Stop the presses!  I’ve got some news.  The great team at GDGT is coming to Seattle, and they are having a bit of a party and meetup.  There should be a great deal of nerdosity going on there, which is awesome in its own right.  This will be further accentuated by the fact that the Windows Phone 7 team will be there to show off some devices.

Under normal circumstances, that would be pretty cool.  However, we’re not in the “pretty cool” business here.  I think I have made it clear, we are in the epic shit business.  Apparently, the nerdosity is expected to flow especially high at this event, and the request was made for the developer platform team for Windows Phone 7 to make an appearance.  Challenge thrown down.  Challenge accepted.  Challenge contorted into something all together different.

Since announcing the email alias to which you can send your device requests (about 2 weeks ago), we’ve been blown away by the response.  We’re still making our way through those requests, getting them into a CRM system and assigning them to our field evangelists.  That’s a tale of logistical complexity for another day.  However, the whole point of having preview devices is to get them into the hands of developers, right?  So we have two things to share.

First, if you are a developer in the area, and want to come to the event, bring your laptops with your Windows Phone 7 XAPs.  We will have phones on site to which you can deploy your code.  You can see it running on a real Windows Phone 7.  You get to share it with the crowd.  That’s not bad, but certainly not epic.  No, no.  Epic is in reserve for those true hackers who show up with the goods.  For those who have got the best XAPs, we are bringing a couple of phones with us, and some developer agreements to sign.  That’s right…the “A” gamers will be walking out with phones on which to continue their coding.

Are you game?  Spread the word, and see you there.

In the last couple of days since Andy’s announcement that all employees would get free Windows Phone 7s, we’ve seen a lot of buzz about the offer, including some around why we were doing it.

So why did we do it?  Put simply, we did it for the employees.  If you speak to any software developer or hacker, they will tell you that they love writing code.  They love solving problems.  They love creating things.  They love sharing their work with their friends and peers.  They love the satisfaction of seeing something work on a screen.  Unfortunately, when you work for a company, most of them generally have pretty stringent rules about moonlighting, and the ownership of IP.  For software companies, this usually includes code and side projects.  Microsoft is no different.

With this new mobile app era upon us, the Windows Phone team felt it important that we enable our own employees to participate.  There are so many talented, technical people at Microsoft.  It’s not just professional software developers…many Microsofties love coding, and they work on projects in their spare time.

We believe most Microsofties want to write apps for Windows Phone 7.  Before last week, and the changes announced in our policies, they couldn’t.  They would not have been able to profit from those projects.  We made these changes specifically to address the desire of our own employees to express themselves in code in the app marketplace.  A funny thing happens when you remove friction and barriers among a group of creative people.  I can’t wait to see what they create.

The internal response has been overwhelming.  I can’t count the number of languages in which we heard “thank you” while at our global sales summit last week.

The first previews of Windows Phone 7 are starting to hit, and they all feel fair and balanced, which is always appreciated. Engadget certainly goes in depth on their preview, as does PC Mag.  However, it was this unboxing video which made me smile the most, if for no other reason than it was the box I designed with the help of a fellow Liverpool Football supporter.  He’s really the brains behind the operation.  My contribution can be seen at around 2:30 of the video.  OK, off to our global sales summit to spend some quality time with our field sales team members, and spread the word on Windows Phone 7.

I cannot believe I have only been working on the Windows Phone 7 team for three months.  So much has happened, it feels like a lifetime.  What’s been most impressive to me has been the pace of the engineering team.  Considering how many technologies from across the company we are bringing to WP7, it’s absolutely amazing what they are doing.

This week, during Andy Lees’s keynote at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, we announced that the Windows Phone Developer Tools have gone BETA.  Beta means that we have a near final version of the tools for building apps and games for Windows Phone 7.

I wanted to share with the community just how excited the developer community has been.  As a data guy, I like numbers because they tend not to lie.  Since the Mix10 release in March of the first CTP tools (and then the refresh in April), we have seen over 200K downloads of the Windows Phone Developer Tools.  That was before we shipped a Beta, and certainly before we had 5M devices in market to fuel demand.  At some point we’ll release the Beta download numbers, but based on the number of people registered for the live training course next week (hint: it’s got a comma in it), there’s a lot of people who want to build apps for Windows Phone 7.

For me, that’s a pretty solid indicator of the excitement levels, how much our developer community is anticipating getting involved with WP7, and that it is time to get serious about building apps and games, or building out your business, for Windows Phone 7.  The opportunities are plenty, even if you don’t want to build apps.  We showed one of our partners, Preemptive Solutions, on stage at WPC showing how they are building analytics tools so that app developers can build better apps.  Get creative, and start building.  Stay nerdy my friends.

There was a story which surfaced yesterday about vulnerabilities exposed in a wide swath of Android apps.  SMobile Systems conducted research in the Android app space and found that some 20% of the apps allow third-party apps to gain access to sensitive or private information.

It would be easy to dismiss this article by pointing out that by simply downloading an app, a customer is making a explicit allowance to an app to access data on the phone.  What I found troubling about the findings wasn’t necessarily the point about access to the data, but rather that, 5% of the apps surveyed could make calls and 2% could send premium SMS messages.  Talk about a surprise cell phone bill.

The key word in the above statements, however, is “could.’”  Yes, customers make the decision to download those apps, but they have no way of knowing with certainty what those apps are doing behind the scenes.  UPDATE: Ben points out below that the customer us warned of all the APIs used, which is true, but they aren’t told *how* they are used.

Further, because of the multi-tasking architecture of Android, the apps have the potential to be doing a bunch of bad things in the background when the phone is not in use.

Google has been quick to point out that the architecture of Android would limit what actual damage one of these apps could do, but that’s really not the point.  What is being lost in this discussion is that there is no curation of the Android marketplace.  For all the grumbling and grousing about the Apple AppStore, their review process would likely catch these abuses.  There is no such level of certification for the Android marketplace.  Customers don’t want to think about needing anti-spyware software for their phone, as the article implies is one solution for Android.

The Windows Phone Marketplace certainly believes in the curation model, and we have placed user security as a top priority.  This is one of the main reasons that we have our app certification process, and why (UDPATE: “at least in version 1”) apps are run in sandboxes, with no access to any data other than its own isolated storage, or the ability to communicate with other apps.  UPDATE: The goal is to ensure that absolute best customer experience when using their phone.

UDPATE 6/25/10

I’m not one who believes in conspiracy theories or anything, but I do find the timing of this announcement from Google that they can remotely wipe apps from phones a bit curious.  I have to go do some digging, but I’d be interested to know if the Android developer agreement has specificity about what would constitute grounds for a remote wipe.

Inspired by the always entertaining Mike Klucher, I snapped this pic of my own avatar on my daily use Windows Phone 7.  He talks about the very way I felt when my avatar showed up on my phone this week.  It made me smile.  I even went into the XBox Marketplace to change around some clothing options to see how long before it appeared on my phone.  I was not disappointed.

I also felt great sadness because my achievements were so dated.  Not that the system wasn’t working.  No,no.  This was a stark reminder that I haven’t been playing nearly as much XBox as I should be!!  So, off to GameStop I went and picked up my copy of Red Dead Redemption.  I very much plan to use the “hey, it’s Father’s Day” excuse all weekend long.

Well, there’s an old adage that you should be careful what you ask for because you might just get it.  The avalanche of emails and phone calls looking for developer devices was a welcome development.  There are some out there who think that we might as well pack it in on this whole mobile thing.  Developers, however, know better.  New markets == new opportunities for big ideas to break through.

I personally have seen, erm, a surge in the amount of email I get on a daily basis, thanks in no small part to Long Zheng.  I love that there are so many developers with so many great ideas wanting to get phones, and I particularly love all the electrons being harmed to fill my inbox.  My email is the one that’s out there [brwatson (at) microsoft], but there’s a whole team of evangelists who will be getting the phones to developers.  I’m just acting as a switch, and have been fortunate enough to be something of a public face.  We’re still working on the specific plan details for devices going out next month, but we wanted to lay out some principles for how we are going to actually get phones in developers’ hands, as well as what we are hearing from developers.

First, we are going to prioritize for apps being built by large and small teams, which represent some pretty big ideas, specifically targeting the launch timeframe.  At Mix10 we showed a pretty long list of partners, and we have continued to add to that over the last few months.  Second, as some of you may have heard, we are getting phones to our existing published Windows Phone Marketplace ISVs.  There’s several thousand apps and companies who are part of the 6.x marketplace, and we want to help jump start their transition to Windows Phone 7.  Finally, we are prioritizing for those committed developers who are building apps for Windows Phone 7 and sharing their knowledge about Silverlight, XNA and Windows Phone 7.

