Live from LA, It's Microsoft PDC!

I’m happy to report I’ve left the cold rainy northeast to bask in the warm sun of southern California. This year Microsoft is releasing the first large scale alpha of what they call Windows 7 at the Professional Developers Conference this week. They’re trying to get everyone as excited about this event as Steve Jobs does for his new Apple product announcements.

I’m really hoping that Microsoft will excite me more than they have with Vista but I’m not easy. There will be plenty of sites reporting on this event so I’ll try my best to provide my own little twisted view of what I learn.

While I had hoped they would give me my copy of Windows 7 today, they’re saving Windows 7 specific stuff until Tuesday. Today is all about “Cloud Computing” and the new Microsoft service called “Windows Azure”.  We even learned how to create programs today that will run on the Microsoft cloud server. 

That’s right, all the code that we create would run on a Microsoft owned server. I’ll bet that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy right?  Naturally, the Cloud Computing investment also relies on your local provider to keep you productive. According to Microsoft, pricing for hosting applications on Azure would be “competitive”.

They say one advantage of Azure is scalability.  Not only will applications be designed to be available for your Windows 7 based machine but will be mobile accessible as well.  We already learned how to create a “Hello Cloud” application. Microsoft showed an existing demo of something called BlueHoo with the obligatory cute representations of the people around you.

Boys are blue, Girls are red, and grey I guess if you’re not sure.

I’ll have more to write tomorrow about Windows 7 from my point of view. I’ve already had a sneak peek but can’t blog about it yet. You can however get an early fix (wink wink) from Mary-Jo Foley at http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1667. 

UPDATE:  Live Tuesday  Windows 7 Desktop Preview