The cloud is all about interoperability, right? Microsoft has taken a step in that direction with the recent release of Windows Azure Starter Kit for Java, an Eclipse-based plug-in that enables Java developers to deploy their applications to the .NET-based Microsoft cloud. The community technology preview is available for Java developers to use with the Eclipse IDE; Microsoft is waiting for your feedback. The idea is to give developers writing in Ruby, PHP or Java an Eclipse-based solution for deploying onto the Azure platform. The starter kit includes an Apache Ant build extension that understands Azure configuration options to simplify deployment. Microsoft's goal, of course, is to have more applications running in the Azure cloud, which Microsoft hosts, as part of its all-in bet on cloud computing.

I'll just get it out of the way: I'm probably wrong on all of these, and sticking them up on the wall for all to see forever is an act that screams for temporal retribution. And retribution there shall be. But first, there must be an affront to the very fabric of time. And here it is:

1. Google will continue to grow its influence over developers around the world. Their APIs, tools and services will form the beginnings of what could be called the Internet-based stack.
2. API management will be quite important. Incoming API usage will need governance, and outgoing API services will need formally enforced policies.
3. Web-based IDEs will start to make big waves. Project Bespin and the forthcoming Atlas will both change developers' perceptions of what a Web-based IDE is capable of. Call it cloud-based development.
4. Functional languages start making more headway in the United States. Europe has already figured this out.
5. Remember all that increadible optimization work that went into JVMs over the past 10 years? It will really be appreciated by all the people running Ruby, Clojure, Python and Scala. In a few years, I expect JVMs to be the standard runtime for most non-C-ish languages.

• Seamless integration with Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS 7), which allows developers to host their PHP project on their local IIS server. VS.Php configures PHP, Fast CGI and XDebug automatically. It also provides unique configuration for each Php project hosted in IIS, allowing developers to utilize custom settings in the php.ini for each project.
• Support for very large projects with over 10000+ files. VS.Php is now optimized to load large projects quickly.
• Project-wide IntelliSense, providing the developer with quick access to all classes, functions, methods and constants defined in the project. VS.Php provides two tabs in the IntelliSense pop-up, one for frequently used entries and another for project wide entries.
• The ability to drag and drop files within the solution view, which allows the user to quickly copy or move files within the project. Also, the user can drag files to the references node for quick access in IntelliSense for the symbols defined in the file.
• The latest version of Zend Framework, Php 5 and XDebug.