The Bing Webmaster Team decided to hit the reset button and rebuild the Bing Webmaster Tools from the ground up. Bing webmaster tools helps you improve your site’s SEO, submit your sites and XML-based sitemaps to Bing, get data on which pages of your site have been indexed, backlinks, inbound links and keyword performance.

According to Anthony M Garcia, Senior Product Manager from Bing Webmaster Tools “The redesigned Bing Webmaster Tools provide you a simplified, more intuitive experience focused on three key areas: crawl, index and traffic. New features, such as Index Explorer and Submit URLs, provide a more comprehensive view as well as better control over how Bing crawls and indexes your sites. Index Explorer gives you unprecedented access to browse through the Bing index in order to verify which of your directories and pages have been included.

Submit URLs gives you the ability to signal which URLs Bing should add to the index. Other new features include: Crawl Issues to view details on redirects, malware, and exclusions encountered while crawling sites; and Block URLs to prevent specific URLs from appearing in Bing search engine results pages. In addition, the new tools take advantage of Microsoft Silverlight 4 to deliver rich charting functionality that will help you quickly analyze up to six months of crawling, indexing, and traffic data. That means more transparency and more control to help you make decisions, which optimize your sites for Bing.”

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With the Beta relased of Windows Phone Developer Tools, Microsoft also launched the updated version of Windows Phone 7 Training Kit for Developers. This Windows Phone 7 Training Kit will give you a jumpstart into the new Windows Phone world by providing you with a step-by-step explanation of the tools to use and some key concepts for programming Windows Phones.

Windows Phone 7 promises to be an amazing mobile phone operating system given its innovative user interface and functionality, as well as its great development platform upon which you can quickly and easily build games and applications.

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Today, Microsoft released the beta version of Windows Phone Developer Tools for developers. The same powerful and easy to use Visual Studio integrated developer environment (IDE) handles design and testing of Windows Phone 7 phone applications. This Beta of the Windows Phone Developer Tools is compatible with the final version of Visual Studio 2010.

The Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta includes the following

• Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone Beta
• Windows Phone Emulator Beta
• Silverlight for Windows Phone Beta
• Microsoft Expression Blend for Windows Phone Beta
• XNA Game Studio 4.0 Beta

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Microsoft Silverlight for Symbian includes a runtime that is optimized to display content on memory constrained devices. Silverlight support for Nokia S60 5th Edition devices includes the ability to view Silverlight applications in the mobile browser and the tools to build Silverlight applications that target devices.

The installable executable file enables users to run Silverlight applications on the Nokia S60 5th Edition platform. The executable file includes the Silverlight runtime for Nokia S60 5th Edition emulator, sample applications, and developer documentation.

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Microsoft has released 3 application themes for Silverlight 4 templates which are Accent Color, Windows and Cosmopolitan. These themes can be used for the navigation template provided by the Silverlight 4 Tools installer or using the various resource dictionaries provided in this download.

Install the templates and use the themes in a new project or use the raw resource dictionary assets on existing projects.

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The Microsoft MVP Program is a worldwide award and recognition program that strives to identify amazing individuals in technical communities around the globe who share a passion for technology and the spirit of community. Microsoft MVPs are recognized for both their demonstrated practical expertise and willingness to share their experience with peers in Microsoft technical communities.

Microsoft MVPs are awarded every quarter and recognizes the contributions of an individual to technical communities over the past year. Here are some of the Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professionals interviewed by us:

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Microsoft today released an add-on for Visual Studio 2010 to provide tooling for Microsoft Silverlight 4 and RIA Services. It can be installed on top of either Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. It extends existing Silverlight 3 features and multitargeting capabilities in Visual Studio 2010 to also create applications for Silverlight 4 using C# or Visual Basic.

Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 includes several features:

• Support for targeting Silverlight 4 in the Silverlight designer and project system
• RIA Services application templates and libraries
• Support for Silverlight 4 elevated trust and out-of-browser applications and other new Silverlight 4 features

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Expression Blend 4 enables you to create websites and applications based on Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4, and desktop applications based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 3.5 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and WPF 4. Expression Blend provides support for prototyping, interactivity through behaviors, special Silverlight functionality, and on-the-fly sample data generation.

Expression Blend includes new behaviors that are quickly and easily configured. To support the development of line-of-business (LOB) applications, Expression Blend introduces support for Views and ViewModels.

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Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 provides an integrated environment of tools and server infrastructure that simplifies the entire application development process. Deliver business results using productive, predictable, customizable processes and increase transparency and traceability throughout the lifecycle with detailed analytics. Whether creating new solutions or enhancing existing applications unleash your creativity with powerful prototyping, architecture and development tools that let you bring your vision to life targeting an increasing number of platforms and technologies including cloud and parallel computing.

Realize increased team productivity by utilizing advanced collaboration features and use integrated testing and debugging tools to find and fix bugs quickly and easily creating high quality solutions while driving down the cost of solution development. Here are the download links:

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So, Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft .NET Framework 4 is now available. Microsoft has posted different links and resources you will need to get the most out of using Visual Studio 2010. Check out the hands-on labs, which demonstrate different ways to deploy Visual Studio; training kits, which present step-by-step directions and resources for using Visual Studio with a variety of other technologies; the reviewer’s guide, the upgrader’s handbook, and much more.

• Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit – The Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. It will help you learn how to use Visual Studio 2010 and a variety of framework technologies including ASP.NET 4, F#, and Windows 7.

