• My boss let me borrow a Tecra M4 that he scavenged from his boss. The display is fairly twitchy, I think it’s a motherboard issue. But it’s very intermittent and I’ll get help desk to take a look. In the meantime, it sure is nice to driving a Tablet PC again. And it’s Vista ready to boot.
• Speaking of Vista, Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista. It’s a mouthful but it’s now available. Soma answers questions about the new release on MS PressPass.
• The DSL tools team keeps on rolling with the power toys. First it was the Designer Integration PowerToy, now it’s the DSL Tree Grid Editor PowerToy. Jeff Santos has the details.
• I missed the TechFest keynote yesterday, but it’s available on demand. They also have descriptions and videos of some of the technologies on display. (well, only one video so far, but I assume since the page is labeled “TechFest 2007 Videos” that more are on the way.)
• There’s new support for integrating WCF and WF coming in VS “Orcas”. Moustafa Khalil Ahmed has the details on what’s new for WF & WCF in the latest CTP drop. For me personally, the WCF/WF integration is some of the most important stuff coming in Orcas, second only to LINQ.

Dare is thinking about what comes after AJAX, building on Ted Leung’s post “Adobe wants to be Microsoft of the Web“. He mentions three things that any Rich Internet Application (aka RIA) platform needs to have: ubiquity, a consistent debugging experience and a continuum of dev tools. I agree 100% with the need for a good debugging experience and dev tools. But RIA platforms like Flash and WPF/E aren’t traditional platforms, they’re virtual platforms. (or should I say Platforms 2.0?) It turns out ubiquity and market penetration of virtual platforms is a lot less important than you might think.

At first glance, Flash Player’s 98% market penetration appears to be demonstrating the typical virtuous circle of platforms. The more people that have the platform, the more software written for it; the more software written for a platform, the more people get it. But the traditional view of virtuous circles assumes that switching platforms requires significant investment of time and money. The vast majority of non-geek users commit to a platform at the time of purchase.

However, Virtual platforms such as CLR, JVM, Flash not to mention the browser itself (aka AJAX) don’t conform to the traditional virtuous circle of platforms. Installing a virtual platform isn’t a “buy a new machine” proposition or even a “pave and rebuild”. At worst, in the case of CLR, it’s fifteen minutes to download and install followed by a reboot. At best, in the case of Flash, it’s two minutes to download and install with no reboot. That means the end user has made little to no commitment to virtual platform itself, either in terms of time or money. Furthermore, the user isn’t forced to choose between different virtual platforms. You can install CLR, JVM, Flash as well as multiple browsers on your machine side by side without conflict.

Think about the install process for a new version of Flash, especially from the perspective of a non-geek. They visit a site, it pops up a dialog saying “you need the latest version of Flash, go here to get it”. Even if the average user doesn’t understand what Flash is or does, they can click on the link. They are redirected to the Adobe site, Flash installs very quickly, and the user goes back to what they were doing and most likely forgets the entire install experience. Because no money changes hands and it takes almost no time, installing the Flash virtual platform requires zero commitment from the user.

Existing user install base is much less important when adding new users requires zero commitment. You can see this is happening with Flash by looking at its version specific market penetration. Flash Player 9 has reached around 55% market penetration in just over six months since it was released. Flash is not seeing the “compete with the previous version” effect that is prevalent with traditional platforms like Windows. I believe this is because users don’t need to make any real commitment to Flash. When a new version of Flash is released, the user is presented with the same install process which they just go thru again without even realizing they’ve done it before.

If the end user isn’t committed to a virtual platform like Flash, then who is? The developers who build software for that virtual platform. This is Virtuous Cycle of Virtual Platforms between the platform and developers instead of the platform and users. In the old model, developers go where the users are. In the new model, users go to where developers are. And developers go where they can be most effective.

Short one today as I’m prepping for a presentation I’m delivering later this morning.

• The US Patent & Trademark is going to pilot posting patent applications online. Microsoft is one of the pilot companies. Given how broken the patent process is these days (note, my opinion – not my employers) nice to see at least small steps to solving the problem. (via Political Animal)
• Joe McKendrick coins the term “intrapreneurial” talking about SOA and SaaS. I like it.
• Xbox Live reaches six million members four months earlier than expected. Congrats!

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.