As Surface develops who are active with many industry events, we've worked with integrating Surface and Surface tags in these environments. One of the downsides though is having to create each tag, assign it to a person, print each one on a Microsoft recommended printer and manually sticking the tag to each event badge. We worked with a printing partner of ours to develop a dry-erase material, full color bleed badge with pre-printed Surface tags that makes Surface an integral and less hassle part of events. Our CEO Joe Olsen explains more on Phenomblue.tv.

Sean Erickson from our .NET development team headed west to L.A. for PDC last week. Since not all of us could go, we asked him to fill us in on the highlights. Here's what we missed: This year’s PDC didn’t have the didn’t have the same wow factor as last year’s, which was sprinkled with major announcements (the Surface SDK, Windows 7 beta and Azure services). The only major announcement this year was the beta release of Silverlight 4 and the roadmap to its official release. But what was lacking in major announcements was made up for with an overriding theme of how to use all the recent releases. It was like they were saying "Here’s what we showed you last year. Here’s what we’ve done to it since then. Here’s how to use it. Now start using it." And that's a good thing. A lot of the ideas and concepts from last year are now actually implemented and are available to start using. Here's some of the coolest. Silverlight 4 This is what will put Silverlight on a more level playing field with Flash. They've added printing support, Webcam and audio integration, the and the ability to host HTML and Flash content inside the Siliverlight plug-in. There's a new user option to allow out of browser apps to run outside the sandbox (think Air, except you can run the same app on the Web and locally with no recompile). An application can run with access to local file system, launch applications and access drives and sensors. It's got a 30 percent faster load time and increased performance (it was said to be twice as fast). You can share reference DLLs between .NET 4 and Silverlight 4 with no need to recompile. And this release has full binding and command structure. SQL Azure With the changes made since last year, SQL Azure will look and act almost exactly like a local instance of SQL Server. There are still some limitations, but the vast majority of SQL Server users could move to SQL Azure pretty seamlessly. Windows 7 Sensors and Location Windows 7 comes with a full API that gives us abstracted access to any sensors on the local machine (GPS, Ambient Light, Accelerometer). A good example of where this would be useful is a map application that defaults to search near your current location. Also, when Windows 7 Embedded comes out for Windows phones, you could add the lat/long to the metadata for any picture taken and have an exact location for every picture. For even more PDC action, check out these session videos: Day 2 Keynote by Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie and Kurt DelBene Silverlight 4 Overview User Experience

Microsoft released its first service pack for Surface back in May, and we’ve been working with it on our machines since then. While it didn’t include any physical upgrades (we took that matter into our own hands), it seems that SP1 addressed most of the issues we’d observed. Check a few of the features our developer Evan Johnston found helpful for both development and enhancing the user experience. When one of our Surface apps was in use at a recent medical trade show, some of the users accidentally exited the application when their sleeves made contact with the access points. This will no longer be a problem, as SP1 includes a single application mode that allows the Surface unit to run only one application at a time. It even bypasses the launcher menu on start-up and goes directly to the application of choice. This is also awesome in situations where you want to limit the user’s access to other applications (for confidentiality perhaps) without having to remove all other applications from the unit. SP1 improves the user feedback as well with contact visualizations. Users can see where their inputs are being detected and the path of motion when the inputs are moved. What’s cooler is that developers can customize the visualization colors and placement, opening up the creativity and making the interaction even more brandable. New tagged object routing allows users to quickly switch between applications using an identity tag. One of our first ideas to maximize this new feature? Think of a conference or trade show badge. Simply slap a tag on the back, and when the badge is laid down on the Surface, the attendee can quickly access the apps relevant to them. Nice. What about updates that are more behind the scenes? A new stress testing tool makes the testing process smarter.  It allows the developer to test by simulating contacts in a fully random approach or in a scripted interaction. The stress load level can be set on a scale of 1-10 in random mode, and the duration of the test can be set in both modes. Simulating massive multi-input scenarios will make stress testing apps more efficient and less labor intensive. SP1 includes several more update and upgrades that we’re exploring more and more, but these are just a snapshot of what Surface is now capable (or more capable) of. We’re curious to see what other developers think of the service pack thus far, too.