If you're writing (or plan to write) a Windows Store app, check out our Windows Store App snippets project!  In partnership with the Visual Studio team, we have created a collection of around 60 IntelliSense Code Snippets for common Windows Store app programming tasks. The snippets are available for Visual Basic, C#, C++, and JavaScript developers.

For more details, please see:

• Installation
• List of Snippets

With the Windows Store now open for submissions, use these snippets to get a jump start on your project.

After installing, just right-click and select Insert Snippet, and select the snippet from the list. Then press Tab to jump between fields.  Here's an example:

Give them a try and let us know what you think!

Hooray!  I can finally talk about this!  As I've alluded to previously, I had a hand (one of many) in the managed portion of the SDK and what was originally shown at MIX. Since then the SDK has changed a bit but it's finally ready to go!

The Kinect for Windows SDK is now available for download on the Microsoft Research site.  We have also launched several samples over at Coding4Fun that you can begin using immediately:

Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit

You definitely want to download this one when you get started.  This toolkit contains a variety of extension methods and controls to make using the Kinect for Windows SDK even easier to use.  Some of my code appears in this one. 

Kinect Mouse Cursor

This sample is entirely mine.  Kinect Mouse Cursor is a demo application that uses the Kinect for Windows SDK and its skeletal tracking features to allow a user to use their hands to control the Windows mouse cursor.  Use your right hand to move the …

Download: SDTabletPCFix_1.0.0.0.zip

I wasn’t lucky enough to receive the Acer 1420P laptop given out at PDC this year since I was “staff”, however I wound up picking one up on eBay for a very reasonable price. I received it last week, added an additional 2GB of RAM, used my Windows Home Server to save off the original hard drive image, and then repaved the machine, installing Windows 7 Ultimate x64, drivers, and applications from scratch. Earlier this week I noticed the machine was consuming over 3GB of memory with only 1 or 2 applications open. Looking at Task Manager, the RAM usage by process looked normal, which didn’t match the total memory usage. After reading the Performance tab a bit more, I saw that the operating system had over 5 million handles open!

Back on the Processes tab, I turned on the Handles column and saw that a process named SDTabletPC.exe was consuming 5 million handles, and it was growing by 10 handles per second. Check it out for yourself.

SDTabletPC.exe …