Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) tools and device updates

Windows Azure SDK updates galore

Product launches: Visual Studio LightSwitch , Internet Explorer 9 , Silverlight 5

Advancements on the HTML5 and CSS3 front: Support in Visual Studio , IE10 Platform Previews

Amazing partnerships: Nokia , Skype

Many new experiences at TechDays Canada : Keynotes, Hands-on Labs and TechDays Online (Coming soon!)

Great conferences: DevTeach , Prairie DevCon , MIX11 , BUILD , Confoo

But, enough talking about this year. Let’s focus on next year! What do you have in store for yourself in 2012? As I always say at this time of the year “Don’t think about what you didn’t do this year and let it get you down. Rather, think forward. Think about your aspirations and then START SOMETHING! ”.

To help you with that, tune in to Developers, Developers, Developers: LIVE & INTERACTIVE on January 4 and join me, fellow developer evangelist Paul Laberge, and MVPs Atley Hunter and Miguel Carrasco in a live and interactive discussion centered around one theme starting something new. See you then!

In the meantime, enjoy the rest of your holidays, and have a safe, happy, and geeky new year!

The Developer Movement , the follow-up to the popular Mango App Challenge , is now live. The Developer Movement is more than Windows Phone. It’s more than Azure. More than apps on their own. It’s a call to action for you as a developer to stand up and be counted. It’s time to #StartSomething .

Microsoft invites you to participate in a five part webcast series designed to help you explore opportunities to minimize development costs within tight timelines while remaining agile throughout software development and test cycles.

The Canadian HTML5 Coat of Arms was designed to inspire and excite the Canadian developer community around the usage of HTML5. The central logo and secondary technology class logos, which are imbedded within the shield, are available through a creative commons license by the World Wide Web Consortium and can be found on the group website here .

Beth Massi pulls together a set of entry-level articles to get you started with the most important concepts you need to build any LightSwitch application.

According to the W3C specification, geolocation is an "API that provides scripted access to geographical location information associated with the hosting device." Because geolocation is a built-in API, all you need to get started is a browser that supports it.