Microsoft has been busy this week, offering a number of updates to its various Windows 8 developer blogs. This week, the Windows 8 app developer blog got not one but two updates to help app makers put in features in their projects.

One blog update gives some advice on how to add SkyDrive support with Microsoft's Dare Obasanjo offering some sample code and hints to enable Windows 8 apps to link to Microsoft's free personal cloud storage service. He states:

The SkyDrive Metro style app acts as a provider for the file picker, which means that any app that uses the file picker also has SkyDrive as a location to save or open files from as long as the SkyDrive Metro style app is installed. Similarly, the People app is a provider for the contact picker and can act as a source for apps that need to select one or more of the user’s contacts.

There are also ways for app makers to find and access a Windows 8 user’s Hotmail contacts so that the people on the contact list with the same app can be aware of each other.

In yet another blog post, Microsoft's Jesse Bishop talks about how app makers can combine the XAML for a user interface with DirectX-based graphics. The highly technical post states that DirectX will now be included in the primary Windows SDK for Windows 8. Bishop states: