My office mate, Kenny Spade has created a series of tutorials about developing games on Windows Phone 7. If you’re new to developing games using XNA it’s a great place to start. Kenny plans to publish his posts (almost) every Monday. The four current postings are listed below: Introduction to XNA – What you get with File – > New Project (TriangleShooter) Using Multi-Touch for Movement (TriangleShooter) Advancing Movement with Multi-Touch (TriangleShooter) Basic Collision (TriangleShooter) Please...

During a presentation today, people were discussing the various sizes of Windows Azure compute instances. Small, Extra Small, Large, Medium etc. I have provided the table below for quick reference. Windows Azure compute instances come in five sizes to enable complex applications and workloads. Each Windows Azure compute instance represents a virtual server. Although many resources are dedicated to a particular instance, some resources associated to I/O performance, such as network bandwidth and disk...

You can catch up on the Silverlight Firestarter videos on Channel 9 including Scott Guthrie’s keynote where he announced Silverlight 5.

And try out a set of 11 Firestarter Labs.

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ACS (Azure Access Control Service) that is part of Windows Azure AppFabric recently added support for the OAuth 2.0 protocol. OAuth is an open protocol that is being developed by members of the identity community to to allow third party applications access to data without providing passwords.

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Get your application compatible with Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2 or Windows Azure between November 22, 2010 to January 31, 2011 by passing the MPR Free online compatibility test to receive a free copy of Microsoft Office Professional 2010!  Office 2010 gives you the best-in-class tools to help you grow your business. Get your application compatible today! View Promotion Terms & Conditions

Microsoft Platform Ready is offering US developers free Windows Azure for a month. We're offering a Windows Azure platform 30 day pass , so you can put Windows Azure and SQL Azure through their paces. No credit card required. Use this link: Microsoft Platform Ready Free Azure Pass . Use this passcode: promo code = DPEWE01 For details about the offer, including the number of compute instances and SQL Azure sizes, see FREE 30-day Azure developer accounts! Hurry! Other Microsoft Platform Ready Benefits...

    The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs, presentations, and demos that are designed to help you learn how to use the Windows Azure platform including: Windows Azure, SQL Azure and the Windows Azure AppFabric. The December update provides new and updated hands-on labs, demo scripts, and presentations for the Windows Azure November 2010 enhancements and the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.3. These...

  I saw this great posting on J .D. Meir Blog and wanted to point you to it as well . It’s a useful guide that helps consolidate some information and provides additional content and resources. Shows you Windows Phone content and where to look Provides an index of the main content collections (Code Samples, How Tos, Videos, and Training) Download the Windows Phone Developer Guidance Map v2.0 here I’ve also copied from JD’s blog a list of content for easy reference: Articles 2D Asset Types - http...

The next version of Silverlight will target numerous improvements for application developers and in media improvements.

Scott Guthrie announced the next version of Silverlight at the keynote to the Firestarter Event in Redmond, WA. The entire day’s events were also streamed on the Internet.

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Want to process credit cards on your Windows Azure site or from Windows Phone 7 application? Microsoft partner Accumulus provides a solution for both. CEO Gregory Kim and company President Christian Dreke describe their solution and provide a demo of how you might accept credit cards on Windows Phone 7 application. The record keeping for credit card processing is provided by Accumulus over Windows Azure.

See Credit Card Processing for Windows Phone 7 on Windows Azure on Channel 9.

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We're offering a Windows Azure platform 30 day pass , so you can put Windows Azure and SQL Azure through their paces. No credit card required . Sign up for Microsoft Platform Ready to get access to technical, application certification testing and marketing support . Use this Promo Code : DPWE01 Sign Up By Clicking This Link : http://www.windowsazurepass.com/?campid=BB8443D6-11FC-DF11-8C5D-001F29C8E9A8 The Windows Azure platform 30 day pass includes the following resources: Windows Azure 4 small compute...

First payouts for Windows Phone 7 sales will be made in the 4th week of January 2011. You can now access up-to-date download and transaction reporting information for all of your Windows Phone 7 applications and games.

