and with feedsfrom Twitter / YouTube / Facebook and any compatible RSS feed, ideal for users with a blog or active Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels.  

If you are going to get your hands dirty and code, then the good news is that the code for Windows apps is similar to the way you would code for a Windows desktop program currently, and there are plenty of ‘Hello World’ examples available for you to work through if you’re unsure.

Building ‘Touch First’

While the coding is similar the interface is something new altogether. The Windows Modern user interface (UI) was designed for touch screens, and works in a different way than the standard Windows UI that we’ve grown used to.

Microsoft wants app designers to design for ‘touch first’. Developers will need to think in a more graphical way and consider things, such as the increasing the spacing between links on the app(fingers are ‘larger’ than a mouse pointer making links that are too close together difficult to click on).

The upshot of this ‘touch first’ design requirement is that you will probably need to spend a bit longer on the design than you would on a normal desktop application.

Additionally if you’re going to produce an app for Windows Phone 8 devices you will also need to consider what the app will look like on different devices and in different orientations e.g. a small portrait-format screen rather than the normal landscape screen you get on a PC.

Mastering Windows 8 Design

If this sounds tricky then there are a few very useful web pages and books available that can help you get to grips with the Modern design. The Planning Windows Store apps pages on MSDN are a good starting point and will guide you through all the things you’ll need to consider before designing your app.

Additionally the Design Guidance for Windows Store apps pages give some user experience guidelines as well as information on things like:

• how to organise content
• where to place your common commands like copy, paste
• what commands go in the app bar or in Charms
• what touch gestures to use
• where to place advertising if you need it
• Testing Apps With App Certification Kit

Once you’re happy with your design and you’ve created your code for the app you need to test the app. To help test the app Microsoft has created the Windows App Certification Kit which analyses your applications code and tests the app for reliability, performance, adherence to Windows security features as well as conducting a test to see if the app conforms to the Windows 8 Modern UI.

Note if you’re thinking of creating an app for the Windows RT then there are additional tests that you need to consider.

Submitting Your App To The Store

After testing, the next stage is to submit it to the Windows Store for approval and to do this you will need a Windows Store account.

Getting A Windows Store Account

You can get a free account if you are:

• A student: You can get one through the dreamspark programme
• A start-up: You can get one through the BizSpark programme
• An MSDN Subscriber: Go to your MSDN Subcription dashboard where you will find an item called Windows Store Developer Account.

If you don’t fit into any of these categories then you’ll need to buy a developer account, and to do that you select Project > Store > Open Developer Account on the Visual Studio Express menu.

It’s $49 (£31.50) for an individual and $99 (£63.67) for a business.

Submitting The App

Submitting the app for approval is the final stage of the process. You need to upload the app to the store where it’s then tested and the code investigated. Unfortunately like the majority of approval processes there’s no set time scale, it all depends on how many apps are submitted and how complicated your app is.

At the very least you should build in time at the end of the project for a couple of approval cycles, hopefully if you have followed all the guidelines it will be approved at the first try. But if your app fails you will need to factor time in to fix the problem, then resubmit.

Congratulations! You Have A Windows 8 App!

Once the app is approved it will be added to the Windows store and that’s where the next journey starts. If you’re very lucky it may get picked up by the store’s editors and made a favourite app; if it isn’t then you’ll need to start promoting it on your own — and that’s a whole new article for another day.

In business, there is a right way and a wrong way to do just about everything. This certainly extends to asking for favors or any other kind of help from someone who is busy and less likely to answer every single piece of email they get. Whether this is a client, a potential client, or simply one of your personal heroes whose brain you’d like to pick, there is a way to make a request of them that will get them to happily reply.

Likewise, there’s a way to make requests that will get you ignored forever. We’re going to explore how to do things the right way, so that neither you nor your busy recipient will be wasting any valuable time

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Don’t Ask Bad Questions

Many people say there’s no such thing as a bad question, but I say that’s a lie. If it’s something that is frivolous, impersonal, or that could be answered by a five-second search on Google, it’s a bad question to ask someone who has a limited amount of time.

                                                        (Image source: Oberazzi)

One thing I like to do, if I have a pressing, work-related question, is to find a popular book on the subject at the library, check it out, and read it. I take plenty of notes on all the possible answers given in the book, and usually I can find the answer to my question in short order. If not, I can either choose to read one or two more books on the subject until I’m satisfied, or I can send a quick note to someone I know will have the answer, making sure to explain that I’ve already attempted to find it on my own.

