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I’m proud to announce our second milestone for the PHP SDK for Windows Azure project that Microsoft and RealDolmen started back in May. Next to our regular releases on CodePlex, we’ll also be shipping a Zend Framework version of the PHP SDK for Windows Azure. Announcements on this will be made later. The current milestone is focused on Windows Azure Table Storage, enabling you to use all features this service offers from any PHP application, be it hosted in-premise or on Windows Azure. Get it while it’s hot: PHP SDK for Windows Azure CTP2 - PHPAzure CTP2 (0.2.0)

Yesterday evening, I received the following e-mail: Dear Maarten Balliauw, Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2009 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in ASP/ASP.NET technical communities during the past year. (…) Toby Richards General Manager Community Support Services Translated in short: I’m now officially an MVP ASP.NET! I am really honored to be recognized as an MVP. Thank you for the nomination!

“Knight Maarten The Brave Coffeedrinker had managed all there is to building an application to interact with the great god of social networking, Twitter. A barn in the cloud, worker roles, web roles, a gate keeper, … The moment of truth came near: would the application survive if it was thrown at the azure cloud? Would the digital villagers like the application?” This post is part of a series on how we built TwitterMatic.net. Other parts:

***“Now that the digital villagers could enter their messages in the application, another need arose: *knight Maarten The Brave Coffeedrinker would have to recruit a lot of slaves to tell all these messages to the great god of social networking, Twitter. Being a peaceful person, our knight thought of some digital slaves, sent from the azure sky. And so he started crafting a worker role.” This post is part of a series on how we built TwitterMatic.net. Other parts:

**“After having found a god-like guardian for his application, Knight Maarten The Brave Coffeedrinker found out that his application still had no functional front-end. It’s OK to have a guardian and a barn in the cloud, but if there’s nothing to guard, this is a bit useless. Having asked the carpenter and the smith of the village, our knight decided that the so-called “ASP.NET MVC” framework might help in his quest.” This post is part of a series on how we built TwitterMatic.net. Other parts:

**“Knight Maarten The Brave Coffeedrinker just returned from his quest to a barn in the clouds, when he discovered that he forgot to lock the door to his workplace. He immediately asked the digital village’s smith.to create a lock and provide him a key. Our knight returned to his workplace and concluded that using the smith’s lock would be OK, but having the great god of social networking, Twitter, as a guardian, seemed like a better idea. “O, Auth!”, he said. And the god provided him with a set of prayers, an API, which our knight could use.”

“After setting up his workplace, knight Maarten The Brave Coffeedrinker thought of something else: if a farmer wants to keep a lot of hay, he needs a barn, right? Since the cloudy application would also need to keep things that can be used by the digital villagers, our knight needs a barn in the clouds. Looking at the azure sky, an idea popped into the knight’s head: why not use Windows Azure storage service? It’s a barn that’s always there, a barn that can catch fire and will still have its stored items located in a second barn (and a third). Knight Maarten The Brave Coffeedrinker jumped on his horse and went on a quest, a quest in the clouds.**”

“Knight Maarten The Brave Coffeedrinker was about to start working on his TwitterMatic application, named after the great god of social networking, Twitter. Before he could start working, he first needed the right tools. He downloaded the Windows Azure SDK, a set of tools recommended by the smith (or was it the carpenter?) of the digital village. Our knight’s work shack was soon ready to start working. The table on which the application would be crafted, was still empty. Time for action, the knight thought. And he started working.”

“Once upon a time, Microsoft started a Windows Azure developing contest named new CloudApp();. While it first was only available for US candidates, the contest was opened for international submissions too. Knight Maarten The Brave Coffeedrinker and his fellow knightsmen at RealDolmen decided to submit a small sample application that could be hosted in an unknown environment, known by the digital villagers as “the cloud”. The application was called TwitterMatic, named after the great god of social networking, Twitter. It would allow digital villagers to tell the latest stories, even when they were asleep or busy working.”

After the summer, I’ll be joining Kurt Claeys and Yves Goeleven and for the start of the Azure User Group Belgium (or AZUG.BE). AZUG.BE is a Belgian user group with focus on development and architecture of the Microsoft Azure Services Platform. Azure is a cloud hosted development platform for internet oriented applications aimed at high scalability and based on .NET technology.