Today is the twenty-fifth day of Diduary. You can see links to all of the published articles in the series here.

This program has been around for a little over a year, and I’m still surprised how few people are really taking advantage of it. Dreamspark is a program from Microsoft that allows students to get access to all of our development tools for free. Yes, free. All you need is proof that you are a student.

For college students, this is easy. You just need to register with your *.edu email address. For high school students, you’ll likely need to talk to your school administrator about getting your school on “the list.”

Once you’ve registered, however, you’ll have access to a ton of development tools at NO COST. Here’s a short list: