We heard from some attendees that they were having a hard time choosing between DAT209 (WinFS Future Directions: An Overview) and TLN306 (The .NET Language Integreate Query Framework: An Overview) in the Wednesday 1:45pm timeslot. To make it a little easier on folks, we scheduled a repeat of DAT209 for...

Okay, maybe not so stunning, but in response to several requests that have come in from commenters and private email, I’m happy to be able to share a few key details that might help those of you trying to figure out your conference plans and budget for the rest of the calendar year. Content: As I noted...

Back in January, my manager ( Steve Cellini ) mentioned that he’d kindly volunteered me to be Content Owner for PDC . I haven’t blogged about that yet, as I’ve been spending the past 6 weeks trying to get my head wrapped around what exactly it is that I’m supposed to be doing. I’m finally starting to...

Here are a couple pointers to the latest info we've made public on some ongoing development projects. I don't have any more insight to add, just wanted to make sure the links were out there in the world. WinFS: Comments from Product Manager Tom Rizzo in Microsoft Watch (and the requisite rampant speculation...

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but finding Rosyna’s post (thanks, Feedster!) finally provided the motivation I needed. In reference to my WinFS post from last April , she writes “I can't help by [sic] chortle demonically as I read this”. There was another link too that caught my attention...

Friday’s announcement has left a lot of people asking what happened to WinFS? The short answer is: nothing. But a lot happened to Windows. As I explained in my previous post, the customer and developer feedback we’ve been getting was consistent on two points: We want to start using WinFX as soon as possible...

Jon Udell has turned his series of blog entries on Longhorn into an InfoWorld cover story . His editor makes the point that the blogging drove some great discussion and contributions to the final article. It’s cool to see that discussions I took part in with Jon, like here and here , had an impact...

Several responses to my last post on Jon Udell’s entries on WinFS suggest that I didn’t get the Jon's point at all. Dare wrote “ You missed his point almost completely .” And David (no blog link provided) said “ Next time, try reading the article before you respond to it...

Jon Udell at InfoWorld is doing a series of blog entries on Longhorn. Feedster just discovered his first one, from Wednesday on the justifcation for WinFS defining a new way to manage metadata . It's a well written entry, and deserves a well thought out response. I did want to get out at least one...

There has been a great deal of hubub about what Jay Greene’s BusinessWeek article means for Longhorn, and WinFS in particular. I’ve been surprised by the general silence on MS blogs on this topic – which is perhaps an indication that I ought to be careful myself ;) But let me throw...

...and he's a real developer, even! Dan Crevier, an architect on the People & Groups team on Longhorn, has posted a write up of how WinFS would have helped him on his last software project.

Wikis seem to be catching on some at Microsoft. Several product teams are using Wikis to brainstorm features and product design, or even more mundane things like recording meeting notes. I love the simple collaborative nature of a Wiki, the openness that just invites every ready to contribute and respond...

Robert Hess tells me the next episode of The .NET Show on MSDN will cover WinFS. He's interested in feedback on what topics you'd like to see covered. His guests will be: Mike Deem , Quentin Clark , and Anil Nori . What would you ask these guys about -- the philosophy behind WinFS? How they design...

For my second not-bad WinFS scenario , I’m going to again avoid anything that requires a bunch of new work entering or editing meta-data. We’ll get to those eventually, but I want to emphasize that WinFS can be useful without requiring the average user to suddenly become a meta-data freak...

Before going on to my next scenario, I wanted to address feedback I’ve gotten so far. On the general usefulness of WinFS, Stephane Rodriquez commented that “It's not about information, it's about MESSAGE.” You can quibble with my language, but we both mean the same thing –...

For my first not-bad WinFS scenario , I wanted to pick something simple. No big behavior shifts to start adding new metadata, no huge rewriting of applications, etc. I settled on adding background music to home movies. I’ve been editing together some old footage using Windows Movie Maker...

That was a long post back there, so here are my quick high level points countering the notion of meta-crap, which I hope to demonstrate with some scenarios over the next couple days: 1) meta-data on a local, individual scale is interesting enough 2) in many cases, people actually are creating accurate...

What better motivation to get back into blogging than a challenge from fellow Microsoftie Dare: “ The WinFS folks and Longhorn evangelists will probably keep focusing on what I have termed “bad scenarios” because they demo well but I suspect that there'll be difficulty getting...