Here's a little nugget of information that I've been sitting on for a rainy day (granted, it is actually sunny and 101F where I live). It's something that was forwarded to me a couple of weeks back that I filed in the "to blog about" folder. I've not got a little time to get out a post on it...

The fine folks at Ch. 9 have an updated series of training resources covering SQL Server 2008 R2. Rather than recap the course, I'll just quote the summary.

The goal of the SQL Server 2008 R2 Update for Developers Training Course is to provide information about the improvements introduced in SQL Server 2008 and the new features added in SQL Server 2008 R2. Its primary audience is solution architects and developers who are familiar with SQL Server, and also developers who are new to SQL Server and want to learn the basics. The content focuses on development aspects and illustrates how to design more effective database applications that take advantage of improved capabilities in SQL Server. This version of the training course is designed to work best with the SQL Server 2008 R2.

Here is a list of the modules in this course:

• Getting Started with SQL Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 – Overview
• SQL Server 2008 R2 – Overview and Labs
• Date and Time Data Types
• Location Awareness via Spatial Technologies
• Improved BLOB Support via FILESTREAM
• Transact-SQL Improvements
• CLR Integration (my personal favorite)
• Reporting Services (also very impressive)
• Reporting Services R2 (even more impressive)
• Application and Multi-Server Management
• StreamInsight (includes some LINQ labs)
• Using Data with Excel 2010 
• SharePoint 2010 (includes some information on SQL Server 2008 R2 PowerPivot and PerformancePoint Services)

If you develop against SQL Server, this is a must-review set of training and hands-on lab resources.

I just wrote a blog post about our developer event series focus on Windows Phone 7. The natural question to follow is "what are the plans for us IT pros?" And I have good news here! We are working on a 20+ city tour for a TechNet event series that will be starting later in September and running through October. The planned agenda is to focus on all things deployment – deploying Windows 7, Office 2010, deployment tools like MDOP and System Center, and App-V techniques.

Please let me know if you have any feedback on cities we might visit (we'll likely pick similar cities to the Windows Phone 7 tour) and if you have any questions or specific areas of interest around the deployment topic. Leave a comment on this post or send me a direct message via Twitter @briandmoore.

Thanks to some travel last week for internal meetings, I am about a day (um, week) late getting this post out. It's my obligatory post advertising our upcoming events. First up, developer events focused on Windows Phone 7. But these events feature a twist on our standard MSDN Events-style format. Gone (for now) are the traditional four-hour, eyes-forward event format. New for this fiscal year (our fiscal year runs July through June, so we've just started a new fiscal year) is what we're calling the Windows Phone 7 Boot Camp. What is a boot camp, you ask? Let me tell you...

Boot Camp 101
We actually started the boot camp format last fiscal year with our Windows Azure Boot Camp series. The boot camp is a BYOL (bring-your-own-laptop) event format. We list prerequisites (in the case of Windows Azure, we list them here; in the case of Windows Phone 7, you need Visual Studio 2010 – either a Pro and above product or Express – and the Windows Phone 7 developer tools which are currently in beta) and all you need to do is bring your laptop pre-loaded with the bits. At the event we'll show you some of the fundamentals of developing Silverlight applications for the phone, give you the lab materials, and stick around for some ad hoc code 'til you drop time in the afternoon. In short, this is a hybrid event format that has some eyes-forwards elements with some hands-on elements, and some time to just play around with the tools while one of our evangelists help you come up with great ideas.

Sounds Great So Far, What's the Plan?
As I mentioned, this is a live event (it's not web-based; we have about 20 cities planned across the central US through October) where we work with you on learning some of the great new things you can do with the Windows Phone 7 development tools. We'll cover the Windows Phone 7 platform, we'll show you how to build a Silverlight application for the new phone, and we'll walk you through how to submit an application to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace (and discuss how you can make money from what could easily be a side project). Included in this boot camp format, as mentioned, will be a hands-on facilitated lab plus ample time to kick the tires and play around with an application idea of your own.

Sold Yet? Here's the Schedule
As I mentioned, we're visiting about 20 cities (21 are currently planned) through October. If you can't make one of these dates – or this isn't coming to a city near you – we plan to continue the boot camp series through June 2011. If you have a particular city you would like us to visit, please leave a comment or direct message me @briandmoore.

