In this screencast, you will explore the @home with Windows Azure application. You will learn how the Windows Azure developer tools work by running the app in the developer emulator. This will provide a preview of how the app functions when running in production, where it will contribute to Stanford University's Folding @home project.

In this screencast, you will learn how to provision a Windows Azure Storage account, and then configure the @home with Windows Azure application to use it.

In this screencast, you will learn how to deploy the @home with Windows Azure solution directly to Windows Azure and start the folding process which contibutes back to Stanford University's project.

In the video Technical Readiness Engineer Jeremy Hayes covers the basics from what is, when should it be used and what is required to use it, to more advanced topics like troubleshooting mailbox server connectivity issues , all while playing a game of fact or fiction surrounding RCA.

At any rate, some serious changes are forthcoming: the photo view page is far more browsable, with a dynamic layout that minimizes white space and looks suspiciously friendly to touch interfaces.

Spiering said the new photo view will hit on Feb. 28, comes with a completely revamped page, photos look more than four times their current size and lie neatly justified on the page, comes a new upload interface (Flickr's uploading page now looks more like an app than a website), with swoopy drag-and-drop.

New Flickr Upload user interface vs. old:

Flickr missed its chance to be Instagram before Instagram was Instagram; it also faces fierce competition from Google+ and Picasa, which is siphoning off some of the social photographers who make up one of Flickr's core user bases. But Flickr is reorienting according to Yahoo's "mobile first" strategy and the design is thoughtful and forward-looking.

The Flickr API is still one of the most popular public APIs, the company actually has an API for almost every function on the site, he said, although not all are public. He said more than 3.5 million photos are uploaded to Flickr via PC and mobile devices a day.

Adding, he said, "Flickr will continue to make major changes in waves in 2012, but there will be no New Flickr campaign." "It is not as if we close the curtain and all of a sudden say, 'ta da, it's different!'" he said. It does seem as if Flickr has had an attitude readjustment, at the least.

"Whether automating business processes for finance or insurance applications, building sophisticated data analytics applications, or managing cloud infrastructure services, Amazon SWF reliably coordinates all of the processing steps within an application," stated Amazon.

"Using Amazon SWF, developers can structure the various processing steps in an application as "tasks" that drive work in distributed applications, and Amazon SWF coordinates these tasks in a reliable and scalable manner."

"Amazon SWF manages task execution dependencies, scheduling, and concurrency based on a developer's application logic. The service stores tasks, reliably dispatches them to application components, tracks their progress, and keeps their latest state," Amazon said.

• Consistent execution state management. You can rely on Amazon SWF to reliably track the execution state of an application across distributed components. The components themselves including the application flow logic do not have to deal with maintaining distributed execution state.
• Reliable task distribution. It guarantees non-duplicated dispatch of tasks to app components and allows you to control the routing of tasks. Using such features, you can easily implement even complex app flows.
• Ease of use. Use it without having to learn new programming languages. You can use a combination of programming languages in implementing the app components and the application flow logic.
• Full control over application execution. It manages task execution dependencies, scheduling and concurrency based on the application flow that you define. You've complete freedom in building, deploying and selectively scaling application components.
• The AWS Flow Framework, a programming framework that helps developers easily incorporate asynchronous and event-driven programming into their applications using Amazon SWF.

Get started using Amazon SWF.

Amazon SWF diagram:

The screenshots are allegedly from Windows 8 build 8250, leaked through PCBeta show not only the layout of apps in the store, but also some of the apps that will be available, the app information page and the update system.

Note, the small text to the bottom of the title in all screenshots translates to "Home".

The following image shows the Windows Store home screen. The title reads "Application Store" with a subheading of "Spotlight", and "Games" with genre tiles below. Also, note the inclusion of "Xbox LIVE Games."

Here is the Windows Store games and the heading to the right reads "Games":

The image below shows the appl installation screen:

The following image shows the app information page for the new SkyDrive app, with left side of the screen shows the icon, rating and price along with an installation button and the right side has the screenshots and information.

Above the images read the tabs "Outline", "Detailed Information" and "Comments".

