Don pointed out to Goran that the Indigo definition of “a service is simply a program that one interacts with via message exchanges.” Goran pointed out that that definition “really doesn’t highlight how it’ll help a customer”. I think part of the reason they are both right is that they are talking about different things. I would say Don is talking about Service Oriented Programming where Goran is talking about Service Oriented Architecture. This gets back to the levels of architecture that I blogged about. Platform tools like Indigo are components used in systems. I’m guessing the customer’s Goran mentioned are at the system-of-system level for whom the messaging plumbing is below the abstraction level they care about. 

Of course, SO* buzzwords are thrown about with such frequency these days it’s hard to keep track of the difference.

Noah Horton, former teammate who has gone on to become PM in the Peer Networking Group, has started a blog. Of course, with the new aggregated feed of MSDN bloggers, you probably already knew that. However, I am compelled to blog this as Noah is a friend, works in the next building over from me and I’ve got a special interest in P2P. I’m looking forward to his promised tips and tricks. Subscribed.

Say hello (and subscribe) to John deVadoss, the latest .NEAT team member to start a blog. John’s the Lead Solutions Architect for .NEAT, which means he’s technical plus he manages people. He’s got his “Hello World” post out of the way where he lists his interests. I spend a lot of time hounding talking with John, so I’m looking forward to his future posts.

I think my extended team (.NET Enterprise Architecture Team plus the Field Architect Evangelists) are really starting to get into this blogging thing. Besides John and myself, we’ve got David explaining “what makes a Smart Client so smart?”, Ram on SOA and OO, Mike on modelling and Simon on interop and Outlook programmability. Maybe I should start a .NEAT / AE blogroll? The blogrolls on my weblog are woefully out of date anyway, might be time for an overhaul.

I had a great idea while I was in the shower this morning (all great ideas come while bathing, at least in my experience), and it proved to work famously. [Robert McLaws]

I’ve joked in the past that if I took more showers I’d be filthy rich. Apparently, I’m not the only one who does their best thinking while bathing. It’s a rich tradition, dating back to Archimedes who figured out in the bath that you can measure the volume of an irregular object (in his case, a crown) by measuring the volume of the water it displaced.

Actually, I don’t think it’s the bathing – it’s the disconnection. In my office I have a phone, two laptops connected to the Internet, four virtual PCs, twelve books, about a ream of various papers plus a pretty nice view of outside. In the shower, I have nothing but soap (not SOAP) and my thoughts.

Going thru my referrer logs, I noticed that my SPSynd project is now listed in the SharePoint Products and Technologies Web Component Directory. Thanks for the listing!