Today, Channel 9 launched two new training courses for SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 created by developers for developers.  Channel 9 has always been about giving direct access to the engineers and future technologies from Microsoft, and now we’re extending this successful formula to bring you training that will allow developers to get started on learning about emerging technologies at their own pace.  Today you’ll find extensive instructor recordings from top MVPs on how to develop against both SharePoint and office 2010. We’ll also be publishing more content at the beginning of December that will include hands-on labs, source code, and much more! All of this free for you to consume or download at your own pace.

SharePoint 2010 Developer Training

See how SharePoint 2010 has evolved into a first-class developer platform. Also, learn how SharePoint 2010 provides the business collaboration platform for developers to rapidly build solutions using familiar tools such as Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010 through this self-paced course.

Office 2010 Developer Training

Discover how Office 2010 Beta is a broadly extensible platform for building information worker productivity solutions and see how developing for Office with Visual Studio 2010 makes this easy. See online presentations with demos that will help you get started developing solutions from Add-ins to full featured Office Business Applications (OBAs) using Visual Studio 2010 with Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 as the core platform.

We hope you enjoy this initial set of training videos and will check back with Channel 9 in the near future as we build the learning center out to support SharePoint and Office 2010 development.

In case you missed it, the SQL Server Driver for PHP 1.1 is now available for download with support for SQL Azure as well. The download is available via the MSDN download site.   The source code for the driver is posted on the CodePlex site.

Microsoft SQL Server Driver for PHP Team Blog : SQL Server Driver for PHP 1.1 is now available

Download Here: http://bit.ly/f9tSV

Check out this cool pumpkin carving app.  This was created by Archetype a Microsoft Partner.  http://bit.ly/1glQa2

The Eclipse tools for Silverlight project, aka eclipse4SL, is an eclipse plug-in that enables Eclipse developers to use the Eclipse IDE to create applications that run on the Microsoft Silverlight runtime platform. It also enables collaboration on Silverlight projects between Eclipse (Java) developers, .NET developers, and web designers on both the Windows and MAC operating systems.

http://www.eclipse4sl.org/

This was noted at ZendCon last week.  Here’s the official link for download.  

Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse

In partnership with Marco Tabini and Associates (MTA) (php|architect; CodeWorks; php|tek), we are excited to announce the launch of The Great PHP on Windows contest. Do you have what it takes to win? Of course you do .

You are encouraged to leverage existing open-source libraries and applications, including blogs engines, forums, photo galleries and other platform/components as part of your submission.

For complete details visit http://phparch.com/win

The Quick Summary:

• Write a new application designed to run in PHP on Windows using IIS—or make a significant contribution to an existing open-source project along the same lines
• The best application, selected jointly by a panel of experts and by our readers, will win a grand prize
  which includes a 52″ Digital HD home entertainment system, as well as an all-expenses paid trip to php|tek 2010 in Chicago. Runner-up prizes include 2 XBox 360 Ultimate and subscriptions to php|architect.
• Not familiar with Windows? No worries—we have partnered with Applied Innovations to give you absolutely free hosting on a pre-configured virtual machine for the duration of the contest.
• Registration and submissions for the contest will be accepted October 19^th, 2009 through February 28^th, 2010 and with judging and public voting will occur March 1^st – 31^st.
• For the duration of the contest, Applied Innovations will provide free web hosting to all participants (shared) and a free VM to the first 60 participants who register.
• Contest is open to all U.S. residents excluding MTA, Applied Innovations, and Microsoft employees and affiliated individuals. (MTA is the official sponsor with AppliedI and Microsoft as promotion entities.)

The contest is open to residents of the United States only—but you can still win by voting, no matter where you are.

 Good Luck!

Man vs. Food on this particular fast food delight…

If you can’t attend in person, this is great opportunity to get some quality content. 

Check out the event here: http://vepexp.microsoft.com/thenewefficiency

Agenda

Windows 7 Track

9:00-9:45am      Taking Your Application to the Next Level with Windows® 7

9:45-9:55am       Break

9:55-10:40am     Beyond Human Interaction with Windows 7 Sensor and Location    

10:40-10:50am   Break

10:50-11:35am   Building the Next Generation User-Interface with
                            Multitouch Ribbon on Windows 7

11:35-1:15pm    Break

1:15-2:00pm      Windows 7 for the Optimized Desktop

2:00-2:10pm      Break

2:10-2:55pm      Windows 7: Make People Productive Anywhere

2:55-3:05pm      Break

3:05-3:50pm      Windows 7: Enhanced Security and Control

3:50-4:00pm      Break

4:00-4:45pm      Windows 7: Deployment Enhancements

Windows Server 2008 R2 Track

9:00-9:45am      What Developers Should Know About Windows Server 2008 R2

9:45-9:55am      Break

9:55-10:40am    Windows Server 2008 R2: Develop with New 
                           Parallel Computing Technologies

10:40-10:50am  Break

10:50-11:35am  Windows Server 2008 R2: Web and Enterprise Solutions

11:35-1:15pm   Break

1:15-2:00pm     What’s in Windows Server 2008 R2 for IT Administrators:
                          A Technical Overview Part 1

2:00-2:10pm    Break

2:10-2:55pm    What’s in Windows Server 2008 R2 for IT Administrators:
                         A Technical Overview Part 2

2:55-3:05pm    Break

3:05-3:50pm    Windows Server 2008 R2: New Server Deployment & Migration

3:50-4:00pm    Break

4:00-4:45pm    Windows Server 2008 R2 Virtualization Technologies–
                         Saving IT Costs

Exchange 2010 Track

1:15-2:00pm    Introducing Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

2:00-2:10pm    Break

2:10-2:55pm    Voice Mail with Unified Messaging in Microsoft Exchange 2010

2:55-3:05pm    Break

3:05-3:50pm    Exchange 2010 High Availability and Storage

3:50-4:00pm    Break

4:00-4:45pm    Exchange 2010 Archiving and Retention

Well I haven’t geeked out on D&D in a while, but here’s a cool Surface proof of concept from Carnegie Mellon.

I often get a lot of questions about the Azure benefits associated with MSDN and the BizSpark Program.  Here is a good posting and I’ve included the table below for easy reference.