Charles Petzold

I suffer from an affliction where certain words trigger songs to start playing in my head. The word "summertime," for example, triggers the George Gershwin song from Porgy and Bess. (I once told my mother than "Summertime" was my favorite song, and she said "That's funny. I used to sing that song to you when you were an infant and I was carrying you around the apartment.")

Another one of these troublesome words is "mango," which for obvious reasons triggers the song "There is Nothing Like a Dame" from the musical South Pacific (music by Richard Rodgers; lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II). The word "bananas" doesn't do it, and neither does "volleyball" or "ping-pong." Just "mango."

Mango is also the code name for the next release of Windows Phone, and the word was mentioned quite a bit this past week at Tech Ed, so my Tech Ed experience incongrously featured lusty sailors singing and dancing and engaging in rowdy horseplay in my head.

The Mango development tools (it's happening again) are anticipated to be released before the end of this month, and Windows Phone users will get the upgrade by the end of the year. Whether that upgrade will be called Windows Phone 7.1 or something else, I suspect no one knows for sure right now.

I hope to be blogging about the Mango updates in the months ahead, and revising my Windows Phone book as well. But don't wait for that. Nothing that currently exists in the Windows Phone API will be changing — just more will be available and possible. You can start coding for Windows Phone right away without regrets.

I spent all week attending Windows Phone sessions at Tech Ed, and some of the presenters must have thought I was stalking them! I particularly want to thank Peter Torr, Maarten Struys, Shawn Oster, and Rob Cameron for their sessions revealing some of the new goodies in Mango (and bananas you can pick right off the tree).