Awesome news. Hacker Chick, Abby Fichtner, has some details in the Microsoft BizSpark blog. Congats to Kinvey!

Kinvey, Backend as a Service, Closes $2M Round

We knew Kinvey was up to all good things when Atlas Venture’s Fred Destin introduced their Boston 2011 TechStars Demo Day presentation with the surprise announcement that he was leading their seed round with a $1 million investment.

(Okay, we actually had a pretty good idea long before that as we watched them evolve their ideas on how to help developers create Bad asS apps).

And so we’re extremely excited (if not terribly surprised) to share that they just closed out that seed round at $2M. In the words of TechCrunch, Kinvey aims to let developers skip past all the boring database-building and get right into the fun stuff.

The Microsoft fiscal year (FY) started on July 1, and it’s our time of year to do things like plan our career path, training, etc. I was just looking at the training I did in Redmond (around) 10 years ago and I thought it would be interesting to post the list. Some of the classes were several hours per week or a week at a time, others are one-off lectures. Amazing to think that .NET was so new then…

I met the guys from Panopto in Pittsburg a couple of years ago and they floored me with the demo of their lecture capture software product. I worked with Christopher Griffin to get them into BizSpark One and they’ve been turned out to be an excellent partner for that program. I would encourage you to check out their Silverlight-based sample recordings to see how really well done this product is. 

Check out the GeekWire story below for an interview with Co-Founder (and former Microsoftie) Eric Burns.

Startup Spotlight: Carnegie Mellon transplant takes root in Seattle with Panopto

Panopto was founded in 2007 with technology from Carnegie Mellon University. But the company is now growing its presence in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood, thanks in part to a connection to Microsoft.

The company’s co-founder and CTO, former Carnegie Mellon researcher Eric Burns, previously worked on book and academic search technologies for Microsoft’s Windows Live unit. (Now Bing).

At Panopto, he’s now leading the charge to develop a video, audio and screen recorder that that helps individuals capture everything from city council meetings to academic lectures to concerts.

In the latest installment of Startup Spotlight, we chatted with Burns to get his take on what makes the company tick.

Good stuff from our Partner Ignition blog…

If you do any WP7, Silverlight, or WPF development, you’re probably not going to want to miss this.

Future of Silverlight

Keynote Starts December 2, 2010 at 9:00 pacific time

• Hear what’s coming next from Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie
• Training, labs & swag
• Online or in-person at Microsoft HQ, December 2nd 2010
• It’s just like an extra day of PDC, dedicated to Silverlight

In the next year or so, a number of our BizSpark Startups will come to the end or their three years in BizSpark. Microsoft wants to be ready to help these companies transition into non-BizSpark partners as painlessly as possible.

Today we posted our offer to graduating BizSpark Startups. You can find the details here:

BizSpark Graduation Offer

The BizSpark Graduation Offer allows Startups who graduate from BizSpark to:

1. Keep, at no charge, all the software they currently use*, and

2. Have the option to purchase a subscription or maintenance to keep their software updated

Highlights:

After three years in the program, we will waive the $100 exit fee and offer the following:

ü Startups can renew their MSDN subscriptions at any level, starting at $935 for two years, per developer (MSDN renewals include Windows Azure benefits – compute hours, SQL storage, etc.)

ü Startups can purchase the first two years of Microsoft Software Assurance (upgrades, support and training) for production server licenses at a 50% discount.

If you’re not currently in BizSpark, check out the site at http://bizspark.com. If you’re eligible, apply for the program. If you’re a startup on the east coast of the US, go ahead and drop me a note at brianjo@microsoft.com and I’ll work with you directly.

It’s like watching your kids grow up.  

Brianjo

No, not that kind of curse. Brandon has a great post on the Windows Team Blog about BizSpark Startup Curse. Check it out.

Managing Game User Interface Add-ons with the Curse Client from Curse.com

I consider myself a casual gamer. I play a few PC games, mostly Games for Windows – LIVE titles, and of course Xbox. But this week I’ve been exposed to an interesting area of online gaming. Some of the more advanced gamers out there might find it sad that prior to this week, I had no idea there is such a big community of user interface add-on authors who create free plug-ins for online games like World of Warcraft. I had, of course, heard of and played World of Warcraft before, but didn’t know there were user interface add-ons for the game. User interface add-ons are plug-ins that change the user interface that a player utilizes in a game. This is where the folks from Curse.com come in. They have created a client for Windows – the Curse Client – that is designed specifically to deliver user interface add-ons that 3rd party authors publish through Curse.com.

