This is a cool technology and the evolution of the CLR, Windows Communication Foundation, and services like LinQ are creating a great foundation for dyamic applications.  There is still plenty of engineering and evolution to go but it seems like we are circling back to be ale to deliver the RAD experiences of the past, think dBase add: distributed, enterprise, presence aware UI, andmanyother pieces and we are to an area where the application is much more robust, much more complex, and has been much more difficult.  Is it a panacea?  No.  Does it remove the need for SQL, no nor do any of the technologies that have come along to get us out of the plumbing.  Will it drive productivity?  Definitely  and it is well positioned for the applications that generally pop up in development groups today.  You already have the database + many other structured, semi-structured, and unstructured sources.  Now you have a library that helps meld these as a developer (not as an ETL/BI tool) and connect them via a consistent paradigm to presentation and service elements.  I am going to be very interested in the response to these libraries as I spend most of my time now thinking about the process and tools around database development.  If you are not at PDC or haven't attended the LinQ sessions there will be a growing amount of info on MSDN and you can take a peak at the XML integration here:

TLNHOL22 Visual Basic 9.0: XML Integration with XLinq

As I have said before I love my i-mate SP3 but now I am needing the new i-mate JasJar  and what a smoking deal we had for a very short while at the show today.  $149, sold like hotcakes....and of course MS Employees couldn't participate.  I am hoping they will get more in stock during the show so more people can grab these.  Windows Mobile 5 is hot, the device looks like a great overall platform especially if you are using a bluetooth headset.  I don't really like the pocketPC as a phone up against my face but the combo would be a great package. 

I liked seeing how the keynote today was all closed captioned.  Making events accesible as well as our software is a cool move.

I don't know as that is the most practicle idea but it does provide a way to extend an old system without cracking open the system.  I question what the speed wil be like and where that memory would be best used.  What would be really cool is to gen up VPC images that could just boot on install.  You would jack in the memory, it would boot the image and use that memory for all the VPC memory leaving your machine OS running in the machine ram. 

Funny to kick off PDC05 with Office and the OS.  That was my first time to see Office 12 and as a place I live a lot of my life, it looks really cool.  Also the ability to use it as a platform looks very cool especially as you start knitting in the pieces like WCP (Indigo), WPF (Avalon), etc. 

 

For those that were there how about that film from Cytek, that is great looking gaming experience, the moving shadows etc were awesome.  How much nicer it is now that a graphics workstation fits on your lap.

 

 

The best thing in your PDC attendee bag is a small, squishy Channel 9 Guy.  I hope this mean we will see a nice new series of photos and movie shorts of the further adventures.  I will start posting photos here with the 9 Guy riding the shuttle back to hotel:

 

 

Please don't get me wrong, I Love LA.  But, unlike San Diego or San Francisco, it isn't much of a town to hang out in from a conference perspective.  LA is spread out, San Francisco is 7 miles by 7 miles.  So, downtown, can be a bit dead in the evenings and on weekends.  I am sure most attendees won't have a lot of time during the week to worry about getting around town to hang out.  PDC is bursting at the seems with cool new technologies this year and I am psyched to see the reaction to some of the technologies that will get show-cased in the opening keynotes.  However, there are places to go around the downtown area like the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Cathedral, tours of Disney Hall, Little Tokyo, etc.  Out group has some pre-PDC activities going on so we all arrived early this morning.  One thing that often also happens on weekends in LA is you can see bits of movie and commercial shoots.  Today I say a photo shoot and the making of a new Cadillac commercial.  The commercial has 3 black cadies, one with a Christmas tree on top and Disney Hall should be in the background.  I always like walking around cities, you get a very different feel for them than when you just drive around. 

You know its sold out, it is impossible to find hotel rooms, your favorite sessions will be jammed but how about the quantity of snacks that will be consumed or the amount of infrastructure required?

 

I have been to a lot of PDCs but always as a guest, not a host.  As a guest it is a lot more relaxing and fortunately this year my group is still basically undercover but I am psyched to see the response to Whidbey and other cool things like LinQ and Indigo, plus the updated beta for Windows Vista.  Plus I return to my beloved LA.