Well, woke up this morning to a nice surprise.  While most people rested, WorldWide Telescope was released.  I have downloaded it and taken a quick look over of the application and I am quite impressed by it.  I never really liked the Google Sky view of the solar system a whole lot.. while it is good, it is not that good.  I am a huge fan/user of Sellarium, but WWTelescope may be my new favorite sky viewing tool.

I’ll post a more detailed review later.

I just downloaded my beta copy of World Wide Telescope and just noticed something after playing with it for a little bit, it is built on the NASA WorldWind virtual globe.

I thought the demo video clips looked familiar, now I know why.  I can’t show and screen shots yet.. probably breading the agreement by just mentioning this.. but I just had to share this tidbit.

I was looking at the latest updates for Virtual Earth and noticed something.

New/Updated Birds Eye Cities in the US: Butler, Pennsylvania

Ok, they spend the time and money to cover a small tow, that while it does have some nice buildings.. is really not that special (Been there many times).  Yet… larger metro areas such as Williamsport, Bloomsburg, Danville are still in old USGS Black and White.

It has been a year and a half now… how about some updating

I don’t know what to say… I thought it was a joke.. but it isn’t.   You can collect all seven Source Force (and friends) action figures by attending a brainwash… er..

Between March 15th and April 15th 2007, the new super dudette will be offered and will be sent to developers who get their act together and attend at least two live MSDN Webcasts or two MSDN Virtual Labs, or one of each. Oh, and hey, not so fast… In order to confirm your shipping address and receive credit for attendance, you must complete an evaluation at the end of each webcast or virtual lab.

All the “characters” have their own bio page with links to movie clips of them in action “saving the source”..I guess.  Kinda creepy if you ask me :}

Me love you long time!

Two interesting blog posts about releasing some of the .Net libraries as Open Source licensed code.

We’ll begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries (System, System.IO, System.Collections, System.Configuration, System.Threading, System.Net, System.Security, System.Runtime, System.Text, etc), ASP.NET (System.Web), Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms), ADO.NET (System.Data), XML (System.Xml), and WPF (System.Windows). We’ll then be adding more libraries in the months ahead (including WCF, Workflow, and LINQ). The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL).

You’ll be able to download the .NET Framework source libraries via a standalone install (allowing you to use any text editor to browse it locally). We will also provide integrated debugging support of it within VS 2008.

This release falls under Microsoft’s Shared Source Initiative, which encompasses a spectrum of source code offerings, complementing the company’s other activities around sharing source code. This is another example of Microsoft’s continued commitment to increasing transparency and addressing developer needs.

Dogs and Cats Living Together, Mass Hysteria!