Bob Caswell

Greetings from the sky! I’m writing this on my flight back to Seattle from Boston and noticed that the tech-news-o-sphere is all abuzz about Amazon’s new cloud music products recently announced. In a nutshell, Amazon automatically now is giving its MP3 customers accessibility to their music anytime and in any place via an online digital media locker (“cloud drive”) and an online music “cloud player”.

My predication is that this is the beginning of consumers (mass consumers, not just early adopters) migrating from an ownership mentality to an accessibility mentality. Here’s what I mean:

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Full Disclosure: I work for Microsoft and enjoy my job. And this blog post is my opinion, not Microsoft’s.

This past week ended up being one of the most intense, yet rewarding, weeks of my career. For the past three weeks, I put my day job mostly on hold and took on the challenge of leading a team to put together a free virtual training event for Windows Phone 7 developers. We had developers in the thousands participating in four 3-hour sessions that covered the ins and outs of developing applications and games for Windows Phone 7.

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Let’s face it: we all love making comparisons. It’s an easy way to simplify a point. The problem, though, lies in the implicit assumptions and interpretations that go along with a comparison. Meaning, as soon as you make your comparison, it’s as if you’re holding all else equal while at the same time elevating your comparison to a higher level of credibility as compared to any of the unspoken alternative comparisons involving the two things you’re comparing.

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Today the Windows Phone team announced the availability of the Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta. I wanted to highlight a portion of the announcement that I’ve been working on personally. Microsoft really wants to show you (Mr. Phone App Developer) why Windows Phone 7 is the hotness. So that’s why we’ve put together the following free training (see below).

I’m very excited about this; it’s one of the coolest things I’ve been involved in at Microsoft! If you have any questions or want more details, leave me a comment.

Get Trained for FREE – Windows Phone 7 Jump Start

Windows Phone 7 JumpStart is a FREE virtual live class for developers interested in developing applications and games for Windows Phone 7. The course is organized into four virtual instructor-led sessions that are of 3-hour duration. They will be presented by forthcoming MS Press authors and MVP’s, Andy Wigley and Rob Miles. It will provide developers a jump start for developing Windows Phone 7 applications. The labs will be completed offline with office hours access to the instructors.

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This weekend I wanted to catch up on the D8 conference, which is basically a series of who’s who in the tech industry being interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. The D8 website has dozens of 5-minute clips but offers no convenient way to watch them in one sitting. Some of us, you know, can handle watching (dare I say, want to watch) certain things more than 5 minutes at a time.

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How do you like my title? It came from a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Microsoft Plans Shake Up” which Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Insider linked to, added an intro that added nothing new, and then added quite the Google-bait headline of “Microsoft Shaking Up Entertainment Group In Desperate Attempt To Catch Apple And Google”.

Now, full disclosure, I work for Microsoft but not in this division. And I have nothing to do with whatever this story is about. It seems like an interesting scoop for the WSJ, but Blodget’s title is tricking Techmeme into thinking it should be the leader story. So as a fellow blogger, I thought I’d one up Mr. Blodget with an equally exciting title of my own and a piece of advice:

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Wow, some major love for Apple tonight coming from none other than Bill Maher:

“America needs to focus on getting Jobs, Steve Jobs… In 2001, Apple reinvented the record player, in 2007 the phone, and this year the computer. I say, for 2011, we let them take a crack at America.”

“Our infrastructure, our business model, our institutions, get rid of the stuff that’s not working, replace it with something that does. For example: Goodbye US Senate, Hello Genius Bar. So good luck, Steve, ’cause you’ll need it. Of course, I’m sure he’ll make us change the name.”

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The Bing team today unveiled turn-by-turn directions for Windows Phones. Now for those that know me, you may know that I currently am using an Android phone (yeah, yeah, I work for Microsoft and use an Android phone; it happens). And one of the reasons specifically was for the free GPS app available via Google.

Having a phone with this kind of app makes my life less complicated, as it removes one more gadget from my life that I’d just as soon not have separately. But lately my Android phone has felt sluggish (it’s a G1), and with this announcement, I think it’s safe to say that I’m looking at getting myself a nice new Windows Phone 7 this holiday season. Anyone else making a major phone change soon?