Last week, we announced the availability of the Facebook SDK for .NET developers. The SDK supports coding for both Silverlight and the Windows Platform (WPF, etc.). Yesterday, Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform, took the stage for his part of the Day 2 Keynote at PDC09 where he announced Silverlight 4.

During the keynote, an out-of-browser Silverlight 4 application called SilverFace was demonstrated. SilverFace was developed using the Facebook SDK we announced last week.

SilverFace lets you do all kinds of things on Facebook directly from your Windows desktop such as update your status, upload photos, view friend’s photos and videos, and much more. This application is meant to serve as a proof point for the capabilities of Silverlight 4 in combination with the Facebook SDK and is not an actual product. You can think of this as more of a “technology showcase” and a demo of what the technology can do.

For those of you wanting to try out physical code (and is pretty cool), I’ve got something just for you.

Today, we’re making available an application for Windows 7 called Fishbowl for Facebook. This application is a sample application created by UXLabs@Microsoft that showcases the Windows Platform (when I say Windows Platform = .NET Platform) and takes advantage of key Windows 7 features.

Download: Fishbowl for Facebook Preview

Fishbowl for Facebook lets you quickly post a Status Update to Facebook, watch your Facebook News Feed, post comments, browse your friends and their photos and upload photos directly from their Windows 7 desktop. Let me take you through a few key areas of the app. I’ll start with the Windows 7 integration.

When running, Fishbowl for Facebook takes advantage of new Windows 7 features such Taskbar Previews and Jump Lists.

For example, when moving your mouse over the Fishbowl for Facebook icon on your Windows Taskbar, you get a Taskbar Preview. This allows you to quickly navigate quickly between Home (you’re News Feed), your friends list, your profile, and photos. You can also quickly go to Facebook’s homepage too.

If you right-click on the Fishbowl for Facebook, you get a Jump List that lets you see your most recent notifications. It also lets you switch to “mini-mode”.

You can upload photos to Facebook using Fishbowl for Facebook – simply by drag-and-drop!

Just put a title in, choose the album you want to add the photo to (or create a new album), and hit upload! Here I am dragging a panoramic photo I created in Windows Live Photo Gallery from my visit in September to the U.S.S. Hornet in Oakland, CA.

See the red lines under the “U.S.S.” and “SFO” text? Yeah, that’s spell check. Fishbowl for Facebook comes with spell check to help ensure you don’t accidently spell important words wrong that your friends can make fun of you for the rest of your life with. Trust me, it happens ;-)

While browsing a photo album, you can view the album in a slideshow, save photos, print photos, and zoom in and out.

And Fishbowl for Facebook supports Windows Touch too.

Ok, one last thing – when browsing your friends in Fishbowl for Facebook, you are given several ways of sorting through your friends. You can sort by name (display name or family), last Status Update, Upcoming Birthdays, or Interest Level. And you can also adjust Interest Level of individual friends by simply clicking on a friend and viewing their profile. Interest Levels let you control how much of that friend’s stuff hits your News Feed. If you have an annoying friend, just turn the Interest Level way down.

There are a lot of neat experiences you can have with Fishbowl for Facebook so give the app a spin yourself! Remember, you can download it here.

Fishbowl for Facebook will run on Windows XP and Windows Vista but requires .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 to be installed (this is not needed if you’re on Windows 7 as it’s built in). For the best experience with Fishbowl for Facebook, it is recommended you use Windows 7 to take advantage of all its features. Fishbowl for Facebook with automatically update when updates are available as well so when we make updated available, you’ll get them! But please note that Fishbowl for Facebook is meant as a sample application showing what developers can do with the Windows Platform and the Facebook SDK. This is NOT an officially supported product.

Stay tuned, Yochay from the Windows 7 for Developers Blog will be posting some behind-the-scenes geeky developer stuff shortly. For you developers out there, this will be a must-read. I can’t wait to see more applications like this for the Windows Platform.

Today is Day 2 of PDC09, and attendees were given a nice “treat.” During this morning’s keynote, Windows and Windows Live Division President Steven Sinofsky took the stage and announced that all attendees* of this year’s PDC will be given an Acer Aspire 1420P Convertible Tablet PC. This is being done to show our gratitude for the support we received by PDC attendees in the development process of Windows 7. This PC enables developers to leverage many of the unique Windows 7 capabilities including multitouch – which I will talk about further down in this post.

