Bumped version #'s for release
Updated changelog
Update to latest npm on startup

Removed specific version - npm has released fix for the breakage on 0.8.26
and now 1.4.9 is giving SHA errors?? Let's try this.
Merge pull request #1224 from christav/release-0.9.8

Setting up for release 0.9.8
Merge pull request #1227 from Azure/release-0.9.8

Merge release 0.9.8 to master
Merge pull request #1228 from Azure/master

Merge release 0.9.8 from master to dev