Four new “How Do I” videos on Azure have been added to MSDN. Check them out!

Leverage Concurrency in Windows Azure Table Storage?

Windows Azure table storage is designed to support many users at the same time. In this session, you’ll learn how Windows Azure table storage supports concurrency, and you’ll learn a few strategies to help you deal with any concurrency violations.

Use Paging in Windows Azure Tables?

To improve application usability, many applications need to support viewing data page-by-page. In this screencast, you'll learn how Windows Azure table storage provides a built-in mechanism that allows you to efficiently page through query results.

Sync Between Devices and the Cloud with FeedSync?

Syncing the cloud and a growing world of devices is a fundamental need in today’s world. In this video, you will learn how to use FeedSync feeds to synchronize Live Framework data between a device and the cloud.

Get Started with the Messenger Web Toolkit?

Making your application sociable is easy. In this screencast, Chris Parker uses simple code to add instant messaging to his Web site. In minutes he connects his Web site to 320 million Instant Messenger (IM) users on PCs, Macs, mobile devices and Xbox 360. These efforts can help bring new users to his application and retain them for a longer period of time through the use of cool features like chat, presence, contacts and profile information.

I'm leaving for Atlanta tonight to attend MDC tomorrow. I will also attend the Influencer Reception after the conference. My goal is to soak up as much information about Azure Services and Live Mesh that I can and attend C# 4.0 presentations to get pointers for my own presentation that I will be giving at user groups.

Here's my planned schedule:

10:15-11:30 The Future of Managed Languages: C# and Visual Basic
12:30-1:45 Developing and Deploying Your First Azure Service
2:00-3:15 A Lap Around the Live Framework and Mesh Services 
3:30-4:45 ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap 
6:00-??? Influencer Reception
 

I just learned that Windows Azure has been announced, presumably at PDC 2008. It's brand new, so visit the site to learn more and download the ctp.

Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft data centers.

Between this and Live Mesh, I feel as though we're in the middle of a huge paradigm shift.