VSLive! 2004 is currently underway in San Francisco, and FTPOnline’s VSLive! Show Daily has articles covering many of the announcements we’re making at the show. Specifically, there’s some good information on Whitehorse, a preview of the .NET Compact Framework 2.0, and Bill’s keynote on Visual Studio 2005 (Whidbey), which includes a video.

A more recent filter definition for e-mail that is considered “junk” by Outlook 2003 is now available for download.

We’ve released a second version of our Data Access Application Block which implements a lot of the common data access code that you’d normally need to write yourself. There are a lot of projects that depend on the first version of this application block, and if you’re one of them, you should check this out. There are some other great application blocks for developers that are worth investigating. Personally, I think anyone who writes ASP.NET code should check out the User Interface Process Application Block. Although it is usable in WinForm projects, most people I’ve talked to tend to use it for web sites.

We’ve launched a technical preview program for the upcoming Windows XP Service Pack 2. This is a comprehensive service pack that benefits everyone, and if you’re responsible for deployment in your organization, you owe it to yourself to check this out ahead of time.

If you’ve been following the Longhorn technology discussions, you’ve no-doubt heard about XAML (some information here), an XML-based markup “language” that allows you to build up objects using a declarative syntax. It’s often demonstrated with user interface elements, but my understanding is that it will work with just about any class. Well, it seems that Joe Stegman has come up with a technology demonstration called Windows Forms Markup Language (WFML), an XML-based declarative syntax for instantiating WinForms and controls. There's even a sample you can download.