A number of interesting sample applications have been released for C#, VB and C++ developers over the last few months. These include

• C# Sample code for building Peer 2 Peer applications on Vista
• A C# toolkit for developing Facebook applications
• C# interfaces for web services from Digg, YouTube, Amazon, Flickr and other popular sites
• C# WPF tools
• C++ Sample Games

Here are links to some of the most important of these toolkits:

• The Coding 4 Fun Developer Kit
• The Vista P2P ToolKit
• The Facebook Developer Kit
• The Game Creators: Dark GDK  (C++ Only)
• Beginner Developer Learning Center
  • Video: Introduction to Visual C# 2008 Express Edition
  • Introduction to Windows as a Platform

Below you can see a WPF application for Peer to Peer Network programming.

FIgure 2:  An easy to build Peer to Peer application that allows you to chat, send file or share pictures over a network.

The Coding for Fun Developer Kit

This developer kit has code for controlling many powerful technologies that are built into Vista:

• Bluetooth
• Vista Contacts
• Vista Calendar
• Telephony
• Desktop Search
• Power Management

There are also a series of Web Services that you can use to interact with popular Internet destinations

• Yahoo Traffic
• Flickr
• MySpace
• Amazon.com
• Craig's List
• Delicious
• Digg
• YouTube

Below you can see one of the sample applications that comes with the Coding 4 Fun Developer Kit. I entered in the string "LINQ", and the application retrieved related links to books about LINQ found on Amazon.com.

Figure 1: Clicking on the links in this demo application causes a browser to be launched that shows books on Amazon.com related to LINQ.

Vista Peer 2 Peer ToolKit

• Build Peer to Peer Applications using drag and drop WinForms and WPF controls.
• Build applications that stream video and music