BizTalk Server

• Channel 9 interview with Tony Bernard, Senior Program Manager, on EDI/AS2 features of BizTalk Server 2006 R2 (which is launching this month). [via BizTalk Server Team Blog]
• My friend Marjan notes "InfoQ just published their interview with Dino Chiesa, Director of .Net Marketing in our Connected Systems Division.  Dino talks about Microsoft’s SOA Strategy and how our investments in Windows Communication Foundation, ESB guidance, BizTalk Services and .Net framework 3.5 play key roles in helping our customers reach the benefits of SOA." Our Connected Systems Practice also utilizes WCF, ESB Guidance, BizTalk Server and Services + .NET Framework 3.5 to deliver on SOA investments. Particuarly, ESB Guidance has been a key enabler lately.
• Richard Seroter has put together a BizTalk Code Review checklist for his team and shares it

Silverlight

• ScottGu in announcing Silverlight 1.00 ship and  Expression Encoder 1.0, makes the key announcement of Silverlight support for Linux and a formal partnership with Novell to provide a great Silverlight implementation for Linux.  Microsoft will be delivering Silverlight Media Codecs for Linux, and Novell will be building a 100% compatible Silverlight runtime implementation called "Moonlight". Wow!
• Scott Hanselman has some insightful commentary on the above

Microsoft Research and Microsoft Releases

• An interesting research project from MS Research: Niobe: A Practical Replication Protocol. [via Jorgen]
• Windows Server 2008 Beta 3, formerly known as Longhorn Server
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 CTP 4