Marrying up ideas and tools and developers

From the first post, I've really enjoyed the feedback around what kinds of verticals Microsoft should pursue with Surface.  So many of you have raised your hand for education, which is awesome!  There are some great blogs around experimental and philanthropic educational efforts on technorati that are worthy of exploration.

Other responses so far have talked about the emphasis on software development, and that's what I want to run with today.  Robert's been posting a lot about our SDK, which is getting better with every iteration.  As we begin to reach out to the developer community I'm curious about what experiences people have had using tools like Expression Blend and Visual Studio.  And what web sites running on Silverlight are impressive to you? 

Ultimately, software development is a marriage of people, tools and ideas.  We want to hear from you about experiences using the tools above or other tools that you find particularly compelling.

A

Comments

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2007
  We have build a wonderful mind mapping application using these tools WPF and .NET 3.5 - http://bookvar.net  We have also created a Silverlight based viewer for mind maps. My dream is to be able to use Surface for creating and managing of my mind maps. When we will be able to have a look at the SDK, so we can plan how to integrate Bookvar and Surface.

• Anonymous
  June 23, 2008
  Hi there, thinking whether Surface be made into a modest mousepad for wider distribution eg schools, which can display all kinds of maps, and show up distances between points and places of interest(by tracing a path with the mouse, similar to what can be done on the screen), furthermore possibly made of robust / flexible material so this virtual map can be folded away into your back pocket?? Cheers