BrandonWatson
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Windows Phone exec Brandon Watson leaves Microsoft, headed to Amazon
There's some more corporate reshuffling going on in the Windows Phone universe this week, now that Brandon Watson has confirmed his departure from Microsoft. Watson, who served as head of the WP Developer Experience, announced the news on his Twitter page Friday, and later told ZDNet that he's heading to Amazon, where he'll be Director of the Kindle Cross Platform team. In an e-mail to ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, Watson acknowledged the difficulty of the decision, but ultimately decided that "the opportunity placed in front of me that was too big to pass up." At Amazon, the exec will be charged with laying out a roadmap for Kindle app development across first- and third-party platforms, including, of course, Windows Phone and Windows 8. Microsoft has yet to announce a replacement, issuing the following statement: "We can confirm February 6th is Brandon Watson's last day at Microsoft. Brandon did a great job helping us build a vibrant developer community and we wish him well with his next adventure."
Early Mango users can upgrade directly to RTM build, won't have to roll back to NoDo
Over the weekend, the folks over at Windows Phone New Zealand discovered the "Mango Friends and Family Bundle: Pre-Cleanup" -- the first in a series of two refreshes that promise to clear away any beta updates ahead of Mango's long-awaited rollout. At the time, it seemed like this tool would allow developers to upgrade to the RTM build of the OS, without rolling back to NoDo and losing all of their text messages or app data. Now, Redmond's own Brandon Watson has confirmed via Twitter that this is indeed the case, adding that the update (available in Zune) only offers support to devs who used the Windows Phone beta program. Still, that's pretty reassuring news for all those who jumped on the Mango train a little bit early.
Microsoft woos webOS developers with free phones, training
WebOS developers may not have had much good news in the past few days (apart from a slew of new TouchPad owners looking for apps), but they are at least getting some attention. That includes a message from Microsoft's Senior Director of Windows Phone 7 Development, Brandon Watson, who offered free phones to published webOS developers on Friday, plus all the necessary tools and training to get them started with Windows Phone. Judging from his tweets since, the response has been fairly overwhelming -- Watson says he's received close to 600 emails from webOS devs as of Sunday evening.
