Three offers to ISVs made it easier to get started and to continue your development efforts on Windows Azure:

• Windows Introductory Special is offered at no charge through the end of September.
• MSDN Ultimate and Premium Benefits increased
• Cloud Essentials Pack offers

See details ...

The Windows Phone 7 Developer Heroes, spotlights a select group of talented Windows Phone 7 developers by promoting the individuals behind the applications. The first Developer Hero showcased on the site is Elliott Forde, a 12 year old self-taught developer who has already created and submitted two apps on Marketplace: Time Tracker and Ricochet. Read on to find out where Elliott got his ideas, how he brought them to life, and his superpower of choice. (Though he might already have one – this developer hero is 12 years old!)

Since Kinect launched in November 2010, enthusiasts have been exploring the potential of Kinect in a number of unexpected, nongaming scenarios. At MIX11, Microsoft detailed some of the features in the Kinect for Windows Beta SDK from Microsoft Research coming in the spring.

We know that getting to the cloud is not always straight forward. That's why we are committed to bringing you the latest tools and resources to help you to quickly get your solution cloud-ready.

We would like to introduce you to the FullArmor CloudApp Studio, it makes it easy to rapidly deploy applications and websites onto the Microsoft Windows Azure platform - making development into the cloud simple.

It's a tool designed to be used by anyone - not just developers - and doesn't require coding knowledge. Using a familiar interface it can take just a few minutes to get your application or website ready for Windows Azure.

You are invited to take part in a three month preview of the FullArmor CloudApp Studio, starting on April 14, 2011 and ending on June 30, 2011.

Steps to Get Started with the FullArmor CloudApp Studio Preview

1. Sign up for a CloudApp Studio Preview Account.
2. Log-in to the Windows Azure Dev portal as normal.
   • If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can try Windows Azure for 30 days – at no cost. Click here and use Promo Code DPWE01 for your free Windows Azure 30 Day Pass. No credit card required*.
3. Select Beta Programs, then VM Role, then Apply for Access [takes 3-7 business days].
4. Once your VM Role access has been enabled, download the FullArmor CloudApp Studio Quick Start Guide for information on how to get started.
5. That's it! Log into FullArmour CloudApp Studio to start migrating your applications or websites onto the Windows Azure platform.

Microsoft announced at MIX the immediate availability of the beta for Microsoft Silverlight 5, which provides advances in rich media and application development.

New capabilities include Hardware Video Decode, for enhanced video quality and performance, and “Trickplay,” which provides variable-rate video playback with audio pitch correction.

Microsoft executives today showcased the next version of the Windows Phone operating system and other powerful next-generation applications that span phones, PCs and other devices.

The free Windows Phone Developer Tools for the new Windows Phone OS will be available to developers in May.

Microsoft also demonstrated the value of developing for HTML5 and the standards-based Web with Internet Explorer 9 on PCs running Windows and Internet Explorer 9 on Windows Phone.

Announcements at MIX11 myriad of new Windows Azure services and functionality that include:

• A new Web Deployment Tool that is part of an updated SDK.
• Preview of Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) for Internet Information Services (IIS) Smooth Streaming.
• Preview of Windows Azure Traffic Manager.

The next major releases of Microsoft Dynamics enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions will run on the Windows Azure platform. The announcement made at Convergence 2011 in Atlanta.

Announcements included roadmaps for a new Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 release and shared the strong momentum experienced by its portfolio of Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM solutions.

HTML5 Labs shares prototypes of early and unstable standards. Microsoft regularly update these prototypes and add additional prototypes based on what will most help with the testing of the specifications. Prototypes shown at MIX11 include FileAPI, a new WebSockets demo, and announcement for plans for a demo of the Media Capture prototype.

Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president, .NET Developer Platform, has announced the first release of Windows Azure AppFabric Caching service and a release of a new version of the Access Control Service. The announcement was made at his keynote during MIX11.

Just four weeks after the release of Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft Corp. unveiled the first platform preview of Internet Explorer 10 at MIX11. In his keynote, Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president of Internet Explorer, outlined how the next version of Microsoft’s industry-leading Web browser builds on the performance breakthroughs and the deep native HTML5 support delivered in Internet Explorer 9.

Students from Arizona State University took the top prize today in the U.S. finals of the Imagine Cup. The project enables low-vision students to take notes in class with the assistance of a custom-designed, portable camera, a touch-screen Tablet PC, and Microsoft OneNote.

