Check out the details here. Figures that I finally give up waiting and do the hacked install and a week later the Vista version comes out. :)

If you haven't already heard, the Release Candidate for 1.0 of ASP.NET AJAX went out yesterday evening. We already migrated to it here and it's quite painless. You just need to reference the new assemblies which have been renamed to from Microsoft.Web* to System.Web*, changing a couple of namespaces and patching up your web.config. All the details of migration from Beta2->RC1 are documented here. These late breaking changes were made in anticipation of merging with the .NET framework in the Orcas timeframe.

So, what are you waiting for? Go download it!

Despite the fact that there's still no true support for the Zune software on Vista yet, there are some hacks out there that enable it to run. So, I bit the bullet and bought myself one this week. The biggest caveat is that even with the hacks I still couldn't get it to update my Zune's firmware which is required before you can even start using the software. I had to go to an XPSP2 machine here at work, go through the setup, install the firmware update and then uninstall the Zune software. :\

So how is it? I love it! Other than the fact that the Vista install isn't available yet (then again, neither is the OS technically), I don't know how anyone can possibly say anything bad about this thing. The screen is gorgeous, the UI is intuitive, battery life is really good (though I'm not a junkie like some people) and the FM radio tuner really is a huge win. I haven't used the WiFi sharing feature yet, but as many others have pointed out I'm sure Microsoft is going to be releasing firmware updates that eventually enable more scenarios for WiFi (connecting to marketplace, your home network, etc.).

I'm not afraid of DRM, in fact I'm all for it. That said I think the biggest mistake is that the Zune doesn't support Plays-For-Sure. I had purchased a bunch of music from MSN Music back in the day which is completely unusable on my Zune. Hopefully MS wises up and supports that spec with a firmware upgrade. If they don't they're really just doing a disservice to customers who bought into the whole campaign and are adding fuel to the flames of DRM opposition.

There's a buzz going around that there's some kind of big WPF 3D announcement being made todoay. I initially read about it over here on Tim Sneath's blog. Wonder what it could be? Guess we'll have to sit tight and keep our eyes on their blog for the news to break.

UPDATE 6:30PM ET:

So the news is out! Basically they've released a new control that makes that effectively enables something that people have been asking for since 3D was introduced to the API: an interactive VisualBrush for 3D content. They've accomplished this using some clever 3D -> 2D coordinate hackery. I had a sneaking suspicion this might be what they were announcing and even though it's not flawless, it's a great implementation to keep us happy until they add first class support in v2 (hopefully!).

C|Net news has some coverage of Mimeo.com that you can check out here. This year has been a phenomenal one for us. We've grown so much more than we ever have in the past. Our development team alone has a little more than doubled in size. In addition to launching our .NET code-base at the beginning of the year, we've also delivered over sixty projects varying in the forms of monthly enhancements to major feature upgrades. We are also finally are beginning to hit our stride in the marketing department where we are currently launching several campaigns. One of our first videos, which I believe is for our kiosk that we put up at conferences, was uploaded to YouTube the other day.

There is one slight correction I need to make to the article though. In the fourth paragraph where it says:

Printers and photocopiers in Mimeo's Memphis operation then print the document...

We do not under any circumstances ever use a photocopier. Every single page of your documents are a digital original that comes straight off one of our printers.

If you haven't already heard, the Expression family of products from Microsoft have undergone a bit of an overhaul. Most important to me as a WPF person is that Expression Interactive Designer has been renamed Expression Blend and is one of the most overhauled tools in the product line. You can read all about the changes to Blend over here on the Microsoft Expression Blog.

Check out this post from Joe Stegman announcing the first public CTP of the WPF/E technology. Then, read all about WPF/E over here on the newly launched MSDN sub-site. I'm installing the plug-in on OSX now, I can't wait to start using WPF/E in our web applications!

I'd love to buy myself a Zune, but seeing as how I run on Vista exclusively these days it's not gonna be of much use to me since the software doesn't work on Vista yet. So Microsoft... quit dragging your feet and get the Vista support finished up!