A technical preview of Windows Phone SDK update gives you access to the 256MB emulator to let you determine how your apps install and run on new lower memory Windows Phone devices shown at Mobile World Congress 2012.

The SDK supports a new series of lower cost devices like the affordable Nokia Lumia 610. These phones will open the door to new price points and customer segments in several high growth markets.

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The $200 Early Bird Savings will expire in only a few more days (February 29) for TechEd North America.  Please help us capitalize on our biggest registration driver by reminding your customers of the substantial savings.

Take advantage of the $200 Early Bird Savings ending February 29.

Join in the Pre-Conference Seminar to help get the most out of your conference experience.

TechEd North America is in Orlando, FL June 11-14.

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Microsoft has announced the beta of the “Visual Studio 11” and .NET Framework 4.5 will be available February 29. It includes a “go live” license, and a new free edition for small team collaboration.

The beta of the next version of Visual Studio  simplifies common workflows, reduces user interface complexities and streamlines application lifecycle management, improving collaboration for developers and teams.

This is developer tool to help integrate cross-functional teams and help you accomplish your goals more efficiently. It helps you write software with greater integration between applications, across devices and among services.

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Have you wanted to offer your customers disaster recovery/high availability? But providing that capability seems like a big programming challenge. Instead, SQL Server 2012 introduces AlwaysOn where you can offer added value with a straight forward code change in your connection string.

AlwaysOn by design looks similar to database mirroring, but is actually a combination of both databases mirroring and clustering. The goal is to maximize the database availability and also give benefits of disaster recovery.

Using AlwaysOn, you can increase application availability and get a better return on your hardware investments through a simplified high availability (HA) deployment and management experience.

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Abstract This article is about scalability and interoperability, two characteristics that are required in architectures to support the diversity of today’s popular mobile platforms, which potentially have millions of users. Figure 1 depicts this diversity, a common—yet challenging—scenario for today’s developers. Supplying Web-based services to mobile devices is a daunting task, requiring distinct and diverse tooling, languages and IDEs. Beyond this diversity is the need...

ISVs are getting ready for the release of SQL Server 2012 by checking code to be sure it will support the new release. Microsoft provides tools that will help you in your testing.

This article provides the steps you can take to be sure your application is customer-ready for SQL Server 2012.

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Glassboard is a mobile service for sharing privately with groups. With Glassboard, you create 'boards' which are groups of people around a common interest where you can share messages, comments, photos, videos, and even your location (when appropriate).

When the Glassboard team was developing Glassboard, they looked for a platform that offered scale, worry-free operation, replicated data, and privacy for their apps on Windows Phone, iPhone, Android, and Office 365. The Glassboard team chose the Windows Azure platform for these capabilities.

This article provides and overall architecture of the Glassboard backend in Azure.

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The Windows Azure team has announced lower pricing for SQL Azure and a new 100 MB database option. The announcement was made Announcing Reduced Pricing on SQL Azure and New 100MB Database Option.

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Writing an application is one thing. Your application has been designed, built, and tested. Yet deploying the application can be an adventure in its own right. Successful ISVs build and deploy often, sometimes continuously. And then run tests to be sure the application functions as expected and runs at as expected at scale.

Windows Azure provides proven methods for moving your application from the developer, into a testing environment in the cloud, and then switching it live for your users.

You are able to provision the required components in the Windows Azure Management Portal, upload the service package, and configuring the service. You test your application in a staging environment and then promote it to production once you are satisfied that it is operating according to your expectations.

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Microsoft TechEd North America 2012 is a unique opportunity for you to gain comprehensive knowledge across the breadth of Microsoft products, solutions, and services.  The event is in Orlando, FL June 11 –14.

Save $200 if you register for TechEd before February 2012.

TechEd also offers you an invaluable opportunity to exchange ideas with your peers and participate in stimulating conversations about your most challenging technical questions. Register today so you don't miss out on any discounts you may be eligible for.

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Ready to learn Node.JS?

Node Bootcamp is a free event for developers and designers who want to learn Node.JS from the ground up with hands-on instruction from Node experts at Microsoft and Cloud9.

You will not need any prior Node experience is necessary to attend. 

At Node Bootcamp you’ll learn how to build your first Node application from scratch, how to work with popular Node.JS development tools and editors, how to work with popular 3rd party Node frameworks like Express and Socket.IO, and how to deploy your applications to production hosting environments. 

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Windows Azure is a wide open and flexible cloud platform built for you. Microsoft is hosting events in the Western US to help you learn more and to begin your applications with a solid understanding of what Azure is. Azure Discovery Events Azure Foundation Workshops

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A new Wiki serves as a launching point for the many offerings for developers and IT Pros to discover and learn the new features of SQL Server 2012.

Rather than announcing new bits of content on various blogs, we will simply update the SQL Server 2012 Early Adoption Cookbook wiki so there is one place to find all the latest information about early adoption content assets.

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Excellent article shows how you can use web services hosted in Windows Azure and have it communicate across various devices, such as Windows Phone, iPhone, and Android. And have that service scale to terabytes in size.

My colleagues Bruno Terkaly and Ricardo Villalobos wrote the article for MSDN magazine Building a Massively Scalable Platform for Consumer Devices on Windows Azure.

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Kinect for Windows consists of the Kinect for Windows hardware and Kinect for Windows SDK, which supports applications built with C++, C#, or Visual Basic by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. The newly release Kinect for Windows SDK version 1 offers improved skeletal tracking, enhanced speech recognition, modified API, and the ability to support up to four Kinect for Windows sensors plugged into one computer.

Version 1.0 of the Kinect for Windows SDK and runtime are now available for download, and distribution partners in our twelve launch countries are starting to ship Kinect for Windows hardware, enabling companies to start to deploy their solutions.

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