Mark Brown in is blog post CNET article on Google Capturing 3D Data talks about Microsoft's UltraCam that I heard about for the first time at ETech in 2007. At the time they had plans for the next version but even at the time it was the coolest image collection device I had ever seen (and I saw some cool stuff on airplanes when I was in the Navy) if you search on ETech ultracam you will see a lot about that session. With the imagery this camera can produce the Live team built algorithms that allow them to build the 3 dimensional data needed to build the maps that you can see on maps.live.com.

I have a great story about how I discovered that we were producing this type of map\imagery while I was I Devconnections a few years back but you have to buy me a beer or 6 to get it out of me ;).

I know I am just a lowly developer but I due use some administrative tools and I have loved for a long time and continue to use the Sysinternals set of tools. They have just opened up a new way to access there tools from there blog entry (with way too long of a title so I shortened it) Introducing Sysinternals Live Beta:

Sysinternals Live: We're excited to announce the beta of Sysinternals Live, a service that enables you to execute Sysinternals tools directly from the Web without hunting for and manually downloading them. Simply enter a tool's Sysinternals Live path into Windows Explorer or a command prompt as \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\<toolname> or view the entire Sysinternals Live tools directory in a browser at http://live.sysinternals.com.

I love it now I can download or just run the apps in a batch file!

I don't know about this offer but it looks like you can get some cash by using Live Search cashback. Let me know if you try this and how it works.

@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