Windows Phone Developer Kit Announced

                      During Mix10 this week,Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7 Series Developer Details.Here is the details from windows blog

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during the Mix opening keynote, we saw some amazingly cool Windows Phone (WP) demos. Although Windows Phone was announced about a month ago, today we heard the complete end-to-end story for both the user and the developer. On top of that, Scott Guthrie announced the availability of the Windows Phone Developer Tools Community Technology Preview.

We recognize that one of the success criteria for a popular consumer platform is having a large ecosystem of developers writing games and applications. Developers require tools and guidance to create compelling applications. The process of obtaining the development tools and getting started should be, as much as possible, friction free, easy, and welcoming. Hence you will love to learn that in order to get started developing for WP, all you need is to download and install is a single installer. But the best news is that the entire WP development environment is free! Yes, you read it right; everything you need to develop, test, and ultimately deploy your WP application is packed into a single 300MB (give or take) installer that is free to anyone using the Community Technology Preview CTP version as well as the final released version.

As part of our effort to help you jumpstart development of your Windows Phone applications, we released the Windows Phone Training Kit for Developers. You can download a local copy of the training kit, or you can go to the online version on Channel 9.

Both kits include four Hands-On Labs:

Hello Phone - This lab intends to be the classic “Hello World” application, introducing you to the tools and procedures required to build and test Silverlight for Windows Phone applications. During the lab, you will see how to use Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phones, Expression Blend to build and design your Windows Phone applications, and how to deploy and debug your Windows Phone application on the Windows Phone Emulator

Building Your First Windows Phone Application – This lab introduces you to the basic building blocks of any Windows Phone Silverlight application. During the course of this lab you will create a simple puzzle game. The lab takes you through the different stages of starting a new project, adding controls and code behind, and testing and debugging. Unlike the Hello World lab, this lab focuses more on a few phone-related topics like navigation, using pages, frame and navigation services, multi-touch, and isolated storage.

Windows Phone Navigation and Controls – This lab introduces you to the Windows Phone layout system, the phone’s chrome, and few new controls. The lab explains the basics of navigating between different screens (pages) in a Windows Phone Silverlight application. During the lab you will build a navigation application that switches between various screens, with each screen displaying different phone functionality, such as playing an audio or video file.

Game Development with XNA Framework for Windows Phone – This lab introduces you to XNA game development on Windows Phones, as well as to the basics of XNA game development. During the lab you will build a simple XNA game application that introduces key concepts in XNA game development and learn how to use Microsoft Visual 2010 Express for Windows Phone to build and design your XNA games for Windows Phones “

Ready.Set.Go

Soon,i’ll review your wp7s app..

New Bing Updates

                    Bing team has updated Bing with few nifty features.One in Bing Image Search and other in Bing Maps.Both are useful in several scenarios.Here is the announcement from the team.

“Do you ever find yourself gazing up at the sky on a night filled will stars and wondering what’s with all the sparkling lights, or where the heck are the Big and Little Dippers, anyways? I know I have a time or two. Luckily for us the Bing Maps team has been busy integrating their work with the Worldwide Telescope (WWT) into Bing Maps so that we can actually make sense of what is happening up there.

With the new Bing Maps WWT App you can explore the constellations and other known space objects just like you would navigate through a regular Bing Map.  Chris Pendleton from the Bing Maps team goes into the details on this and how to work the application in his blog post New Bing Maps Application: Worldwide Telescope.

We hope the next time you are looking up at sky at night you can name what you see. “

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dvances in digital photography technology have catapulted the number of digital images that are available online. Whether through various online photo services or during an everyday search on Bing, the number of digital image results is staggering, and continues to grow at an amazing pace. How you sift through and find the right image and image size could seem daunting. Bing tries to make this easier by enabling you to sort by size, layout, color, or even filter for images that contain faces or entire body.

One feature that will make my life much easier is the ability to find other sizes of an image that I like. I cannot tell you how many times I am looking for a different size image for a specific use. And sometimes I want to limit my searching to one file type, like a jpeg. file.  You can now do all of this with the “Find more sizes” option using Bing Image search.

To see how this works go to Bing and type in Seattle, click on images, then mouse over an image you like and you will see a link that says “Find more sizes”.  Click on it

You will get a page listing where all of the “same” images appear online (with different format, resolution, or with minor editing).  You will also be able to see the other ways this image has been used (mockups, editing, cropping, framing, etc). This will be helpful for the many instances where you need exactly the right resolution, file size or type for a certain project.

