I'm going to try and not let this blog go for close to an entire year without posting this time.  I've come back to the blog to kick off what I hope is going to be a really exciting first half of 2008.  The first big thing to announce (or at least talk about since Soma already announced it) is the launch of the MSDN Code Gallery.

MSDN Code Gallery is our new code and sample sharing site.  Your first question is probably "How is this different from CodePlex and why should I care about another sharing site?"  That's a very good question, and one that I hope I have a satisfactory answer for.  CodePlex is a great place for doing collaborative or community development for Open Source projects, using a TFS backend.  What CodePlex doesn't really target is the simple sharing scenario.  You've created a code sample and you want to share it with people quickly and easily.  That's where Code Gallery steps in.  Code Gallery removes the source control system from CodePlex, and makes optional some of the pieces that you might normally use for your project management.  Sure, if you want the issue tracker to let people log bugs on your samples you can have it, but for most simple scenarios you can just post your code, edit your wiki and be on your way.

We worked with the CodePlex team to try and make Code Gallery as easy to use as we could so that it would be a good successor for the GotDotNet user samples.  If you have suggestions for improvement, or need some help getting a resource page up and running you can contact us at codeglry -A-T- microsoft.com.  I hope you find some good resources on Code Gallery, and if you've got your own samples you want to release, post 'em up!

-Jeremy