Live blogging from the Tech-Ed 2007 Keynote .. 

[13:51]

We found our seats .. this place is huge .. a live VJ is mixing up some nice visuals while two graffiti artists ply their trade on two large pieces of canvas. The paint fumes are a little strong but hey Im sure it just adds to the 'relaxed' atmosphere :)Hopefully the wireless network will hold up and Ill be able to post OK !  Developer Division Corporate Vice President S. Somasegar should be taking the stage soon.

[14:00]

Here we go .. S. Somasegar in speaking .. erm ..seems to be restaurant recommendations at the momement .. eating in Barcelona is clearly very good if you've got lots of cash. 

[14:05]

Reflecting on success of VS2005 - 1 million developers worldwide, 25% using Team System (full edition), Express Editions have 17 million downloads. 80% of all questions answered on MSDN (!?!)

[14:15]

Finishing touches on the framework releases ..

• NET Framework Data Support (LINQ / Microsoft Sync Framework)
• New controls for WPF
• WCF: REST,ATOM, RSS, JSON
• Integrated workflow
• Silverlight 1.0 / 1.1 - Cross platform/cross browser in .NET
  
  He's excited about LINQ :)

[14:20]

• VS2008 - Multi-targetting support / LINQ Support - Built in tools for Office (with Proffessional Edition)
• Team Foundation Server - More scalable / more reliable. Database tools are now integrated with VS2008.
• Seemless workflow between Expression and VS2008 - XAML etc. The developer / designer axis of evil :)
• Patterns and Practices - Software plus Services blueprint - Sets of tools and practices out of the box.
• MSDN - MSDN Code Gallery - Beta in next month or two / MSDN WIki (not really a full wiki - just adding community comments to documentation) / Translation Wiki

[14:30]

Microsoft Sync Framework announced - CTP available today - New way to handle syncing data between apps. Occasionally connected systems (Google Gears ??) [Introduction] [Download]

Software + Services Blueprint announced - S+S applications guidance & best practices - ready to use building blocks - plugin for visual studio. Exposing and importing data with Office 2007.

[14:35]

Visual Studio 2008 - Major Announcement - Available November 2007 (erm.. isnt that now ?) along with Framework 3.5 - available from MSDN before end of the month. Just in final testing.

[14:40]

Demo of Visual Studio 2008 - Going through new features - Multi-framework (2.0, 3.0, 3.5) / CSS editing + Design View / LINQ Datasources / AJAX is built-in / Javascript intellisense.

[14:55]

Workflow Foundation debugging in VS2008.

Custom task-pane in Word (Using WCF and Workflow) .. Now using WPF element host to put WPF into windows forms. ooh 3D WPF in word .. who would have thought :)

[15:00]

Arghh .. low battery.

VS2008 - Behind the scenes - The making of story ... is this serious or a mockumentary ?

..battery OK .. wireless network has died .. doh!

[15:05]

Announcement - Visual Studio IDE - now no license restrictions - not limited to just MS lanaguages can be anything - Premier Partners have source code access to Visual Studio IDE
Demo - Addin Studio (Free and on Codeplex soon) - Visual Studio for World or Warcraft - makings addins for WoW now with an IDE
Showing intellisense for LUA (Impressive!)
RSS Feed from inside WoW (why ? i have no idea!)

[15:15]

Popfly - Hobbyist and enthusiasts - Announcement - Popfly Explorer Beta [Download] - Popfly looking a lot different from the Alpha (had serious problems when I used it last)
Importing a popfly gadget (silverlight project) into a page.
Drop it into web page using Popfly Explorer.
Can choose friends projects too.

[15:25]

Looking ahead ..

• TFS "Rosario"
• Expression Studio 2 - Targetting Silverlight / PHP Support
• Silverlight vNext (1.1??)
• .NET Framework 4.0 (eek!) - No details though.
• Biztalk 6
• Visual Studio 10 (!?!?)

[15:30]

Visual Studio "Rosario" (TFS v2) - Collaboration / QA / Advanced Tools
"Build it the right way" - No details though hehe!

.. well not a bad keynote nothing really major announced other than a release date for Visual Studio 2008 which was quite predictable. I need to do some investigation into the Sync Foundation but it looks interesting. There is a DInnerNow / Contoso Food POC product which seems to be being used in a lot of these demos it uses ~all~ of the latests .NET features from biztalk and workflow, powershell, WPF, LINQ the whole stack .. will be interesting to look at it if its available !

Off to my first session on the Future of .NET (Update: Hm.. seems the title was a lie and its actually about BizTalk .. lots of not very happy people sitting about .. lots leaving)