The Midweek Download: Halloween Edition (boo!) – News from the Build Developer Conference

In this edition of The Midweek Download, we’ve got stories coming out the sold-out Build 2012 conference—including the availability the Windows Phone 8 SDK, the next wave of Windows 8-ready products, and new programs and tools that make it easier to develop great apps.

The business opportunity with Windows 8. Yesterday, we kicked off Build 2012 and invited the developer community to our Redmond campus to share in the tremendous opportunity with our Windows 8 wave of products. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Kevin Gallo, Director of Program Management, Windows Phone, took the stage to showcase Windows … on the PC, the tablet, the phone, and at work and play. Get more of the story in Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Chief Evangelist of Developer & Platform Evangelism Steve Guggenheimer’s post on The Official Microsoft Blog, where he outlines developer opportunity, including the availability of the SDK for Windows Phone 8. Below is a video showing the construction of the Build 2012 keynote tent.

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Introducing Windows Store App Labs for app builders. On Oct. 22, we introduced Windows Store App Labs in more than 30 cities around the world for all app builders – developers, designers and entrepreneurs. Windows Store App Labs are places where you can access the newest Windows 8 devices, get technical help from Windows experts, and receive design guidance from leading edge designers and digital agencies. All for free! The labs are stocked with the latest Windows 8 devices in multiple form factors including Windows RT tablets like Microsoft Surface, Ultrabooks, All-in-Ones, and more. Head over to the Windows 8 app developer blog to find out more.

Performance Analysis for your Windows Phone Apps. Performance is a key concern for all but the most trivial of apps, and memory usage helps determine how well your app runs. In this series, Pratap Lakshman shows how the Windows Phone Performance Analysis Tool can help you diagnose and fix memory issues and improve app performance. In this specific post, Pratap focuses on the Object Graph view, which shows the graph of objects that are reachable from any instance of an object. Head over to the Windows Phone Developer Blog for a detailed guide.

Windows 8 Pro for small and midsize businesses. Last week, we celebrated the release of Windows 8 across the globe with a huge kick-off in New York where we officially launched Windows 8 to the world. Windows 8 is now available for everyone to purchase – including small and midsize businesses. In his Oct. 26 post, Jay Paulus covers what Windows 8 means for small and midsize businesses, walks through some key features, and highlights the benefits some of our customers are already seeing.

Introducing the new Office on Windows Phone 8. The Office Next blog on Monday announced the new Office, which comes pre-installed on every Windows Phone 8. In his guest post, Bert Van Hoof of Office engineering says that when they started on this journey, they set five clear objectives:

· All your Office documents, where and when you want them

· The best Office document rendering on any phone

· All your notes – in one place and with you, anywhere

· Communicate and collaborate effectively from your mobile device

· The most world-ready Office experience on any phone

Check out the Office Next blog to see why Microsoft Office feels right at home on Windows Phone 8.

Internet Explorer 10 now available with Windows 8. Internet Explorer 10 is a huge part of the re-imagined Windows experience. With an entirely new modern touch-first UI, IE10 raises the bar for what we should expect from the Web on new modern devices. The underlying platform innovations in IE10 around touch are allowing developers to create new experiences that rival their native app counterparts. Check out the new features in IE10 over on the Exploring IE blog.

Yammer announces the Enterprise Graph. Yammer Inc., an Enterprise Social Network and part of the Microsoft Office Division, announced on Monday a new App Directory and platform at its first customer conference, YamJam ’12. The platform offers standard components to more easily build social networking features, such as feeds, profiles, following and likes, into business applications. This approach not only helps save developers time, it also enables enterprise customers to seamlessly connect people, conversations and data across their business applications — an experience Yammer calls the “Enterprise Graph.” Learn more about this announcement and other news from YamJam ’12 over on the Microsoft News Center.

Announcing the Windows Azure SQL Data Sync October update. We are happy to announce the new October update for the SQL Data Sync service is now operational in all Windows Azure data centers.

In this update, users can now create multiple Sync Servers under a single Windows Azure subscription. With this feature, users intending to create multiple sync groups with sync group hubs in different regions will enjoy performance improvements in data synchronization by provisioning the corresponding Sync Server in the same region where the synchronization hub is provisioned. Get details and more resources in the Oct. 26 Windows Azure blog post.

In case you missed it…

Microsoft Announced New Apache Hadoop Solutions for Windows Azure & Windows Server and, of course, Windows 8 and Microsoft Surface Launched and Windows Phone 8 Unveiled.

That’s it for this edition of The Midweek Download! Thanks for reading!

Posted by Jeff Meisner
Editor, The Official Microsoft Blog

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