• Nashville, TN – July 27
• Cincinnati, OH – July 29
• Minneapolis, MN – August 3
• Dallas, TX – August 4
• Indianapolis, IN – August 5
• Overland Park, KS – August 5
• Columbus, OH – September 7
• Waukesha, WI – September 14
• Grand Rapids, MI – September 14
• Little Rock, AR – September 15
• Cleveland, OH – September 15
• St. Louis, MO – September 16
• Southfield, MI – September 21
• Austin, TX – September 22
• Des Moines, IA – September 23
• Tulsa, OK – September 28
• Memphis, TN – September 29
• Houston, TX – September 30
• Knoxville, TN – September 30
• Chicago, IL – October 08
• Downers Grove, IL – October 20

I'm at one of those internal Microsoft meetings where they share new things with the broad field. In all honesty I should have known about this sooner, but what can I say... I'm behind on email. When I catch up on email I am sure I'll find the announcement and realize I am probably a couple of weeks behind on this so-called "announcement". Anyway... I just learned about this resource today, called ScriptJunkie.

What Is It???
It is a site that contains articles, videos and code samples focused on HTML, CSS, and scripts of all types. Basically resources covering almost anything on client-side web development.

I quite literally just learned about it in detail and so I poked around on the site to see what was up there. And there are loads and loads of resources on the site. I found resources on jQuery (and other forms of JavaScript and script in general), CSS3, HTML and similar things to help you build web-based sites. There are even resources to help you build browser neutral sites based on web standards.

There are also code samples and a developer-submitted gallery of code samples like jQuery postMessage: cross-domain scripting goodness, Simple Three-Column CSS Fluid Layout and jQuery replaceText: String replace for your jQueries! – plus a lot more than that. There's also a great rating system in the gallery, and the new standard of an RSS feed for each (highest rated, most popular, etc.).

Granted I haven't done development in a good three years or so, but I truly wished a resource like this existed back then. It looks like it could be very useful.

Here's a last-minute time-sensitive blog post about some Windows Phone 7 developer training happening this week. First things first, here's where you register for the training course.

So what is it all about? It's a virtual training event series happening this Tuesday and Thursday. It includes four instructor-led three-hour training sessions that will help you learn how to develop applications for the Windows Phone 7 platform using Silverlight and XNA.

The Schedule

• July 20 – 8am: Session One: Getting Started with Microsoft Windows Phone and Silverlight
• July 20 – 1pm: Session Two: Programming Game Applications with XNA
• July 22 – 8am: Session Three: Programming Applications with Silverlight
• July 22 – 1pm: Session Four: Review and Wrap Up

The Tools
Of course, you can't learn how to develop for Windows Phone 7 if you don't have the tools. And there's some recent news on the tools front. Most of you already know this, I am sure, but we released a beta of the Windows Phone 7 developer tools last week.

This is a web-based installer (i.e., the installer you download is small and it downloads more stuff based on what you have installed). What does it download? If you have Visual Studio and/or Expression Blend it will install just the components you need to add the Windows Phone 7 tools, such as the design and development templates and emulator. If you have nothing, it will download and install Visual Studio 2010 Express.

Once upon a time (circa 1996; I know, not as cool as the Third Age of Middle Earth or something), there was a young developer who relocated to Dallas to learn distributed object oriented development techniques, or Object Oriented Analysis and Design (OOAD). And learn OOAD techniques he did. He learned UML, his favorite model type was the collaboration diagram, and he learned C++ and Smalltalk to put practice into implementation. As he worked for a consulting company, he quickly learned that business weren't building a whole lot of applications on Smalltalk and he quickly found himself developing in COBOL (again) and Visual Basic 5.0. Despite not developing in "true" OO languages, this young developer still applied OOAD design techniques (you know, to annoy his manager and COBOL developer peers – oh, and to keep his hard won OOAD skills sharp). What this young developer learned, using Visio (then not owned by Microsoft), was that OOAD techniques weren't super useful for COBOL but were quite handy to express event-driven development in VB5 and VB6. And his love for OOAD continued for years – and, in fact, continues to this day...

What, exactly, are you babbling about???
Sorry about that. I was waxing nostalgic. Maybe its because I'm getting older. Anyway...

