Brandon Watson, who has been heading up Microsoft’s efforts to convince programmers to develop for Windows Phone, is leaving the company for Seattle-area neighbor Amazon.

“The rumors are true,” Watson said in a Twitter post. “The team is in great hands.”

At Amazon, Watson will lead a group working on Kindle applications for various Amazon-made and non-Amazon devices.

Watson’s move was earlier reported by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley.

Update: Microsoft confirmed Watson’s last day is Monday.

“Brandon did a great job helping us build a vibrant developer community and we wish him well with his next adventure,” a representative said in a statement.

Microsoft did not immediately say who would pick up Watson’s duties.

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If you live near a Microsoft retail store, you can now pre-order a Nokia Lumia 900 with a $25 down payment, the Verge reports.

Unfortunately, even if you do that, you still won’t know how much the device will cost when it finally arrives, probably in March.

The Lumia 900 sports a 4.3″ AMOLED ClearBlack display with a 800×480 pixel resolution, an 8-megapixel camera (as well as a 1-megapixel front-facing one for video chat) and LTE/HSPA+ support.

See Also: Is the Lumia 900 a Recipe for Windows Phone Success?

With a 1.4 GHz processor, an Adreno 205 GPU and 512 MB of RAM, it’s Nokia’s most powerful Windows Phone yet. However, we’ve heard rumors that its price will be very competitive, possibly even as low as $99.

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Skype for Windows version 5.8 is out, bringing several interesting features, including full HD video-calling, group screen sharing and Facebook integration.

Full HD video calls will be most useful to those who own a HD webcam, for example Logitech C920 which does the video encoding itself thus improving HD video quality on older computers.

Video calling for Facebook works even with users who don’t use Skype. To start a video call with a Facebook buddy, select the person in your list and click “video call.”

Finally, group screen sharing, available with Skype Premium, allows you to share your screen or an application window with other participants of a conference call. To activate it, choose the + menu during a call and select “share my screen.”

Other new features include a push to talk hotkey, the ability to hide offline Facebook contacts and Bing Toolbar integration.

Besides these improvements, the new version fixes several bugs, including the one that prevented you from adding a phone number to a group which belonged to a Facebook contact. You can download it here.

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