The WIndows Phone 7 guys just released the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 (v1.2) in time for TechEd North America 2011.  This release includes some important new features, including:

• Support and tooling for the Access Control Service 2.0 (i.e. use identity federation like Live ID, Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, and ADFS)
• Support for Apple Push Notification Services (works along with the Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS)
• Support for Windows Azure storage queues (simple enqueue and dequeue operations)
• Updated UI/UX for the management web application
• Code refactoring, simplification, and bug fixes

Call to Action

• Try the toolkit.  It’s quick, simple, and (I hope!) will impress you.  Download the bits here: http://watoolkitwp7.codeplex.com/releases/view/61952.
• Watch the TechEd North America keynote tomorrow to see Drew Robbins demonstrate how quickly you can build application using this toolkit.
• Blog and tweet!  Please feel free to use any of this email and/or related resources in your own blog posts.

Resources

Two new videos are available up on Channel 9:

Here are some useful blog posts with details:

– NOW AVAILABLE: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 v1.2

– Bring Your Active Directory in Your Pockets with ACS, OAuth 2.0 and the New Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7

– Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 1.2 will Integrate with ACS

– Using Windows Azure for Windows Phone 7 Push Notification Support

The CodePlex project has a lot of useful information for you to review:

• Setup and Configuration
• Toolkit Content
• Getting Started
  • Creating a New Windows Phone 7 Cloud Application
  • Running and Going Through the Windows Phone 7 Cloud Application
    • Starting the Application
    • Authenticating the User (ASP.NET Membership Authentication)
    • Authenticating the User (ACS Authentication)
    • Sending Microsoft Push Notifications
    • Sending Apple Push Notifications
    • Working with Tables, Blobs, and Queues
• User Authentication
  • How to Choose Between ASP.NET Membership and ACS
  • How to Obtain Namespace and Management Keys
• Troubleshooting
• Change Log

Details

The toolkit includes an awesome File à New Project experience in Visual Studio.  In this release we added some additional flexibility to the New Project Wizard:

Here you can see that we provide optional support for the Microsoft Push Notification Service and the Apple Push Notification Service (useful for iPhone and iPad applications).  The important takeaway is that Windows Azure is a great place to support these applications, regardless of the platform.

Here you can see the ability to specific the Access Control Service 2.0 in the tooling, along with links that help you decide which to choose and how to proceed.

The net result is a solution that you can literally run and use.  Simply choose the identity provider you want to use, then login.

Support for Windows Azure queues is also simple and straightforward.

Finally, we were not particularly pleased with the out-of-the-box ASP.NET theme, so we updated it. Inspired by the Metro Design guidelines for Windows Phone 7, we came up with something nice and fresh.