Steve Martin (no, the other Steve Martin) recently blogged about the Beta release of BizTalk Server 2009 — and there was much rejoicing. If you haven’t been keeping up — and who can keep up with everything? — Microsoft announced in September 2008 that the effort formerly known as BizTalk Server (BTS) 2006 R3 will be BTS 2009 and will be a full release of the product.

But back to our story: Steve also highlighted the release of the ESB Guidance 2.0 CTP October 2008, based on the BTS 2009 Beta, which updates the existing guidance, Microsoft ESB Guidance for BTS 2006 R2, from November 2007.

The ESB Guidance 2.0 CTP is delivered as a zip file which contains two MSI files (for x86 and x64) and an installation doc. For now, I am primarily interested in the documentation, so I performed and administrative installation of the MSI using the msiexec.exe command line utility:

msiexec /a "ESB Guidance 2.0 CTP October 2008.msi"

I don’t know how msiexec.exe determines the destination of an administrative installation, but I found the results easily enough in “D:\Programs\Microsoft ESB Guidance 2.0 CTP – October 2008”. In the Docs folder is a compiled help (.chm) file with the goods. Happy reading.

Bonus track. If terms like BTS, ESB, SOA, and BPM are the very stuff that piques your interest, then take note of the 2009 Microsoft SOA and BP Conference in Redmond, January 28–29, 2009, and the accompanying road show. Last year’s SOA and BP Conference is where Microsoft publically announced the Oslo initiative. This year’s conference looks to be quite compelling.

I received word today that I’ve been chosen as a speaker for the INETA North America Speakers Bureau. What a cool New Year’s present! Thanks to the selection committee and INETA for this opportunity.

INETA is the world-wide association of .NET user groups, and I have volunteered with INETA for several years on their membership and activities committees, and it is through the auspices of INETA that I co-chair the Birds-of-a-Feather track at TechEd and PDC conferences.

The INETA Speakers Bureau provides speakers to member .NET user groups. I believe that I’ll also be called on to contribute a webcast to INETA Live. I will be getting details on the program in the next few weeks, and I’ll let you know when local user groups can start requesting me to speak.

My friend, colleague, and fellow alumnus, Kilong Ung is featured in an article titled "Fearless, Now" in the Reed College magazine. Kilong is a Cambodian refugee who survived the Khmer Rouge genocide and escaped through the infamous Killing Fields. From a refugee camp in Thailand, he eventually came to live in Portland as a high school student, and later graduated from Reed College in mathematics.

I worked with Kilong at Corillian for about half a year before we figured out we are both Reedies, both in mathematics, albeit at different times. Kilong is a relentless civic activist and motivational speaker, and he is working on a memoir, Golden Leaf, to be published in 2009. I encourage you read the article about Kilong and be inspired by his story.

Luca Bolognese has put together a .NET library of financial functions which is now available on CodeGallery on Microsoft. His goal was to replicate the financial functions in Excel, right or wrong. And if you think that Excel got a function wrong, he invites you to contribute a different implementation.

Luca implemented the library in F#. The library is available in two forms, one which statically links to F# (so that you don't need to redistribute F#) and one that doesn't (which is correspondingly smaller). Luca gave an outstanding talk on F# at PDC2008, which is well worth checking out.

Brian Randell, Microsoft MVP on Team System, announced that he's put together new VSTS virtual machines for Microsoft, and they're available for download. The previous VSTS VMs are set to expire at the end of 2008; the new ones expire at the end of 2009. Additionally, all the components have been updated to recent versions.

There are four VM images to choose from. You can select an "all-up" image with Team Foundation Server (TFS), Team Build, Team Explorer, and Team Suite, or a "TFS-only" image with TFS, Team Build, and Team Explorer only. Each of those comes in two flavors: one compatible with Virtual PC 2007 and Virtual Server 2005 R2, and one compatible with Hyper-V. As Brian says, "Download the ones that make you happy!"

See Brian's post for the details and download links. Thanks, Brian!

A story on NPR's All Things Considered considers if cloud computing will work in the White House.

Both Google and Microsoft are lobbying the Obama transition team to adopt cloud computing to get work done in the White House. In the story, security expert Kevin Jackson discusses how cloud computing can make data and computing more secure than traditional systems. It would also improve collaboration, an area that government is particularly bad at. Vince Cerf, the so-called father of the Internet, who now works at Google, opines that cloud computing would also be a good paradigm for the new administration to help achieve the new openness that has been championed.

Sara Ford has posted Visual Studio Tip of the Day #382 as the final tip in her popular 17 month series. From its introduction to yesterday's graceful exit, Sara has brought Visual Studio into sharp focus for a vast number of developers. Each post begins with a personable "Did you know..." and no matter how much I thought I knew about Visual Studio, often, no, I didn't know that.

Did you know... that the popular tips series was a labor of love (translation: not what she gets paid for), a gift to the developer community?

Mining her blog, Sara brought these golden nuggets out in book form this fall,  Microsoft Visual Studio Tips: 251 Ways to Improve Your Productivity (Microsoft Press, 2008).

And did you know... that all of the author's proceeds from the book go to help send Hurricane Katrina survivors to college?

Now Sara will be turning her attention to other ways to engage with the community, including her day job on CodePlex, Microsoft's open source project hosting website. I cannot wait to see what's next.

We stand on the sandy shore and wave a fond farewell to the Visual Studio Tip of the Day series as it slips over the horizon. Adieu!

So long, and thanks for the all the tips!

I wasn't able to attend last weekend's WhereCampPDX, an unconference on all things geographical. I find the current Stuart v1.0's inability to be in two places at the same time to be overly restrictive. I'll have to work on a time-travel upgrade or cloning technology or something.

That meant that I missed real-life Pac Man on the streets of Portland. What a concept! It turns out that some grad students in NYU's Interactive Telecommunications program started the idea with Pac Manhattan, running through the streets around Washington Square Park in Manhattan. Each real-life player (Pac Man and the ghosts) is paired with a controller back in a game room, and players and controllers are in constant contact via cell phone communicating location and status.

WhereCampPDX transported the game to Portland's Park Blocks. Now you can watch the video of Jason Mauer in interview and in action as the Pac Man. Wild, man!

Get your party self down to Party with Palermo on Sunday night before PDC08. Join your affable host, Jeffrey Palermo, for great company and conversation, free food and drink, swag and more from 7:00 to 10:00 PM at Casey's Irish Bar & Grill in Los Angeles. The price of admission is one business card.

Don't throw an exception! RSVP so that Jeff knows you're coming.