In the most recent Microsoft Architecture Update newsletter, David Hill defines just what the heck Microsoft means when the sling around the term “smart client.” Worth reading for the Ven diagram alone.

Rory has graciously allowed me to volunteer as his code/slide monkey at his Portland Area .NET User’s Group meeting talk on Thursday, 2/26 at 6:30pm. The topic, in his words: "2/3 'Stuff you can use right now' and 1/3 'When pigs fly (Longhorn)'." I miss monkeying with my DM brethren, so I'm looking forward to this very much.

Steve Maine has written a very nice piece on anonymous delegates and higher order procedures in C# Whidbey. Enjoy. I know I did.

Jason Nadal posted a description of the DataTransformer. A DataTransformer is a handy way to transform data-bound data into another format, like a number into a formatted string or a string into a background color. Make sure to download the B sample, which shows things a little more completely.

If you haven't gotten the Indigo bug yet, Benjamin Mitchell lays out a nice, easily digestible Indigo intro on what all the fuss is about. I especially like the picture showing all communications roads leading to Indigo while maintaining the advantages of multiple styles of programming. Looking forward to reading more, Mr. Mitchell.

Adam Kinney is at it again, this time with a sample RSS Aggregator that uses Avalon's adaptive flow layout and some WinFS. Things are starting to get interesting...

Karsten *Januszewski* has some answers to questions about Indigo as related to ASMX, .NET Remoting, RPC and firewalls.

On his quest to find “non-bad WinFS scenarios” (ironically, because he was called out by another Microsoft employee -- I love it when we fight in public : ), Jeremy Mazner, Longhorn Technical Evangelist, starts with his real life use of Windows Movie Maker and trying to find music to use as a soundtrack. Let Jeremy know what you think.