This is reblogged from the Windows Azure blog which can be found here .  Last week we shared how Enterprises can benefit by integrating Windows Azure into their business strategy.  Having a strong enterprise identity strategy is a key component for enabling new applications and infrastructure in the cloud. Today, we’re excited to share that Windows Azure Active Directory (AD) has reached general availability and is now ready for production use!   Windows Azure Active Directory...

BUILD 2013 will take place at The Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA from June 26 – June 28, 2013. Last year BUILD sold out very quickly.  This is a reminder to register as soon as possible if you’re interested in attending in person. Registration will open tomorrow (April 2, 2013) at 9:00AM Pacific Standard Time! For more info follow the link .

The following is a repost from the The Official Microsoft Blog and Steve Guggenheimer, Microsoft Corporate VP and Chief Evangelist, Developer & Platform Evangelism In the past year, we’ve introduced an assortment of new opportunities to build incredible apps and experiences on Windows, and developers all over the world have taken advantage of it. Just look at the last few weeks - we’ve seen great apps like Twitter on Windows 8 and Pandora on Windows Phone 8 as great examples...

  I realized that we didn’t create a post on the latest Windows Azure Kit in December.  Sorry for the delay in case you weren’t aware it was available. The Windows Azure Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs and presentations that are designed to help you learn how to use the latest Windows Azure features and services. December 2012 Update The December 2012 Refresh of the Windows Azure Training Kit includes two new demos from the BUILD 2012...

How To Prepare Your Windows 8 App For The World Market With the possibility of selling apps in more than 200 markets to billions of people, it’s pretty important that your Windows 8 apps be accessible to a worldwide market. Luckily, it’s easier than you might think to accomplish that goal. This Windows 8 blog post shows you how to design new world-ready apps with little to no code modification. Test Your Windows Store App – From Anywhere! ...

  The newly available ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 update is FREE and adds some great additional features to both products. All of the ASP.NET templates have updated versions of jQuery, jQuery UI, jQuery Validation, Modernizr, Knockout, and other open source NuGet packages. ASP.NET Web API now provides support for OData endpoints that support both ATOM and JSON-light formats. With OData you get support for rich query semantics, paging, $metadata, CRUD operations, and custom actions over any...

If you are a BizSpark member, you are eligible to receive unique offers and promotions. This month, there are three new offers to take advantage of: With New Relic , you can monitor your Windows Azure apps in real time, track real end-user experiences, and diagnose and eliminate bottlenecks. BizSpark members receive New Relic Standard FREE of charge plus a 3-month trial of the Pro version (usually $199/instance/month)! Sign or send documents for signature from anywhere using any internet-connected...

  Mobile Services Adds Android Support We created Mobile Services to make it easier for developers to build engaging and dynamic mobile apps that scale. We’ve made it even easier to develop for the Android platform. The Windows Azure team partnered with Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. to deliver Android support; our friends at MS Open Tech developed the SDK and the Windows Azure team built push support and completed the portal integration. This release also expands Mobile Services availability...

The Windows Phone Dev Center app (preview) gives you all that great data about how your app is doing in the real world to help you make it the best it can be. Access download and crash trends, and read user reviews quickly from your phone. IMPORTANT: This app requires a Windows Phone Dev Center account and won’t work without one. Key features: Secure connection to Windows Phone Dev Center. Downloads and crash trends for 5d, 1m, 6m, and 1y periods. User reviews translated to a...

App Madness Student Challenge Looking for a way to get started building awesome Windows 8 apps? Participate in the Windows 8 App Madness Challenge and qualify to win $100 for each published Windows 8 app! Additionally there are four app sprints you can take part in. Publish the highest number of apps in store during any one of the sprints and win an awesome trip for two. The location will be determined by a Facebook poll among participants. You decide! For further details check out the official...

There is a new landing page on Channel 9 where you can find videos, event recordings and shows about Windows Azure. The page aggregates numerous videos from events like Build and AzureConf and a bunch of new content. The first new videos include these tutorials : Below you will find a list of some of the newest Windows Azure series available on Channel 9. Windows Azure Mobile Services Tutorials App development with a scalable and secure backend hosted in Windows Azure. Incorporate...

ZERO260 is a virtual training session, that will get you up to speed FAST with Windows 8 game creation. In just 2 hours, participants will learn everything needed to create, upload and distribute a new game. Each session will cover a different game style, and keep you on the edge of your seat! We think Construct2 by Scirra , is an AWESOME game framework that allows brand new developers to build their first game, and allows even the most experienced developers to build games quickly and easily...

This is a cross post from my colleague Kevin Ashley . It’s a great App if you have a Nokia phone. Windows Phone now has the best app in ski industry, leaving Apple and Google far behind, and raising the bar for ski apps very high: the app is called WINTER SKI & RIDE . For now the app is exclusively available on Nokia Windows Phones. The WINTER SKI & RIDE app received recognition from the association of professional ski and snowboard instructors of America (PSIA-AASI) , as an official...