• Windows 7 Training Kit For Developers – The Windows 7 Training Kit for Developers includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos to help you learn how to build applications compatible with on Windows 7.

• Windows Azure Platform Training Kit – The Azure Services Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs, presentations, and demos to help you learn how to use the Windows Azure platform, including Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and AppFabric.

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Tell us who you are?
A Silverlight MVP, founder of the Silverlight User Group in Bulgaria, and an active speaker at local and regional Silverlight events, I’m the key figure behind CompletIT Silverlight operations. I’m responsible for the architecture of the company’s Silverlight Projects, deliver Silverlight trainings, and I’m the project manager for key customer accounts. I blog frequently on all things Silverlight at http://emil.silverlightshow.net/. I’m passionate about extreme sports, snowboard, sport climbing. I also enjoy photography and traveling.

Tell us about your MVP history, when were you first awarded?
I was first awarded in July 2009. I was nominated in April and by that time I didn’t know the exact process so when 3 months later I was awarded it was a surprise for me.

What do you do in order to keep up with latest tools and technologies?
I use RSS and once I read anything interesting I experiment with it. It is really that simple. I have not long, but quality list of blogs that I follow and that helps me understand first for the latest technologies.

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Tell us who you are?
My name is Davide Zordan and I’m a Silverlight MVP living in Arsiero, a little city located in Italy very close to Venezia. I started working in the IT field in 1993, always exploring new technologies and doing a lot of Research and Development stuff and prototypes.

Currently I work as teacher of Computer Science labs and Silverlight / WPF architect in the North-east of Italy, trying to do all my best to spread the “Silverlight word” in the area. In this period I’m really interested in Researching new modalities of interaction between users and every sort of devices, primarily focusing on Natural User Interfaces, User eXperience and application architecture using Silverlight.

Tell us about your MVP history, when were you first awarded?
I was awarded for the first time in October 2009. It has been a huge honor to become part of this small group of Silverlight MVPs.

What do you do in order to keep up with latest tools and technologies?
I love/must stay up-to-date with new technologies reading books, articles and following the on-line forums like the ones available on the http://silverlight.net official site and http://www.msdn.com. I also find Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook a valuable source for keeping up to date with the new tools and technologies.

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Tell us who you are?
My name is Soumow ATITALLAH; I am 23 years old, a computer engineering student; serious and very motivated. I am a person who has always new ideas, a true passionate by new technologies. I love what I do and I’ll do everything to achieve my goals. My achievements are:

• “Microsoft Student partner” in two successive years 2008-2009 and 2009/2010

• 2nd place in the Tunisian Imagine Cup 2009

• 2nd place in the Tunisian IE8 Dev Challenge

• .NET Framework 3.5 Certified

• Founder of the Silverlight-TN Group (on the Azure cloud) : http://silvertn.cloudapp.net

• Vice President of the Club Info+ : http://infoplusfst.org (computer club of the Faculty of Sciences of Tunis ) (2007-2008)

• Vice President of the Club .NET+ : http://dotnetplus.spaces.live.com (Microsoft Club of the Faculty of Sciences of Tunis) (2008-2009)

• I’m a Web Radio broadcaster (for fun) and an Editor in a website: http://www.tunisia-dev.com

Tell us about your University?
The Faculty of Sciences of Tunis (FST) , its full name is Faculty of Mathematical Sciences, Physical and Natural of Tunis It is a faculty in the campus of El Manar University in Tunis (Tunisia). It depends on the University of Tunis – El Manar. FST was founded in 1960 and moved into the former premises of the Institute of Higher Studies in Tunis on the streets of Rome (downtown).

In 1974, she stood on the hill of El Manar, next to the “École nationale d’ingénieurs de Tunis” (National School of Engineering of Tunis) , place of its current location. Before 1968 the primary mission of the FST was to train secondary school teachers in mathematics, physical sciences and natural sciences (biology and geology). Two branches of the third cycle in the late 1960s were added and focused on marine biology and physics of solids.
Organization: The FST is organized by discipline into six departments:

• Department of Mathematics (the oldest)
• Department of Physics
• Department of Chemistry
• Department of Biology
• Department of Geology
• Department of Computer Science (most recent)

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Microsoft has added Windows Phone 7 category to Imagine Cup where the challenge is for teams to create a Windows Phone 7 application in either Silverlight or XNA. The app needs to be designed with the consumer in mind and should be as visually compelling as possible. Here are a few examples:

• An app that could help you in school, like a study guide or a note-taking app or a test prep app
• An app that might help you monitor power consumption at your residence
• An app that consumes data from popular API providers, like Twitter or Foursquare, and helps you visualize it in a compelling way
• Existing Silverlight web apps that you would want to see running on a Windows Phone
• Existing XNA applications that you would want to see running on a Windows Phone

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Visual Studio 2010 is set to be launched at DevConnections conference in Las Vegas, April 12-14. “Short but sweet, Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4 will launch on Monday, 12 April 2010,” said Rob Caron, marketing communications manager for Developer and User Experience Runtimes and Tools at Microsoft.

According to InfoWorld, Visual Studio 2010 has been positioned as a platform for building Microsoft SharePoint, Windows 7, Windows Azure cloud and now Windows Phone applications. It also offers historical debugging and Silverlight rich Internet application development capabilities. The .Net Framework 4 programming platform features capabilities such as a reduction in size.

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