Back in September of '08  Douglas Purdy wrote a blog post titled, What is Oslo?.

Time for an update - On “Oslo”

We started using the term “Oslo” for only the the modeling platform pieces of the overall vision.  In addition, we would roll out a bunch of technologies in the .NET 4.0 wave.  So when you hear about things like WF 4.0, WCF 4.0,  “Dublin”, MEF, the unified XAML stack – all of those things were part of “Oslo” at some stage.

The fundamental focal point of “Oslo” has always been the notion of (meta)data stored within SQL Server or another database.  If you look at the Repository, it has always been “just a SQL Server database” containing application metadata.  Likewise, “M” and “Quadrant” having their roots in making this particular database easier to use.

With this in mind, we made a decision to merge the Data Programmability team (EDM, EF, Astoria, XML, ADO.NET, and tools/designers) and the “Oslo” team (“Quadrant”, Repository, “M”) together.

Richard Feynman's Messenger Lectures were acquired by Bill Gates from the BBC and  Microsoft Research has made the 1964 lectures available for free viewing

On this page you will find videos designed to help you learn the technologies and features that make up "Oslo".

Included are the slides and videos from the DSL Developers Conference 

applied topics in domain specific languages

Lang .NET 2009 Symposium is a forum for discussion on programming languages, managed execution environments, compilers, multi-language libraries, and integrated development environments.

The 2009 Videos are now available and there are some great discussions about where software is going. 

Microsoft Previews Great WPF and Silverlight Apps with Facebook OpenStreams API

Facebook announced some new APIs to further open up access to the Facebook Stream through their new Open Streams API. Microsoft participated in their Developer event and will began to demonstrate how to make developing for Facebook a whole lot easier for millions of .NET developers

Ink Input and Tablet PC

A good post on the Engineering Windows blog about new advances in pen and touch computing with Windows 7.

The Tablet PC Input Panel, sometimes called the TIP has a new writing pad that you'll find easier to manage then the previous Vista version.

Everyone who's used a Tablet PC knows corrections are the most tedious aspect of the User eXperience, but the new Smart Corrections feature could make this less of a hassle.

Entering URLs looks like it will now be a snap and we all love linking, especially to blogs about innovation.

Math recognition is the most intriguing new design addition with the implication that it may give mathematicians a productivity boost.

PeopleBrowsr is a way to trach your Tweets on Twitter in a garphic and visual way. At SXSW in Austin this was the companie everybody was talking about. 

BarCampAustin 4 will be Saturday March 14th

Follow BarCampAustin on Twitter Sign-up on the BarCampAustin 4 Facebook event page.

It takes a community, I'm here in Austin where there's tremendous anticipation with great participation for the coding Event of the year!

Interesting Times

Based on discussions so far, it looks like the offer would be to work for Omri Gazitt, or possibly John Shewchuk.  We’ve discussed a number of possible roles, most of them focusing on Open Web activities, either advocating their increased and correct use within Microsoft, and/or engaging in Open Web communities on Microsoft’s behalf.

From Apache Software Foundation director to Microsoft interoperability guy, we sure are living in interesting times. Sam's a busy guy, working to inspiring Atom and the Feed Validator and the book RESTful Web Services all cool powerful stuff.

Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop unveils Microsoft's vision for the future of business technology.
The software plus services strategy is taking hold.