[Via]

Twitter for iOS version 4.1, brings back the handy swipe shortcut: Just swipe a tweet in your home timeline to reply to, retweet, favorite or share it, or view the Twitter user's profile, without leaving your timeline.

You can also copy and paste tweets and profiles and press and hold links to get additional options, including opening the link in Safari, tweet, copy or mail that link or read it later.

Twitter for Android update brings new devices support, "Twitter for Android is now optimized to run on Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich."

As well as on the Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble NOOK Color and NOOK Tablet (available February 23 though the Barnes & Noble NOOK Store).

Twitter bring the following features to Android and iOS:

• Swipe shortcut: Swipe a Tweet in your home timeline to reply to, retweet, favorite or share it, or view the Twitter user's profile, without leaving your timeline.
• "Find friends": A new confirmation alert when you select "Find friends". "This notification more clearly and explicitly messages the fact that when you upload your contacts' email addresses and phone numbers, you can quickly find which of your friends are on Twitter (that is, if they've chosen to be discoverable by email or phone number)," informs Twitter.

Here is what is new in Twitter for iOS:

• Copy and paste: We've returned the ability to copy and paste the text of Tweets and user profiles. Just press and hold to copy.
• Link love: The "share" feature used to just give you the option to copy or email a link to a Tweet. Now, if there's a link within a Tweet, you'll see the option to tweet, copy or mail that link, or you can choose to read it later. (Select a "Read Later Service" under Settings > Advanced.)
• Pressing and holding links provides similar options, along with the ability to open the link in Safari.
• Direct messages: We updated the design for Direct Messages and returned the ability to mark all DMs as read. Simply tap the check mark in the lower right corner.
• Font size settings: Change the font size under Settings > Advanced.

You can download the Updated Twitter Mobile Apps by visiting to iTunes App Store, Android Android Market, and Amazon Appstore

The video embedded below says that the full reveal will happen on Monday, February 27 which is the first day of the Mobile World Congress.

"Stay tuned for the latest news from Nokia at Mobile World Congress, February 27th to March 1st 2012," reads the video descrption.

An earlier Internet rumor claimed that Nokia has plans to reveal what the report called the Nokia 808 PureView.

Also, it seems Nokia could be releasing yet another device, the "Lumia 719," as spotted by Unwiredview.com, while checking out the official certification site for the Bluetooth standards.

The site showed approval for the Nokia Lumia 719, and the listing suggest that it has a 3.7 inch display, a five megapixel camera, and that it would be sold in North and South America as well as Asia.

"Google now asks you to enter your credit card as part of the Gmail signup flow. Bold," tweeted Robert Matei.

This new addition, is prompted in the setup phase of an email account, makes it seem as if the Google email account is not free. Sure, Google wants to increase the numbers of Google Wallet accounts as many as possible but the mix and match of email to credit card seems like a strange marriage.

The video raises some very valid points about Google Docs. "What happens when the world's largest advertising business tries to sell productivity software on the side? Beware the Googlighting Stranger," reads the video description.

Learn more at http://WhyMicrosoftProductivity.com

In other Google news, a user posting on the Pirateweb message board has accused Google of removing copyrighted MP3 music files from a Gmail account -- possibly using the scanning services that Google employs to block illegal content on YouTube, possibly using something else. Shocking if true, Google responded "no. Or not, at least, just like that."

Later, a Google spokesperson denied of doing anything of this kind, stating, "We do not go into or interfere with user's Gmail accounts, except in extreme cases, such as in response to court orders. Emails, data and files contained in Gmail are users' private information."

However -- and this might be a worry for some who store all kinds of things in Gmail -- he also left open the possibility that Google could do something like this "in extreme cases," for example, in response to court orders.

And, in the Microsoft news, the Redmond-based software company plans to open two new retail stores in Bridgewater and Freehold New Jersey in the coming months, growing its brick and mortar presence slowly toward its 75-store target.

In the picture below from Microsoft's retail-store hiring site, you can see the list now includes Bridgewater and Freehold: