It's getting close!!!!!!
The nature of software development is radically changing.
At PDC2008 Ray Ozzie will lay out Microsoft’s vision for cloud computing and building applications that seamlessly bridge the gaps between PC, Web and mobile devices.
In our first keynote Ray will talk about the new world of Software Plus Services, with Bob Muglia joining him, to unveil our new Cloud Computing platform.
In a second keynote, Ray will return to talk about building immersive user experiences and introduce Steven Sinofsky, who will give developers a first look at the next version of Windows, Windows
Scott Guthrie and David Treadwell will join Ray and Steven to dive deep on the latest Win32 and .NET platform advances that enable a next generation of user experiences spanning multiple devices, including a look at the latest developments in .NET, Silverlight, “Live Mesh”, and the rest of the client platform.
In keynote three, we turn the microphone over to coders extraordinaire Don Box and Chris Anderson, who will look at Microsoft’s latest technologies through the eyes of working developers.
And finally, in our fourth keynote, Rick Rashid will talk about how Microsoft research is helping to shape the future of computing.
I'll be spending much of the week in the MS Open Source Area and the OpenSpaces talks !!!
And remember the 160GB PDC2008 hard drive that will be given to every attendee.
http://www.microsoftpdc.com/
The folks at O'Reilly recently published this gem !
From the book description:
This book is a comprehensive guide to the tips, techniques, secrets, standards, and methods of website optimization. From increasing site traffic to maximizing leads, from revving up responsiveness to increasing navigability, from prospect retention to closing more sales, the world of 21st century website optimization is explored, exemplified and explained.
Though I've just started readying it I'm already convinced it's a must have !
[ Click Here to get your copy ! ]

I'm working on my demos for ZendCon and updating a PHP Chat application built on the Microsoft Ajax Client Libraries and the PHPMSAJAX codeplex project.
Since I want to use a JSON serializer and PHP 5.2 has one built in, I wanted to upgrade the default PHP version on CentOS (5.1) to 5.2.
To do this, I needed to install from an alternate repository maintained by "Remi" .
He has a repository for many distros, but since I'm updating CentOS, I used the RedHat ES5 repository.
Here are the commands you need to run.
wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...5-2.noarch.rpm
wget http://rpms.famillecollet.com/el5.i3...emi.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh remi-release-5*.rpm epel-release-5*.rpm
Ater these steps the .rpm(s) are you your system but that not installed and active.
To "install" them do this.....
yum --enablerepo=remi update php
PHP 5.2.6 should now be installed.
Check by running this command in a console.
# php -v
The output should indicate the latest version of PHP.
To see the results from phpinfo(); you'll probably have to restart Apache. (Or at least I did.)
So there is this very smart guy on the ASP.NET team named David Hunter who is one of the guys working on Dynamic Data !
He has just added a sample of using Dynamic Data with Stored Procedures to the Dynamic Data Samples on CodePlex.
Click [ HERE ] for the Sample Project home page.
Click [ HERE ] for a forums discussion on Dynamic Data with Stored Procedures.

The Deep Fried Bytes guys caught up with me at DevLink and we had a talk about developer security needs, mistakes, activities, etc !
Listen Here http://deepfriedbytes.com/
What's wrong with this picture ?

9:00AM PST - Virtually live from Ireland:)
Click HERE http://developers.ie/webcasts.aspx for more info !
Christian Wenz has pushed a new release of he PHP libraries for the Microsoft AJAX libraries with support version 3.5.
Get it here on Codeplex http://www.codeplex.com/phpmsajax