The Joplin Tornado Fund for DeathmatchGames
Via The Dead Pixel Society comes the word about the impact of the Joplin Tornado on the XNA community:
As you may or may not know (until now) a fellow XNA developer @DeathmatchGames and his family were victims of the May 22nd tornado that ravaged Joplin, MO. You can find extensive coverage of the tornado and the devestation [sic] it's caused at CNN.com, Google, and everywhere else.
Head over to the DeathmatchGames - Joplin Tornado Fund to read more and to learn about the ways to help.
High End Performance Optimizations on the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7
Ian Nicolades
Technical Director, UberGeekGames
For the Xbox or Windows Phone 7 programmer, performance is something that should always be kept in mind. For any moderately complex game, it can be very easy for framerate issues to crop up, and seeing as those pesky gamers insist on having a smooth playing experience, it can quickly become problematic.
Having had quite a bit of experience in this area with our last few games, this article will be a “missing manual” of sorts; the kind of cheat sheet that would have saved me more than one headache! 
Windows Phone 7 Unleashed Hackathon
Via Chris G. Williams comes the word of an upcoming Windows Phone 7 hackathon in Atlanta, Georgia. Quotes the Chris:
This is a "hands on" hackathon where you will learn from Windows Phone 7, XNA and Azure experts how to build, scale and publish your Windows Phone 7 app or game. If you are just a beginner, or already have apps in the Marketplace this event will should not be missed. BYO Laptop!
RSVP early, space is limited to 300 attendees: http://bit.ly/RegWP7Hackathon [Ed.: The unshortened URL for the event details is here]
(YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A TECHED ATTENDEE TO COME TO THIS!)