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The third //BUILD/ conference takes place June 26-28 in San Francisco. Tickets went on sale back on April 2^nd and sold out in the blink of an eye. Good news if you missed the chance to buy tickets and still want to go. This Wednesday more tickets will go on sale.

About 2000 people attended the //BUILD/ developer conference this past fall in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft attracted attendees from all over the globe in an event that sold out in less than an hour when tickets went on sale in August. You were given a Surface RT, Lumia 920, and 100GB of SkyDrive as part of your $1600+ registration fee. Unfortunately for folks with those Lumia 920’s, you haven’t had early or timely access for the Portico update. At least until today.

With BUILD 2012 now behind us, we can talk a little about those Lumia 920’s that were handed out en masse to all the developers in attendance (media did not get them nor the Surface).

Seeing as BUILD attracts developers from all over the world, it would be a bit inconsiderate to give out a phone with limited 3G/4G capabilities as some would get the full package, while others would be restricted to their network. The problem is multi-dimensional as 3G GSM and 4G LTE networks vary quite widely, not to mention the combination of the two often required for great performance.

Microsoft has announced today plans to slash its Windows Phone developer registration fee to just $8 for 8 days in an effort to get more developers on-board with the company's mobile platform.

To show its support for developers and the ecosystem's future, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced at the company's BUILD event today that all attending developers will receive a gift - 100GB storage on SkyDrive, as well a brand new Surface RT tablet with Touch Cover.

Stay tuned for more coverage from the BUILD event.

San Francisco was sooo yesterday. Today we're all up in Microsoft's homebase for their BUILD developer conference. From 9am to 11am today is the first keynote (tomorrow is the other), so we figured we'd live blog the event. For full-width live blog, you can tune in at live.mobilenations.com. Join the chat!

Mark your calendar, October is shaping up to be a busy month for Microsoft. Rumors have surfaced for release dates for both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.

Okay... we've known for some time that the general availability for Windows 8 is October 26th. It now appears that on October 25th, there will be a Microsoft launch event for Windows 8 and the Surface RT in New York City. No specifics on the event as of yet but Windows 8 and the Surface tablets should become available at midnight following the event.

Although Microsoft’s MIX conference is now kaput the plan was to merge that dev conference with the bigger, more exciting BUILD event. And today, Microsoft has announced BUILD 2012 is a go for October 30 through November 2 at home base, Redmond, Washington.

The timing is of course perfect—Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Surface, new Xbox updates and more. You almost get the feeling that Microsoft has been planning to sync all of this together for one big explosive event.

Registration opens August 8^th at 8am PDT, so make sure you sign up and book your flight for what’s sure to be an exciting few days—especially since it overlaps with Halloween.

We’ll of course be there with our A-Team for live coverage and analysis should you not be able to make it.

Read more at Buildwindows.com

In a press release today, Directed Electronics announced that it has been working with Microsoft to bring its Viper SmartStart automotive app, which allows users to lock/unlock, and of course, start their vehicle via smartphone, to the Windows Phone platform "later in the year."  In conjunction with the announcement, Microsoft representatives demonstrated a beta version for those in attendance at the BUILD conference in Anaheim, CA. 

"We're very excited about partnering with Microsoft to extend Viper SmartStart products to the Windows Phone 7 platform," said Mike Simmons, Executive VP of Directed Electronics. "Our developers were able to quickly bring the app to Windows Phone 7 because they are so familiar with the Microsoft environment."

SmartStart, created by the same Viper brand of car alarms and other accessories, has a wide range of other smartphone-based apps for the car and home, though it's not clear from the press release if all of them are equally as close to arriving for WP7.  You can see a demo of the various functions on their website.

Aside from the clear convenience of what this app brings to users, what is even more interesting is what else Simmons had to say: "We look forward to collaborating with Microsoft in other areas, including jointly developing advanced solutions for the cloud connected car."  We have seen how Microsoft has been expanding and integrating SkyDrive into Mango, so could this mean such things as cloud-based music playback for the car?  This could take the Windows brand beyond just the PC\Phone\Gaming unification that we already know is coming.

Source: PRNewsWire