• Akira in HD from XBL Video Marketplace?
  
  Coolness.
• Omar Shahine has the WL Hotmail + Outlook scoop. Download it here. I’ve used this product off and on over the past few years. Typically, I would use it, love it, but then never get around to reinstalling it after a repave since it was subscription-only product.
• Microsoft releases eScrum project management tool. I’ve seen this internally but haven’t used it yet. However, I have no doubt that the cool kids will deem it “not hot” in favor of Mingle. (via Larkware)
• Ted Neward writes at length about relational databases, object databases and OR mapping. Ted may be Switzerland when it comes to platform, but he has no problem taking sides and mixing it up when it comes to data & object persistence. He makes some interesting points that mostly boil down to “different tools for different jobs”. Also, has the dual schema problem entered the general vernacular, or just Ted’s?
• Nick Malik survives his trip to Nashville and has some thoughts on Ruby, Microsoft and alpha geeks. His point about the alpha geek track record (he sites Powerbuilder, Delphi and EJB) is spot on. This is something I’ve been thinking about since ETech last year. How good are alpha geeks at trendspotting? For every technology they adopt that makes the mainstream, how many don’t? I’m guessing quite a few more than the three Nick mentions.
• Speaking of alpha geeks, this whole ALT.NET silliness reminds me of the famous Groucho Marx quote: “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.” Though maybe I’m just bitter because “Working at MS” has been deemed “not hot”. 😄

I’ve got over 500 unread news posts and 200 emails in my inbox to process. So this is nowhere near comprehensive.

• Clarius released the June 07 CTP of their Software Factory Toolkit. Big new feature in this drop is T4 Text Template editor that has syntax highlighting and eventually intellisense. They also released the May 07 CTP of VSSDK Assist, previously known as VSIP Factory. Haven’t played with either yet, but it seems like a good time to be a tool builder.
• PowerShell hits a million downloads in six months. No surprise there, IT’S FRAKING AWESOME. Jeff Snover details seven MSFT products using PS, promising many more that he can’t talk about. See earlier comment about being fraking awesome.
• Speaking of PS, I don’t “get” Server Core because it doesn’t support managed code. So no PS for Server Core. They announced @ TechEd that Server Core will support IIS 7, but since there’s no CLR you can’t run ASP.NET. As far as I’m concerned, no PS and no ASP.NET is below the minimum threshold of usefulness. I realize it’s technical limitation related to the current factoring of the .NET Framework and I assume some team somewhere in Redmond is working on fixing it. But what’s the point of releasing Server Core in the meantime?
• QUT releases version 0.8 of their Ruby.NET compiler. Given that the IronRuby guys bootstrapped by licensing the Ruby.NET compiler, I wonder how these two projects will evolve side by side.
• Speaking of Ruby, JRuby has gone 1.0. Congrats!
• At TechEd, I saw my friend Steve Jones from Capgemini, and it’s not this Steve Jones. Woops. But CRUD is still CRAP.
• Pat Helland breaks Scott Hanselman’s Rule #2 and details how he “lost a Megan“.
• My ex-teammate David Hill has been busy with Acropolis. If you are even the slightest bit interested in this technology, you should be reading his blog.
• Microsoft acquired a company called Stratature last week. I don’t typically track MSFT acquisition news + it was lost in the noise of TechEd. But Roger Wolter thinks it’s a great move and that Stratature’s Master Data Management hub product is one of the best. Given the importance of MDM in SOA, I think I need to go learn more about this product.

Harry will be back on Monday so I will returning to blogging on my website, while I will let the expert return to his normal posts here (not that he really took a break). I agree with Harry’s post in that I really want to get something built so that we can talk about more than theoretical models. Like last time I appreciate the opportunity to sub for the master this last week. I hope that you found some of my entries interesting.

