The fine folks at php|Architect are hosting a contest. A contest with a great prize. All you need to do is build a PHP application on the Windows platform, submit your application, and you will have a chance to win a complete 52" HDTV home entertainment system and have the opportunity to present your creation to the crowd at php|tek 2010 in Chicago with an all-expenses paid trip.

What? A free HDTV rig? What do I need to do?
It's pretty simple. All you need to do is create a PHP application optimized to run on Windows and the IIS platform from scratch – or leverage existing open-source libraries and applications – to create something new, unique, and useful. It can be anything from a new or enhanced blogs engine, forum, or photo gallery application to other platforms or componentizable parts. All you need to do is register for the contest and submit your application between by February 28th, 2010.

The best application, as selected jointly by a panel of experts and by the readers of php|Architect, will win a grand prize: a 52" Digital HD home entertainment system, as well as that all-expenses paid trip to php|tek 2010 next Spring. Runner-up prizes include Xbox 360s and subscriptions to php|architect.

What's the catch?
Good question, and there is a key catch. This contest is open to residents of the United States only. Read the full rules for the full spectrum of guidelines and legalese. The key one is this is only open to US residents.

So, that should help you steer your efforts. Maximize the points in each of the criterium – and snag some bonus points for clever use of storage or client technologies – and you will set yourself up to win. The contest offers free hosting (thank you, Applied Innovations).

What are you waiting for? Go give it a try.

Next Monday, October 26th, my colleagues on the West Coast will be hosting the San Diego New Efficiency Launch. We know that not everyone has been able to attend the launch events in person – either they weren't held in your city (which we're working on here in good old Central US) or you weren't available on the day they were held. Fortunately the fine folks out West are also hosting their San Diego event online!

So, if you missed the launch, you can view and download 18 IT Professional and Developer focused sessions live from the San Diego launch event starting at 9am PDT October 26th. Focusing on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Exchange Server 2010, you can listen to Microsoft experts, download valuable resources and explore the live launch event "virtually".

Mark your calendars now, and enjoy what my West Coast friends have to say.

Following the release of the .NET Framework v4 and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 earlier this week, the latest CTP (community technology preview) of both IronPython and IronRuby are available on CodePlex. This is the third build of IronRuby and IronPython running on the Dynamic Language Runtime that is built directly into .NET 4.0; these releases are built to run on the .NET Framework v4 Beta 2.

As before, this release allows you to use IronPython and IronRuby objects and types as .NET 4.0 dynamic objects from within C# and Visual Basic code.

These releases are roughly equivalent to the functionality found in IronRuby 0.9 and IronPython 2.6.

One more nugget of training goodness I forgot to mention in my last post: the Channel 9 Learning Center. This is a resource on Channel 9 that plays host to free technical training materials, content, videos, hands-on labs, and code samples. It will focus on new and emerging technologies with an eye towards helping you quickly ramp your skills with those new products and technologies.

Visual Studio 2010
Germaine to my previous post is the .NET Framework v4 and Visual Studio 2010 Training Course. This course includes videos and hands-on-labs designed to help you learn about some of the new features in Visual Studio 2010 as well as several .NET Framework v4 technologies, such as C# 4.0, Visual Basic 10, F#, Parallel Computing, WCF, WF, WPF, ASP.NET AJAX 4.0, ASP.NET MVC Dynamic Data, Team System and more. Wow, that was an alphabet soup of technologies!

By my count there are eight units in the course, covering all of the above alphabet soup of tech. And, in the interest of full disclosure, those training resources are related to .NET Framework v4 and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. Consider the prerequisite disclaimer appropriately included.

Windows 7
As a special bonus added to this post (specifically about Visual Studio 2010, but I had to throw in a little something extra), there’s also a Windows 7 Training Course. Just like the Visual Studio 2010 course, this course will help you learn how to leverage the new features of Windows 7 as you develop client-based applications. You’ll learn how to take advantage of multi-touch, the new taskbar, sensor and location APIs, the new Windows 7 Ribbon control, enhancements to the shell libraries, instrumentation and performance capabilities, and a boatload more.

Again, seeing as how I learned to count two paragraphs ago, by that counting I see there are thirteen units in the course. Likewise, in the interest of sharing the disclaimer so no one is surprised, this course requires a few more prerequisites: Windows 7, Visual Studio 2008 SP1, Windows 7 SDK, Windows API Code Pack for the .NET Framework, Windows 7 Multitouch .NET Interop Sample Library, and (optionally) Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (or higher).

The two coolest requirements of that bunch are the Windows API Code Pack for the .NET Framework and the Windows 7 Multitouch .NET Interop Sample Library (and especially the API Code Pack). If you had a chance to attend any of our New Efficiency Launch events, you saw some of those capabilities in action. Very easy to build in touch and other Windows 7 features into your .NET application.

Free! It’s all Free!
Did I mention all of this is free? Yes, yes I did. (Thank you Phineas and Ferb…)

In case you hadn't heard, earlier this week (October 19th at the SharePoint Conference) we announced several things related to Visual Studio. Among them we announced Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (download it here), Beta 2 "go live" guidance, changes to the product lineup – including the "Ultimate Offer" – and even a screencast to help you download and install Visual Studio 2010. We also unveiled a new look:

+

Okay, so it's all new… How do I learn about it?
To make your ramp on Visual Studio 2010 as easy as possible, we've also made a training kit available for the .NET Framework v4 and Visual Studio 2010. The kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. The resources in the kit are designed to help you learn how to utilize Visual Studio 2010 as well as show you a variety of framework technologies including:

• C# 4.0
• Visual Basic 10
• F#
• Parallel Extensions
• Windows Communication Foundation
• Windows Workflow
• Windows Presentation Foundation
• ASP.NET 4
• Windows 7
• Entity Framework
• ADO.NET Data Services
• Managed Extensibility Framework
• Visual Studio Team System

One important thing: this training kit *only* works with Beta 2 of the .NET Framework v4 and Visual Studio 2010. If you have Beta 1 or another interim build, you will need to move to Beta 2 to take advantage of the labs and demos in this kit.

