I was going to wait until tomorrow’s Morning Coffee to post about TechFest 2007, but I just realized that Rick Rashid’s keynote will be webcast publicly tomorrow at 9:30 am Pacific time. I don’t ever get my Morning Coffee post out that early, so I figured I’d give my readers the heads up now.

From the TechFest website:

Microsoft Research TechFest provides a strategic forum for Microsoft researchers to connect with the broader group of Microsoft employees and product managers. Hundreds of researchers from Microsoft’s worldwide labs in China, England, India and the US gather for the annual event at the company’s corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington. They come together to exchange ideas with colleagues, show off their latest innovations, and shine a light into the future of computing. In many cases, the partnerships formed at TechFest between researchers and product teams allow innovations to begin making their way into game-changing products for Microsoft customers.

I’ve been to every TechFest so far, even the first one when I lived in L.A. (got special permission my my manager to come up for it) and the one where I was on paternity leave after Patrick was born (got special permission from my wife to be leave her alone with a three week old). This one is no different. In fact, I think my whole team is going up on Wednesday.

Last week was been slow, but with GDC and TechFest I’m thinking this week will be much more lively.

• As predicted, the XNA guys had a bunch of news to announce at GDC. They launched the XNA Creators Club Online with samples, forums and a new starter kit. Also they announced some cool partnerships for Creators Club Premium members (aka the folks who paid $99 a year to be able to run code on their Xbox 360) including access to the highly anticipated Torque X Engine.
• From Don Syme, we here that the new 1.9 version of F# is almost ready. When I shifted from learning F# to learning PowerShell, it wasn’t because of a sudden lack of interest in F#, so I’m glad to see them still chugging along. And by the time they release 2.0 later this year, I hope to have learned enough PowerShell that I can spend some time focusing on learning F#.
• Apparently Jenny Lam at Microsoft reviewed more than 10,000 images to pick the new Vista Wallpapers. Not sure if I would love or hate that job. But some that didn’t make the cut are available online. (via DotNetKicks)
• Tomas Restrepo reviews a number of lightweight, syntax-highlighting text editors. Personally, I like Notepad2, but as Tomas mentions there’s no way to save your settings. Also, there’s no way to add new syntax highlighting without recompiling it. For example, Wesner Moise compiled a version that added Ruby syntax. I really want a version that that supports PowerShell. Maybe it’s time to give Notepad++ a closer look
• Dale has some new SOAhlocis Anonymous shirts available.
• Jeff Atwood discovers that the French acronym for object oriented programming is POO.