And if you need more information on an image -- for example, if you are interested in a particular painting, you can find all different pages talking about it, which can be helpful for that next school paper or research project you have.

Having access to online images is incredibly useful.  Now with new tools to help you organize and sort images to find exactly what you are looking for, some difficult tasks have become a little bit easier.”

Cool..

Embed Bing Twitter Maps in you Website

Its very Cool..U  have more options to customize your maps..Just goto Bing Twitter maps and give it a try..i've done a sample,which you can find above this post..tweets with mix10 keyword alone will appear in the map..you can scroll through different places for related tweets..How is it?

Update:I have removed the Bing Twitter maps from my site.Still you can try in your website.

Windows Phone Mix Sessions Announced

 

• Unit Testing Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Applications

• Jeff Wilcox
• Learn how to create and maintain Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Series applications using the Silverlight Unit Test Framework. See what tools are available to easily validate controls and application interfaces, add automatic testing to builds, and gain a solid understanding of test principles to deliver great experiences for your clients and customers.

• Silverlight Performance on Windows Phone

•  Seema Ramchandani

• Learn how to optimize your Silverlight code for Windows Phone. This session will discuss common bottlenecks using the graphics and managed stacks, and will highlight how to optimize startup and reaction time.

• Distributing and Monetizing Windows Phone Applications and Games

• John Bruno, Todd Biggs in Mandalay Ballrom A on Wednesday at 10:30 AM
• will revolutionize distribution of Windows Phone applications, games, and content, and is designed to solve the two largest problems of the Windows Phone consumer-focused developer community: distribution and monetization. This session will provide application developers with the insights, tools, and processes necessary to begin distributing and monetizing their applications on the Windows Phone platform.

• Development and Debugging Tools for Building XNA Games for Windows Phone

  • Cullen Waters in Mandalay Ballrom A on Wednesday at 9:00 AM

  This session covers tools available to the developer for building XNA games including debugging, emulation, and performance. Special emphasis is placed on best practices for managed code performance and .NET profiling tools you can use to optimize your games for windows phone.

• Windows Phone Application Platform Architecture

  • Istvan Cseri in Mandalay Ballrom A on Tuesday at 4:30 PM

  Windows Phone 7 Series represents a significant change from the past. The entire stack, starting with the operating system, user experience, and the application platform have been engineered to build a new class of phone that users will just love. This session will go under the covers and describe how to think about applications and games from the perspective of user experience, security, packaging, cloud services and performance. Details on the new application model, device capabilities, location, sensors, and other platform capabilities will be covered.

• Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight, Part 2

  • Peter Torr in Mandalay Ballrom A on Tuesday at 3:00 PM

  Together with part 1, these sessions give an overview of the functionality for Silverlight applications that is unique to the Windows Phone application platform. Part 2 will cover the new application model, updated control templates, themes, and services available to applications, including new Windows Phone web services.

• Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight, Part 1

  • Mike Harsh in Mandalay Ballrom A on Tuesday at 1:30 PM

  Together with part 2, these sessions give an overview of the functionality for Silverlight applications that is unique to the Windows Phone application platform. Part 1 will cover new input paradigms including multi-touch, software keyboard, accelerometer and microphone, as well as the APIs to leverage phone applications like email, phone dialer, contact list and more.

 

• An Introduction to Developing Applications for Microsoft Silverlight

  • Shawn Oster in Mandalay Ballrom A on Tuesday at 11:00 AM

  New to Silverlight? This is the session for you. This session will cover: how to get started building your first application, tooling, extensibility and deployment. We’ll also highlight the capabilities of Microsoft Silverlight on the PC, as well as support for Windows Phone.

• Windows Phone UI and Design Language

  • Chad Roberts, Michael Smuga, Albert Shum in Mandalay Ballrom A on Monday at 3:30 PM

  Windows Phone constitutes a dramatic new user experience paradigm. This session will provide prescriptive guidance, tips, and techniques on how designers & developers can build beautiful, compelling user experiences that are consistent with the built-in Windows Phone 7 Series experiences.

• Overview of the Windows Phone 7 Series Application Platform

  • Charlie Kindel in Mandalay Ballrom A on Monday at 2:00 PM

  The new Windows Phone is coming! Get a high-level overview of the new application platform and a complete picture of the developer story. Learn about the developer tools, the application frameworks, the support for Silverlight, and the support for XNA.

