Steve Maine of Brain.Save() has done a really good job on the description of a set of duplex contracts in Indigo, i.e. those contracts where callbacks are specified, using the design of a multi-player game of blackjack. Steve shows the service contract interfaces, a bunch of the messaging code and even what's on the wire. Recommended.

It took a coupla days more than we wanted ’cuz I was fighting with some internal tools, but the March 2005 Avalon/Indigo CTP is available for public download.

Make sure you follow the instructions on the download page and only use it with the February CTP release of Visual Studio 2005, i.e. don’t use it against the Whidbey beta 2 that’ll “coming soon*” to a theater near you.

* for some definition of “coming soon…”

Chris Anderson has updated XamlPad for the March 2005 CTP of Avalon and renamed it AvPad. As a tool for learning and experimenting with XAML/Avalon, it can't be beat. Enjoy!

Scott Swigart has a nice video demo of putting the Smart Client Offline Application Block to use. Enjoy!

TheServerSide.NET has a nice summary of what’s new in the Updater Application Block 2.0 from the new Enterprise Library on GDN. If you're not using ClickOnce from Windows Forms 2.0 yet (maybe because we haven't shipped it yet...), the Updater AppBlock is your next best bet.

If you’re not getting enough Chris Anderson in your diet (and who is?!?), check out these two new interviews:

• ServerSide.NET TechTalk: Chris Anderson on Avalon video
• .NET Rocks: Chris Anderson and the Longhorn Evangelism Team

Enjoy!

A new XAML web site enters the fray: XAML.net. How did we miss the boat acquiring this domain name? : )

Did you miss the Microsoft’s Day of Indigo at VSLive? Have no fear — you can trade your personal details for free access to the entire day of videos from the FTP web site, including:

• Keynote: Introducing Indigo, Eric Rudder, Senior VP of Servers and Tools
• Programming Indigo, Don Box and Steve Swartz
• Building Secure Services, Doug Purdy
• Building Reliable, Asynchronous Services, Shy Cohen
• Orchestrating Service-Oriented Apps With Indigo and BizTalk, Michael Woods (Microsoft) and Curt Peterson (Neudesic)
• Indigo Upgrade and Interoperability, Steve Swartz and Anand Rajagopalan
• Building Service-Oriented Applications Today, Rich Turner

Enjoy!