In January this year, Microsoft announced Visual Studio Achievements for Developers – a fun way bringing Xbox LIVE-like points to everyday programming tasks. The fascinating program makes sure your hard day’s work doesn’t go unnoticed and after over 80,000 downloads since the initial release, Microsoft has now extended the game to enroll developers working on Windows Azure.

Microsoft announces ‘Visual Studio Achievements’ for developers. Badges, points and a leaderboard to track your unlocked achievements.

Nokia readying PR1.2 for N9 owners. Beta flasher for N950 developers going live soon.

Interview with indie developer Samuel Clay, developer of popular RSS reader and Google competitor, Newsblur

An interview with Chris Sainty, the developer of gReadie, a Google Reader client for Windows Phone 7.

RIM announces BBX, the next-generation platform to bring together their smartphones, tablets and embedded devices.

Sony Ericsson has decided to support the ‘FreeXperia’ group of developers by providing them with 20 handsets, and rebuilt binaries for the camera modules of their handsets.

Earlier today at the keynote of BUILD conference, Steven Sinofsky, President, Windows & Windows Live Division at Microsoft announced that developers will be able to download the Windows Developer Preview via the new Windows Dev Center.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced Windows Phone Mango RTM. Today, Microsoft surprised developers by releasing Beta 2 Refresh of the Windows Phone SDK 7.1. The latest update showcases Twitter integration in Windows Phone for the first time.

Microsoft has figured out an interesting way to get into the social games business. The social gaming market continues to grow in terms of number of users and profits. These social applications have the potential to grow from a few users to millions of users in an incredibly short period of time, and therefore, they need a robust, scalable, and dependable platform.

Microsoft has released Small Basic 1.0. With a friendly development environment that is very easy to master, it eases students of all ages into the world of programming.

Looking to go to Google I/O? Win free tickets to go to Google I/O 2011 by participating in contests by Google.

The Vision Game Engine from Trinigy is coming to the NGP. With some extremely focused support made for the new portable console, gamers can expect eye popping games at par with the PS3 on their handheld NGP.

The new Medal of Honor has done pretty well for itself, facing quite the challenge of the Call of Duty games. Medal of Honor developer Danger Close has openly stated that it will be developing a sequel to the original game. How Medal of Honor 2 will match up to its contemporaries is anybody’s guess, however.

Microsoft Qt Framework pokes fun at Microsoft-Nokia deal. Qt framework will not be used on Windows Phone Nokia devices.