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Windows 8 guru Thomas Lewis shares his list of top Windows 8 blogs to watch, tools to check out, designer resources, social connections, and developer resources.

THOMAS LEWIS
Thomas Lewis is a Principal Technical Evangelist who at 8 years old thought that there was a frog apocalypse happening in his yard. It just turned out that the rain made all the frogs come out and hop around. He has been at Microsoft for over 12 years and has evangelized everything from Visual Basic 6 to HTML5 to Design for web developers and designers world-wide. He even once ate a "century egg" while in China. He is bent on eradicating IE6 from the planet and will never stop, never.

D³: LIVE & INTERACTiVE
In case you haven't heard about the show, Developers, Developers, Developers: LIVE & INTERACTIVE (D³) is a monthly show hosted by Jonathan Rozenblit. The show airs live every first Wednesday of the month at 12:00 PM ET and features the latest updates on what's new and exciting in the world of development; featured presentations; and guests. LIVE and INTERACTIVE means that you'll be part of the show – You're invited to interact with us; ask questions and get them answered; and share your thoughts and opinions.

Join the Canadian Developer Connection LinkedIn group  
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Following his presentation at the East of Toronto .NET User Group (@easttorontoug), Gladstone Grant (@gladstonegrant) takes on Jonathan's questions as well as some from the viewers about the opportunities developers have working with the Microsoft platform.

GLADSTONE GRANT

Software is an "innovate or die" business. It's the kind of business that attracts restless, positive people like Gladstone Grant. As VP of Microsoft's Developer and Platform Group, Gladstone has the enviable job of being focused on the future, on what's next, on the things most of us haven't even dreamt of yet. After nearly 20 years in the technology industry and more than 12 years with Microsoft Canada, Gladstone's passion for technology, for learning, for new challenges and for competition are stronger than ever. When Gladstone turns his attention to the present, rather than the future, he indulges his passions for sport and home renovation.

D³: LIVE & INTERACTiVE
In case you haven't heard about the show, Developers, Developers, Developers: LIVE & INTERACTIVE (D³) is a monthly show hosted by Jonathan Rozenblit. The show airs live every first Wednesday of the month at 12:00 PM ET and features the latest updates on what's new and exciting in the world of development; featured presentations; and guests. LIVE and INTERACTIVE means that you'll be part of the show – You're invited to interact with us; ask questions and get them answered; and share your thoughts and opinions.

Join the Canadian Developer Connection LinkedIn group  
Follow @devsdevdevs
Like D³ on Facebook
Subscribe to podcasts via iTunes or RSS

More D3: LIVE & INTERACTIVE >>

What an excellent idea, Erik! We will do this—and so here is the first episode of Checking In.

For this pilot, we thought, who better to interrogate than our very own Mike Sampson? Mike, also known as Sampy, is the lead developer of Channel 9's back-end infrastructure and has done some really excellent engineering in the cloud (C9 is wholly run on Azure and Sampy made all the pieces fit and work together in addition to designing the system and, of course, checking in the code). Let's see what Erik wants to know (we honestly don't know!) and how this conversation unwinds. Thank you, Sampy, for taking the orange pill!

Enjoy this beginning of a great series of content brought to you by Channel 9's favorite genius, Erik Meijer. Thank you Erik! We love you, man!

In this newest preview, developers have a chance to check out IE9’s fully hardware-accelerated HTML5 implementation and test drive samples of modern SVG and native JavaScript in action.

And as before, the applications made available for testing purposes are fun for developers and non-developers alike. For example, there’s a Hamster Dance Revolution game, the musical IE Beatz, and the Psychedelic Browsing app which shows off hardware acceleration’s capabilities.

Continued improvements to the Javascript engine are measured using the Webkit Sunspider benchmark and the results, charted here, and they’re encouraging. IE9 has come a long, long way from IE8, that’s for sure. And the differences between IE9 and other modern web browsers on this microbenchmark are converging within thousandths of seconds, the post notes.

Also in the latest preview, IE’s score on the Acid3 test improves from 83 to 95, which is also good news.

This preview is the last one before IE launches its beta, so developers and designers need to get their sites ready soon. There are some tips on doing so listed at the bottom of the page here.

Access to the kit is on an invite-only basis at the moment, and interested developers have to go to Skype’s website and fill out an online form detailing their user and organization info. 

SkypeKit will allow the integration of voice and video calling and/or IM features into third-party desktop applications or compatible Internet-connected hardware devices. It also offers Skype’s super wideband audio, based on the SILK codec. Developers who use SkypeKit will be able to describe their apps as “plugged into Skype” in their marketing materials, notes a company blog post about the announcement.

To request an invite to the program, you can head over here to the sign up page now.

Included in the download are 28 layered Photoshop templates that offer those controls included in the Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta and those that are a part of Windows Phone, but not yet in the Beta, letting you get a jump on your app’s future development.

Templates in the download included the following:

Application Bar & Application Menu, Buttons, Check Box, Context Menu, Date Picker, Dialog Boxes, Edit Control, Hardware, Icons, Keyboard & Input, List Picker, List View, Panorama, Panorama Backgrounds, Picker Box, Pivot, Progress Indicators, Quick Jump Grid, Radio Button, Reminders, Slider, Start & App List, Start Tiles, Status Bar, Theme, Time Picker, Toast Notifications, and Toggle Switch.