This laptop promotion is the result of a collaborative effort with Acer, whom we worked closely with to have these laptops ready for PDC. This PC is not yet available in the US (Acer has not yet announced pricing and availability for this PC) so that makes this “PDC Edition” of the laptop exclusive to PDC attendees.

The Aspire 1420P PDC Edition comes with the following specs:

• Windows 7 Ultimate x64
• Processor: Intel Celeron CPU SU2300 @ 1.2GHz
• Memory: 2GB (Supports up to 8GB)
• Display: 11.6” Widescreen |1366x768 Resolution
• Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
• Network: 10/100/1000 Ethernet | Intel Wi-Fi Link 1000 802.11b/g/Draft-N
• Mobile Broadband: 3G
• Storage: 250GB

For a more complete and detailed list of specs, click here.

The Aspire 1420P comes with 3 USB ports, 1 HDMI port for connecting to HDTVs and monitors, a VGA port, Ethernet port, and a headphone and microphone jack. The laptop features a unique design with a metallic textured design just above the keyboard and a metal hinge for converting the laptop into Tablet mode. Its design is essentially a small laptop with Tablet PC features. It’s slim, light, and has a small footprint – making it easy to carry around. This laptop features a CTRL+ALT+DEL button and a Flip 3D button. Also, the Aspire 1420P uses the Windows 7 Sensor and Location Platform to adjust the screen depending on which way you hold the PC (in Tablet mode). For example: if you’re holding it a landscape position, the screen will display in landscape for you. Vice versa if you hold it in a portrait position.

We worked with Acer to image the laptops with some great software – including the beta release of Office 2010.

• Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta
• Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7
• Windows Live Essentials
• Windows Virtual PC with Windows XP Mode
• Microsoft Security Essentials
• Corel Paint it! touch

Because the Aspire 1420P supports Windows Touch, we’ve included the Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 as well as Corel Paint it! touch.

Corel Paint it! touch allows you to use your fingers to draw and paint. You can also turn your photos into paintings too.

One application I’ve written about recently is Amazon’s Kindle for PC. Amazon has released Kindle for PC and it works great on this laptop. You can download the beta of Kindle for PC today here. You can use multitouch gestures to move from page to page on the Kindle book you are reading. You can also zoom in and out with ease. For more on the Kindle for PC app, check out my demo video here on this post. In Tablet mode, reading books with Kindle for PC is very nice.

The Aspire 1420P also sports Mobile Broadband. With Windows 7, using Mobile Broadband is easier than ever before. Windows 7 will automatically detect if a Mobile Broadband connection is available (after inserting your SIM card).

You can choose to connect to the Mobile Broadband connection where you will be required enter subscription details from your mobile carrier. No need to mess with 3^rd party Mobile Broadband connection utilities.

Not only can you use multitouch with the Aspire 1420P, you can also use it as a Tablet. The Aspire 1420P is perfect for writing down notes using Microsoft OneNote 2010 (my favorite Office app).

Overall, this PC will be great for all the developers attending PDC to experience many of Windows 7’s new features and to be able to develop with those features in mind.

* This promotion is for full-conference attendees who are onsite at PDC. It is not available to Microsoft attendees, members of the media, government employees, staff, speakers, crew, volunteers, day pass attendees, guests, or Workshop-only attendees.

During this morning’s keynote at PDC09 – Seesmic Founder Loic Le Meur joined Ray Ozzie on stage to make a very important announcement regarding the future of Seesmic. Seesmic focuses on bringing many of your favorite social networking services like Twitter and Facebook together into a single application so you don’t have to bounce between those services. They are best known for their Abobe AIR Twitter and Facebook app called Seesmic Desktop today.

While on stage with Ray, Loic announced the launch of Seesmic for Windows.

With the vast majority of Seesmic users coming from PCs running Windows, the move to the Windows Platform made sense. By moving development to focus primarily on the Windows Platform, it will allow Seesmic to focus on providing the best user experience to the majority of its users. This includes addressing issues with performance. Loic also announced that Seesmic for Windows will allow developer to write plug-ins that can run securely within the application.

As part of today’s announcement, Seesmic is releasing a Preview release of Seesmic for Windows. Seesmic for Windows is Seesmic’s brand new desktop client developed on the Windows Platform. They have been working aggressively to have this Preview release ready for you today.

