Here it is, almost another month has passed and I am finally getting another blog post out. Surprisingly it is about Windows Phone again. This post will be short and to the point: the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC is now available.

This update includes an improvement in the profiler (now with memory profiling), improvements in the emulator (including screenshot capabilities built in), NuGet is now supported with Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, the Marketplace Test Kit (which can be used to test your application against certification requirements from within the IDE), and loads more.

Confession time: I haven't blogged in nearly two months. (Okay, that's not much of a confession since you can see I haven't posted since May 5.) Reasons abound – end of fiscal year, planning for next fiscal year, and other urgent deliverables. Sure, that sounds a lot like excuses to me, but there you go. Ironically my first post in nearly two months is on almost the same topic as my last post: Windows Phone 7.

Well, this short post is about the availability of the Beta 2 release of the "Mango" tools... and the OS (for people with developer unlocked devices)! You can find the official announcement on the Windows Team Blog.

Windows Phone "Mango"
The tools give you the latest development capabilities for Windows Phone "Mango". This includes loads of new features like deep linking inside your app, background tasks, data access to contacts and calendar, and amazing new debugging tools like an enhanced emulator that supports accelerometer and location. The OS also introduces a lot of great new features, like a unified inbox, threaded messages, Windows Live Messenger support, double-sided Live Tiles, contact groups and loads more. Of course, deploying a beta OS on your device should be restricted to only development devices. Consider yourself warned.

Students, Share Your Ideas
Are you a student? Do you have access to DreamSpark? Well, if you have a stellar phone app idea you should polish up that idea a bit and submit your idea. Rules are as follows and if your idea is among the best of the best you could get selected to win a Windows Phone Mango developer device.

1. Make sure you’re registered for DreamSpark
2. Download and install Expression Studio Ultimate and the new Mango Windows Phone Developer Tools (available free as a member of DreamSpark!)
3. Get the free Sketchflow Template for Windows Phone and create a Sketchflow mock-up of your app
4. Post the Sketchflow mock-up somewhere online and tweet out the link using the hash tag #WPAppItUp
5. The Windows Phone team will review all prototypes and will contact the developers who submit the best ones and send them a special Mango developer device

But... I'm Still Building for WP7
Good news on this front, too. Just like the earlier beta, the Beta 2 tools support framework multi-targeting. You can not only kick the tires on the new "Mango" feature set, but continue to develop for Windows Phone 7. Goodness all around.

Last Nugget of Fun
Today also marked the release of Angry Birds on Windows Phone 7. I bought it today, have played about 45 or so levels, and I now kinda get what all the hype is about. For me, at least, it's a supremely frustrating little time waster, but it's also pretty darn rewarding when you clear a tough level or three-star a level. Heck, I've already nabbed 5 Cheevos for 35G.

I think that many of us have great ideas that could be the next Angry Birds phone app. I'm (slowly) working on a Windows Phone 7 app to help developers and IT professionals find Microsoft, third-party and community events. Heck, even Penny on The Big Bang Theory had a great app idea to help people shop for shoes. And I bet that you have a phone app idea, too. Now is the time to turn your napkin sketches and leverage your hard work into real, sellable apps. And we are here to help you do just that for Windows Phone 7 in ONE WEEK!

Our team is hosting two one-week Windows Phone Accelerator Lab events, one in Dallas (week of May 9th) another in Chicago (week of May 16th). The purpose of the lab is to provide technical and design assistance to developers who have app ideas that may be developed (iOS or Android) or are in development for any platform that just need a little extra help in getting their apps finished and published into a marketplace. Our team will help you take your mostly complete idea to the next step or help you get past that last tricky roadblock so you can get your app into the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace and begin earning money or fame or both.

Details, Details
In case you're curious, these events are free (you gotta cover your own travel expenses) and any developer can attend. Seating is limited, however, and registration is not guaranteed. Priority registration will be based on:

• Apps currently in development with a plan to completion by May 31
• Developers who have apps on other platforms that are looking for assistance to port over to Windows Phone 7
• Someone who has a great idea and needs help in getting their project kicked off
• Application must be ready to submit to Marketplace by May 31

During these labs, you will be provided a working space, access to technical experts, access to phones to test your app on and access to all the caffeine you can consume! There will be a few other surprises thrown in for good measure as well! Register now!