Michael Astrauskas, David Hayden, Shashank Srinivas and Qian Yan from Team Note-Taker will represent the U.S. at the Imagine Cup 2011 Worldwide Finals in New York City this summer. They are competing against student teams from more than 70 countries and regions around the world.

Can’t attend MIX 11 in-person? Watch the keynotes live from Las Vegas, April 12 & 13 at 9am PDT (4pm GMT), via live.visitmix.com. Tune-in for the latest announcements from Internet Explorer, Windows Phone and Silverlight. Keynotes will run for approximately 90 minutes.

ISVs often ask me about how they can improve their data center and internal practices. The Springboard Series Tour is back to help answer those questions.

Microsoft has made available a guide for developers for your SharePoint Online development.

This guide walks you through some of the rich features in SharePoint Online that are available to developers and designers. It provides an overview of the feature set and extensibility points for SharePoint Online, and a discussion of how to create solutions for this new environment.

Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 is due mid-summer. Announcements of specific features will be made on team blogs according to the post Office 2010 Service Pack 1 is Almost Here.

A white paper, Developing Applications for SharePoint 2010, contains guidance documentation, detailed examples, and a reusable class library. These resources help solution developers and architects make the right decisions and follow proven practices when designing and developing applications for Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

The guidance focuses on the building blocks that every developer needs to understand to become an effective SharePoint developer or architect.

Simon Said game on began life as a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application that showed off touch user experience. Since then, it has become an advertising supported application for Windows Phone 7.

David Kelley, User Experience Architect for Wirestone, explains how you can get AdCenter working to monetize your Phone application. He talks with ISV Architect Evangelist Bruce Kyle about the performance considerations he did to move his application from WPF to Windows Phone.

ISV Video: Windows Phone 7 Game Begins Life in WPF -- Now a Silverlight, Ad Supported App

Registration for SharePoint Conference 2011 is now open. The conference will be in Anaheim, CA October 3-6.

It will be the only conference to hear experts from Microsoft and around the world share their experience and knowledge about a variety topics such as cloud services, best practices & real world project insights.

Session content will cover products including SharePoint and SharePoint Online as part of the soon to be released Microsoft Office 365.

Cloud Development is one of the fastest growing trends in our industry. Don't get left behind. Join us for an overview of developing with Windows Azure.

We'll cover both where and why you should consider taking advantage of the various Windows Azure's services in your application, as well as providing you with a great head start on how to accomplish it.

In a blog post on the Silverlight developer blog, Microsoft provides guidance around developer choices for standards-based Web, plug-ins, and Silverlight.

The post, entitled Standards-based web, plug-ins, and Silverlight, describes the role of plug-ins in general, and Silverlight in particular, in the context of HTML5 and the future of the web. It sets the stage for announcements that are expected at MIX11.

So many choices to participate in over 4 days. Why not get ahead? Start early. Register today for Tech·Ed North America in Atlanta May 16-19.

Attend one of our 15 pre-conference seminars on Sunday May 15. Invite your friends to attend so they can see what Tech∙Ed is all about.

Make sure to check out our 8 workshops that proved to be very popular in 2010. Once you have digested all this goodness don’t forget to sign in to My∙Teched or if you are not a member sign up to start building your schedule to maximize your time.

With six weeks left there is plenty of time to get yourself registered and on your way to Atlanta.

This exciting new release will include improvements that are interesting to developers, DBA’s and business intelligence pros alike, including:

• New developer improvements including a new unified Visual Studio IDE code named “Juneau”, Transact-SQL programmability improvements and more!
• New “AlwaysOn” capabilities make it easier to deploy and manage high availability and disaster recovery across both shared and non-shared storage, and supports great new functionality like multi-site failover (a.k.a. geo-clusters).
• Core storage engine improvements make it easier to manage all of your data like support for column-store indexing, better support for BLOB and document storage, and statistical semantic search.
• New browser-based reporting tool code named “Crescent” will empower end-users to explore and visualize the data they care about the most with lightning-fast speed and eye popping visualizations.

There are many more improvements that will be revealed as we approach launch.

A new game development tutorial is now available on App Hub. Online. Plaintext Searchable Code. Lessons for Design, Art, and Programming. Everything You Need, Free. From the makers of the “XNA Game Studio Beginner’s Guide” DVD’s, the next evolution of Game Development training for those getting started.

A common question we often hear from developers is: “What can Microsoft do to help me promote my app?” One of the great things about the Windows Phone Marketplace is our unique range of merchandizing opportunities. On any given day and in every single market, there are at least three different types of merchandizing slots on every Windows Phone 7 device.