From the same page on MSDN, you can also access other resources like, this visual explanation of the inspiration behind the Windows Phone design system codenamed Metro and this guide which provides detailed information about UI elements and controls, UI system behaviors, and the interaction model for the touch interface.

(credit: istartedsomething.com)

To get started, all you need is the code (open sourced under the BSD license), an API key, and the API Docs (you’ll need an MSDN login to access them).

Then, you can follow along with this tutorial written by PHP guru Cal Evans where you can access sample code, too while learning more about Bing’s API. Stay tuned for follow up posts, as well, where he will talk about what possibilities this API access permits. 

This is pretty interesting stuff because it’s entirely unique – no other search engine gives you access to information like this via an API. Now go build something amazing with it!

The new Messenger Connect API lets developers do 3 main things:

1. Create instant user profiles and friend lists. In other words, portable friend lists you can choose to share with websites by signing in.
2. Enable real-time IM on websites plus feed-based sharing options
3. Easily integrate into multiple development environments (an API service exposes a RESTful interface, wrapped in a range of libraries including JavaScript, .NET and others)

For end users

But for consumers, what the Messenger Connect will allow for is the ability to pull together “all of a user’s social networks into one ‘passport’ that they can use around the web,” writes Martin Bryant on The Next Web blog. Yep, that means you can tote around your Facebook identity and others too, all in one package.

“Like the new version of Windows Live Messenger, it supports Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn but will additionally be supported by over 100 third party partners at launch,” Bryant explains.

While Microsoft claims that the aim is not to compete directly with Facebook’s Open Graph, “we’re not trying to be a social network, we’re trying to be the best companion to social networks…,” Microsoft’s John Richards told TNW, there are some similarities between the two services and how they both let you port your social graph around the web.

However, privacy is being positioned as the biggest difference. The official blog post reads: “…we believe that the privacy of a customers’ data is a critical element of a secure web and the customer should be in control…Websites cannot access any of a user’s non-public information from Windows Live without prior consent…”

Security and privacy, in fact, are listed as “foundational elements” of the new service, which should be a big plus for consumers who want the convenience of a social companion service without the fear of over-sharing.

The new API is part of the next version of Messenger, coming soon and available for preview here: http://www.messengerpreview.com/

The .NET 4 framework has also been made available and Silverlight 4 is set to launch this week too, according to S. Somasegar, Senior Vice President of the Developer Division, who shared the news on his blog.

To download the new software, go here. For more information on developer resources check out the site Develop for Windows. This collection off tools, sample code, and developer kits features some interesting stats on its homepage, too like:

• 1,000,000,000 Windows users
• 2,700,000 Windows developers
• 250,000 unique devices running Windows
• 95% of all netbooks run Windows

(via the Windows Team blog)

Inside the toolkit, you’ll find the following:

• Facebook Developers Toolkit Link
• Ninject 2.0 for Dependency Injection Link
• Asp.Net MVC 2 Link
• Windows Azure Software Development Kit (February 2010) Link
• AutoMapper Link
• Azure Toolkit - Simplified library for accessing Message Queues, Table Storage and Sql Server
• Automated build scripts for one-click deployment from TFS 2010 to Azure

For more information on how to get started, check out the toolkit’s page here on Codeplex.

(via ISV Developer Community blog)

• New platform
  • Windows Phone 7 Series
• New features
  • Integrates with Visual Studio 2010
  • Dynamic audio output
  • Microphone input
  • BasicEffect has four new siblings
    • SkinnedEffect
    • EnvironmentMapEffect
    • DualTextureEffect
    • AlphaTestEffect
• Improved portability and usability
  • Collapsed graphics caps into just two profile levels: Reach and HiDef
  • Many graphics API improvements
  • This involves some breaking API changes
  • Split Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll into several assemblies, to make it more obvious which pieces are available on each platform

Michael Klucher also added a few answers to some people’s “burning questions,” noting “yes, we have hardware accelerated 3D API’s on Windows Phone 7 Series. Yes, we have Visual Studio 2010 integration with our toolset. We’ve even added buffered audio support to the Audio API’s that many of you have asked for.”

You can find out more about XNA news on the XNA Creators Club Online.

Now that documentation has been made publicly available. On MSDN, anyone can read through all the details about the PST Structure Specification, including all the data structures it uses, examples, considerations, data algorithms, and product behavior.

Armed with this info, developers will be able to interoperate with PST data in both server and client scenarios on the platform of their choice. You can access the full spec details here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff387869.aspx.

The answers will be revealed next month at the MIX10 conference. All those attending the event, a web conference intended for designers and developers, will receive free development tools and exclusive free support for Windows Phone 7 Series. There’s also a dedicated track on the Windows Phone 7 Series platform that runs throughout the event for mobile developers to follow. And if you register before February 21st, you can get $200 off.

So how excited are the developers? Well, as the first comment on MIX’s site about the offer reads, “Can't wait! Windows Phone 7 is made of win.” We couldn’t agree more.

Image credit: Engadget

Also, Dmitry and Peter discuss Snoop, FastCGI 1.5, Windows Mobile wish lists, Windows Azure X-Drive,  PHP MEF, Gaming Addictions, and other bad habits. Is this a Developer talk show or what?!