The crew behind that Conference have been hard at work on their venue (Kalahari Resort, Wisconsin Dells, WI), the agenda, and the speakers. While the conference itself is a fair way out (August 13-15, 2012), they've put together a great little video that I just had to share...

The Springboard Series Tour is back and coming the to Central US (plus Toronto, but I don't think too many people from Canada reads my blog). Here is the tour schedule:

• May 4 – Detroit, MI
• May 6 – Chicago, IL
• May 9 – Indianapolis, IN
• May 11 – Dallas, TX
• May 13 – Columbus, OH

This year the tour will take a first look at Windows Intune and Office 365. The tour will also showcase some of the new Windows Slates as well as preview the new tools in the MDOP 2011 suite, dig into into managing and deploying Office 2010 and great tips and tricks to help you deploy Windows 7.

To register for any of those cities (or Toronto), all you need to do is visit the Springboard Series Tour site.

Your Pointy-Haired Boss (PHB) just walked in and said, "We need to do this cloud thing, pronto. I just read about it in CIO Magazine." Pop quiz, hot shot: what do you do?

Protecting Against PBH Syndrome
Fortunately we have a solution to help you ramp on the cloud with practically no friction whatsoever. For those that don't know, Windows Azure is Microsoft's cloud platform and a lot of developers are excited to try it out. To help you try it out, we have started a program called "Windows Azure Pass." You basically register a Live ID for a Pass and receive 30 days of free cloud computing. That's just enough time to download the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit (WAPTK) and test drive some of the hands-on labs. The best part about Windows Azure Pass is that no credit card is required. So preempt your PHB storming and forming around the cloud before you're ready. Get ready on the cloud today.

Sounds Great, What Do I Do?
Simple. Visit www.WindowsAzurePass.com and enter promo code DPCE01. Your Windows Azure Pass will be activated within a few days and you can start deploying code. Once you get a pass you can attend one of our two day boot camp events to learn more about Windows Azure, try some hands on labs on your own time, or join us online during our office hours to get your questions answered.

Okay, What Exactly Does This Pass Thing Get Me?
The Windows Azure platform 30 day pass includes the following resources:

	Windows Azure	3 Small Compute Instances 3 GB of Storage 250,000 Storage Transactions
	SQL Azure	Two 1 GB Web Edition Database
	AppFabric	100,000 Access Control Transactions 2 Bus Service Connections
	Data Transfers	3 GB In 3 GB Out

This could very well be the first time I've blogged about Imagine Cup. I've tweeted a lot about Imagine Cup, especially my votes for my favorite teams (Voltron, for Software Design, and Bloom, for Game Design).

So, what is Imagine Cup?
Well, it is, officially, "the world's premier student technology competition." Think of it sort of like the Olympics for students in technology degree disciplines. There are several competitions, such as Software Design, Game Design, IT Challenge, mobility and others. I have some additional information on my website, including videos from past competitors as well as posters, flyers and brochures for students and faculty. Finally, you can visit the Imagine Cup worldwide and US sites for the most thorough information on the competition.

Great, Brian, But Why Are You Telling Me All This...?
I'm sharing this information because we are in the final days of the People's Choice Awards. There are ten finalists for Software Design and twelve finalists for Game Design. Since I work in the Central US, and (presumably) most of my readers are also in the Central US, I have listed several of our local teams below. If you click each team's name, you will be taken directly to the team's voting page on Facebook.

Software Design

Game Design

There's not much to share at this time, but the community in Illinois and Wisconsin have something big brewing, and they call it that Conference. Here's what they have to say about the event...

that Conference is a new unique technology event coming to the Midwest in 2012. Is this just another technology conference? No. This is an event for developers created by developers. This event will include Web, Mobile, Client, Methodologies, Architecture and of course languages. We're in the planning stages now, so feel free to chime in. Your voice matters.

Details, Details...
The event is going to be held August 13-15, 2012 at the Kalahari Resort, Wisconsin Dells, WI. If you've ever been to a CodeMash, you know how cool this event is going to be. If you've not been to a CodeMash before, trust me that this will be a truly great event.

Follow them on Twitter
Follow the that Conference planning team on Twitter, share your feedback, and make sure your topics and technologies are represented.

