The Windows Azure training Kit is a free download that is chock-full of useful training content including videos, hands-on-labs, presentations and demos. The material in the kit covers the Windows Azure Platform including: Windows Azure, SQL Azure and...

If you have an MSDN Premium or BizSpark subscription you should be aware that for the next 8 months you automatically have 750 Windows Azure Compute hours, 10GB of durable storage and 1,000,000 transactions per month absolutely free! You also have...

ARCast.TV - Enabling Architects with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 In this talk, Cameron Skinner , Product Unit Manager for Visual Studio Team System, and Zhiming Xue discuss the challenges architects often face and how they may benefit from new features...

With Open XML SDK 2.0, it becomes much easier to create Microsoft Office (2007 and 2010) based solutions with managed code than to work with VSTO (Office runtime for Visual Studio through interop) directly. The December 2009 Community Technical Preview...

Windows XP mode is an optional add-on to Windows 7 that provides a seamless virtual environment to run applications depending on XP. If it becomes necessary to uninstall Windows XP Mode, all you have to do is to uninstall it as you would with any application...

A recent article “ Windows 7's XP Mode: what it is, how it works, who it's for ” by Peter Bright published at Ars Technica is one of the best that I’ve seen on the topic. It explains what Windows XP Mode is in great details, including setup screens, how...

With Windows 7 Federated Search users can access and interact with both internal and external contents and data from within Windows Explorer. Much has been written, for example, David Chou’s blog , about what the Federated Search is and how to search...

How many times have you called your cell phone carrier, or your cable provider and received an automated message to authenticate yourself (phone number, address, etc..)?  Then, the split second you get someone on the phone, they do what?  They...

A while back we told you about the Windows Azure TCO/ROI calculator designed to help you measure the potential savings of product development or migration to Windows Azure platform services. At the time the calculator was only available on-line...

An updated version of the Tailspin Travel demo has been released that is focused exclusively on showing off some of the new features in ASP.NET MVC 2. Tailspin Travel is a sample travel booking application, this version highlights the benefits of ASP...

Ever wonder what performance issues you will run into when you attempt to take advantage of the new Parallel processing capabilities in .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010?   Ever think that all it takes to go from LINQ to PLINQ is to add a “.AsParallel...

As Silverlight RIA applications more into the mainstream enterprise business applications, a need quickly arises to to ensure that your vital corporate data (like SSN’s) is protected and only downloaded and visible to authorized users.  In this blog...

On January 19, the "Beta" tag was removed from the Silverlight version of Bing Maps - along with a couple of new features and Bing Maps Application Gallery mash-ins – like the ability to choose a custom map – like the “treasure Map” view shown...

If you like the Netflix Silverlight player’s ability to show thumbnails while fast-forwarding, here’s an example that does it with The Silverlight Media Framework player and Expression Encoder: http://blogs.msdn.com/synergist/archive/2010/01/22/scrubbing...

If you want to know the health status of Windows Azure Platform services in each of our data centers at any time take a look at the Windows Azure Platform dashboard at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/support/status/servicedashboard.aspx . ...

Brian H. Prince talks with Stephen Giffin and John Hannah about their new open source project called MVC4WPF . It is a new framework and guidance package that helps you quickly build enterprise WPF applications. They have seen a dramatic...

Each month through June 2010, we’ll bring you a 60-minute Architect focused Webcast to educate on the latest trends/topics and how new technologies can align with your business needs. February 25, 2010 at 1:00pm – 2:00pm EST Title: Visual Studio Tools...

bundle.com is a new service just launched in conjunction with Microsoft Citicorp and Morningstar. It is dedicated to helping people make better sense of their spending and saving decisions through context, comparison and community. It incorporates Money...

ARCast.TV Special - Designing Multi-tenant Applications on Windows Azure featuring Joseph Hofstader Cloud computing is one of the hottest topics in information technology today. With all the confusion surrounding acronyms ending in ‘aas’ like Platform...

Jeffrey Schwartz over at RedmondMag.com covered the inaugural meeting of the New York Technology Council . Google Vice President of Research Alfred Spector and [our very own] Microsoft architect evangelist Bill Zack debated their views on how data will...

While working on a Windows 7 application that allows users to choose their preferred colors to customize selected objects, I came across a few examples that I found very useful in terms of helping me get started working with colors from the development...

Microsoft Architect Evangelist Bill Zack spoke about Microsoft’s 3 Screens and the Cloud vision at a local Technology Council panel in New York Thursday night. He was on the panel with Alfred Spector, Google’s Vice President of Research and a councilwoman...

In his Cloudy in Seattle blog Jim Nakashima illustrates the “Hello World” of Windows Azure blob storage through the vehicle of a simple file upload and maintenance program.   Starting with a very brief overview of Blob Storage he covers how to use...

Need help justifying Silverlight for your developing mission-critical RIA Applications?   Check-out the latest Gartner report – released December 31, 2009 under the title “ MarketScope for Ajax Technologies and Rich Internet Application Platforms...

Need to get up-to-speed quickly on the new features in Silverlight 4? Check-out this webcast series on Channel 9 by John Papa that cover topics like: What's New in Silverlight 4 Find out what enhancements Silverlight 4 Beta introduces… Rich Text Editor...