Yes, true believers, _I_ was that young developer (well, not so young anymore). And although that's a bit of a wacky way to start a blog post my love for OOAD continues to this day. My tool of choice really was Visio. I tried Rational Rose but I never managed to get a license for it. When .NET came out and Rational (before the IBM acquisition) launched their XDE product, I totally jumped over to that. I was with Microsoft by then, but partnered with Rational colleagues and, boy, did I love that tool. Eventually I gravitated to Sparx Enterprise Architect, another great tool for UML. As a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft, I always tried to include a little UML best practice in the occasional demo. But then I moved into a different role and shifted my focus. Ultimately I moved into a management role and my development is limited to tinkering, but I still have a strong appreciation for OO design.

Okay, seriously, what _are_ you babbling about???
Ah, there is a reason for waxing nostalgic. Trust me!

The recent release of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate we have finally brought a series of UML-based tools to bear. And they are _really_ nice tools. To help you learn a bit about the tooling – and learn quite a bit about UML along the way to boot – my colleague Clint Edmonson has published a series of screencasts covering the How Do I of UML using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. Here's the rundown:

• Brainstorm a Project
• Organize Features Into Use Case Models
• Model the Business Domain
• Capture Business Workflows Using Activity Diagrams
• Architect an Application Using a Layer Diagram
• Design A Project's Physical Structure

Clint will be publishing a few more screencasts in the coming days. Keep an eye on his blog for announcements. And go learn some UML and start to build your OOAD muscle. From there, go learn the Gang of Four design patterns and expand your horizons into MVC, MVP, MVVM and so much more.

Do you know Chris "Woody" Woodruff? If you don't you really should – he's a great guy and super smart to boot. And if you live in Downers Grove or Chicago, IL or Madison, WI you will have the opportunity to see him at one of five event hitting those cities (two each in Downers Grove and Chicago and one in Madison).

The Event Series
The Open Data Protocol (OData) is an open protocol for sharing data. It provides a way to break down data silos and increase the shared value of data by creating an ecosystem in which data consumers can interoperate with data producers in a way that is far more powerful than currently possible, enabling more applications to make sense of a broader set of data. Every producer and consumer of data that participates in this ecosystem increases its overall value.

Data is consistent with the way the Web works - it makes a deep commitment to URIs for resource identification and commits to a HTTP-based, uniform interface for interacting with those resources (just like the Web). This commitment to core Web principles allows OData to enable a new level of data intergration and interoperability across a broad range of clients, servers, services, and tools.

OData is released under the Open Specification Promise to allow anyone to freely interoperate with OData implementations.

In this talk Chris will provide an in depth knowledge to this protocol, how to consume a OData service and finally how to implement an OData service on Windows using the WCF Data Services product.

The Agenda

• Overview of OData
• The OData Protocol
• Producing OData Feeds
• Consuming OData Feeds

About Woody
Chris Woodruff (or Woody as he is commonly known as) has a degree in Computer Science from Michigan State University’s College of Engineering. Woody has been developing and architecting software solutions for almost 15 years and has worked in many different platforms and tools. He is a community leader, helping such events as Day of .NET Ann Arbor, West Michigan Day of .NET and CodeMash. He was also instrumental in bringing the popular Give Camp event to Western Michigan where technology professionals lend their time and development expertise to assist local non-profits. As a speaker and podcaster, Woody has spoken and discussed a variety of topics, including database design and open source. He is a Microsoft MVP in Data Platform Development. Woody works at RCM Technologies in Grand Rapids, MI as a Principal Consultant.

Woody is the co-host of the popular podcast “Deep Fried Bytes” and blogs at www.chriswoodruff.com. He is the President of the West Michigan .NET User Group and also is a co-founder of the software architecture online portal nPlus1.org.

Woody has worked in many arenas throughout the years, including healthcare, manufacturing, publishing, promotion execution and the automotive industry. He has experience with starting and running new ventures, including past work with technology startups. Woody continues to develop his expertise by learning & developing new technologies to better meet the needs of his clients, while devoting his free time to improving the development community at large, and giving back to the community in which he lives.

The Dates
There are three cities, with two dates each in Downers Grove and Chicago and one date in Madison.

• Downers Grove, IL on June 21 at 8:30am 
• Downers Grove, IL on June 21 at 1:00pm 
• Chicago, IL on June 22 at 8:30am 
• Chicago, IL on June 22 at 1:00pm
• Madison, WI on July 7 at 1:00pm

Here's a quick hit blog post for you – the Visual Studio 2010 training kit has been updated. You can download the kit here. It's a bit of a big-ish download at 178MB, but it will help you cover a lot of ground as you learn the .NET Framework v4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. Here is the checklist of topics covered:

• C# 4
• Visual Basic 10
• F#
• Parallel Extensions
• Windows Communication Foundation
• Windows Workflow
• Windows Presentation Foundation
• ASP.NET 4
• Windows 7
• Entity Framework
• ADO.NET Data Services
• Managed Extensibility Framework
• Visual Studio Team System

What Else Is There?
Ah, I'm glad you asked! There are several other training kits you can try out as well. If you're interested in one of those topics, download the kit today. They all hold loads and loads of great information, labs, and code samples.