Seesmic for Windows provides an excellent way to manage tweeting on Twitter. It helps you stay on top of what your friends are tweeting and what the latest trends on Twitter are.

Seesmic for Windows provides a “tabbed” UI (left-side of the app) that lets you filter your Twitter “stream” of tweets. You can filter by account as Seesmic for Windows supports having multiple Twitter accounts signed in, searches and Twitter’s latest new feature called lists. Everything can be filtered into specific columns. You can drag the columns into whatever position you like and scroll right to left to view your columns. And the new posting bar in Seesmic for Windows makes it easy to switch from one account to multiple accounts.

I’ve had the pleasure of using Seesmic for Windows for the last few weeks now and it works great! I’m currently managing 2 Twitter accounts, a few lists and use the Twitter Search capabilities track tweets on Windows 7, Windows Live, and more. I am very excited about what’s to come for Seesmic for Windows. You can expect to see Seesmic for Windows take advantage of the Windows Taskbar enhancements in Windows 7 and when Twitter adds support for dynamic location, it will use Windows 7’s Location and Sensor Platform!

Seesmic for Windows was released to all Team Seesmic members during the keynote this morning. If you are a Team Seesmic member, you should have an email from Loic in your inbox with a link to download Seesmic for Windows. If you’re not a Team Seesmic member, don’t worry. Join Team Seesmic to download the Seesmic for Windows Preview and receive the latest and greatest builds. You can also head on over to Seesmic.com right now and sign-up to receive Seesmic for Windows when it becomes available as well. Give Seesmic for Windows a spin and be sure to follow @windowsblog and @mswindows!

Loic also demonstrated Seesmic ported over into Silverlight and running as a Silverlight-based app. Seesmic is also excited about the possibilities Silverlight will provide in regards to eventually creating a cross platform application.

For more on today’s announcements from Day 1 of PDC09, click here. 

UPDATE: For more information on Seesmic’s announcements today including Seesmic for Windows, check out Loic Le Meur’s blog post!

Yesterday, Dell officially announced availability of the Dell Inspiron Zino HD.

The Inspiron Zino HD is a small PC that packs quite a punch in an 8” by 8” square. Hip to be square, right? Ok – enough Huey Lewis, let’s talk about what this PC comes (and can be configured) with:

• It comes with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit or Windows 7 Professional 64-bit*.
• You can customize the PC with 7 solid colors.
• You can customize the PC with 3 designs.
• The Inspiron Zino HD uses AMD’s Athlon processor (single or dual core).
• The base configuration is 3GB of RAM, but can be configured with 4, 6, and 8GB of RAM with 8GB being the max.
• Storage shouldn’t be a problem with your choice of 500GB, 640GB, 750GB, or 1TB 7200rpm SATA hard drives.
• You can choose either a DVD +/- RW drive or Blu-ray drive.
• For graphics, you can choose either an integrated ATI Radeon HD3200 or discrete ATI Radeon HD 4330 with 512MB of dedicated memory.
• It has HDMI and VGA ports.
• A 4-in-1 media card reader and integrated gigabit Ethernet are both standard.
• It has integrated 2.1 High Definition audio with the choice of going with a Sound Blaster X-Fi High Definition audio from Creative.
• For your wireless needs, you can choose either a Dell 1397 802.11 b/g wireless card or Dell 1520 802.11 b/g/n wireless card.

This little PC starts at just $229 and can be customized to support a variety of configurations depending on your needs.

Matter a fact, Dell’s Lionel Menchaca talks about a perfect use for the Inspiron Zino HD – a Windows Media Center “hub” with Windows 7. You can connect this PC up to your HDTV via HDMI and play HD Blu-ray movies. You can buy a USB TV tuner to watch and record live TV in Windows Media Center and also stream video content via Internet TV and Netflix.

For a powerful Windows Media Center setup with Windows 7, it is recommended when ordering your Inspiron Zino HD you choose the discrete graphics option (the ATI Radeon HD 4330) for the best experience. With with the storage options you get with the Inspiron Zino HD, you can literally make this PC the centralized “hub” on your network for all your digital media. And of course HomeGroup in Windows 7 makes it easier than ever to share that content with the rest of your PCs on your network too.

In the coming months I’m hoping to pick one of these up and deploy it in my home as my own Windows Media Center hub.