People, especially busy people, appreciate initiative (why wouldn’t they, being so busy all the time?), and the fact that you haven’t simply come to them with a dumb, generic question will usually delight them and make them more interested in helping you out.

Be Considerate Of Their Time

Let’s face it: we’re all busy. If you’re a working professional, you are inundated with a deluge of emails, voice mails, texts, social media messages, blog posts, and so on. Not to mention interactions with the real people in your life and all of the tasks, large and small, that have to get done. Often, people are busy simply attempting to multitask their lives, not to mention their work.

                                                     (Image source: zev)

Be aware of what’s going on in your intended recipient’s life before you pose your question. If possible, research them a little bit. Do they have a family? Are they currently observing any kind of holiday or taking a vacation? Are they in “work mode,” “family mode,” or “leave-me-alone mode?”

Finding out the current situation of your busy person will give you valuable information about how you should phrase your question, and when you can best expect a positive response

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Work On The Question

If you absolutely can’t avoid asking a question in the middle of a person’s busiest time of day, make sure you word it so that they can devote the least amount of brain power to their answeras possible. Simple, fill in the blank answers, or yes/no questions are the best.

Play with different formats, and if appropriate, consider a shorter delivery method, like a tweet or a Facebook post rather than an email.

Try To Guess Their Answer

By this, I don’t mean attempt to answer the question yourself. There’s no point in asking it in that case. I mean that you should try to guess the way in which they will answer you. Before you send that email, tweet, or Facebook message, think of the likely response you will get. How does the language sound? Is it in simple terms?

Try to answer a similarly worded question yourself first. If it’s too difficult for you to answer quickly, it’s too long or complicated and you need to change it.

Make It Super Easy

Again, make it easy for people to answer your questions. Make them short, easy, and, if you can, entertaining. Busy people are human too, and sometimes a splash of humor is just what they need to pick them up and help them get through their hectic day.

And remember that not every question in your email has to be strictly work related. Engaging people casually, not just professionally, is what builds real relationships that last.

If they have a spouse or children, ask about them. If you know they’re working on an exciting project or are working on their graduate degree, ask how it’s going. No matter how busy they are, everyone will be more likely to remember the person who took the time to ask them a simple, human question about their lives.

Give People A Directive

Calls to action aren’t just for websites and marketing materials. Everyone appreciates knowing what is required of them, and busy people appreciate it more than most. Don’t ask vague, open-ended question without giving directions on what, specifically, you want in terms of a response.

   

                                             (Image source: Fabrizio Sciami)

Tell them to do something, anything – click here, watch this, reply with your top 3 ideas, et cetera.

It’s not condescending or manipulative to have a call to action in your emails. On the contrary, you alleviate people’s stress and save them the mental energy of figuring out how to reply. As a result, your request is much more likely to get a response, instead of a short trip to the trash bin.

In Conclusion

Remember, if you do everything right and still fail to get a response, you shouldn’t take it personally. Most likely the person was simply too wrapped up in their lives and responsibilities that they couldn’t get to your request. It’s likely nothing personal, and most people will appreciate it if you simply try again, rather than vanish.

If you just disappear, it sends the message that you weren’t really looking to make a meaningful exchange with the person in the first place. Don’t come off like an opportunist – be persistent and respectful, and you may find that busy people will start carving out time to approach you with requests, rather than the other way around.

Every success book, seminar or life coach out there can tell you that failure is just a stepping stone towards success. And they’re right. It is. But that simple piece of information won’t help you. Information is power only when applied in real-life situations. In this case, that means being able to view failure for what it really is: feedback

You then simply extract different lessons from that feedback and you’re on your way to success. That sounds easier than it really is. Everybody gets caught up in the day-to-day drama of work, family or friends. It’s easy to forget the basic rules and feel like a failure after something doesn’t work out, especially in business.

Failure Beats You Up

It’s the habitual first ‘instinct’ to feel disappointed in yourself when the start-up you’ve invested so much in fails. After such a defeat, you couldn’t care less about the mantra failure equals feedback that those ‘success gurus’ keep chanting. It’s understandable. But let me show you some real-life examples that will actually prove that that very mantra is true.

