HP has reached an agreement to buy Palm for $1.2 billion.  This should be interesting to see what products come out of this.  Speculations are that HP might use WebOS as an option for their new slate tablets due this year.

I got an official response from someone at Microsoft.  The Touch.FrameReported event WILL be available in the final release of Silverlight for Windows Phone 7.  It just didn't make it into the current technology preview.  I was also told that it did not make it into the next release of the CTP but it will be in the following one.  For those of us that are working on multi-touch apps, this will be great to have.  Windows Phone 7 is going to be fun.

I also wanted to say how impressed I am with Microsoft's response to my questions.  I sent an email to ScottGu on Sunday afternoon asking about Touch.FrameReported event.  Within an hour, he forwarded my email to the people who knew the answer and they responded in less than an hour.  It was fantastic response time on a Sunday afternoon.  I continue to be very impressed.  Keep up the good work. 

For those of us who have one of the HP tx2 tablets, we can already develop multi-touch apps for the Windows Phone 7 because the emulator supports multiple touch points.  However, I'm currently not able to get the Touch.FrameReported event to fire in a Silverlight app on the Windows Phone 7 emulator.  I'm hoping that it's just because this is the first rev of the emulator.  There are very few postings online that even talk about it.  I'm going to contact someone from Microsoft to get an official response on the subject.  I'll post the results as soon as I know more.

Check out the concept device from Microsoft Research and Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs called the LucidTouch.  It is a prototype device that let's the user interact with screen content from the BACK of the device.  You can see your fingers through a 'pseudo-translucency' on the screen.  The idea is that your hand and fingers won't obscure images on the screen.

If you're like me, you've already installed Visual Studio 2010 released version.  Unfortunately the current Windows Phone 7 tools do not work with the released version.  However, you can sign up to be notified when the updated Windows Phone 7 tools are released.   Sign up here.

The Windows Mobile Marketplace is where you can currently sell apps for the Windows Mobile 6 platform.  Eventually this will be where you will deploy your apps for the Windows Phone 7 platform.  Even if you're not planning on writing apps for Windows Mobile 6 but do plan on writing apps for Windows Phone 7, you can sign up to get an account and your account will automatically be upgraded to the Windows Phone 7 market place.  Why not get in now so that you're ready for the Windows Phone rush...

You can find some Windows Phone 7 code samples at MSDN.

You can find the free developer tools for Windows Phone 7 at Developers.WindowsPhone.com

The current tools only work with the RC version of Visual Studio 2010.  They currently will not work with the released version of Visual Studio 2010 and they are NOT backwards compatible with Visual Studio 2008.  We are told that a new version will be released soon that will be compatible with Visual Studio 2010 release version.  You only need the single install for the tools and it will load all the necessary components/packages to develop for the Windows Phone 7 including the Win Phone Emulator running in virtual pc.  Check it out.