The September Windows Azure One Month Pass will be available tomorrow September 1. This offer is limited to 500 passes, first come, first served.  It’s a great opportunity to learn and put Windows Azure and SQL Azure through their paces.  As a reminder, the passes are good for the month that you sign up in. For example, If you sign up on September 1 you’ll have the full month of September. If you sign up on September 20, your pass will expire on September 30 etc. To Enroll Please Visit...

If you’re looking for some guidance on the application registration process, the Marketplace team has created two walkthroughs Windows Marketplace for Mobile Developer Registration Walk Through View more presentations from Mike Francis .

Service Pack 1 of Exchange 2010 has reached general availability. The announcement was made on the Exchange team blog at The Future of Exchange Starts Here: Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Is Now Available.

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Sara Ford is a Developer Evangelist based in Northern California.  Sara was recently on tour presenting her 101 Visual Studio Tips in 55 Minutes.  Here’s the first five and if you want to see the presentation click this link: Sara Ford’s – 101 Visual Studio Tips Tip #1       How to not accidentally copy a blank line TO – Text Editor – All Lang – Gen – Apply cut or copy commands to blank lines Tip #2      How to cycle through the Clipboard ring...

A new set of videos from MSDEV explains Internet Explorer 9 Platform for developers. Platform Preview 4 of Internet Explorer 9 has features like a new SVG engine, the “Chakra” JavaScript engine now integrated into the browser instead of a separate object called via COM. It has better Acid3 (95/100) and WebKit SunSpider scores.

A set of four videos explore some of these features.

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The updated version of SQL Azure now supports Database copy, adds new How-to documentation, and an update to Project “Houston”.

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Jesse Liberty has stated a series of tutorials for iPhone developers that focus on the minimum you need to know to add Windows Phone 7 development to your skill set.

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The beta of Visual Studio LightSwitch was released today. Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch gives you a simpler and faster way to create professional-quality business applications for the desktop, the web, and the cloud. LightSwitch is a new addition to the Visual Studio family.

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Brandon Watson, Director of Windows Phone 7 announced that the Windows Phone Developer Tools will go final on September 16. The announcement was made on Channel 9 at Windows Phone 7: News for Developers.

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If you live in the Western United States, don’t miss this half day for Developers with guest presenter Rob Bagby, direct from London! Rob, famous for his demo-driven sessions, will illustrate how to take advantage of the Entity Framework 4 in your applications. Register today for these free, live sessions in your local area. These dates are for the US Only (Arizona, California and Colorado) Topics: Modeling, Mapping & Relationships Querying the Model Updating the Model Dates/Registration Information...

If you’re looking for a way to stay current on the latest security features in Windows Azure please visit this site: Security Resources for Windows Azure . This site lists the latest white papers, articles and webcasts. This is a living list, so make sure to bookmark the page. For more Information: Windows Azure <TEAM BLOG> Windows Azure Platform Microsoft SQL Azure Get Your App to Market Faster: Early Adopters - Microsoft Platform Ready – Front Runner for the Windows Azure Platform Getting...

A new series of videos from MSDEV can help you get started with Windows Phone 7.  New videos added today include Globalization and Localization, Building a Location-aware Application, Push Notifications, and Security and Windows Phone 7.

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Microsoft MVP Rob Miles and Andy Wigley led a live training course about a month ago, focused on getting developers trained up on building amazing applications and games for Windows Phone 7. That training event is now available online.

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The August 2010 CTP of Microsoft F# went live on the Download Center this week. The preview is available as an MSI for use with .NET and Visual Studio, and as a ZIP for use with other CLI implementations and platforms, including .NET Compact Framework on Xbox 360, and Mono on Mac, Linux and other platforms. If you already have F# in visual Studio Pro or above, you already are using this version and don’t need to update.

