It’s been a busy day! Both the Windows 8 team and the Visual Studio teams have reached significant milestones in their respective releases.

Per Steven Sinofsky’s blog, Windows 8 has been Released to Manufacturing (RTM), and the Windows Store is officially open for paid applications and company accounts (and with a considerable expansion in the number of markets and certification languages).

And Jason Zander just announced the final build for Visual Studio 2012, with MSDN availability on August 15th, and a online launch event on September 12th.

Here’s a quick rundown of the timeline for availability

The early bird gets the worm (and the $)! so if you’ve been putting off developing that great Windows 8 app – don’t! Take a look at the following resources to get started, so you can be one of the first apps of your kind in the store.

Windows 8 Dev Camps (and hackathons!)

Generation App – build a Windows 8 app in 30 days

Windows 8 Dev Center

How Do I Video series

Top 10 Windows 8 Secrets of App Success (Chris Bowen’s blog)

• The Windows 8 Opportunity