Microsoft has introduced the capability of allowing application developers to build their own camera applications, called Lens, in Windows Phone 8.0. This articles walks a Windows Phone application developer through the process of building a camera application that integrates directly with the built-in camera application.

With the release of Windows Phone 8.0, Microsoft introduced support for Direct3D, which is part of Microsoft’s DirectX application programming interface. Join Vipul Patel to learn more about the platform support for Direc3D in Windows Phone 8.

Windows 8 lets you build the auto-upload feature into your mobile application. This article walks a Windows Phone 8 application developer through the steps to build the auto-upload feature into their Windows Phone 8 application.

Windows Phone 8 offers new APIs for maps and navigation. This article walks the user through the steps involved in building a navigation application for the Windows Phone 8 platform.

Wallet, Windows Phone 8's new functionality lets you manage payment instruments, store coupons, credit and loyalty cards in a central place, and lets you link these items to Windows Phone 8 applications. Vipul Patel shows you how.

Windows Phone 8 platform lets users interact with Windows Phone 8 applications through speech. This article walks the reader through the steps of integrating speech support in their Windows Phone 8 applications.

Windows Phone 8 allows application developers to build applications that can use the device’s physical location. This article walks through the steps of building a mock application, which utilizes the location API.

Vipul Patel walks application developers through the process of building Windows Phone 8 applications with the new map control.

The recently announced Windows Phone 8 platform supports the ability to customize the lock screen. This article walks a Windows Phone Application developer through the steps to provide lock screen notifications for their application as well as set the lock screen background.

Live tiles make interaction more personal by providing notifications on the Start screen itself. Join Vipul Patel in a walk-through of the basics of Windows Phone 8 Tiles.

Windows Phone 8 has a lot of great features. Get insights into the new features in the Windows 8 platform that you, as a developer, can target in your applications.

(Updated) Vipul Patel walks mobile application developers through getting started with Windows Phone 8 development.

Vipul Patel walks you through building a working Windows 8 application that is powered by the recently announced Windows Azure Mobile Services. This application demonstrates the ease of building a working application for mobile devices in a very short time, using the tools offered by Microsoft.

Vipul Patel shares the steps a Windows Azure developer can take to increase the scalability of a Windows Azure based cloud application.

Microsoft has made it easier for mobile applications to connect to the Windows Azure based backend. This article provides an introduction to Windows Azure Mobile Services – the latest offering from Microsoft.

Windows Azure supports running applications in a variety of frameworks.  Vipul Patel shows you how to run Java applications on Windows Azure.

Developers targeting the SQL Azure platform should make sure their applications are secure. This article walks through the considerations developers need to keep in mind when designing SQL Azure applications.

Windows Azure, by default, runs code in low trust. In this article, we explore how to enable running an Azure service with full trust.

Knowing the knobs and hooks available for web and worker roles in Azure can be very helpful to administer complex configuration settings. This article walks us through an understanding of these advanced roles and how we can use them in our Windows Azure based cloud services.

Not only does Windows Azure provide a reliable platform to host and execute services, it even provides a set of Service management APIs to help create application which can be used to monitor these services. In this article, we will walk through the creation of a simple monitoring application which will list our Azure services running in the cloud.

Windows Azure offers a plethora of programming modes to harness the power of cloud computing. In this article, we explore how to create a WCF service running on Windows Azure.

Microsoft is working hard to improve adoption of its cloud computing platform. To tap into non-Windows markets, it has released toolkits for both iOS and Android. In this article, we explore the offerings of the Windows Azure Toolkit for Android.

Windows Azure provides ability to cache blobs in its Content Delivery Network service. In this article, we explore Windows Azure Content Delivery Network Service and see how we can use it in our applications.

Windows Azure provides secure, scalable and easy to access services for durable storage in the cloud. In this article, we explore how we can programmatically store a file in Windows Azure storage.

Windows Azure provides a variety of storage services. In this article, we will learn more about the Windows Azure Blob service.

When designing applications for SQL Azure, it is important to consider the architectural impact to achieve the best performance. In this article, we discuss some of the architectural considerations for an SQL Azure application.

Windows Azure Connect allows Azure developers to enable IP-level network connectivity between Azure services and external resources. This article discusses how you can go around using Windows Azure Connect to create a virtual network of all our computing assets.

Microsoft SQL Azure Reporting is a cloud-based reporting platform which can work with SQL Azure. This article walks you through how use SQL Azure Reporting to present your cloud-hosted data.

Developers targeting Windows Azure often need to access diagnostic data from their Windows Azure application. This article walks the reader through the steps Windows Azure application developers can take to capture diagnostic data in their application.

Developers targeting to use Microsoft's Azure computing platform will have questions around how to migrate their on-premise data to SQL Azure. This article walks through the steps to move data from existing on-premise installations to SQL Azure.

Developers desiring to build cloud applications based on Azure technologies will benefit from understanding how they can leverage SQL Azure for their database needs. In this article, we will show you how to build a cloud application--with data access--using SQL Azure.

Developers who are building applications for the Windows Azure platform would also be interested in the database offering, SQL Azure. This article provides an overview of the SQL Azure editions, various subscription types and pricing structure.

The cloud computing platform from Microsoft, called Azure, provides data storage and processing capabilities. This article provides an insight to SQL Azure.

Developers targeting the newly revamped Windows Phone platform will benefit from knowing the minimum hardware capabilities specified. Having knowledge of these capabilities will allow application developers to better target their applications to take advantage of these capabilities. In this article, we will walk through the various hardware specifications outlined for the Windows Phone devices.

Developers targeting applications for the Azure platform should be aware of the various configuration settings which can be made for a cloud-based application. This article walks the reader through the various settings one can utilize in a Windows Azure application.

Cloud developers are excited about the business opportunities the Microsoft Windows Azure platform presents. This article discusses the business opportunities Windows Azure offers to developers in the form of the Windows Azure Marketplace.

It is imperative that cloud developers using Windows Azure familiarize themselves with the practice of debugging applications which are not hosted in-premise. Learn about the debugging methodologies that can be used for cloud application debugging. 

Azure, the cloud computing platform from Microsoft, is garnering a lot of developer interest. To start developing Microsoft Windows Azure applications, you need to have a toolset ready. This article describes how to get the development tools you'll need to get started.

Visual Studio Development tools for the Microsoft Windows Azure platform provide an emulator to test our cloud application. Deploying the application to the cloud takes a few more steps. In this article, we learn how to deploy our Azure application to the Cloud.

To get on the Microsoft Windows Azure cloud computing bandwagon, you need to understand how to develop applications targeting the platform. Discover how to create your first “Hello World” cloud application.

Before writing applications targeting the Windows Azure platform, you should understand the various roles within a hosted service.

C# 3.0's new collection initializer feature provides a new syntax that combines collection object creation and initialization into a single step.

C# 3.0 introduced object initializers, which provide a new syntax to initialize the objects you create. This simple syntax combines object creation and initialization into a single step.

When a generic method is called without specifying type arguments, C# 3.0 uses a type inference process to infer the arguments. Find out how it works.

C# 3.0 introduces lambda expressions, a more concise syntax for declaring method code inline where in the past you would have used a delegate function.

Extension methods provide a new mechanism for invoking static methods on object instances. Although they behave similarly to static methods, they offer greater convenience.

C# 3.0 provides a mechanism for declaring anonymous types in your code without explicitly declaring the class structure, and the C# compiler optimizes the creation of anonymous types if one with a similar structure already exists.