With help of Microsoft, I am sharing top 5 news with you on Microsoft platform. This is the first post on this channel and I hope you will like it over the period. Please share your views on these topics below, which will be shared to the team over time.

Above the fold, Microsoft Research makes touch develop tool as open source. Read more to find out the top 5 posts. Don’t forget to share your views/feedback.

Microsoft first introduced “Cortana” in Windows Phone 8.1 and now integrating with Windows OS. Going with Windows 10 (build: 9926 onwards), you will see her assisting you in your desktop, tablet versions too. Though it is currently in development stage for Windows 10, not all the functionalities work properly.

In this blog post, we will discuss how to activate Cortana in Windows 10. Also we will see, how to activate touch free “Hey Cortana”. A short video tutorial can be found at the end of the post.

Microsoft updates the “Phone Insider” app with a new name “Windows Insider” and ability to login with Microsoft account, moving one step forward to release Windows 10 Technical Preview for Windows Phone in February 2015. This new build will be available to users registered for Windows Insider program.

In this post, I am just sharing the link and few screenshots of the app. The Windows 10 Technical Preview build for Windows Phone yet to come in February.

Microsoft released Windows 10 Technical Preview release build: 9926 for the people registered under Windows Insider Program. This January 2015 release adds new features including Cortana support, enhanced UI and a set of other stuffs.

Find the steps mentioned below to download the Windows 10 (build: 9926) to try the new features coming in Windows 10. Also, ISO links are available for offline installation.

Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 4.6 came up with another new feature (more precisely an enhancement) for C# 6.0 named “Dictionary Initializer”. It’s not a new thing but now you will be able to map the key/indexer directly at the time of dictionary object initialization.

Today in this blog post, we will discuss about this with an example. Don’t forget to read the other new features which I posted earlier. Links can be found in this post.

Yesterday, 6th January 2015, Telerik introduced a new developer program called “Telerik Developer Experts”, announced few months ago by Burke Holland (Director of Developer Relations). Today I am pleased to announce that, I am also part of this program as Telerik Developer Expert.

In this post, sharing a little about the program, few links etc. Thank you John Bristowe, Burke Holland and Telerik for nomination and consideration.

C# 6.0 came with another new feature along with Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 4.6. Now you will be able to write await operations in catch {} and finally {} blocks too. This will help many developers to do certain async operations when they encounter any exceptions or want to do async clean-ups in finally block.

Today in this blog post, we will discuss about this new feature. Don’t forget to read the other new features which I posted earlier. Links can be found in this post.

“Time and Tide wait for none” – seriously, how the year passed through and a new journey is going to start with fresh hope, fresh expectation by forgetting the past and thinking ahead. Thanks to all my friends, family members, blog followers and other known/unknown persons with whom I am connected virtually.

The year 2014 is over. We did many things in 2014 and let us do more in the coming year and deliver our best to our work. Thanks for all your support and feedback to my articles.

Is your Internet Explorer crashing when you are trying to debug your Silverlight application from Visual Studio but runs perfectly when running without debug option set? This might be due to an update that Microsoft pushed recently via Windows Update service.

If you faced the same, this post will guide you to resolve it at the earliest. Continue reading to learn about the trick to resolve this. Share it with your friends. This might help them too.

Did you explore the latest of C# 6.0? It brought another new feature called “Expression-bodied function members” which will allow you to write expression bodies for properties, methods etc. instead of writing statement blocks. Thus reducing the code.

Today in this post, we will discuss about the new feature “Expression-bodied function members”. Read more to learn about it. Don’t forget to share the feature links in your network.

Microsoft released a new beta app named “Gestures Beta” for Lumia Windows Phone devices which enables you to interact with your phone device in different useful ways. If activated, you can gesture to manage your calls and silence your alarms.

In this post, sharing more information about the app and the link to download the app from the Windows Phone Store. Use it and share your feedback to Microsoft.