Thanks to Rob Caron for posting these great links for developers today. Keep coming back for this information if you are interested in developing on Windows devices or if you currently do develop using Microsoft products and software. 

1. Jason Zander: April 27th What’s Happening Around Visual Studio
2. Jon Galloway: Windows 8 and ASP.NET Web API - Part 1 - Getting Started
3. LightSwitch Help Website: Using Visual Studio LightSwitch To Orchestrate A Unity 3D Game
4. Eric Lippert: GUID guide, part two
5. This Week on Channel 9: Windows 8 Release Preview, SkyDrive, PhoneGap Build and more
6. Channel 9: Windows Azure App Scaling to Need
7. Willy-P. Schaub: ALM Rangers switching to single TPC/TP and multiple Teams model
8. Rubel S: Visual Studio 11 Beta–Test Agent needs to be installed on Test Controller box for Load Test
9. Burrows: New MVVM Tutorial
10. Vignesh C: Load Testing in cloud using Visual Studio

All sorts of guessing and excitement about the new Microsoft investment in Barnes & Noble today. One thing is certain, Microsoft is all about the cloud and putting apps on devices.

From the press release:  

One of the first benefits for customers will be a NOOK application for Windows 8, which will extend the reach of Barnes & Noble’s digital bookstore by providing one of the world’s largest digital catalogues of e-Books, magazines and newspapers to hundreds of millions of Windows customers in the U.S. and internationally.

From the TechCrunch story, Microsoft Makes $300 Million Investment in Barnes and Noble....

This is also a progression — a very big one — of the funding etudes that Microsoft has been making to developers to make sure they are making apps for the Windows Phone platform, a way of getting more content on its platforms, which, it can be argued, may have come too late to the market. The first product to come out of the door? A Nook application for Windows 8, the companies say.

Venture Beat says it's a gateway into the lucrative higher education market. 

The inclusion of B&N’s higher education business also gives Microsoft a gateway into that potentially lucrative market. The subsidiary will push forward B&N’s Nook Study software to deliver digital education goods — which could potentially remove the need for expensive textbooks.

The Next Web focuses on the push to make a dent in the e-reader market against Amazon and the Kindle and Kindle Fire:

One of the first things that customers will be able to experience will be Barnes & Noble’s NOOK app for Windows 8 (Amazon has also built a Kindle app) that will push e-book, magazine and newspaper content to Windows customers.

The two companies will also push education incentives via Barnes & Noble’s College business, providing students and teachers will digital tools and content via Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Study software.

The Portable Future

The really simple way to look at it is that Windows Phones and then the future devices that will use the Windows 8 platform -- like the really hot looking tablets coming out -- are preludes to a future of portability. Developers now have an even bigger doorway through which to walk through their apps ideas.  

Microsoft is hosting, through BizSpark, a competition to build web and mobile apps for Windows Phones. You can do this at Seed Philly.  You can also, presumably, do this anywhere from now until June 3, when you take the 30 to Launch Azure Challenge, which gives you an opportunity to work with Microsoft Windows teams to put your business in the cloud with an app for the phone or the web. 

Pun aside, Wappwolf is based at Rocketspace on Fremont Street in San Francisco. Roland Trimmel, who is from Austria, manages the marketing and strategy for the company. He is here in this video with the team, also from Austria. They have an automation app for documents put into dropbox that is easy to use and that gives me some thoughts on the future of workplace automation. 

I get sick and tired of haivng to tag and post every single Facebook photo into albums, especcially since my job means that I have to do this for many pictures. Yes, Facebook does have some automation, but the great thing about Wappwolf is that Wappwolf does all the dirty work for me and makes sure that anything I drop into Dropbox or Box will be automatically processed using all the little tasks that I have created for it. 

It doesn't matter if it's a pdf, a video going to YouTube, like the one I am going to show you here, or spreadsheets.

They are getting ready to announce some changes, like the use of "recipes" created by avid users of the app.  Microsoft has a partnership with RocketSpace -- our attempt at being deeply embedded in Silicon Valley Startupland.

An Israeli startup called Soluto switched to Windows Azure to help it deliver Soluto to more than 3 million PCs worldwide, maintain its market momentum, and uncap its business potential. That's what happens when you win Tech Crunch Disrupt and people fall in love with you.   You can click here to see a full video about the solution.