What has surprised me is the creativity that some people have used in getting in touch with us.  For example, Dan Ardelean, in Italy, hit me up on Facebook:

Most of the emails I have received start the same way: “I am sure you are getting a ton of emails, but…”  It’s pretty funny actually.

Dan, thanks for reaching out, and excellent blog.  Our guys in Italy now know who you are.

Next up is Jeff Weber.  He has a great games focused blog where he shares lots of knowledge, specifically around Silverlight.  He put up that blog post with a special request for a phone.  Nice.  On his site, I found this recent video of his physics engine he is using for his Windows Phone game, and it made me smile and smile big.

If you really want to get our attention, do something EPIC.  For example, when you identify an opportunity to build and extend the Windows Phone 7 platform, and build your own solution, that can be epic.  Building a database for Windows Phone 7 qualifies as epic.  The guys over at Appamundi have done something that certainly caught our eye, and we are going to be following up with them.

Jonathan Yong put his video up on YouTube, and while he made it clear it was very rough, he tagged it “wp7dev” and we found it right away.  He was the first to do this…well done.

Last is Adrian Tsai, a registered Marketplace ISV.  He also sent me a youtube video, but this was actual gameplay.  It looks like a tower defense game, and a nice Tron like feel to it.

His NextWar game started out as a PC game written in .NET, in C#.  He ported the game to the XBox using the XNA Game Studio.  His email made a point of describing the process of moving from XNA for XBox to Windows Phone 7.  We would love to see that in a blog post for the rest of the community.

Ways To Get Noticed By The Windows Phone 7 Team

1) Get the tools and start building apps – asking for a phone without any kind of app development in place is not going to get it done.  If you need ideas, go to our site where customers are posting app ideas for apps they want.  As of this writing, there’s almost 1,000 app ideas up there.

2) Blog about your development progress.  Screenshots and videos help a lot.  So do tips and tricks on how to do amazing things on the platform.  The important thing here is to share what you know with the rest of the community.  Those who share are engendering much love from us.

3) Tag your posts with “Windows Phone 7 Development” or “wp7dev” so that we, and other developers, can find you.

3) Build something which extends the platform and can be used by other developers.  Being developer friendly is top form.

4) Post videos of your app running in the emulator to youtube.

5) Register in the Windows Phone Marketplace.  When we know your Marketplace ID, it’s a lot easier to find you and get you a phone.  Besides, to unlock your developer device, you are going to have to register anyway, so might as well get it out of the way now.

It’s been an interesting handful of weeks.  I’ve been spending a lot of time in the field with our country managers as we get ready for the coming launch of Windows Phone 7.  That’s a post for another day.

I’m here at TechEd, and there’s a lot of talk about Windows Phone 7 devices and when they are going to be made available.  One cool thing that the team is doing is handing out coupons to event attendees redeemable for general availability devices when they start shipping.  We’re only handing out around 50 or so of these coupons, so it’s definitely not a broad distribution.  It’s meant for people who are attending sessions or wearing Windows Phone hats around the show floor.

Developer devices are also on everyone’s lips.  During the Windows Phone session yesterday, Terry Myerson (he runs engineering for Windows Phone 7) stated that we will start putting phones into select developers’ hands next month.  That’s exciting stuff.  Obviously we’re starting with the developers who have invested in the Silverlight and .NET platforms, registered at Windows Phone Marketplace and have begun building apps with the Windows Phones Developer Tools.  Specifics of the programs are TBD, but we are going to want to get phones into large ISV hands, small team hands…you name it.  We’re definitely not going to carpet bomb phones; we want to get maximum leverage for our phone distribution to developers.

Stay tuned, and go download the developer tools.  If you need inspiration about what amazing apps you can build, check out this post from Anand about the Imagine Cup winners.  And if you want to show some gumption and reach out to me directly, have at it.

This past week, I participated in a backstage conversation with the community interested in Windows Phone 7.  It a very strange experience for me, which you will understand when you watch the video.  Between lights going out, phones ringing, and talking to a screen for an hour, it was most certainly novel.  I enjoyed it thoroughly and look forward to doing another.  Lots of great questions from the community.  Have a watch and let me know how I can help you.

Courtesy of the fine folks at Remix Atlanta, I found myself being interviewed by the very Southern-courteous Celia Dyer for TechDrawl.  They’ve finally posted it.  The audio was best we could manage given the space we had, and the impromptu recording.  Enjoy.