One of the cool aspects of working at Microsoft is the opportunity to work on some fantastic projects.  It’s truly been a pleasure working on some great internet facing SharePoint websites that showcase the platform’s ability to service some of the internet’s most demanding websites and show it’s effectiveness as a web content management platform. 

Today, the newly redesigned/re-architected Recovery.gov website that’s running completely on SharePoint Server 2007 was launched!

Recovery.gov is a government website designed to provide transparency in to how stimulus funds provided by the federal government are being allocated and spent on various stimulus related projects across the US.  On February 13, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, who’s main goals are to:

1. Create and save jobs
2. Spur economic activity and invest in long-term economic growth
3. Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending

To that end, SharePoint Server 2007 was chosen as the platform to deliver on the requirements for the Recovery.gov site and will deliver compelling features and functionality that provides deep insight into how stimulus funds are being spent.  Head on over to Recovery.gov and check it out!

The Patterns & Practices team has recently released new guidance around building collaborative applications on the SharePoint platform.

The goal of this release is to help customers understand how to develop large scale, content-driven SharePoint applications that extend the value of existing line of business systems.  It essentially focuses on three primary objectives:

1. Large Scale – Show customers how to build a large scale SharePoint application.  This includes guidance on building in the manageability, configurability, and performance expected from large scale applications.
2. Content Driven – More advanced SharePoint applications often include many sites and combine custom coded logic with created content.  The guidance demonstrates areas like custom navigation and publishing, composing web parts with published information, and managing a consistent UI.
3. Extend LOB Systems – SharePoint can aggregate and extend information from Line of Business systems to end users, enhancing structured business process with informal processes through collaboration.  The guidance shows how to integrate security considerations into business services, and demonstrate how to create collaborative sites that help manage business events like incident escalations and order exceptions.

This release integrates new guidance with the original release of the SharePoint Guidance – November 2008 guidance (now retired) into a single download.

The guidance package contains the following components:

To download this release, click here.

  Project Riviera is a comprehensive code sample to demonstrate how to develop multi-tenant highly-scalable line-of-business application on Windows Azure Platform, built by a cloud ISV partner, Cumulux.

Cumulux is a Microsoft partner who’s built their business around  delivering solutions that leverage cloud computing and are keenly interested in making Azure their primary platform for delivering custom solutions for customers.

The reference application been published to the MSDN code gallery at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/riviera.  You can also see a brief video, architectural slides and related material here (http://cumulux.com/riviera.html)

The main tenants of Azure demonstrated by Riviera Include:

• Federated Security (using custom STS, .NET Access Control Service and Windows Live ID)
• Multi Tenancy (On demand provisioning, Tenant Management, extensible metadata)
• Extensibility  (using Silverlight 3, Workflow)
• Scalability (using Azure Queues , Async patterns)
• Flexible SLAs (using SQL Azure / Azure storage partitioning)

Head over to the MSDN Code Gallery and check this solution out.  It’s a great showcase of what can be done on the Windows Azure Platform.

Sanjay and our ISV Team are at it again and is putting on another great incubation event.  This time it’s around Windows 7!

If you’ve enjoyed the Dynamics CRM Incubation weeks Sanjay and our ISV Team have put on (in Reston and Boston), you’re certainly in for a treat!

For those of you out in the blogsphere who're local to the Reston, VA area and has a startup business, or is contemplating building competencies around the delivery of solutions on our latest and greatest Windows release, I welcome you to attend the inaugural Microsoft BizSpark Incubation Week for Windows 7, to be held in at the Microsoft Technology Center in Reston, VA the week of August 24th, 2009.  The event will cover the following:

• Learning and building next generation applications utilizing new and unique Windows 7 capabilities with help from onsite advisors and off-shore development teams
• Getting entrepreneur coaching from guest speakers and a panel of industry experts
• Generating marketing buzz for your brand
• Creating an opportunity to be highlighted at the upcoming Windows 7 launch

My colleagues, Sanjay Jain and Ashish Jaiman, and the ISV Evangelism Team is hard at work putting this outstanding event together.  To get more details about this event, head on over to Sanjay's Blog or e-mail him or Ashish directly to nominate your team.

To learn more about how Microsoft can help startups, head over to the Microsoft BizSpark Website.

The April Update of the Azure Services Training Kit has released and is ready for download. Below is a brief overview (taken from the download site) of what's included in the latest release.

Overview
The Azure Services Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs, presentations, and demos that are designed to help you learn how to use the Azure Services Platform. The April release includes the following updates:

• New Presentation for SQL Data Services
• 2 additional hands-on labs for WIndows Azure PHP and Native Code support

This technical content covers services including: Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services.

The final March 2009 CTP for the Visual Studio 2008 Extensions for SharePoint (v1.3) has now been recently released.  Head on over to Paul Andrew's Blog (Paul is a Technical Product Manager on the SharePoint Team) for a rundown of the new capabilities available in this CTP.  Also with this release, we released a set of ten fresh new themes for SharePoint built as VSeWSS projects. Here’s a thumbnail of the new designs available to VSeWSS SharePoint Developers now.

Hi Software and Microsoft recently released version 2.0 of the Accessibility Toolkit for SharePoint. The intent of this solution is to provide a accessible development framework for Office SharePoint Server environments.

Key features of AKS v2.0 include:

• Smart Control adapters which greatly reduce the amount of custom configuration previously required for AKS control adapters.
• The Web Part Zone Control Adapter, a special Smart Adapter that modifies the output of SharePoint so that it does not use tables for layout of the Web parts.
• HiSoftware’s Compliant Code Engine (HCCE) to assist organizations in creating code that is compliant to standards-based HTML or XHTML.
• Additional requirements under Canadian Common Look and Feel 2.0 (CLF 2.0) guidelines.
• Examples of remediation to comply with WCAG 2.0 Level AA.
• French language version of AKS components.

The toolkit is freely available through the Microsoft Public License through CodePlex and can be downloaded at https://aks.hisoftware.com.

Due to the popularity of the inaugural Dynamics CRM Incubation Week event , Sanjay and his team are at it again with the 2nd installment of this great event.

For those of you out in the blogsphere who are local to the Boston, MA area and has a startup business, or is contemplating building a new business around the delivery of business solutions, a co-worker of mine, Sanjay Jain, recently made an announcement of a great event, called the Dynamics CRM Incubation Week, that's being held at the Microsoft Technology Center in Boston, MA from 4/20/2009 to 4/24/2009.  The event will cover the following:

• Learning how to build next generation business solutions on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform
• Getting entrepreneurs coaching from an industry panel of experts (to include VC and Angel Investors, Academic, Marketing)
• Generating marketing "buzz" and recognition for various Awards

This event is interesting in that its geared at empowering entrepreneurs to build successful businesses leveraging Microsoft as a key partner.

To get more details about this event, head on over to Sanjay's Blog or e-mail him directly to nominate your team.

To learn more about how Microsoft can help startups, head over to the Microsoft BizSpark website.

Microsoft has recently published the first 9 or 40 Azure Services Platform “How Do I” (HDIs) videos for public consumption.  The intent of the HDI videos are to provide additional training and resources around building cloud-aware applications on the Windows Azure Services Platform.  These HDI videos are freely downloadable and contains a ton of useful information and guidance.  Over time, more HDI videos will be published that addresses many aspects of developing solutions on top of Windows Azure.  Included in the first round of videos are the following:

	Get Started Developing on Windows Azure?	If you’re a developer and you’re new to Windows Azure, start here! You’ll see what you need to download and install, and how to create a simple “Hello World” Windows Azure application.
	Deploy a Windows Azure Application?	You’ll see what it takes to move your application into the cloud – you’ll see how to request and register a token, how to upload your Windows Azure application and how to move it between staging and production in the cloud.
	Store Blobs in Windows Azure Storage?	Learn how to leverage Windows Azure storage to store data as blobs. You’ll learn about blob storage, containers and the API that makes it easy to manage everything from managed code.
	Leverage Queries in Windows Azure?	Learn how to use queues to facilitate communication between Web and Worker roles in Windows Azure.
	Debugging Tips for Windows Azure Applications?	The Windows Azure SDK includes a development fabric that provides a "cloud on your desktop." In this screencast, learn how to debug your Windows Azure applications in this environment.
	Get Started with .NET Services?	.NET Services are a set of highly scalable building blocks for programming in the cloud. In this brief screencast, you'll learn about the registration process, the SDK and the built-in samples - everything you need to know in order to get started.
	Harness the Microsoft .NET Service Bus?	The .NET Service Bus makes it easy to access your Web services no matter where they are. In this brief screencast, you'll see how to take a basic Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service and expose it to the Internet with the .NET Service Bus.
	Get Started with the Live Framework?	If you are looking to get started developing with the Live Framework, this is the place to start! In this screencast you'll learn how to get a Live Services token and what you need to download in order to start writing Live Framework applications.
	Use the Microsoft Live Framework Resource Browser?	The Live Framework Resource Model is a simple, straightforward information model based on entities, collections and relationships. In this brief screencast you'll learn how to navigate the relationships between entities by using the Live Framework Resource Browser, which is a tool that ships with the Live Framework SDK.
	Stay tuned!

To keep abreast of new HDI videos, head over to the overall HDI landing page regularly and sign up for the RSS feeds. 

The February Update of the Azure Services Training Kit has released and is ready for download. Below is a brief overview (taken from the download site) of what's included in the latest release.

Overview
The Azure Services Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs, presentations, and demos that are designed to help you learn how to use the Azure Services Platform. The February release includes the following updates:

• 19 demo scripts that walkthrough several of the services
• 10 presentations covering the entire Azure Services Platform
• 3 additional hands-on labs for Live Services

This technical content covers services including: Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services.