There are four new videos available on the www.ASP.NET site. Two new videos on using AJAX UpdatePanel and two on using Team Systems to do stress testing.

Microsoft announced at its partner conference that it plans to release:

• Windows Server 2008
• Visual Studio 2008
• SQL Server 2008

together in a single launch on February 27, 2008, in Los Angeles. Click here for more details.

Looks like people are jumping on the bandwagon with checking out Safari:

• Five tips for using Safari 3.0

• 6 Reasons not to swtich to Safari

• Analysis: So why did Apple release Safari for Windows?

Recently Apple released a beta of Safari for Windows. This seems very odd since the browser space seems pretty full and Safari is not exactly the hottest software out there. While it is a beta release, security resarchers have been reporting that the software is riddled with flaws (18 within the first day) and it requires a large memory footprint. This all after announcing that the beta software was built from the ground up with security in mind. What is Jobs thinking? My best guess is this is how he plans to pave the way to get people used to Safari for development on the iPhone platform. Another possibility is to get more interest in Safari and thus the Apple platform itself. Another thought comes to mind, an official Apple machine that has Windows on it as well? Do you have any other thoughts why Jobs would port over Safari, lets here them?

Here is a link to a cool cheat sheet for the order in which Microsoft AJAX events occur on the client. Sometimes it can be confusing what order the events occur in.

Welcome to the new home of ASPToday. Soon this site will be your new destination for the same great articles and coverage of ASP.NET content. We will also be broadening the topics we cover to other Microsoft related technologies. Best of all, no subscriptions – all the articles will be free. The existing archive of ASPToday articles will be opened for free as well. Take a look around and bookmark this page for sure. I will be posting more details over the next few weeks, so be sure to check back often.

Surf over to searchvb to get a really good start on Silverlight. You will find a comprehensive list of links to samples, links and tutorials. Good stuff to get going…

Microsoft is still offering a free copy of Visual Studio 2005 Standard edition for attending 2 VB Labcasts. There are currently 6 labs to choose from covering introduction material, deployment with clickonce, using SQL Server and creating Excel and Word documents.

Looks like the rumors are true, PDC 2007 is being rescheduled / cancelled. With so many new products and technologies and products in the works, what is Microsoft thinking? PDC is the biggest developer event for any developer working on the Microsoft platform, PDC gets everyone excited about all the new products and technologies.

There has not been any solid official reason given as of yet which is causing a lot of speculation, some things I have thought and heard…

1) This is a key indication that one of the main products is behind – Orcas or Linq possibly.
2) Possibly that a new product yet to be announced is not completed that was going to be unveiled.
3) There are already enough events that have been taking all the developers time.

For me I think it is some combination of reasons that is the driving force. I would not at all be surprised if Orcas was behind or that they have yet another big innovation waiting behind closed doors. The last reason seems odd, too many events? This is the one I have heard from several different sources. PDC was scheduled very close to several key launches in the fall. There are many events coming up where realeases and annoucements will most likely happen.

I am curious to hear what you think…

Looks like Microsoft is on a roll, here comes another new toy from Microsoft – Popfly. Popfly looks to be geared more toward those who want to design web pages and mashups visually and not do any coding. It looks to be a set of tools along with a VS plugin. This looks to be a limited alpha, you can sign up to be on the list on the Poply site.