I mentioned on FB last week that a big patch came out for World of Warcraft last Tuesday and that one of the things that Curse was able to do was to mitigate traffic spike problems by moving to the Microsoft Web Platform. They seemed to have handled lasts weeks patch with no problem at all.

I’ve been working with a BizSpark startup called MyWebCareer.com. This site lets you monitor and manage your “Online Career Brand”.  The site is one of the largest Azure applications I’ve seen, but you wouldn’t know it just by looking at it. Very cool stuff. Check it out.

From their About page:

Based in Northern Virginia, MyWebCareer was founded in January 2010 by a group of executives with over 30 years of collective experience in developing mission critical solutions for US Federal Law Enforcement, Intelligence and Forensics clients.

What do you know about your Online Footprint?

Almost everything you do on the Internet can be traced back to you and nearly everyone has left some online footprint(s). These online footprints can include references to you on corporate websites, blog posts, press releases, and social or business network profiles. Collectively these footprints make up your online brand. Employers, colleagues, friends or just acquaintances are increasingly using ever more sophisticated Internet search engines to research your online brand to gain additional insight about you.

At MyWebCareer we have created a service for Career Professionals that enables you to uncover and evaluate your online footprint. Our product integrates technologies and methodologies that have been successfully utilized by the law enforcement and intelligence communities since 2001. Our objective is to provide Career Professionals with insight into their online brand and to offer tools to make this data accessible, manageable, and actionable. We use sophisticated link analysis, visualization and semantics technologies to enable you to quickly evaluate and explore data that may relate to you.

At MyWebCareer we know all about privacy and data protection. Our approach to privacy is simple. Your data is available to you only. We will never share or sell your data with any third party without your express permission.

Really excited for this. Be sure to check out the Windows Phone 7 launch events linked below:

Today we announced that Windows Phones will be available for consumer purchase thru At&T November 8th! Make sure your app is ready in time for consumers by following the below timeline:

• Oct 11: Participating early certification developers will receive instructions on submitting their xaps, allowing those apps to be published in Marketplace in the lead up to, and after, launch.
• Oct 12-November: Microsoft will continue processing submissions and prioritizing new requests in the order they are received until the self-serve submission process is broadly enabled.

Need help getting started with how to build your app and the resources available? Check out the Windows Phone 7 Launch Events and MPR below.

WP7 APP DEMO:

Windows Phone 7 Launch Events:

Get ready to capitalize on this exciting new frontier with two days of fast-paced learning. Day One takes you under the hood of Windows Phone 7 with the tools and fundamentals of application development, plus design scenarios using Silverlight, XNA and the Windows Phone 7 SDK. Day Two is all about turning your napkin sketches into real, sellable apps. Go at your own pace to build your app and upload it to the full-service Marketplace. Register at www.msdnevents.com/wp7.

Additional Resources:

Microsoft Platform Ready is always available online to help you develop, test and deploy your WP7 app. Get access to trainings, offers and 24/7 support @ http://www.microsoftplatformready.com/home.aspx.

Eric Ligman announced today that Microsoft Security Essentials will be available to small business for free in October. I use Microsoft Security Essentials on all the machines in my house and it’s saved our bacon a number of times. Check out Eric’s post on the solution for small business and the other options that are available.

Announcing: Microsoft Security Essentials available FREE to Small Businesses in October!

Here is some great news for all of the small businesses out there from Microsoft that I am very happy to be able to tell you about!

As we all know, small businesses are under incredible pressure to:

1. Reduce operating costs
2. Improve productivity
3. Grow their business
4. Do all of this in a very challenging economic climate

It’s also no secret that most small businesses today do not have a dedicated IT professional on staff to manage their IT resources (which you may recall is why we originally launched the Small Business Specialist Community of partners worldwide). Small business owners and employees are focused on running their business, not managing complicated IT infrastructure.

For those reasons, we are extremely excited today to let you know that Microsoft is making its Microsoft Security Essentials available to small businesses on up to 10 PCs for FREE, beginning in early October!  By providing Microsoft Security Essentials to small businesses free of charge, Microsoft extends its commitment to help these companies save money and grow their business by offering no-cost protection from viruses, spyware and other malicious threats.