• Designing and Developing for the Rich Mobile Web

  • Joe Marini in Mandalay Ballrom A on Wednesday at 3:00 PM

  The Mobile Web has been a long time in coming, and now that it’s here, it’s a force that you and your business can’t afford to ignore. What has made all of this possible is the combination of ever-more-powerful devices, fast network connections, and highly capable mobile browsers. In this session, you will learn how to build sites that work well and look great on Windows Phone and across mobile devices. We’ll cover the core mobile Web scenarios, preparing content for mobile, and tips and techniques for debugging and testing your sites.

• Building a High Performance 3D Game for Windows Phone

  • Shawn Hargreaves, Tomas Vykruta in Mandalay Ballrom A on Wednesday at 1:30 PM

  This session will detail how to use XNA to develop 3D games for Windows Phone, with a special eye towards the special characteristics of Windows Phone application platform. Special attention will be placed on optimizing high-performance managed code games for the platform, to help you squeeze out every last drop of performance.

• Building Windows Phone Games

  • Michael Klucher in Mandalay Ballrom A on Wednesday at 12:00 PM

  With the release of Windows Phone, game developers will be able to create amazing content rapidly through the power of Silverlight and the XNA framework. This talk will outline the basic application model of Windows Phone, enumerate Windows Phone core device characteristics, and walk through highlights of Silverlight and XNA Frameworks on the phone.

• Changing our Game – an Introduction to Windows Phone 7 Series

  • Joe Belfiore in Mandalay Ballrom A on Monday at 11:30 AM

  Major changes are coming to Windows Phone! This session goes in-depth on the design and features of Windows Phone and gives a comprehensive picture of what’s coming in this exciting new release.

   

Microsoft Cloud Strategy

 

 

Windows Azure offers a flexible, familiar environment designed to create applications and services for the cloud. With Windows Azure, you can shorten your time to market and adapt as demand for your service grows.

Windows Live ID – with 460 million users – is the identity and authentication system provided by Windows Live. The system lets you create universal sign in credentials across diverse applications.

Microsoft SQL Azure provides a highly scalable, multi-tenant database that you don't have to install, setup, patch or manage. Kelley Blue Book, 3M, Siemens and other leading companies are using SQL Azure today.

Microsoft SharePoint Online gives your business a highly secure, central location where employees can collaborate and share documents. That means more managed workflow, better version control, and "anywhere access" to business critical data.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online helps you find, keep, and grow business relationships by centralizing customer information and streamlining processes with a system that quickly adapts to new demands.

Microsoft Office Live Meeting provides real-time, Web-hosted conferencing so you can connect with colleagues and engage clients from almost anywhere – without the cost of travel.

Microsoft Office Communications Online delivers robust messaging functionality for real-time communication via text, voice, and video.

Microsoft Office Web Apps are online companions to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, giving you the freedom to access, edit, and share Microsoft Office documents from virtually anywhere.

Microsoft Exchange Online is highly secure hosted e-mail with "anywhere access" for your employees, starting at just $5 per user per month.

Web Application Toolkits from Microsoft

                  Microsoft recently announced new web application tool kits for certain common tasks for developers to use them for their applications.These are find to be useful in many ways.Here is the Microsoft’s announcement on Web Application Toolkit.

These FREE Web App Toolkits help you complete common web development tasks and quickly add new features to your apps. Whether it’s Bing Maps integration or adding social capabilities to your site, there’s a toolkit for you. Download and install them today.

Web App Toolkit for "Freemium" Applications

A popular way to attract first time users is to offer a free version of a service that has limited functionality and once you’ve got them hooked provide an easy way to upgrade and pay for more features. This Web Application Toolkit offers a more elegant and cost-effective way to solve this problem by using a SKU/Features matrix to manage which features are available in certain SKUs. The Toolkit uses standard ASP.NET Role Management features together with WCF REST Services to retrieve the SKU/Features information.

• Download

Web App Toolkit for Calendars

Lots of Web sites store and display date information that is personal to their users. Users often want one place to manage their calendar, for example Outlook, Windows Live Calendar, Google Calendar and so on. This Web Application Toolkit provides a standards-based service that can be reused in your own Web application to expose calendaring and events information for different users, using different data formats (iCalendar, XML, JSON) using REST. Additionally, you’ll find examples of how to consume the endpoint using the ASP.NET Ajax Library with templates and the iCalendar microformat.

• Download

Web App Toolkit for Bing Maps

A common scenario for Web developers is to provide location based information rendered on an interactive map. For example, showing the location of an office or a store location. The Bing Maps SDKs including the Bing Maps Controls enables developers to incorporate both location and enhanced mapping features into their Web applications. In this Web Application Toolkit you will find a set of reusable custom controls built in Silverlight, which integrated with the Bing Maps Silverlight Control, make a perfect fit for some of the most common location-aware scenarios. With this Toolkit, you will also find a sample Silverlight application showing how to use those controls when implementing a “store locator” scenario on a Web site.