So, what are you waiting for? Download Beta 2, kick the tires, and see what all the hubbub is about.

More coming on this soon, but for now a quick summary… Our team delivering the best of The New Efficiency Launch in cities across the central US. We'll be starting with Winona, MN and Madison, WI this week followed by another nine cities in November and December.

Here's the full list of cities we're visiting the next several weeks.

• Winona, MN on 10/23/2009
• Madison, WI on 10/24/2009
• Des Moines, IA on 11/11/2009
• Indianapolis, IN on 11/12/2009
• Louisville, KY on 12/2/2009
• Omaha, NE on 12/3/2009
• Mason, OH on 12/3/2009
• Columbus, OH on 12/8/2009
• Austin, TX on 12/8/2009
• Tulsa, OK on 12/9/2009
• Franklin, TN on 12/10/2009

Visit my event page for more details. And, again, expect another blog post "soon" describing the event, sessions and… wait for it… prizes (we'll have a Dell netbook, Zune HD and more).

In follow-up to my post from yesterday, one of my colleagues, Keith Combs, encoded the TechNet portion of the Nashville event with Silverlight streaming. Here it is for your viewing pleasure.

We've largely completed our Real World Azure events, delivering 32 events, 64 sessions and sharing information and insights with 868 architects, developers and IT professionals across the central US. We have two outstanding events, our Minneapolis TechNet and MSDN events on October 27, 2009.

If you don't live in Minneapolis and you weren't able to attend one of your local events, not to worry! We recorded our Nashville events and made them available for you on-demand:

• TechNet Events Presents: Real World Azure On-demand
• MSDN Events Presents: Real World Azure On-demand

Listen to our on-demand events and let me know what you think. Drop me an email at brimoore at microsoft dot com and share your feedback.

And… as a little teaser… with the wrap-up of our Real World Azure event series, we're looking at our next event series: the Highlights of The New Efficiency Launch, visiting 11 cities across the central US, and – changing it up a bit – those cities will be ones we don't often have a chance to cover (hello, Tulsa and Omaha!). We're also looking into getting swank prizes, so stay tuned to my blog for updates in the next several days.

Peers of mine are launching a new monthly webcast for both infrastructure and software architects. Dubbed the Architect Innovation Café, these folks will be publishing new 90-minute webcasts each month starting in October and running through June 2010. These webcasts will focus on the latest industry trends and technologies and how those technologies can align with your business needs.

First Up – An Architect’s perspective on Silverlight 3, October 27, 2009 at 11:00am – 12:30pm PST
Kicking the series off will be a webcast featuring Tim Heuer, a program manager on the Microsoft Silverlight team. For those new to the term, Silverlight is a web technology aimed at delivering rich internet experiences to users. Before his current role, Tim was a developer evangelist serving the Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana and Utah areas aiming to strengthen and support communities and software developers in these geographies.

His presentation, An Architect’s perspective on Silverlight 3, will step back from a detailed implementation of the technology and instead take a broader look at Silverlight from the architect’s perspective. Tim will discuss the types of applications where Silverlight makes sense and some scenarios where Silverlight may not be the appropriate technology. He will also delve into some of the architectural decisions you must consider when writing applications for this platform and where some of the tradeoffs may lie.

Next Up – Deploying Windows 7 from an Infrastructure Architect’s Perspective, October 28, 2009 at 11:00am – 12:30pm PST
Following Tim is Doug Klokow, a member of Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) for the past 9 years focused on client desktop deployment scenarios. He is part of the Virtual Deployment Practice, focused on driving early customer deployment on Microsoft client technologies and he also supports Microsoft’s Desktop Virtualization capabilities and service offerings.

His presentation, Deploying Windows 7 from an Infrastructure Architect’s Perspective, will discuss five key areas centered on deploying Windows 7:

• Developing business justification – Evaluate the capabilities provided by Windows 7 and develop a plan for how to realize business value from these solutions
• Where are you today – Explore the differences of preparing for Windows 7 based on your current desktop operating system
• Application readiness – Explore the tools and resources available to gain insight into your readiness to deploy Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8, and/or Office 2007/2010
• Deployment readiness – Explore the tools and resources available to create a design and deployment solution for your enterprise
• Training your employees – Discuss available resources for training your IT Staff and End Users

PDC 2009 is just a bit shy of two months from now and plans are hopping. In the next few days we'll be making several additional session announcements, adding even more variety to the wide range of topics currently listed on the PDC 2009 site. Topics span all the major product and development areas, from Azure, ASP.NET, Visual Studio, Velocity, and Silverlight to the Managed Extensibility Framework, Unified Communications, Identity, Powershell, BizTalk, and Dublin. With workshops on November 16 (the day before the big event kicks off), keynotes kicking off the event, and numerous sessions running from November 17 through November 19, the Los Angeles Convention Center will be the center of news, information, and technical goodness later this fall.

But the important thing to note from this blog post is that the discount – $300 off the regular conference fee – only lasts another thirteen days from today, expiring October 13, 2009. If you can't swing the full event, there are one-day passes available and even passes for the big room. Check out the registration page for more information.