Here are 5 giant entrepreneurial figures (whose net worth in total comes in at around $90 billion or so) who didn’t succumb in the face of early failure, but rather enjoyed and appreciaanted it for the lessons heeded. And they aren’t afraid to admit it.

FunBug – Nick Woodman

Net Worth $1,750,000,000

Nick was a ‘B student’ during college and an avid surfer, a hobby which often times interfered with his studies. He wasn’t born a billionaire. Before creating the now wildly successful brand of wearable cameras – GoPro, he failed in great style with two online startups during the crazed dotcom bubble of 2000.

The Failures

First, he created EmpowerAll.com, an e-commerce site aimed at a young demographic which sold very cheap electronics. The company didn’t make any profit, so it was quickly shut down. That didn’t drive our future billionaire out of the business arena; it drove him to try harder, so in 1999 he set up FunBug, an online marketing company.

The site gave users the chance to win cash prizes in return for participating in sweepstakes. It was marketing through games. He even managed to raise $3.9 million in funding from different investors. The company was on the rise, but by 2001, Nick had to admit failure once again. Hewasn’t able to create a sustainable user base from which to drive profit via the companies he was marketing.

Here’s what he said to Forbes about failing the second time and losing almost $4 million dollars:

"I mean nobody likes to fail, but the worst thing was I lost my investors’ money and these were people that believed in this young guy that was passionate about this idea… you start to question: are my ideas really good?"

The Lesson

After losing the second company, Nick cleared his head by going on a surf trip, a long one. Once back, he started working on a prototype for a camera which can be used by athletes: GoPro.

‘I was so afraid that GoPro was going to go away like Funbug that I would work my ass off. That’s what the first boom and bust did for me. I was so scared that I would fail again that I was totally committed to succeed.’

Only this time, there was no bust, only the boom. GoPro made him one of the youngest billionaires in the world, and the owner of the fastest-growing camera company in America.

Traf-O-Data – Bill Gates

Net Worth $72,700,000,000

Before being the richest person in the world and owning Xanadu 2.0 (the ‘Bill Gates House’), a computerized residence with real-time adjustable temperature, music and lightining for each pin-wearing guest, Bill Gates was a failing entrepreneur.

The Failure

His first company was Traf-O-Data, the objective of which was ‘to read the raw data from roadway traffic counters and create reports for traffic engineers‘. In this way, the company would optimize traffic and end road congestion.

The company’s product was the Traf-O-Data 8008, a device which could read traffic tapes and process the data. They first tried to sell the processing service to the local County, but their first demo failed because the machine ‘didn’t work’, recalled Gates.

The Lesson

His partner, Paull Allen, summarised the experience for exactly what it was: ‘Even though Traf-O-Data wasn’t a roaring success, it was seminal in preparing us to make Microsoft’s first product a couple of years later’

And happily, that’s exactly what they did. They kept on going and Microsoft became the largest personal-computer software company in the world. But it’s still nice to know that even the richest philanthropist in the world can make business blunders.

Dyson – James Dyson

Net Worth $3,000,000,000

Most people think inventors are born inventors, with some special talent or gift. Their genetic makeup must be different than that of us mere mortals. But in fact, the opposite is true. Inventors are created; they’re ‘grinders’.

Sir James Dyson’s company is now a worldwide success, selling bag-less vacuum cleaners in over 50 countries. It made him a billionaire. But he had to fail a lot of times before he can get to that winning formula.

The Failure

In fact, he created 5127 vacuum prototypes, all of which could be considered ‘failed attempts’. Hespent 15 years perfecting his product before taking the DCO1 to market in ’93. The vacuum works on his own patented principle of cyclonic separation, that’s why it doesn’t need a bag. This innovation took a lot of dedication:

‘There are countless times an inventor can give up on an idea. By the time I made my 15th prototype, my third child was born. By 2,627, my wife and I were really counting our pennies. By 3,727, my wife was giving art lessons for some extra cash. These were tough times, but each failure brought me closer to solving the problem.’

With such relentless drive despite failures and hardships, how could Dyson not be a billionaire? I dare say, no matter what other business he would have started, he’d be successful. That’s what dedication gets you.

The Lesson

True inventors are the biggest failing lot you could encounter. And that’s a compliment. Failing is the only way through which you can create something new. But real inventors, they don’t even call it ‘failing’. As Thomas Edison famously put it:‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’ Sir James Dyson, the founder of the Dyson Company really took this principle to heart.