• Download

Web App Toolkit for IE8

Today users can access rich information and services while they are browsing a site; it's not a trivial task to expose this content to the same users when they are not on that site. The goal of this Web Application Toolkit is to leverage the new features in Internet Explorer 8 (Web Slices, Accelerators and Visual Search Providers) to extend the reach of your web site and services also to those users that are not on your site. The Web Application Toolkit includes a set of ASP.NET Web Controls that you can use to take advantage of these IE new features in your own Web application.

• Download
• Screencast

Web App Toolkit for Bing Search

Bing is a powerful new Decision Engine designed to help consumers accomplish tasks and make faster, more informed decisions. The Bing Application Programming Interface (API) provides developers programmatic access to Bing, offering flexible options for building or enhancing your site or applications. This Web Application Toolkit shows how to take advantage of the Bing API to add search capabilities to your Web site by leveraging the various search results that the Bing API provides, including Web content, images, news and videos, among others. Through this Web Application Toolkit you will also discover how to use ASP.NET AJAX and jQuery to provide an enhanced and more interactive end user experience when using the Bing API.

• Download
• Screencast

Web App Toolkit for REST Services

Many Web applications today are starting to expose data as REST service interfaces, so it can be accessed through APIs by other tiers of the application or even by other applications. A RESTful web service is a simple Web service implemented using HTTP and the principles of REST. REST Services focus on resources; each one is represented by a unique URI, and users interact with them via their URI using the HTTP uniform interface. This Web Application Toolkit shows how to easily add REST service interfaces for an existing Web application. The Web Application Toolkit includes a sample REST service, two sample client applications that access the REST services, one using simple ASP.NET Web Forms and a second Web application using AJAX to asynchronously invoke the REST service and finally a custom project template for Visual Studio to make it very easy to build new REST Services.

• Download
• Screencast

Web App Toolkit for Mobile Web Applications

This Web Application Toolkit is designed to demonstrate how to extend an existing ASP.NET MVC Web application to provide access from mobile devices. To enable mobile access, the Web application should have views targeting each of the mobile devices to be supported. The MVC pattern helps you create applications that separate the different aspects of the application (input logic, business logic, and UI logic), while providing a loose coupling between these elements. This Web Application Toolkit provides a component called MobileCapableViewEngine that enables the Web application to show the appropriate view depending on the device's browser that is performing the request. It also includes a sample site that provides different views for Windows Mobile, IPhone, and Blackberry devices.

• Download
• Screencast

Web App Toolkit for Template-Driven Email

This Web Application Toolkit is designed to demonstrate how to generate and send dynamic, template-based emails from a web application. There are many common scenarios where notification emails need to be sent to end users. Examples of these common scenarios may involve notifying a user of their newly created account, sending a new password in respond to a forgotten password request, or emailing an alert under specific business circumstances, such as the creation of a order. Typically the E-mails sent from a Web application scenario are formatted as HTML, include CSS stylesheets, and images and need to be generated dynamically with custom or user-specific data. This Web Application Toolkit includes samples that show how to use templates to generate these dynamic email bodies.

• Download
• Screencast

Web App Toolkit for Making Your Website Social

Adding social capabilities to your Web site allows you to attract new users, keep them on your Web site for longer and get them to come back more often. This Web Application Toolkit shows how, using a few lines of code with the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit, it is possible to add social capabilities to a Web site with instant messaging from a website to various client endpoints like Windows, Windows Mobile, Xbox 360 and Mac. Behind the scenes is a powerful set of UI Controls and a JavaScript library that connect your website to the Messenger Service which is used by 330 million users around the world.

• Download
• Screencast

Web App Toolkit for FAQs

Adding social capabilities to your Web site allows you to attract new users, keep them on your Web site for longer and get them to come back more often. This Web Application Toolkit shows how, using a few lines of code with the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit, it is possible to add social capabilities to a Web site with instant messaging from a website to various client endpoints like Windows, Windows Mobile, Xbox 360 and Mac. Behind the scenes is a powerful set of UI Controls and a JavaScript library that connect your website to the Messenger Service which is used by 330 million users around the world.

• Download
• Screencast

Windows Phone Announcement

Channel 9 has got a great hands on,head over to http://channel9.msdn.com/