If you are ready to begin developing apps for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview released this week, we have the tools for you: Beta versions of both Visual Studio 11 and Blend are now available.
As in the Windows 8 Developer Preview released in September, Blend is part of Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8. In addition, starting with the Visual Studio 11 Beta, Blend is now also included in Visual Studio 11 Ultimate, Premium and Professional. If you install any of these editions of Visual Studio 11 Beta on Windows 8, you will have the Blend and Visual Studio capabilities that this post describes.