So if you want to create anything, the way you view your failed attempts will decide whether or not you’re going to succeed.

Apple – Steve Jobs

Net Worth $10,200,000,000

We all know Steve Jobs as the Guru entrepreneur, the genius behind best-selling products such as the iPod, iPad, the iPhone or the MacBook. He is the most influential business figure of our time and he’s going to be forever reminded as the Da Vinci of our tech-world renaissance.

The Failure

What we know less of is Steve are his nothing-burger creations. Believe it or not, Apple was producing exactly that at one time. Remember the Lisa? Of course not. Steve managed to waste millions of dollars in development to create such mass amnesia. It would have been cheaper to simply hypnotize every customer out there.

He had a track-record for this sort of thing, considering that in the previous Apple dud episode, he and partner Steve Wozniak invested their savings and time into the Apple I, which sold a not-so-impressive 175 units. But it was the Lisa development fiasco which got Steve Jobs kicked outof the company he founded.

Applying the principle ‘failure is just feedback’, Jobs went on to create another company: NeXT. That company also met its demise, due to hardware issues in the product. Eventually the software division was sold to Apple, and Steve returned to his starting point.

The Lesson

But now, armed with so many failures, Jobs was more determined than ever to succeed. His dream of creating ‘a company that will still stand for something a generation or two from now‘ just like ‘Walt Disney did, and Hewlett and Packard, and the people who built Intel‘ was finally going to manifest.

Ask yourself this: What if Steve had stopped? How would the world be different now?

Virgin’s Richard Branson

Net Worth $4,600,000,000

Richard Branson really cashed in on the ‘failure principle’. He made it work to the point where he’s one of the most well-known entrepreneurs in the world. The Virgin Brand is one of the most recognizable brands out there, carrying a lot of weight, especially thanks to Richard’s charming persona and televised adventures.

The Failures

But if you were to meet him in his teens, you wouldn’t really bet on his later success. Branson had poor reading and math skills, dropped out of high-school and is proud to admit he’s dyslexic all his life. Not really your first choice for a billionaire philanthropist knight and worldwide media icon.

But this guy, with his perfect 59-year old blonde hair and dazzling mumbling charm didn’t always have a hold over an empire of 400 companies. His first business endeavor, the Student Magazine which he started when he was 16, had difficulties with, believe it or not, the UK’s law enforcement agencies. Richard almost went to jail for publishing remedies for veneral disease in the magazine.

It didn’t stop there. His Virgin record shops, in the midst of cash-flow problems, almost put him in jail again. This time it was for something more serious: tax evasion. After spending one night in prison, the plea bargain for £60,000 was paid.

The experience, as he recalls, had a big impact on him: ‘I vowed to myself that I would never again do anything that would cause me to be imprisoned or, indeed, do any kind of business deal that would embarrass me.’

The trend of failures however kept on going for him for pretty much his entire life: Virgin Cola (for which he drove a tank in Times Square), Virgin Vodka, Virgin Vie, Virgin Brides (for which he dressed up as a bride), Virgin Clothing, Virgin Cars, Virgin Digital all failed. And the list could go on for a long time.

The Lesson

I guess you could say Branson is the king of the entrepreneurship club, according to his definition:‘Learn from failure. If you are an entrepreneur and your first venture wasn’t a success, welcome to the club!’

So, Failure is Feedback!

Conclusion

The fact of the matter is most of the people you see in Forbes’ list of richest people in the worldhad to take enormous risks to get there. That almost always means a lot of failing. I know it’s easy to put on tag on the rich and say: They had it easy. It’s their parents. They were lucky. It’s probably secret societies or reincarnation. Or maybe alien control.

You can find a dozen reasons to internalize somebody else’s success as ‘luck’ or ‘special access to information’. The reality is 73 out of the first 100 billionaires in the world are self-made. That’s a Bloomberg fact. There’s no conspiracy going on. They just work harder than you did.

Those self-made billionaires simply applied some core, fundamental knowledge everybody else has access to. They did what everyone only read about. But knowing and doing are very different things. Failure and success are very similar in that they’re both spiral staircases. Once you get on, inertia keeps you going, and adds some dizziness to the process. Stop failure’s spiral by seeing it as feedback or you’re going to go deeper and eventually crash and burn.

So what are you going to do next time you fail? Give up? Or become the next billionaire?