To enter, publish your app(s) to the Windows Store and/or Windows Phone Store between December 20, 2012 and February 28, 2013 and complete the form on the generation app site to qualify for the following rewards: PUBLISH 1 APP Store Registration Fee Reimbursement New subscriber? Receive your Windows Store or Windows Phone Store registration fee reimbursement when you register for the Store and publish your eligible app during the promotion period. Publish an app in both stores,...

Kevin Ashley is my colleague, so I don’t think he’ll mind that I reposted from his blog . I think it’s a great story…Hopefully he won’t retire soon! Kevin is an Architectural Evangelist on the West Region Developer & Platform Evangelism team and is based out of our Silicon Valley campus. Making money with Windows 8 Why developers should build Windows 8 apps? Card Games Chest is one of my Windows 8 apps, together the apps are making more than $30,000 per month...

TouchDevelop is a programming environment that runs on your mobile devices. You write scripts by tapping on the screen. You do not need a separate PC or keyboard. Scripts can perform various tasks similar to regular apps. Any TouchDevelop user can install, run, edit, and publish scripts. You can share your scripts with other people by publishing them to the TouchDevelop script bazaar, or by submitting them as an app to the Windows Store or Windows Phone Store. Want to get started? Watch these...

      Windows 8 Unleashed Coding Competition The Windows 8 Unleashed Coding Competition is designed to encourage developers to innovate with Microsoft Windows 8 and increase the number of high-quality apps available in the Windows Store. ComponentArt is sponsoring this competition and will award $10,000 USD to the author(s) of the best application as decided by the Panel of Judges.         DEADLINE ACTION LINK January 31, 2013 Entry submission deadline...

The Windows Phone SDK Update for WP 7.8 has been released to the web and is immediately available for download via the Microsoft Download Center using the following links: Direct link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36474 FWLink: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=275836 wpdev.ms: http://wpdev.ms/wpsdk8update This optional update installs on top of an existing WPSDK (either 7.1 or 8.0), and provides two new emulator images that allow you to deploy and...

Accellos, a leading provider of supply chain execution software solutions, talks about their release of AccellosOne Mobile, a new series of mobile line of business applications for smartphones and tablets that provides real time access to key supply chain information.

CTO Ross Elliott and Software Architect Sean Elliott talk with Microsoft Technical Evangelist Bruce Kyle about the new applications that are part of AccellosOne Mobile.

They explain why they chose Windows 8 as their platform, how they created two mobile applications that leverage their existing ASP.NET applications. They describe customer concerns and why Windows 8 applications are important to supply chain customers.

ISV Video:  Accellos Adds Windows 8 Apps for Line of Business

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Microsoft is bringing Windows Azure Web Sites, Virtual Machines, the Service Management Portal and API to Windows Server, enabling Hosting Service Providers to easily deliver high density website hosting and Infrastructure as a Service scenarios in a Windows Server-based environment. The beta has just been released, with full release along with the System Center 2012 Service Pack 1, which is scheduled for early 2013.

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If you are a Web Developer, we want to show you how to make money with your Windows 8 app using the Windows Store. We'll help you use the skills you already have to adopt the Windows look and feel, system integration and touch-enablement to create beautiful, cash-cow apps.

This full day event offers accelerated content for the experienced web developer who would like to use acquired skills to create applications for Windows 8.

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Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie will give two Windows Azure sessions at the Silicon Valley Code Camp on Sunday, October 7, 2012.  SVCC is the largest code camp in the country, and will be held on the campus of Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, CA.  Scott and his team are in charge of the developer platform for Azure, so you won’t want to miss this opportunity to learn Azure development straight from the source.

Be sure to register on the Silicon Valley Code Camp site, and then click the “Will Attend” radio button underneath the description of each of Scott’s two talks:

• Windows Cloud Walkthrough with Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie, VP Server & Tools (Part 1)
• Windows Cloud Walkthrough with Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie, VP Server & Tools (Part 2)

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Yesterday, Microsoft announced that the Windows Store is open to all developers in 120 Markets. You can read more about it at the Windows Store for Developers Blog . If you’ve already signed up—fantastic. We’re ready for your app. Haven’t signed up yet? Getting started is easy—just go to the Windows Store Dashboard on the Windows Dev Center and sign up. The dev tools are free , the SDK is ready , and we have a ton of great supporting content to help you build your...

Today in a global online launch event Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft Server and Tools Business, announced the general availability of Windows Server 2012. The new server is built from the cloud up for the modern datacenter.

Windows Server 2012 redefines the server operating system and introduces advanced storage, networking, virtualization, automation and end user access capabilities. It delivers a transformational leap in the speed, scale and power that datacenters and applications can build on. And it is a linchpin in that consistency customers will use to take advantage of private, hosted and public clouds.

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Windows Azure Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content to help you learn how to use Windows Azure. In this release of the training kit we have delivered 41 Hands on Labs covering a wide variety of bug fixes and screen shot updates for Visual Studio 2012.

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