* Base model comes with Windows Vista Home Basic SP1 32-bit.

Photos credit: Dell. See the full set of Inspiron Zino HD photos from Dell’s official Flickr page.

Today, Popular Science released their annual Best Of What’s New for 2009 which recognized this year’s top 100 innovations. Windows Touch in Windows 7 has won Popular Science’s Best of What’s New Award this year in the computing category. Very cool!

Speaking of Windows Touch – USA Today’s Ed Baig takes a closer look at Windows Touch in Windows 7 and multitouch on PCs in general. He suggests Windows 7 could spur multitouch adoption in PCs. I’ve been playing with the HP TouchSmart tx2 and have a couple of multitouch monitors on the way for my office here in Redmond. If you haven’t had a chance to experience Windows Touch on Windows 7, head to your favorite retailer and give it a spin.

In my guide to awesome Windows 7 PCs, under “All Around Great Everyday PCs” I listed the Toshiba Satellite U500. Courtesy of Toshiba, I had the pleasure of living with the Toshiba Satellite U505 for a few weeks this summer.

So let me start off with the specs for the Satellite U505:

• Windows 7 Home Premium x64
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU P7350 @ 2GHz
• Memory: 4GB (Supports up to 8GB)
• Display: 13.3” Widescreen |1280x800 Resolution | Native 720P HD
• Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
• Network: 10/100/1000 Ethernet | Intel Wi-Fi Link 5100AGN 802.11a/g/n Wireless
• Storage: 400GB (5400 RPM) Serial ATA
• Optical: DVD SuperMulti Drive

The Satellite U505 has a textured design to it and comes in Luxe Red, Luxe White, and Luxe Brown. The Satellite U505 I have is Luxe Brown.

This Toshiba laptop comes with 3 USB ports (USB 2.0), a LAN port, modem port, and an eSATA/USB combo port. This eSATA/USB combo port comes with something a little extra: USB Sleep and Charge. That means while the Satellite U505 is asleep or off, you can plug USB devices into this port and have them charge. I had been out traveling with laptop and ended up leaving the charger for my cell phone at home. I was able to use the Satellite U505 to charge it overnight without leaving it on. It worked great. The Satellite U505 also has a VGA port to connect a monitor as well as a HDMI port to connect to an HDTV.

The TouchPad on the Toshiba Satellite U505 has multi-touch controls and can be enabled and disabled. It also comes with a LED backlit keyboard and just above the keyboard are media control buttons for mute, media, playback controls and volume controls.

The Satellite U505 also comes with an ExpressCard slot and a Memory Card Reader that supports Secure Digital, Secure Digital High Capacity, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Multi Media Card, and xD Picture Card. You could certainly use the Memory Card slot to quickly add some more memory using Windows ReadyBoost but the fact the Satellite U505 comes with 4GB of memory and is expandable to 8GB tells me you likely won’t need to.

For more on the Toshiba Satellite U505, click here. Price starts at $698.99. You can also find the Toshiba Satellite U505 on Windows PC Scout as well.

After using the Satellite U505 for a couple weeks, it’s certainly a great everyday PC and perfect for Windows 7. The Toshiba Satellite U505 is packed with some great specs that give you the flexibility to use this laptop for a wide range of scenarios based on your needs – from video editing to multimedia hotness with Windows Media Center to simply being your workhorse PC.

Oh, one other thing – Toshiba has released updated models of the U500 series Satellite laptops that support Windows Touch in Windows 7 available today!

Yesterday, Rick Brewster announced that the final release of Paint.NET 3.5 is now available for download.

Download: Paint.NET 3.5

I had blogged about one of the initial beta releases of Paint.NET 3.5 back in August. Paint.NET 3.5 utilizes DirectWrite in Windows 7 to render text (instead of GDI). As I wrote back in August, DirectWrite is one of the new additions to the DirectX family of APIs in Windows 7 and enables better readability, adds support for a large variety of languages and scripts, and in conjunction with Direct2D provides superior rendering performance for Windows applications.

You’ll notice that with the final release of Paint.NET 3.5 – it brings some new UI changes to the application. This “refreshed” UI takes advantage of Aero in Windows 7 (and in Windows Vista). I happen to be a huge fan of the updated UI.

