@shanselman pointed out an interesting blog post titled "Building a web app the Microsoft way" where the author Jeremy Baines dose a good job of giving the facts that he and his team found while developing ‘Meet with Approval’. I could not find the case study that was mentioned but that is because the case study site sucks, I will try to find it internally and find the external link.

I know that I have tainted opinion but I don't see why more people\companies\startups don't evaluate the MS stack. From all of the comments only one that I saw was accurate and that is that Windows hosting is quite abit more expensive than LAMP hosting but I think that price will be coming down with the new support we have in Windows Server 2008 for hosters. I also think that a company looking at long term success and would want to look at the cost of self hosting, there are a lot of reasons that Windows for self hosting can be more cost effective but the big one for me is support.

I just mostly successfully upgraded this blog from Das Blog 1.7 to 2.1. The big deal there is now I am running the .NET 2.0 CLR and all the 3.5 components. The only thing I am missing now is with the trust level that GoDaddy supports I can't have the server email anymore. I can't wait until more hosters support virtual private hosting of Windows Server 2008!

I love that now I can work on this site in Visual Studio 2008, I had keep a Virtual Machine with Visual Studio 2005 on it and now I will enjoy reclaiming that hard drive space ;).

If you are going to TechEd this year you should also check out ]inbetween[ my counterpart in Florida Joe Healy AKA devfish and the local Florida community is putting on a great event the weekend between the two weeks of TechEd. I had not wanted to go to TechEd until now but my team is out of budget for T&E for the year so I will have to miss this.

From all that I have seen Brad Abrams as the best wrap up of what is in SP1 at hi blog post Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 "SP1" Beta. It did not hurt that I stopped looking after I found it ;).

This is an update to my last years list of SoCal user groups, like last year I wanted to have a resource that people can go to get an idea of what Microsoft Developer focused user groups are in Southern California so I have updated the list with the best information I can find. Again I do not clam this is the holistic but I hope that others will comment about other groups.

And again this list is not in any type of order! If I have any of this incorrect or you have a group you think that should be listed please comment on this post or email me woodyp-at-microsoft dot com.

San Luis Obispo .NET User Group
http://www.slodotnet.org/

Central California .Net User Group
http://www.centralcaldotnet.com/

Santa Barbara .NET Developer Group
http://www.sbdotnetug.org/

Inland Empire .NET User's Group
http://www.iedotnetug.org/

San Gabriel Valley .NET Developers Group
http://www.sgvdotnet.org/

LA C# Developers Group
http://www.lacsharp.org/

LA Fox
http://www.lafox.org/

Los Angeles SQL Server Professionals Group
http://www.sql.la/

Los Angeles .NET Developers Group
http://www.ladotnet.org/

Los Angeles Connected Systems User Group - CS-UG.org
http://cs-ug.org/

Orange County .NET Server Users Group
http://www.ocnsug.org/

Southern California .Net Architecture Users Group
http://www.SoCalDotNetArchitecture.org/

Orange County C# Developers Group
http://www.occsharp.org/

Southern California .NET Developers Group
http://www.socaldotnet.org/

Orange County Visual Basic .Net Usergroup
http://www.ocvbug.org/

SoCal DotNetNuke Users Group
http://www.socaldug.org/

Orange County FoxPro Developers Group
http://www.ocfox.org/

Orange County Internet User Group
http://www.ociug.org/

Orange County Connected Systems SIG
http://www.ocdotnet.org/

San Diego .NET User Group
http://www.sandiegodotnet.com/

San Diego .NET Developers Group
http://www.sddotnetdg.org/

San Diego SQL Server Users Group
http://www.sdsqlug.org/

San Diego .NET User Group ASP.NET SIG
http://asp.sig.webpublishing.com/

San Diego Connected Systems SIG
http://www.sandiegodotnet.com/ConnectedSystemsSIG/

XP San Diego
http://www.xpsd.org/

The FoxPro Developers Network of San Diego
http://www.foxdevsd.org/

Hawaii .Net
http://hawaiidotnet.org/

Community TJ.NET
http://www.tjnet.org

OK I know everyone in the .NET community reads Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com but just incase you missed this you need to checkout this cool new tool RockScroll in him post titled Introducing RockScroll. It is a way cool to visualize where you are in your code page!

Anyone who has ever gotten a ride from me in my car knows a few key things about me:

1. I am a slob!
   • I can't stand to clean my car and it's a wreck inside and out!
2. I love Public Radio

So I was shocked today to be in the car today and hear a show I had never heard before (ok maybe I just never noticed it before). It is called Radio Lab from WNYC, what got my attention was that were doing a story on Lying to Ourselves and the researchers in the story concluded that people who lie to themselfs are happier. The story was entertaining and the conduction sounded way too plausible it's an interesting show and now I know way I am doomed to my fate I am just too damn honest with myself. I guess there are worse things! ;)

Last week I presented to to about 30 to 40 people in Irvine about developing applications for the Mobile platform using the Compact Framework. The audience was great, lot's of good questions and interactions, I had promised to post all the content after the class and while this fulfils the terms of that statement I am sorry it has take me this long.

There are still some Mobility Metro events scheduled see Loke Uei Tan's blog entry More Mobility Metro events for more information. I talked to Loke this week and he has assured me we will be doing more of these events in a few more months as well.

Wan to get up to speed on on .NET 3.5 (I know I do!) the Microsoft Corporate Platform Evangelism team released the .NET 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit it has information on:

You can think of this kit as a CTP it's not to where the team wants it to be but there are a lot of people asking for this type of resource so they decided to release it now.

A lot! My two big things are Threaded Text Messaging & Cut, Copy, and Paste on a Non-Touch Screen device :).

The only problem now is Version has not said it would update the Q 9m, looks like it's time to go shopping.

Windows Mobile 6.1 – New Windows Mobile Software for Pocket PC and Smartphone