Architecture

• Bloggers Guide to Connected Systems V 1.0: Alan Smith maintains a bloggers guide to Connected Systems. The guide contains an easy overview of Oslo, Dublin and Azure in the form of a CHM file, which you can download and read off-line.
  Note: you have to "unblock" the file to make the content visible: download the file, right-click it, open the file properties dialog box, then click the "Unblock" button.
• Cloud Computing and the Microsoft Platform: David Chou talks about cloud computing from the perspective of the Microsoft platform, and the architectural considerations that influenced its design and direction.
• Why Oslo is Important: Dan Vanderboom offers deep insight into the reasoning and goals behind Oslo.

BizTalk

• BizTalk Server 2009 Beta Documentation: A beta version of the BizTalk Server 2009 documentation is available for download.

SharePoint

• SharePoint Branding Tool (Themes, Master pages, Site Logos…): An open source tool to help you brand SharePoint sites.
• 12 Steps to Creating a Collaboration Cafe: Lee Reed explains how to create a "Collaboration Café" for your SharePoint user community

Development

• XAML Power Toys: XAML Power Toys is a Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Multi-AppDomain add-In that empowers WPF & Silverlight developers while working in the XAML editor. Its Line of Business form generation tools, Grid tools, DataGrid and ListView generation are supposed to shorten the XAML page layout time.
• The Larry Test: “Done" means different things to different people, depending on where you’re standing. An inspiring article about choosing to be done.
• Windows Azure – Breaking It Down: Justin Etheredge has broken down Windows Azure in bite-sized chunks.
• Understanding Azure Tools – The Real Starting Point: Another good "first steps" article on Windows Azure
• Screencast: Building RESTful Services with WCF – Part 2: Second part of the screencast about RESTful WCF services.

Software

• Windows 7 Beta anti-virus: Philippe Destoop points us to anti-virus solutions that are already available for Windows 7
• Presidential Inaugural Committee picks Silverlight. Rest of the world uses Flash.: Serge Jespers is a little miffed that the Presidential Inaugural Committee has picked Silverlight for the official site – which is completely understandable if you’re an Adobe platform evangelist Personally, I’m guessing it’ll do wonders for spreading the Silverlight runtime.

Industry

• Microsoft accused by EU of harming web browser competition, again: You would think that our European Members of Parliament had better things to do (I thought I heard rumors of an economic crisis, somewhere?), but here we go again.

Social

• ‘Twitterer’ posts plane picture: BBC World speaks to Janis Krums, the guy that posted the first picture of the Hudson river plane crash from his iPhone on Twitter. The picture actually crashed the TwitPic website. Talk about citizen journalism!