If you’re looking for a free and powerful application for editing graphics, give Paint.NET 3.5 a try! For a complete list of changes in Paint.NET 3.5 (since 3.36) – see Rick’s blog post.

After seeing Brad Brooks’ demo of Play To in Windows 7 a couple weeks ago at the New York City Windows 7 Launch Party, I decided immediately that I must use Play To in my home. I went out a picked up a Linksys DMP100 Wireless-N Music Extender by Cisco. This device is on the market today with firmware that is currently compatible with Play To for Windows 7.

Future releases of firmware for the DMP100 will enable it to be logo’d for Windows 7 which means it will have passed all of Microsoft’s internal tests and has complete functionality in Windows 7 such being see it in Devices & Printers, ability to name the device, and easier setup with wireless networks.

What you do with this device is connect it to a stereo system and/or a set of speakers and then to your network. You then can play your music to this device over your network.

The Linksys DMP100 supports Draft Dual-Band 802.11n, 802.11g, 802.11b (2.4GHz and 5GHz) and WEP, WPA, WPA2 for security. If a physical network connection is needed, it also has an Ethernet port. For connecting to a stereo or speakers, it has a RCA L/R Input, a RCA L/R Output, an S/PDIF Output, and a 3.5mm Stereo Headphone Output.

I set up the Linksys DMP100 on a shelf in my office (please pardon the Star Trek DVDs) and connected some Altec Lansing speakers to it via the 3.5mm Stereo Headphone Output.

With my D-Link DIR-655 Router, I was able to easily connect the Linksys DMP100 to my wireless network as it supports Windows Connect Now.

On my Windows 7 PC, I fired up Windows Media Player and I have a playlist for the entire Beatles catalog (I purchased ALL of their remastered albums a few months ago). To “play to” the Linksys DMP100, all I needed to do was right-click on my Beatles playlist and chose “Play To” and select “Cisco Player”. I was then able to start playing the playlist.

And while I was playing music to the Linksys DMP100, I was also able to play music and video to other PCs on my network and videos to my Xbox 360.

I will also be talking about other devices that support Play To in Windows 7 – stay tuned!

Join Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft’s Business Division, and Robert Wahbe, Corporate Vice President of the Server and Tools Marketing Group at Microsoft, for the TechEd Europe 2009 keynote on Monday November 9th starting at 6:30am Pacific. During the keynote, Stephen and Robert will discuss the state of IT and the new generation of business solutions from Microsoft that will help customers reach their full business potential. Following the keynote at 8:00am Pacific there will be a post-keynote Q&A with Chris Capossela, Senior Vice President of the Information Worker Product Management Group, Bob Kelly, Corporate Vice President of Infrastructure Server Marketing, and Tami Reller, Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Windows and Windows Live.

You’ll be able to watch the keynote and participate in the post-keynote Q&A via the Microsoft TechEd Global Press Room. Additionally, you can follow the excitement on Twitter by using the hashtag #TEE09.

One of my favorite things about Windows 7 is how you can customize it and make it your own. Our personalization features give Windows 7 the ability to be as individual and to reflect who you are! Adding to this is a new Personalization Gallery on Windows.com, launched on Oct 22nd. With Windows 7, we’ve made it easy for people to customize their PC with different themes. Each theme has a custom background (or a series of backgrounds that shuffle), different Aero Glass colors, and sounds. Not only will you find Windows 7 themes on the Personalization Gallery, you’ll also find desktop backgrounds and desktop gadgets to download as well.

For the first time ever, Microsoft is working with other companies to enable them to offer their customers a branded experience on the desktop through Windows 7. The effort is part of a pilot program running until October 2010 by Microsoft Advertising. As of today, you will find themes from 7 global advertisers with well-known brands such as Coca Cola, Ducati, Ferrari, Infiniti, Pepsi, Porsche and Twentieth Century Fox on the Personalization Gallery for download. So if you are a fan of one of these brands, check them out! For more on this effort from Microsoft Advertising, see this blog post.

We’re also offering new Microsoft branded themes too – including the Xbox game Gears of War, Zune, and Bing!

So what if you want to make your own theme? No problem – it’s very easy. Click here for a step-by-step outline (and video) on how to customize and create your own themes. Once you’ve created your own theme, you can share it with you friends and family on Windows Live SkyDrive.

For you geeks out there wanting to know more about how we went about designing the ability to use themes in Windows 7, see this blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog.