Jeremy contributes to the news about Longhorn and WinFS. Most interesting is Jeremy's discussion of the usability studies we did on WinFS and how we're using that information to improve the API. Check it out.

Lots of interesting news about the plan to make WinFX available on Windows XP and Windows 2003:

• Press release:  Microsoft Announces 2006 Target Date for Broad Availability Of Windows “Longhorn” Client Operating System
• Note from David Treadwell, the Grand Poobah of WinFX
• Longhorn Developer Center Editor’s Note from yours truly
• New Longhorn Developer FAQ section: WinFX on Down-Level Windows
• New WinFS page on the MSDN Data Developer Center

Enjoy.

I really enjoyed listening to Charles Petzold on the most recent episode of .NET Rocks. It was wonderful to hear about an entire part of Windows history when I didn’t even know that it existed (I never heard of Windows ’til version 3.1). I was also surprised and honored to hear that Charles was familiar with my book (or the sales numbers at least : ).

BTW, I’m a huge Richard the Toy Boy fan. He’s got such a radio voice and entertaining manner that he should do the radio thing professionally (hopefully I’m not embarrassing myself because he’s already a professional and I don’t know it : ).

“At the Albertville winter Olympics, condom machines in the athletes’ village had to be refilled every two hours. And in Sydney the organisers’ original order of 70,000 condoms went so fast that they had to order 20,000 more. Even with the replenishment, the supply was exhausted three days before the end of the competition schedule. (For the record, athletes who were in Sydney report that the Cuban delegation was the first to use up its allocation.) Salt Lake City in 2002 went even bigger: 250,000 condoms were handed out, despite the objections of the city’s Mormon leadership.”

“There’s a lot of sex going on. You get a lot of people who are in shape, and, you know, testosterone’s up and everybody’s attracted to everybody,” says Breaux Greer, a shaggy-blond Californian who competed in the javelin at the Sydney Games.”

It sounds like a PDC, except that we don’t have anyone in shape, anyone attractive or any the sex… (or maybe I’m just going to the wrong parties : ).

[via Raymond Chen]

Tim Sneath shares his experiences building a Longhorn Sidebar, including some tips on how to do the work w/o making your shell unusable (always a plus : ).

Here.

Joe Marini is working with Longhorn, Avalon and XAML on a Microsoft product team and finds that he really loves XAML. This, in and off itself, is not surprising (I mean, that’s what we’re paying him for : ), but it’s interesting to hear the specifics.

One thing that Joe seems to love (and I can hardly blame him) is that data binding in Avalon is used to build the UI, not just show external data. He expounds on this in his wonderful Data Bound User Interfaces in XAML article.

Another thing that Joe loves is that a Avalon designer’s work is in the same format as what the designer needs and can be dropped right into an app w/o converting from bitmap mock-ups (Peter Stern and I are doing this).

You can read about the work that Joe has done with XAML and download his code samples on his web site’s tutorial section. Joe is definitely one to watch in the Longhorn/Avalon space.

After seeing all of those pictures in Wired of the wacky letters that people send, I love the idea of Michael Swanson opening the floodgates by sending his resume along with a life-size cardboard figure. What’s next?

That's quite a nice fortune. My lucky numbers were 7, 12, 15, 36, 39 and 21. With the "gold pieces by the bushel," I don't really need the lucky numbers, do I? : )