That was interesting. I spent all week getting ready for the big announcement, we launched it on a Friday and then I took off for a week of fun in the sun. And now, it’s taken me a week to catch up with what everyone is thinking. People I’ve found particular interesting are:

• Chris Anderson, Architect on the Avalon team (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
• Joe Beda, recently formerly on the Avalon team (1)
• Jeremy Mazner, Longhorn Evangelist (1, 2)
• Robert Scoble, MS RSS Filler (1, 2)
• Miguel de Icaza, Architect on the Mono project, a .NET clone (1, 2)
• Robert McLaws, a 3rd party developer (1, 2)
• Jason Olson, a 3rd party developer (1, 2)
• Jim Allchin, Group VP for Platforms (1)

In the meantime, I’m re-aligning the Longhorn DevCenter content with our new goals, making sure to keep on my toes as things suss out (we’re far from completely sussed on the details or implementations of this announcement, which is why watching internal and external commentary is so interesting right now).

Robert Scoble has done a great job reporting the pulse of the Windows developer community on Friday’s news. Recommended.

Channel9 has the latest Windows/WinFX/Longhorn/WinFS/Avalon/Indigo skinny right from the horse’s mouth: Jim Allchin the Group VP in charge of Windows.

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.

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 : ).

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.

Arun Bhatnagar found Longhorn on Mars today:

“I am a software developer who is currently working on C#/.net in Canada. Like so many other developers I am really excited about the features in Longhorn. I am waiting for it and so it is really good to know that Longhorn already exists on Mars. Yes, that’s what USA Today reported today. Read the caption beside the image in this story.”

Apparently NASA’s in the early adopter program… : )