Soluto Reached for Azure when they realized their new found fame had made the friendly IT solution a hot ticket. Here's the complete Microsoft Israel case study.

Tomer Dvir and Ishay Green have been programming software since before they were teenagers. In 2008, they started a business in the “Silicon Boulevard” area of Tel Aviv, Israel—a hub of technology entrepreneurship—and built an application called Soluto that helps advanced PC users manage and optimize the Windows-based PCs of their friends and family remotely.

“As technology becomes ubiquitous, we want to help people get everything they can out of it,” says Dvir, CEO at Soluto. “We wanted to do it in Tel Aviv, where we could be at the center of all that innovation.”

In May 2010, Dvir and Green publicly launched Soluto at the inaugural TechCrunch Disrupt, a worldwide competition for IT startup companies. Soluto won Best of Show, and suddenly the company was an international thought leader, with media coverage in global outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, and the BBC.

What Made Soluto Different? A Focus On Unsnarling the Consumer IT Confusion

“Everyone at TechCrunch was talking about Facebook plug-ins and Twitter applications, and we showed up with home PC support,” says Roee Adler, Chief Product Officer at Soluto. “But the idea that Soluto could help make people happier with their technology really resonated.”

In the month after TechCrunch Disrupt, almost 1 million people downloaded Soluto. As people use Soluto, it collects information about the PCs they work on and then analyzes and presents that data for use in managing other PCs, which requires a lot of computing capacity. The company supported Soluto with a hosted environment running Microsoft SQL Server data management software and Amazon Web Services, but the system failed under the sudden demand. “Our server environment couldn't scale up fast enough,” says Adler. “We needed a better, more flexible solution, but we still wanted to avoid the risk of a big IT investment.”

An Azure Solution

The Soluto team wanted to power the application with cloud technology. Having already used the cloud-based Amazon Web Services, it also evaluated other cloud environments, including Windows Azure, the Microsoft cloud set. 

The team expected that transferring a live application to the cloud would be challenging, and it quickly determined that it could support Soluto most effectively with Windows Azure. “Because we could work with familiar tools such as the Microsoft .NET Framework and Microsoft Visual Studio, we knew that we could get to market much faster with Windows Azure than we would with Amazon,” says Adler.  You can click here for a video about this case study.

Soluto users now connect to Windows Azure through a web browser and use Soluto to connect remotely with any PC, while the application automatically collects anonymous information about the computer. “We collect usage data from every Soluto-managed computer to generate information that helps Soluto users quickly optimize the PCs they work on,” says Adler. “But only technical information is gathered into Windows Azure, and no Soluto user has access to anyone’s personal data.”

Soluto users can remotely diagnose PC problems, add updates, or install applications, often in a few mouse-clicks and with no action required by the user. “From any location, I can update my mother’s Windows Media Player, turn on her firewall, or install Skype on her PC,” says Adler. “If her PC is off, the command will be stored on Windows Azure and executed when she turns the machine on.”

Soluto uses Windows Azure table storage to save PC data, deliver it to users, and process it with data from other machines. Soluto users generate tens of millions of data transactions every day, making Soluto one of the largest consumers of Windows Azure resources among startups worldwide.

Benefits of Windows Azure

By adopting Windows Azure, Soluto solved its scaling issues so it could offer a powerful tool to PC users, maintain its market momentum, and uncap its business potential.

Complete Elasticity, Endless Scalability

The Soluto team uses Windows Azure to support a powerful tool that allows users to connect to and optimize PCs with the help of a broad peer-usage database, so everybody can benefit from the skills and knowledge of the broader PC community. “With Windows Azure, we gave Soluto the power to deliver an advanced user experience to every PC user,” says Adler.

After migrating to Windows Azure, Soluto grew rapidly. By October 2011, the application had 3 million downloads. Demand can spike by as much as 30 million transactions per day, but the Soluto team can quickly and easily scale Windows Azure to avoid any break in service. “With Windows Azure, we have complete elasticity and endless scalability,” says Dvir. “We are ready to serve any peak in consumer demand.”

Business Focus

By choosing Windows Azure over Amazon or other cloud services, the Soluto team could build on its initial momentum by moving the application to the cloud in just a few months. “With Windows Azure we did not have to learn new development tools—or build a server infrastructure—so we could stay focused on the unique value we offer,” says Dvir.

