The Midweek Download: March 16th Edition – Ben the PC Guy reviews the Dell Vostro v130 and two wicked cool videos from Corning and Silverlight

Hopefully, the news regarding the launch of Internet Explorer 9 hasn’t satisfied your thirst for technology stories coming out of Microsoft this week, because plenty of other stuff happened at the company.

Without further ado, here is the latest edition of the Midweek Download:

New content series for Windows Phone developers. The Windows Phone Developer Blog has launched a new series of posts for Web developers targeting the Windows Phone 7 platform. In the first installment, blogger Jorge Peraza, a program manager on the Windows Phone Browser Team, writes about managing the Windows Phone browser viewport.

Ben the PC Guy reviews a business-class laptop from Dell. In this March 11th post on the Windows Experience Blog, Ben “the PC Guy” Rudolph blogs about the new Dell Vostro v130, which he describes as “an impressive little PC that stands out from the business PC crowd like a red dress at a black tie affair.” That’s the Vostro v130 below.

A Day Made of Glass. Science fiction fans will dig this ultra-cool video from Corning (maker of the Gorilla Glass used in products such as Surface 2.0 and the iPad) posted on the Next at Microsoft Blog by the blog’s editor, Steve Clayton. Watching the video, one gets the feeling that all the instances of natural user interfaces are not too far off in the future. Plus, it’s just really, really cool. Check it out:

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Updated Windows Azure SDK now available. The Windows Azure Team has announced the availability of an updated version of the Windows Azure Software Development Kit and the Windows Azure Management Portal for developers. Read this March 9th post on the Windows Azure Blog for more details.

Silverlight TV: Building 3-D graphics using Silverlight 5. In the latest installment of Silverlight TV, watch as Danny Riddell, CEO of interactive firm Archetype, dives into how the company built s 3-D medical application. Riddell takes John Papa, a senior technical evangelist at Microsoft, through a detailed tour of the application. Watch the video below. It’s impressive, to say the least.

That’s it for this edition of the Midweek Download. See you next week, same Bat time, same Bat channel!

Posted by Jeff Meisner
Editor, The Official Microsoft Blog

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