"SOAPscope is designed to help diagnose problems developing XML Web Services by logging message traffic and helping you find problems with the SOAP messages and WSDL." Mindreef did a very cool demo of their diagnostics tools at the DevCon and it was a big hit. Recommended.

The Middleware Company ran a comparison between the Pet Shop v2.0 application for both Java and .NET, both with the same features and both with the same aim at building something to use as a "best practice" sample while still being as responsive and scalable as possible. Pet Shop v2.0 was both company's attempt at winning the comparision run by the Middleware Company. My reading of this report is that .NET kicked Java's hinder in every single measure, from through-put and responsiveness to lines of code and lines of configuration required to build and run the app.

"SUN Microsystems looks set to take a seat on the Web Services Interoperability forum, after almost two years of argy-bargy with founding members Microsoft and IBM." The more folks involved in making web services work, the better I like it. Wahoo!

"X-Code .NET is a successor to the popular "X-Code" codegen language, which was included as part of the excellent-but-now-defunct product from DevelopMentor known as Gen. X-Code .NET is like classic X-Code, except that it’s based on JScript .NET instead of classic JScript.” I’m very happy to see Shawn, a valued member of the DevelopMentor Software team that built Gen in the first place, take up this project. You go, Shawn!

"It's possible to change the shape of the form by making parts completely transparent. One way to do this is with the TransparencyKey property, which designates a color to use to mark transparent pixels. When a pixel on the form is supposed to be drawn with the transparent key color, that pixel will instead be removed from the form, both in the sense that the pixel will not be drawn over whatever is behind it and that clicking on that spot on the form will actually cause the click to happen on what's underneath." This is a little exerpt from the book about using WinForms to do non-rectangular forms and hit-testing.

If you've got a VS.NET question, I'm now the official SearchVB site’s VS.NET “expert”, which seems strange on a site with "VB" in the title, but .NET is about language-neutrality, after all. : )

I'm a big Alan Cooper fan and this is a recent interview.

"[W]here is the unmanaged programmer to turn [for building web services]? The answer is ATL Server. Developers familiar with conventional COM programming using Visual Studio® 6.0 and ATL 3.0 will find an extraordinarily empowering suite of tools and classes in the new ATL 7.0 library that comes with Visual Studio .NET. The classes that support such Web application development as building XML Web Services are collectively termed ATL Server. This article will explain how the C++ programmer can use the facilities available in ATL Server to develop high-performance Web Services quickly." This is really Kirk's baby, I just helped get it dressed for public display. : )