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Knowing the competitive landscape of gaming, especially here in the Northwest, we want to invite you to a 2 hour session to learn about building your next game on Windows Azure.  Hear from a game developer just like you, Sneaky Games , who has successfully leveraged the cloud and Windows Azure to build and deploy Facebook games such as Fantasy Kingdoms .  The Windows Azure Platform can revolutionize the way you do business, making your company more agile, efficient and flexible while allowing...

When it comes to game design for Windows Phone 7, Microsoft turned to Plexipixel to design and develop a free game called Unite.  The team that designed and developed the game using Silverlight shares the tips and lessons learned.

See Game Design and Development in Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 on Channel 9.

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The technologies around HTML5 are still under active development and people need a better way to differentiate between the more experimental parts of HTML5 and the parts ready for use in mainstream sites.  The recent issue around WebSockets offers an example that developers and consumers will face over support of emerging standards. Microsoft’s approach to HTLM5 is to provide better choices around standards support. Internet Explorer 9 offers support for real-world web patterns that developers...

Now is the time to get acquainted with Native Extensions for Microsoft Silverlight (NESL) ,a new and evolving toolkit that enables Silverlight 4 out-of-browser applications to interact deeply with Windows 7 and leverage it in your Silverlight + Windows 7 customer scenarios.

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Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 Beta is now ready for download to MSDN subscribers -- general availability on December 9.

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Three new training courses from MSDEV show you how you can diagnosis your service and perform troubleshooting, show you how to use the new lightweight data manager for SQL Azure, and how to get started using Sync Framework with SQL Azure.

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This is a three part series covering the benefits, implications and best practices for adopting Windows Azure. The webinars are scheduled for three dates in January: The Business Case for Azure (Part 1) - January 12, 2011 The objective of this session is to provide an understanding of why Software as a Service is a compelling business model for today's ISVs and how Windows Azure can be a key enabler for ISVs considering a move to the cloud. Understanding Implications of the Cloud (Part 2 ) - January...

Plexipixel developer Lisa Smith and designer Stephanie Newcomb talk with ISV Architect Evangelist Bruce Kyle about their work with Okapi, a Javascript framework that allows developers to create animation in HTML 5 online.

See Plexipixel Creates HTML 5 Animations Online with Okapi.

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The Imagine Cup Mission is a global competition and a community encouraging and inspiring students to employ their passion to make a positive change in our world with technology. Get involved with Imagine Cup and encourage innovation. Imagine Cup is not just the world’s premier student technology competition, it’s also a valuable spark that inspires the next generation of technology leaders. Students earn rewards, schools get recognition, and we all get a better world. Support Imagine Cup and light...

The 19th annual Microsoft Tech·Ed North America conference provides developers and IT professionals the most comprehensive technical education across the Microsoft current and soon-to-released suite of products, solutions and services. Sign up before December 31 and receive a $300 discount.

Our four day event (May 16 - 19) is in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Would you like to win money and prizes for your Windows Azure platform applications you’ve created? Then you'll want to check out Perficient ’s  #CloudDevComp competition. All competition entries must use a Windows Azure platform element and can use any platform (Ruby, .NET, Java, etc.) You could win: First Prize - $500 gift card & a prize pack Second Prize - $250 gift card & a prize pack Third Prize - $150 gift card & a prize pack For more details about the competition you can click...

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Release Candidate (RC) is now available for download in the Microsoft Download Center.  As with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Beta, the Release Candidate is available for anyone to download, and will be available until the RTM release scheduled for Q1, 2011. Download Link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=c3f82c6f-c123-4e80-b9b2-ee422a16b91d&displaylang=en For More Information Please visit: The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blog For Technical...

Video Link - http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Talking-Dynamics-CRM-and-the-CRMUG-event-with-the-Dynamics-CRM-MVPs-Part-Two Our Dynamics CRM MVP's always deliver great value at any of our events and at the recent CRMUG event I talked with Scott Sewell of Customer Effective and Larry Lentz of Lentz Computer Services Each year our Dynamics CRM MVP's deliver great services to the Dynamics CRM community so I was pleased to get them on camera talking about their background and life as a busy Dynamics...