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Yesterday at gamescom 2010 Microsoft premiered the first wave of Xbox LIVE games launching on Windows Phone 7 this holiday. Here’s a preview of 17 games on Channel 9 Max & The Magic Marker Flight Control Game Chest Guitar Hero 5 Bubble Town 2 Bejeweled Live GeoDefense O.M.G. Toy Story Mania Ilomilo Puzzle Quest 2 Uno Asphalt 5 Glyder 2 Star Wars: Battle for Hoth Rocket Riot Implode XL If you’re interested in learning more about creating games on Windows Phone 7, here are some resources to explore...

The JumpStart is a four part deep-dive into Windows Phone . The four sessions included: An Introduction to the Windows Phone Platform Game Building on the Windows Phone Platform Advanced Windows Phone Development Selling Your Windows Phone Solutions & Wrap Up I’ve included links to the recorded live meetings and content as well. Live Meetings Session one: Intro to the series and intro to Windows Phone platform: AM:  https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/view?id=Win7072010&pw=webcast...

Microsoft has updated the SSMA (SQL Server Migration Assistant) family of products to include support for both Access and MySQL. This release makes it possible to move data directly and easily from local Microsoft Access databases or MySQL databases into SQL Azure. Microsoft refreshed the existing SSMA family of products for Oracle, Sybase and Access with this latest v4.2 release.

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Video Link - http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/jodonnell/Talking-with-Dan-Bien-about-the-new-Microsoft-Dynamics-Marketplace/ Our partners do a great job of writing compelling solutions that integrate with our Dynamics products. In this video I talked with Dan Bien, a program manager in our Dynamics CRM product team about Microsoft's plans for a new marketplace focused on our Microsoft Dynamics products starting with Dynamics CRM. Enjoy the show! John O'Donnell Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect...

Video Link - http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/jodonnell/Avalara-talks-about-the-challenges-of-Sales-Tax-solutions-and-their-cloud-computing-initiatives/ Scott McFarlane of Avalara talked with Warren Wilbee about cloud computing and its impact on their industry which primarily is around sales tax. Any tax solution is very much driven by various aspects such as the increase in spending during the holiday season therefore server load is constantly changing which makes Avalara a perfect match for cloud...

Video Link - http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/jodonnell/Microsoft-Robotics-Developer-Studio-update-with-Trevor-Taylor/ With the launch of the new R3 version of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio I sat down to talk about the product with Trevor Taylor, Program Manager with the Microsoft Robotics product group . Microsoft Robotics combines a number of components to make up a robotics system including Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR), Decentralized Software Services (DSS), Visual Programming...

A few weeks ago a few invited partners and agencies participated in an event called “Windows Phone Design Days ”. This was a 1.5 day deep dive into their inspiration, philosophy, goals and implementation. The event was recorded and listed in order below. If you’re ready to get started take at the links below the videos. Videos Ana and Miles, the Windows Phone personas (  Tracey Lovejoy, 3:33 ) The Metro Design Language, the inspiration   ( Jeff Fong, 29:48) Deconstructing a Windows Phone...

The PHP team in the SQL Server Connectivity team is looking for feedback. By providing feedback to the team they can review your collective priorities. The team received a significant amount of feedback in the October 2009 survey.  The team responded by delivering a PDO driver in v2.0. The survey should take less than 10 minutes to complete and will be open until August 16th, 2010 – 5:00PM Pacific Standard Time. If you would like to participate please visit the survey site .

A new series of videos from MSDEV can help you get started with Windows Phone 7. Each short, to-the-point video in this series highlights a feature of Windows Phone 7 in less than 7 minutes. This is a series for developers who want to pick up the basics quickly with brief explanations and hands-on examples.

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Internet Explorer 9 will be launched at an event in San Francisco September 15. The launch celebrates the Beauty of the Web. More information is available on the Windows Team Blog  posting Announcing the Beauty of the Web event for IE9 Beta Launch.

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SQL Server Migration Assistant for MySQL is the newest migration toolkit, others include Oracle, Sybase, Access, and an analyzer for PowerBuilder. The toolkits were designed to tackle the complex manual process customer’s deal with when migrating databases. In using the SQL Server Migration Assistants (SSMA), partners can reduce the manual effort; as a result the time, cost and risks associated with migrating are significantly reduced. A recent SSMA survey showed that 94% of SSMA downloader’s would...