We have a new section on our Visual Studio Developer Center over at MSDN, for getting started on our cloud computing stack.
You will find free downloads, blog postings, developer resource kits, community resources and more linked conveniently from this page.
If you're using Visual Studio, make it a web favorite and/or your VS start page, and you'll quickly have all the latest tools and technology at your fingertips.  
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/cc972640.aspx 

I have been getting inquiries of late from various friends and family members on how they too could get a good position with a company like Microsoft (if not Microsoft itself).
My advice has been to make sure they are up to speed with the latest products and platforms.  
Certainly from a development/engineering perspective, Windows Azure and its derivative building blocks are a sure, safe technology bet in my humble opinion.
So much so, that I have been changing my specialization focus over to the Windows Azure platform/stack for the past several months.
I'm pleased to announce that my work internally at Microsoft is also switching focus to Windows Azure, and I'm excited about the possibilities this will bring to the table for our customers in the future.  

For all my SharePoint friends, rest-assurred I still will be blogging about SharePoint issues, and I have a whole series of blog postings lined up in conjunction with our beta releases of SharePoint Server 2010.
Stay tuned for more information.  

Rob Jarratt, one of our Visual Studio Team System Core Rangers, has developed a new beta that was put out this morning, with some top requested features for performing load testing.  Judging from the thousands of downloads of his last release, this release, which features ASMX support, will sure to be a hit.  This release is out on the Codeplex WCF Load Test site.

This tool takes a WCF trace file and a WCF client proxy, or a WCF interface contract, and generates a unit test that replays the same sequence of calls found in the trace file. The code generated is easily modifiable so that data variations can be introduced for the purpose of doing performance testing.

The tool generates code for both Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008. It also installs a wizard into both editions of Visual Studio for creating the trace and processing it from inside Visual Studio. If both editions are present the tool is installed into both editions. The source code is a Visual Studio 2005 project.

The tool has the following main features:

• Replay of captured scenario in a unit test that can be included in a load test.
• Support for the DataContractSerializer.
• Support for message contracts.
• ASMX support (beta)
• Support for proxies generated using svcutil.
• Support for clients that create proxies at run time from contract interfaces.
• Supports calls to multiple services in a single scenario.
• Supports multiple calls to the same service operation.
• Filtering by SOAP action of which messages in the trace to replay.
• Readable and modifiable code is generated.
• Automatic association of trace message with proxy method (requires all operations to have a unique SOAP action).
• Support for client and server side traces.
• A command line tool for processing traces and generating code.
• Visual Studio 2005/2008 integration (Team Developer, Team Test, Team Suite and for 2008 also Professional)) that can be used instead of the command line tool.

Kudos to Rob and the VSTS Core Ranger team for putting together another outstanding tool.  This is going to assist many developers who need to test web/cloud services and ultimately will improve quality of solutions in use today.

On Tuesday, we announced free trials of hosted Microsoft Team Foundation Server in partnership with TeamDevCentral, which is an Inner Circle Partner.  This is really exciting news for me, because many customers have asked about using hosted TFS in the past.  This is also a great option for smaller development shops / ISVs.

This offering provides our potential customers with a lightweight trial experience. In addition, this gives our existing customers another option for trying the full Team System experience, which enables them to quickly and easily get up and running with a complete Team System environment without the need to provision Team Foundation Server.

During the six-week trial period, TeamDevCentral (TDC) will provide guidance to customers, further enhancing the trial experience.

The six-week TDC trial includes:

ü  Accounts allowing you to experience different team roles and to collaborate within a project.

ü  Up to 4 hours of guidance and/or support for the trial can be used for any type of advice related to TFS or Visual Studio Team System.  For me, this is a huge bonus for many customers.

TeamDevCentral Web site

Press Release: TeamDevCentral Offers Free Trials of Hosted Microsoft Team Foundation Server

New Team System Trial Page

Brian Harry’s blog post for his first impressions.

I urge anyone interested to give it a try, and let me know what you like / didn’t like.