I did two very hard-core sessions on WPF today.  The first was with Tim Huckaby on WPF data visualization applications.  Some of the coolest WPF 3d that I’ve seen.  Oddly enough, he mentioned that the Scrips Research Institute had entered a patent last year that effective cures cancer.  The problem is that the host is killed 100% of the time too, but still very promising.

For the sub-genius line of business developer, WPF is the closest thing you can get to being paid to write video games without actually going back to C++ and slaving away in the video game industry.

Besides the formal sessions, one great aspect of TechEd is your ability to walk around the exhibition floor to talk with people from various teams at Microsoft.  I made it my mission to talk to as many people as possible.

·         ADO.Net Entity Framework:  Very cool.  The objects are not dumb CLR objects, but this MAY BE what I’ve been looking for.  I’ve always been a fan of the ORM and only once, in Java, did I have one (OJB) that I felt was the right mix of features and intrusiveness. I’m eagerly awaiting a production-ready MySQL EDM plugin.  In the mean while, to play with this, I think I’ll convert KlipschCorner.com to use this.  The programming model and LINQ queries felt very natural.

·         Visual Studio extensibility: there’s a World of Warcraft script plug-in for Visual Studio! 

·         ClickOnce: things are a lot better in SP1, but you still have issues with self-signed SSL certs and Internet+non NTLM authentication and of course keeping people from getting your bits if they shouldn’t have access.  It was good to see that people like Quicken and GoTo Meeting are using ClickOnce to deploy software over the Internet.

·         WPF: I met the principal architect behind XAML.  We looked at some amazing spatial data applications including:

o   Zurich airport: http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2007/03/27/great-wpf-applications-13-z-rich-airport.aspx  

o   iZooFari: http://www.interknowlogy.com/Pages/iZooFari.aspx

·         ArcCast : Let’s just say there was some friendly arguments and teasing.  You know who you are.

·        Live Earth: The bird’s eye view 3d maps are freaking insane.