• Silverlight 4 Training Kit 
• Windows Phone 7 Training Kit
• Windows Azure Platform Training Kit – we use this in our Windows Azure Boot Camp training series
• SharePoint 2010 Training Kit
• Office 2010 Training Kit 
• Windows 7 Training Kit 
• SQL Server 2008 R2 Training Kit 

While I was out of the office at TechEd last week helping deliver Windows Azure Boot Camp sessions, the Windows Phone folks made a pretty tremendous announcement about changes to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace on their blog. Specifically they announced marketplace policies, costs, and benefits. And I have to say I’m pretty happy with the details.

Warning disclaimer: to make sure I reflected this news accurately I have largely copied the text from the official post. I have added some color commentary where I felt various details would benefit from some more explanation.

The Policies
Marketplace policies start with the annual $99 registration fee, which gets you a fair amount of benefits and are comparable to what I've seen from the other players. What's more, if you are a student enrolled in DreamSpark (and why aren't you?) your annual registration fee is waived.

Here's what your $99 (or free for DreamSpark students) registration will get you...

• No limit to the number of paid apps submitted (meaning: apps you charge for)
• 5 free apps (meaning: apps you don't charge for) per registration, $19.99 each after that
• A new optional push notification service to help developers stay engaged with customers
• A new optional Trial API (this is like a demo version of a Xbox Live Arcade game; people can try your app for free and easily purchase it after kicking the tires; the Trial API enables you wire that up easily in your app and you get to control the length or type of trial)
• The ability to publish to all available Marketplace markets through a new “worldwide distribution” option, allowing developers to pay once and distribute broadly
• Wider range of business models; free, paid, "freemium" (meaning: some level of free functionality without a trial limit and a paid level with more functionality) and ad-funded

The Deal
The new policies are pretty good, but what do you get for that deal. The good news is that the model remains _very_ developer friendly.

• A revenue share of 70/30 (meaning: Microsoft will only take 30% of the fee for the your app to cover cost of hosting the app in the marketplace, also meaning you keep 70% of whatever you charge for your app)
• Developers manage their business with Marketplace via the self service portal http://developer.windowsphone.com
• Payout takes place monthly for developers that have earned more than USD$200 worldwide
• Developers can make ad funded applications
• All applications go through a process of technical and content certification
• Marketplace offers support for credit card commerce, and where available mobile operator billing
• Microsoft continues its practice of publishing policies, guidelines, and submission process details to developers so they understand exactly how marketplace works

Sign Up Today
If you have a solid idea for a phone, and want to leverage your existing .NET, XAML and Silverlight skills, visit http://developer.windowsphone.com today and register. You never know... you might just have the next $.99 app that sells a million copies and earn yourself nearly $700,000 for the development efforts.

We had a *great* series of of Windows Azure Boot Camp sessions at TechEd 2010 in hot, steamy New Orleans, LA this pas week. Over 300 people attended the boot camp across five sessions. They learned the “first mile” and “final mile” involved in developing, deploying and managing applications on Windows Azure. Collectively they deployed nearly 250 applications.

First Mile
The first mile portion of our boot camps at TechEd focused on getting people signed up to use Windows Azure (we provided trial accounts for all attendees) and gave attendees the latest tools needed to develop applications on Windows Azure. The fundamental tools are the Windows Azure SDK (v1.2 is the latest and provides some stellar enhancements; both Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and Visual Studio 2010 are supported) and the Windows Azure AppFabric SDK. There are additionally several interoperability SDKs for Java, PHP, Eclipse and more. This part of the boot camp was, not surprisingly, the shortest.

Final Mile
Once we got people logged into their free temporary accounts, we walked them through deploying a sample guestbook application. This guestbook application had a very simple web front-end that allowed people to sign the guestbook and upload an image. The image would get stored into Windows Azure Client Storage (a blob to be specific). The application also had a worker role that would take the image and create a thumbnail. To make things easy for the attendees, we created a deployment package (essentially a compressed file of the application, DLLs, service definition file, and all the bits needed to launch the application in Windows Azure) and configuration file that merely needed to be uploaded to the attendee’s temporary account.