I spent some time today wiring up IE9 site pinning capabilities into my blog (and the old domain, just for thoroughness). I actually spent more time on this relatively simple bit of code than I should have. In fact, I even ended up needing a second set of eyes to see what I was doing wrong. Hence the title of this post: don't forget the </script>  tag. Which I forgot. Which prevented my scripts from running. See, another set of eyes is often a very helpful thing, especially when you can't see the forest for the trees.

Addendum: I've since learned a couple of interesting tidbits about my missing </script> tag. What I initially coded into my site was <script ... />. Technically that is valid syntax, especially for XHTML, but interestingly in the DTD for HTML self-closing script tags are invalid. IE9 interprets the DTD to comply with the HTML specification, thus the closing </script> tag is required. The moral of this story remains unchanged: don't forget the </script> tag.

ie9ify Your Site
Adding the basic IE9 site pinning capabilities is easy as adding a few <meta> tags to your <head> section. Here are some of the tags embedded in my blog...

<meta name="application-name" content="Brian Moore"/>
<meta name="msapplication-tooltip" content="Blog"/>
<meta name="msapplication-starturl" content="/default.aspx"/>
<meta name="msapplication-window" content="width=800;height=600"/>
<meta name="msapplication-task"
      content="name=Twitter;action-uri=http://twitter.com/briandmoore;icon-uri=http://twitter.com/favicon.ico"/>

While that brute force approach would certainly work to get basic IE9 site pinning into your app, it is neither elegant nor does it enable your site to take advantage of some of the advanced features like decorating a pin teaser, adding dynamic jump lists, flashing the pinned site's icon on the Windows 7 taskbar, or hooking into overlays or adding buttons.

ie9ify to the Rescue
To provide a more extensible and flexible solution, my colleague, Brandon Satrom, has created the ie9ify jQuery plugin. You can download it from CodePlex or install it from NuGet (that was my choice; it adds all the dependent plumbing, like jQuery 1.5.5). Once you have jQuery and ie9ify hooked into your site, you're ready to write a simple bit of code to hook all the <meta> tag details into your site to enable pinning. here is a partial block of code that hooks everything into my blog:

<!-- Start ie9ify code -->
<script src="Scripts/jquery-1.5.1.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="Scripts/jquery.ie9ify.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    $().ready(function () {
        $('head').ie9ify({
            applicationName: 'Brian Moore',
            favIcon: 'favicon.ico',
            startUrl: '/default.aspx',
            tooltip: 'Blog',
            tasks: [{
                'name': 'Twitter',
                'action': 'http://twitter.com/briandmoore',
                'icon': 'http://twitter.com/favicon.ico'
            },
            <!-- Repeat for each task. –>
         }]
     });
    });
</script>
<!-- End ie9ify code -->

Here's what that code generates once you pin the site to the Windows 7 taskbar.

Next Steps
Once you have the ie9ify plugin integrated into your site, you can start to dig into even more powerful features, like adding JumpLists, overlays, notifications and more. You can read up on the full capabilities of the ie9ify plugin in the documentation on CodePlex. And Brandon has written a pretty detailed blog post on ie9ify that can get you even further along than this (very) introductory post. He's even recorded and posted a screencast on Channel 9 that walks you through a pretty decent demo.

But I do challenge you to take advantage of IE9 site pinning and ie9ify. I mean, I integrated it into my site in about 15 minutes (once that second set of eyes spotted my mistake) and I'm a manager. Don't let me show you up.

Well, I ran into a few more glitches than I had hoped, but my blog move is now complete. The old domain is still around, but it's going to be used for data and services. The new domain is ready to go and all old blog content has been moved across. There may be the odd link here or there that's broken and pointing to the old domain. I tried to update them all, thanks to Visual Studio 2010's Find in Files (Ctrl + Shift + F), but if you run into a broken link here or there drop me an email at brimoore at microsoft dot com and I'll track it down and fix it.

Next up on the docket is to explore new blog engines. I'm looking at, in no particular order, WordPress, Umbraco and Orchard. While I am open to playing with PHP – and certainly would prefer to stick with .NET – at the end of the day all I really want is a blog engine that works, is relatively easy to customize, tweak or administer, and offers a decent UI/template to make it look like "mine". Again, if you have any recommendation on what blog engine I should look at, send me an email.