Azure Introduction

I am very excited about the Azure platform from Microsoft. You have the Amazon and Google cloud computing platforms. What distinguishes the Azure platform from Microsoft is the fantastic integration with dot net technology. The Azure SDK gives you a very good development platform to work with Visual Studio. As an experienced C# and Visual Basic programmer this was the most exciting thing for me. I found the following web sites very useful to star with. I hope this posting will help some one who wants to start with Azure.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/
is the official Microsoft Windows Azure site. This has quiet a lot of information and can be confusing. Start with the white papers to get some idea about the platform.
Then go to the
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/getstarted/
download the SDK, read the white papers, watch couple of videos in this site  and start playing with the code. You can work with Visual Studio Express, but it is better to have the full version.
The SDK has some quick start samples which will give you a flavor for the Azure platform.
Couple of blogs to follow
http://blog.smarx.com/
Steve Marx  is one of the official gurus of Azure and always has interesting information in his web site.
http://blogs.msdn.com/jnak/default.aspx
Jim Nakashima is another guru of Azure and has very useful technical articles in his blogs.