Charlie Kindel, one of the key thinkers behind the Windows Phone 7 Series development platform that’s being unveiled today here at MIX10, admits he’s the kind of guy who wears his heart on his sleeve. Talk to him about technology, and his passion bursts at the seams. Onstage at MIX, Kindel will announce the availability of Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, which is specifically designed for building Windows Phone applications and is now available free in a single download at http://developer.windowsphone.com. Visual Studio 2010 Express includes an emulator that will allow developers to build and test their applications directly on their PCs in a virtualized Windows Phone 7 OS environment. That means developers won’t need the phone hardware to get started at building phone apps. Kindel will also tell attendees they can get a free version of Microsoft Expression Blend specifically designed to help them build apps for the new phone. They can use it to build graphical interfaces for Silverlight applications. As Kindel views it, the aim of the new tools is to give developers a “friction-free” way to build Windows Phone 7 Series applications and games. The goal is to make developers “super-productive very quickly” building “innovative and beautiful user experiences.” Perhaps no one is more prepared to tell developers what the new suite of Windows Phone tools can do. Full Story At Source