Soluto is still developing a revenue structure. But with Windows Azure, the team has the capacity and flexibility to serve its global user base and maintain its high-profile industry position in the meantime. “Using Windows Azure, we have the capacity to process hundreds of terabytes of data,” says Dvir. “That releases our growth potential and gives us the agility to watch the market evolve, learn from our customers, enhance our products, and develop a profitable model.”

Here's a whole list of videos of Soluto during their heady TechCrunch Disrupt days.

People think that software engineers just sit around and solve problems. The truth is, no problem really becomes a problem unless there is some human interaction in the real world that highlights the friction between the human and that difficulty.

Engineering and the software they create is not really problem solving, though. I like to think about it more like opportunity solving, as if each opportunity is just waiting there, like a sliver of water in a jar.  You've heard of the Aesop's fable of the crow who was thirsty, but who could not reach the water in the bottom of a jar.

Well, the crow finally figured out how to put a bunch of stones in the jar, until it raised the water level. And then she took a nice cool drink.  Birds are smart. Crows are among the smartest birds in the world.

Startup engineers and developers are kind of like the crows of the startup ecosystem.

And Microsoft kind of gets developers, so we are showing the world with things like the Azure accelerators. 

The Microsoft^® Accelerator for Windows Azure will host ten companies for a three month, on site, deep immersion program focused on building businesses that take advantage of the cloud. Through this program, Microsoft and TechStars will help entrepreneurs, engineers and innovators to bring to life a wide range of business ideas that leverage the limitless possibilities enabled by Windows Azure’s open and flexible cloud platform.

The program will run from late August through November in Seattle, Washington. The Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure is being powered by TechStars using the same mentor driven methodology pioneered and proven by them in New York, Boulder, Seattle and Boston.

Mentors for the Microsoft Accelerator include a broad base of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in the industry as well as Microsoft executives. In addition, Microsoft will provide in-depth technical support for Windows Azure and the METRO user interface environment delivered on Windows 8 and Windows Phone.

No Shift, Just Showing What We Really Mean -- Startups are Heroes and Culture Makers

Microsoft was instrumental in the creation of the home PC market. It literally revolutionized how people work anywhere.

The world is about solving for opportunity now. With the Cloud, people can not only just do business anywhere. They can create business anywhere. 

That's where relationships with investors and incubators mean a lot more than before. Real relationships are happening here, and we're dead set on giving the best deveopers anywhere a chance to make the best companies

and solutions in the world.

 Microsoft is being nimble in helping startups use Azure, for one thing. Check it out in Israel:

"Right next door to the Microsoft R&D center, the company renovated a large shared space and cleared out a floor just for startups. The focus is to bring in companies to utilize the Azure cloud platform to help them scale and grow, which is a rocky proposition, especially in Israel. Along with the ten startups, there is a mentorship heavy program with forty of the top startup CEOs in Israel.

Remember, that Microsoft also invested in TechStars.  And we are partnered with many other investors and incubators in the space. Microsoft BizSpark is making headway in making sure they are compatible with the startup

mentality and with the aims, goals and aspirations of what Startup America CEO Scott Case calls "the real American heroes."

Not Following a Trend, Shaping a Future

Two days ago, we announced our partnership with Startupbootcamp Amsterdam.

It's no secret why. If you look at the latest venture capital trends, investor confidence is up (borrowing this image from the Venture Beat article). 

(Image courtesy, Venture Beat)

Along with investor confidence making a tick up, there's been an overall trend among VCs to build an ecosystem that ensures startup creation. Leading investors in the space who mentor, like the folks at TechStars, have realized that rather than wait for investment opportunities to present themselves, they are going to invent the pipeline.

Mentors like Fred Wilson are exceptionally capable at not only spotting trends before they surface, but in creating a systematic culture that surfaces smart ideas within the sphere of influence. I've been an avid fan of Wilson after following and commenting on his blog, A/VC, for some time.  He's a master at creating culture and zeitgeist, not by any direct influence, but by opening up platforms for people to express their views. All great startups come from conflicts, open views of open and closed systems, and from interaction with other smart people.

The rise of the social web has led to this exponential growth in startup cultures, all over the world. Incubators are springing up all over the place. If you look at the Microsoft BizSpark blog, you will see a heavy emphasis on events, partners and cultural moments. Wherever there is discussion and interest, there is a tie in to helping startups grow.