According to the latest round of rumors, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer will make a surprise appearance at WWDC 2010 (7 minutes to be exact from Steve Jobs keynote) to announce Visual Studio 2010 for iPhone, iPad and Mac OS development. John Gruber of Daring Fireball reports the following.

The final version of Silverlight 4 has been released today for Windows and Mac OS X. The RTW (Release to Web) version of Silverlight 4 can be downloaded today for the said mentioned platforms to view and create RIA apps. Also released today are Silverlight 4 Tools RC for Visual Studio 2010, Expression Blend 4 RC and Silverlight 4 Toolkit April 2010 Release.

Microsoft today has announced the general availability of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4. In a press release today, the company announced that VS2010 and the new .NET Framework 4 will be available for developers after the launch event which is taking place in Las Vegas today. The final version of Silverlight 4 will also be available later this week.

Just found out this Visual Studio 2010 theme for Windows 7 and thought I should share it with you all. This theme includes 3 VS2010 wallpapers (wish they were widescreen), and has been put together by Rob Caron for all the .NET devs out there.

Microsoft today at the MIX10 conference has rolled out Release Candidate version of Silverlight 4, along with tons of other tools like Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, Windows Phone 7 Series add-in to use with Visual Studio 2010 RC, XNA Game Studio 4.0, Windows Phone 7 Series Emulator for application testing, and Expression Blend for Windows Phone Community Technology Preview. It was announced by Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of the .NET Developer Platform in his keynote today at MIX10, held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas.

Microsoft has just released the Release Candidate version of Visual Studio 2010 for public download. You can now download and try out Visual Studio 2010 RC and .NET Framework 4 RC before the final version which is due to hit retail in this first quarter of 2010.

Microsoft has just released Silverlight 4 based facebook client for both Windows and Mac OS X. Back in April last year, Microsoft showed off a proof of concept facebook client which was made using facebook’s Open Stream API on Silverlight but unfortunately that never saw the light of the day. After a long wait, they have finally released a fully working client for users running Windows and OS X – with full capability to run it out-of-the-browser.

Microsoft today has released an update to its Software Development Kit (SDK) for the most popular social networking site, Facebook. With Microsoft SDK for Facebook Platform 3.0, developers can build rich Facebook applications using Silverlight, WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC and Windows Forms. The SDK contains samples, controls, templates, and help documentation for implementing a simple Facebook Connect functionality, to a fully functional desktop, mobile or a web application. According to a Microsoft spokesperson: “the goal is to enable .NET developers to quickly and easily leverage the various features of the Facebook Platform.”.

Microsoft has just released Beta 2 milestone of the next version of Visual Studio to its MSDN subscribers. Testers who are enrolled in MSDN subscription program can now download and try out Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 before its public availability, which is scheduled for later this week.
Visual Studio 2010 is a monstrous and the most awaited release which is surely set to have a big impact on Microsoft platform developers in a positive way.

When working with WPF/Silverlight in Blend, it is quite irritating having to actually switch between Visual Studio and Blend throughout the course of the project by opening the project from its folder location again and again. I bet you might have wondered atleast once whether there was a way to open your project in Blend directly through Visual Studio!

Today, Microsoft has finally shipped the final version of Expression Studio 3 and it can now be downloaded from Microsoft Download Center. Expression Studio 3 was announced alongside Silverlight 3 at a recently held launch event in San Francisco.

Tired of the usual look of your buttons in WPF? Do you want a glossy-looking button with glass shine and glow effect as soon as you move the mouse cursor over the button?
Its just six easy steps away … Follow the tutorial below and give a fresh look to your apps.

Last week, I posted a tutorial on how to save and retrieve images using SQL Server and WPF. This is an extension to that article. In my previous article, the images were displayed in the image box as soon as its name was selected from the list box. In this tutorial the picture will be displayed from the database as soon as you the speak the name of the picture.

Microsoft has finally rolled out the final bits Silverlight 3 along with full version of Expression Studio 3 for creating RIA (Rich Internet Applications). If you haven’t already discovered the new features in Silverlight 3, here is a list of all the new controls, features and functionality that is added within the Silverlight 3.

Well yes you have finally found it! A complete tutorial on how to save and retrieve images from the SQL Server 2008 database in a C# WPF application. Everything has been kept simple so that even beginners can understand. However, if posed with any problem, questions are always welcomed!

Special promotion offer on Expression Studio is back! Just received an email from Renee Yong, the product manager for Microsoft Expression in the US, enlightening me about the special 50% discount on all SKUs of Microsoft Expression 2 products for a limited time only.

One of the easiest and the most common ways to make a reflective surface is through the use of visual brushes and opacity masks. In this step-by-step tutorial, I have attempted to teach the absolute beginners how to make an image reflection in WPF and giving a 3D feel to it.

XNA Game Studio 3.1 is go! and it brings support for the new features in Xbox 360 NXE – Xbox LIVE Avatars, Xbox LIVE Party features, Video playback and more!

The Beta bits of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 were released yesterday to MSDN subscribers. Visual Studio 2010 is designed in a rich and modern way to make it easier for both the developers and designers to build innovative applications in a more natural way.

Microsoft today has released Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 and .NET Framework 4.0 to its MSDN subscribers. Visual Studio 2010 is a monstrous and the most awaited release which is surely set to have a big impact on Microsoft platform developers in a positive way.