Deployment involved creating a storage service and a hosted service. The configuration file was edited to reference the account name (a globally unique identifier to the storage service) and the account key (either the primary or secondary storage key randomly generated for the storage service). Editing the configuration file was basically to provide the “user name” and “password” to the storage service. From there attendees uploaded the package and configuration file and ran and tested their application.

Slides
While attendees waited for Windows Azure to provision their application (and all that implies, from OS to storage to configuration, DNS to load balancers), Brian Prince walked through a presentation on Windows Azure covering some of the details around deployment and management of applications in Windows Azure.

Thank you to all of the folks at TechEd who attended our boot camp sessions. I hope you found them useful. You can download the slides from my blog (11.6MB).

Our cloud computing training events – Windows Azure Boot Camp events and the An Hour In The Cloud With Windows Azure webcasts – have been very successful. To date we have hosted over 10 two-day events and over 10 webcasts. Over 350 developers around the Central Region have been trained on the fundamentals of Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and related technologies. Those same 350+ developers have built and deployed applications to the production Windows Azure environment using free, time-limited accounts we've provided as part of the training. Response has exceeded our expectations – thank you for your support!

To provide you even more opportunities, we have scheduled several additional Hour In The Cloud With Windows Azure webcasts; see my upcoming webcasts list for more information. We have also scheduled additional Windows Azure Boot Camp events, both events my team is hosting as well as events hosted by partners. The first partner scheduled is Neudesic. See my upcoming events list for cities and registration links.

Join us for one of our Windows Azure Boot Camp events or one of our webcasts. Either format, the 1- or 2-day boot camp or the 60-90 minute webcast, will provide you hands-on exposure to Windows Azure. We will help you ramp up on the cloud today.

I presume that, if you are following my blog, you are a developer. Or, at least, in the information technology field. Anyway, for the sake of this post, let's assume you are a developer like I used to be back before I embraced the dark side of the Force (sales), followed by a lobotomy (management) about two years later. With that assumption (warning: you know what they say about "assume")...

If you are writing code with Visual Studio, and hopefully Visual Studio 2010 and all it's amazing enhancements, you should check out a couple of resources related to Windows 7 (amazing, amazing, amazing OS – and I'm not just saying that as a Microsoft employee; Windows 7 have saved me twice since I've moved to it, fodder for a future blog post). The first is the Windows 7 Training Kit for Developers. This modest 86MB download includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos that will help you learn more about developing for Windows 7. You'll get resources and see samples on how to tap into the Taskbar, libraries, multi-touch, sensors and location APIs, the new Ribbon UI infrastructure, and other great resources for optimizing your application for Windows 7.

It's great that there's a robust resource to help you make the most out of Windows 7. But here's the second resource: the "light up your code" campaign. Download the training kit, think of a creative way to exploit Windows 7 in your application, and record a short video of your application. An eligible video will net you a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. (Caveat: read the disclosure and terms; this offer is good only in the 50 United States and DC to software development professionals & enthusiasts ages 18 and up. Et cetera.) You can also check out the videos submitted so far to spark your creative juices.

One of our partners, Cumulux, is also hosting a series of 90 minute Windows Azure webcast events, titled An Hour in the Cloud with Windows Azure. Here's the scoop...

Why is Windows Azure important?
Have you wondered how cloud computing can bring your ideas to the web faster? Reduce your IT costs? Or be able to respond quickly to changes in your business and customers needs? If so, then you need to find out what Azure is all about!

What is this Windows Azure training?
In this Windows Azure training session you will learn about Azure; how to develop and launch your own application as well as how it impacts YOUR daily life. Like the Windows Azure Boot Camp events, these webcasts are free.

Agenda

• Overview of Cloud Computing
• Introduction to Windows Azure
• Tour of the Azure Portal
• Uploading your first Azure package
• Real world Scenario
• Experiencing your first cloud app & behind the scenes
• Q&A

Check out my upcoming webcast list to see the dates and times for these webcasts.

We've announced a few more Windows Azure Boot Camp events over the past few days, and since I'm pretty heavily involved in the behind-the-scenes part of it (read: funding it; my colleague, Brian Prince, is the mastermind), I wanted to fire off a quick post about our Windows Azure Boot Camp events. In part because we have a few new ones to draw your attention to, and in part because Mr. Prince and I will be delivering 5 or 6 shorter Windows Azure Boot Camp breakout sessions at TechEd 2010 in New Orleans, LA in June.

