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Will XNA be available in Windows 8 Metro Apps?

One of the big things I’ve seen flying around Twitter lately is the question of whether or not XNA is being depricated or faded off into the sunset or whatever.  I can understand how if you base your entire career on a single technology this might be scary, but remember that XNA isn’t available in METRO UI apps only, and that’s because Metro UI uses DirectX 11, and the current XNA implementation uses DirectX 9, which is still supported by the standard desktop view.  This means that XNA is still very much alive and well in the Desktop, and I would say thriving.  XNA isn’t going away anytime soon, and here’s why:

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How to Build an RSS Feed Reader in Windows Phone 7 – Part I: Retrieving, Parsing, and Displaying Post Titles

One of the first applications that I write for a new platform to learn the ropes is an RSS reader.  That rule holds true for Windows Phone 7.  The great thing about the Windows Phone 7 SDK and the .NET 4.0 platform is that everything you need to work with RSS or any other syndication feed is ready for you right out of the box!  With Android development, you need to parse the XML and return values yourself.  For just reading an RSS feed, it’s a nightmare.  The references don’t, however, show up in Visual Studio 2010 automatically, so you’ll need to add them manually.  I’ll go over it all in this guide to programming RSS feeds in Windows Phone 7.