• Sam Gentile wrote the other day why it’s great to be a Microsoft developer. I enjoyed that post because I just celebrated the end of my first year here at Microsoft. At this point I am not sure what I have contributed, but I have learned a great deal and want to apply that knowledge over the next year to help the company to succeed. We really do have great people and great technologies.
• The Seattle/Oklahoma City Sonics hired a GM who is only 30 years old. You know you must be getting old when the people running the sports teams are younger than you. 😄 He comes from the Spurs organization though so at least he has a background from a successful franchise.
• Ben Pearce listed out his top 5 questions about PowerShell this week at TechEd. He also recommends the book “PowerShell in Action” by Bruce Payette. I heartedly agree with this endorsement as the book is excellent.
• It looks like there are going to be more family friendly games for the Xbox 360. I for one am glad to hear that. The other day as I was trying to find some games my 4 year old with the broken leg could play I realized how many games I have that wouldn’t be appropriate for him. This is very good news in my opinion.

TechEd isn’t technically over, but it is for me. I’m on a flight home in about four hours. Frankly, I am very excited to be going home. It’s been almost a year since my last public presentation, and the only work travel I’ve done in the last 12 months was that Gartner EA conference last June, the Thomas Erl SOA workshop back in September and TechEd 07. I am simply out of practice being gone from home this long.

It doesn’t look like I’ll be going dark another 12 months before my next public presentation. People must have noticed me stick my head up to do TechEd, I’ve been asked about presenting at seven conferences that all happen in the next six months. I’ll do a few – I hope to gravitate to the ones close to campus and don’t require me to be gone very long – but my problem with presenting right now is that I’m still talking theory. I left evangelism because I wanted to build something. We’re still getting started on that “build something” thing, so I don’t have anything to show, just stuff we’re thinking about building. Hopefully, by conference season next year, I’ll actually have something to show.

My session yesterday went ok – I think it could have been better, but the audience seemed to get a lot out of it. It was a larger crowd Monday, but only one customer came up afterwards to discuss the talk with me. Yesterday, I had a half a dozen or so. I’d post slides for you dear reader, but I didn’t do any. However, I think on of the sessions I will be doing in the next few months is basically a breakout version of this talk, so I’ll need slides for that.

The attendee party was almost a bust due to rainstorm. When I got there around 8pm, the word was that all the rides but Spiderman were closed. So I rode Spiderman with a bunch of UK blokes I ended up hanging out with, and by the time we got out the rain had passed and almost everything was open again. Unfortunately, the one thing that didn’t reopen was Hulk, which I was really looking to ride again. I got to ride it two years ago at TechEd 2005 as part of a special trip the TechEd core team took. But I did get to ride Spiderman, Dueling Dragons, Jurassic Park and Ripsaw Falls (I got drenched) which is pretty much all the big rides but Hulk.

I did take a little time out yesterday before the expo closed to go on a Swag Hunt, mostly to get little trinkets for my kids. I picked up my Sourcegear Evil Mastermind shirt on Monday (the only piece of swag I actually wanted). Mostly, it was the usual assortment of little flashlights, yo-yo’s, and the like. I do want to give a shout out to the /n software folks, who were giving away a custom painted Xbox 360 with the Powershell logo. That was cool. Seemed almost every booth had some type of hi-tech gadget giveaway, but that was the coolest by far. They also gave me a copy of their new NetCmdlets product, which Dale has apparently been playing with. The question is, which will Dale be more jealous of: my copy of NetCmdlets or the cool PowerShell sticker I got for my laptop?

• I am a big fan of PowerShell, and I know Harry likes it as well. Of course I have aliased many of the commands so they appear more Unix like. I mention this because David Aiken mentions a new product for PowerShell called NetCmdlets produced by N Software. I downloaded a trial and have been impressed so far. If you use PowerShell it might be worth giving this a look.
• The New Yorker has an interesting article about feature choices in technology. Basically it comes down to customers choose products with more features and customization options if given the choice, but when they actually have to use the products they prefer simplicity. I think that is something lost on those of us who design things. Giving users every possible option can make our products seem more difficult to use over simpler less feature rich choices. (via Coding Horror)
• Well it took longer than some may have guessed, but Microsoft has been sued over the name Vista by a French TV company. Apparently they were going to launch a television station with the same name. I wonder what the courts will decide since apparently the TV company didn’t register the name in the software category.