What is this Boot Camp?
It is a two-day deep-dive – including hands-on labs – into cloud computing and Windows Azure. The agenda has the full details, but sessions will focus on cloud and Windows Azure fundamentals, web roles, storage (blobs, tables, and queues), worker roles, SQL Azure, AppFabric, and various cloud scenarios. Each attendee will need to bring their laptop, ideally pre-loaded with the required bits, and will work on Windows Azure-based development projects, including upload into the production Azure environment using free, limited-time access accounts we'll provide.

So, think about it... Two days of instructor-led training focused on cloud computing and Windows Azure. Hands-on time working with Windows Azure-based application development. Production deployment of said developed software. What's not to like? Ah, you are curious about the costs, are you not? Well, no fear. The boot camp events we are hosting are free to anyone.

Wait... You Said TechEd?
Yes, yes I did. Brian Prince and I are also delivering a series of Windows Azure Boot Camp sessions at TechEd. If you are going to TechEd, be sure to attend one of the many Windows Azure or related cloud computing sessions. Once you get the basics down, join one of our sessions – it will be repeated several times throughout the conference – to learn about the "first mile" (what to install on your development environment, etc.) and the "final mile" (how to deploy and manage it using the Windows Azure portal, etc.). Here's the summary...

Take what you've seen and learned here at Tech•Ed and put it to work with your own hands. Visit the Windows Azure Boot Camp and let us set you up with all of the bits and tools you need to start rocking in the cloud, and walk through deploying your first cloud application. Bring your application, build one with us, or deploy a sample application we have ready to go. All you need to bring is your laptop and we take care of the rest. While you’re at the Windows Azure Boot Camp, we can also discuss your applications back at work, and how they might fit into the cloud. We can even teach you how to talk about the cloud with management. We even supply a free, temporary Azure account for you to play with! Space is limited and is available on a first-come, first-seated basis.

What you need to bring: A computer or laptop running Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista Service Pack 1, or Windows Vista Service Pack 2.

We will have the following bits on USB drives to install onsite and get you up and running:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate (free), Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1, or Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition with SP1*
• SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (or above) (this is usually installed with Visual Studio)
• Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio
• AppFabric SDK
• Windows Azure Platform Training Kit

* If you use Express Edition you should update to the Visual Studio 2010 free trial, to ensure you are able to complete all of the labs.

Well, that's my short announcement for the day. Head over to my events list and sign up for one of our boot camps (or one of our Visual Studio 2010 or Office 2010 launch events). Other than your time, it's free and you will learn a lot about Windows Azure.

Although I am still behind on several blog-fodder items (SQL Server, SharePoint, Office 2010... the list goes on), there is one timely bit of news I would like to share right now: the Silverlight 4 training kit is now available. And not only is there an online training kit, they have packaged up the entire thing as an offline kit as well.

So, what does this kit include? Well there are eight modules, each with hands-on labs and videos (25 total), that help you learn all sorts of things about Silverlight 4. Things start with What's New in Silverlight 4, an overview whitepaper (60+ whopping pages!) that covers the new business-centric capabilities, enhancements and features for rich media experiences, tool support in Expression Blend and Visual Studio, as well as the new Out of Browser features. From there the modules dig into Silverlight 4 New Features; an introduction to business applications; WCF RIA Services; how to use rich text, styling, and more; using the webcam and clipboard; out of browser support; and MEF. It all builds around single business application and walks through building out the components of that application through deployment of the application. The training kit will work through several sandboxed and elevated out of browser features... Quoting the site, "RichTextBox control, implicit styling, webcam, drag and drop, multi touch, validation, authentication, MEF, WCF RIA Services, right mouse click, and much more!"

Unlike my announcement for Visual Studio 2010 (which was, if I am self-critical, was pretty late as far as announcements go), _this_ announcement comes only a weekend on the heels of the release of Silverlight 4.0. Scott Guthrie blogs about the new features in Silverlight 4.0; he summarizes the key enhancements, links to an hour-long keynote he gave, as well as a link to download the Silverlight Tools RC2 for Visual Studio 2010. Lastly, he links to the release candidate of Expression Blend 4.0.

Wow, is that a packed paragraph!