Welcome to the fifth Community Convergence update. This file is published on my blog, and shortly thereafter on the front page of the C# Developer Center. To comment on this entry, please go to my blog.

The Visual Studio Orcas September Community Technology Preview is available for download. This is a preview of the next version of Visual Studio. It can only be downloaded as a Virtual PC image.

The Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Beta is now available. The team has been working on this for months, and it has been a high priority effort with major input from a few on the developer team and nearly everyone in QA. You can go to the connect site to find out how to join the beta and download the image.

Microsoft VP S. Somasegar has a post on VS 2005 SP1. He dedicates a good portion of his text to a discussion of Vista, and focuses particularly on the VS 2005 SP1 compatibility issues that are associated with Vista. The post states that Vista should have support for all .NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0 applications, but that VS 2003 will not be supported.

A New Spec and a New Video

The C# team has a new technical video featuring PM’s from the IDE team. Watch Karen Liu and DJ Park step up to the white board and explain the Language Analysis Framework (LAF), Quick Info, extension methods, and related matters.

A new Orcas draft specification is available for download. Called DLINQ Data Types and Functions, it is a companion piece to the Mapping draft specification that was released last week. Please go to the blog version of this post to comment.

What’s Hot from the C# Team

• Veteran C# developer Eric Lippert has a very entertaining new post on the horrors that ensue when you change the interface to a COM object. It may not sound like a very promising subject, but he has a great story to tell.
• Anson Horton has a new post on extern aliases. Check it out if you want to learn more about working with security and strong names in .NET.
• If you need a break from work, I’ve published a true story about the joys and dangers of hiking in the Cascades. I have a new camera, and the post contains some wondrous vistas of Mount Rainier, the Puget Sound area, and other sights of note.

What’s Hot in the Microsoft C# World

• Chris Sells has a podcast interview with Scott Hanselman. They chat about Vista, XBox, and associated usability issues. You can have the interview streamed, or download the file in wma or mp3 format. While listening, I learned about RipDigital.com.
• Some friends of Microsoft have written a book called ASP.NET 2.0 MVP Hacks and Tips. I know it doesn’t sound like I have that title quite right, but I double checked. The authors are Microsoft MVP’s David Yack, Joe Mayo, Scott Hanselman, Fredrik Normén, Dan Wahlin, J. Ambrose Little, and Jonathan Goodyear.
• Scott Guthrie has written about Optimizing ASP.NET 2.0 2005 Web Project Build performance.
• If you are willing to wander a bit further from the Microsoft fold, you can read about Log4Net troubleshooting

Downloads

• Visual Studio 2005 SPI Beta
• Visual Studio Power Toys
• The Expression Web Beta
• FinalBuilder 5 Beta.

News

• Details on the 30 GB, $249 Zune are emerging. I actually held one in my hand yesterday. It was very cool looking, but the folks who say that brown is a weird color for a music player may have a point.
• Microsoft and Peter Jackson formed a game studio.