Microsoft officially announced the dates for its three-day Build 2014 developer conference. It will take place from April 2 to 4 at San Francisco's Moscone Center.
This will be the second consecutive Build held in San Francisco, a move the company made last year in a bid to cultivate more developer interest in Windows 8. Build conferences in 2012 and previous years were held in Microsoft's home territory of Redmond, Wash.
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Microsoft is also kicking off developer season early this year. By holding Build in early April, it will likely come before Google I/O, BlackBerry Live and Apple's WWDC. No dates have been set for those other conferences, but they typically begin in late April or early May.
Microsoft used Build 2013 to show off many of the features of Windows 8.1, which shipped this fall, and the company announced several big-name apps would be coming to the platform, including Facebook, Foursquare and Flipboard.
In 2014, we'll probably see more about the next iterations of Windows, most likely called Windows 8.2 and rumored to have the code name "Threshold." Many users have called for a complete return of the start menu in the desktop; the current button, reintroduced in Windows 8.1, merely takes users back to the start screen. It will be interesting to see whether Microsoft brings back on old feature once again to appease users that aren't yet warmed up to the new, touch-friendly modern UI.
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