Something I found that might come in handy:

The Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is a free, centralized code sample library driven by developers' needs. Our goal is to provide typical code samples for all Microsoft development technologies, and reduce developers' efforts in solving typical programming tasks.

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For a full list of downloads (sorted by technology), please check the Codeplex download page. There are samples available for C++, ASP.NET, Silverlight, Azure, Office, Windows, WPF, Windows Security, and many more…

Microsoft patterns & practices is excited to announce the release of a new guide: Developing Applications for the Cloud on the Microsoft Windows Azure™ Platform

The cloud platform provides you with access to capacity on demand, fault tolerance, distributed computing, data centers located around the globe, and the capability to integrate with other platforms. Someone else is responsible for managing and maintaining the entire infrastructure, and you only pay for the resources that you use in each billing period. You can focus on using your core domain expertise to build and then deploy your application to the data center or data centers closest to the people who use it. You can then monitor your applications, and scale up or scale back as and when the capacity is required. - Source MSDN

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