It's not quite the end of January, but there's already alot of "new" in my new year.  There's a  new car, some new gadgets, and on the work front a new project and a new team.

As you may have heard, Charles Fitzgerald, left Microsoft to head to a startup. Charles was the GM that my old team, platform incubation, reported into. Charles set the mission for that team, and was the major stakeholder for Tafiti and several other internal facing projects that I worked on. Charles was a great GM, and while this is a loss for MS, I'm confident we haven't heard the last of him.

With Charles' departure, Scott and I will be moving to different roles in the company. I am happy to report that I am now officially part of Simon Guest's team.   

One of the few negatives about my last role in incubation was that it was inherently secretive, as parts of the work could be patented. As a result, after delivering my book on CardSpace I mostly dropped off the public scene, save for promoting Tafiti. With Simon's team having a key focus on talking about architecture with the broader community, this is something that will change, and you'll see me engaging more publicly on architecture related subjects. Simon's team has a big focus on Software+Services, which if you've read the blog for awhile know is something I've been looking at for some time in and outside of Microsoft. Expect to see me blogging more, podcasting/screencasting more, and writing the odd article or two. (No more books for awhile, though. Having written or co-written 3 books in 2 years, I've committed to my wife not to start another one until 2009)

I also mentioned there's a new project. I'll be carrying over a project with me from incubation to Simon's team as well. Nothing I can share at the moment, other than it will be public focused and it's going to be a key focus for me for a good portion of 2008.

While this project is big, there's another project I'll be working on that's even bigger.  This is a longer term project, estimated to last decades with a budget estimated to be in the seven figures. Oh, and it has nothing to do with software. My wife and I are expected our first child, a son, to literally arrive any day now. While there's alot of great 'new's in 2008 already, this will surely be the best.

Here's hoping your 2008 is going well, and I look forward to engaging with the community more broadly once again.  If there's anything you'd like to see me engage on - be it in blog, article, or podcast, let me know. As always, I can be reached at mmercuri@microsoft.com

Speaking of folks that I got to work with last year, I had the opportunity to work with Alberto Arias on a major WF project in the UK (the first Fortune 500 WF project in production, I believe).  Earlier this fiscal year, Alberto crossed the pond and took a job over in the Connected Systems Division.

He's been working on activities for BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) for awhile now, and while chatting with him tonight, he told me that with today's announcement on Paul Andrews blog, it was now cool to talk about the BPEL support externally. He and I then booted up Meeting Space in Vista (if you've not used it, check it out, it's quite cool), and he stepped me through how it works. 

Having spent alot of time with customers and partners last year, I regularly heard requests for BPEL support. The implementation is very clean, very straightforward, with capabilities to import and export BPEL. BPEL 1.1 wil be supported in the March CTP, and 2.0 will be supported after it is ratified by OASIS.  I think people are going to be happy with it, it's very cool stuff - hats off to Alberto and team! 

No, not the DaVinci Code, but his Codices.  Leonardo DaVinci's two notebooks, the Codex Arundel and the Codex Leicester, are being brought together digitally. This is the first time that the two parts have been together since DaVinci's death in 1519.

The British Library owned the former, Bill Gates owned the latter, and they've brought them together in an WPF Browser AP.

You can experience “Turning the Pages” 2.0 here www.bl.uk , following the link with take you to http://ttpdownload.bl.uk/browserapp.xbap

For those of you wondering where the heck I've been for the past couple of weeks, I think this helps describe the why...

World Cup - U2 - Sick Days Video:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1zRcIJPrg8&search=u2%20world%20cup)

I've not just been a total World Cup slacker, however, I've been recording a new video series I'm looking to publish on Channel 9, been to TechEd, incubating a new project (to be unveiled on July 11th), closing out the end of year (Microsoft's fiscal year), some demos, a technical whitepaper or two and a blog software upgrade.

Lots of stuff will hit this week and next, so stay tuned..

As long as I'm blogging about cool stuff, have you seen RoboCast yet?

http://www.francisshanahan.com/robocast/

Francis Shanahan has put something together that's pretty cool.  It will take your blog entries, “read them” using the Speech APIs, and record the audio as MP3s. Effectively taking written content and making it a podcast, no human voice work required.

When I first saw it, I thought - pretty cool. When I thought about it a bit more, I realized it opened up the option of podcasting to individuals who may not have the opportunity otherwise due to certain disabilities. That takes it from pretty cool to very cool for me.

I'm writing this from the airport in Amsterdam, I've got a few hours here before connecting
on to Barcelona, the first stop in a three city tour through Europe. For the next week and a half, I'll be visiting with customers and MS field in Barcelona, Munich, and Paris.

As I was disembarking from the plane, I'd turned on my smart phone and within seconds was attached to the local Orange phone network and downloading email from my colleagues back in Seattle. While waiting for my luggage, I was on the web, reading a blog.
 
A few minutes later, and I'm in the KLM lounge.  I flip open my tablet PC, and I'm on a wireless network. I'll be at my hotels today and later this week, all with wireless access. I've not checked on mobile service, but I think I'll be 'live' there as well.

It never ceases to amaze me the level of connectivity that's been put into place over the past 5 years. With connectivity so pervasive, I'm even more interested in our recent Windows Live and Office Live announcements that were made last week. 

Did you see them? If not, go over and check out www.live.com to see what's coming.