I got my first 5 "buddies" today as part of the ISV Buddy Program! This is a really cool way for developers to interact with Microsoft employees on a 1:1 basis and just another step that we're taking to get closer to the community and be more transparent about what we work on every day. It's a simple way to establish a partnership. I'm really looking forward to learning about my “buddies“, what they work on, the types of challenges they face, their ideas for product improvements, etc.

If you're interested you can sign up here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/isv/isvbuddy/default.aspx

Who knows, maybe you'll be my next buddy? I read that BillG is participating, too. If you get paired up with him tell him I said hello. <g>

**Updated 8/31 with new links to the official releases, replacing the links to the technology preview

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.NET Framework 1.0 SP3 and 1.1 SP1 Tech Preview Available for Public Download

Today, Microsoft made technology preview versions of the .NET Framework 1.0 SP3 and .NET Framework 1.1 SP1 available for developers to download so they can test their .NET Framework-based applications with these service packs applied. Though these are unsupported technology previews, we would like to ask your help in ensuring the quality of the service packs by downloading them, testing your existing applications on them, and giving us feedback.

These two service packs address issues with the .NET Framework 1.0 and 1.1 including:

·         All customer issues addressed with hotfixes

·         Improved importing of WSDL

·         Data Execution prevention

·         Buffer overrun protection