Steve Maine has done a beautiful thing, and put together a list of links for learning about the new web programming model features in WCF 3.5

Check it out here : http://hyperthink.net/blog/2008/01/18/WCF+Web+Programming+Model+Documentation.aspx

Going through my email this morning, I received my official Mix07 confirmation.  Last year, I had a number of customer commitments so was really not in the loop on Mix, this year, though, I've had some overlap with some of the things I've been working on and have had a chance to get involved in various aspects of the event.

Earlier this year I went to another web conference(which shall remain nameless), and was so dissapointed I left the conference (and Vegas) a day early. (Me, leaving Vegas early? unheard of, I know). 

Mix, though, is a different story. From what I've seen of the sessions, this is actually an event I'd pay out of pocket to go to. It's got a good mix of folks from MS, as well as from third parties.  I may or may not be delivering a session, that's something that'll get decided in the next month or so, but will be onsite either working in certain areas of the event, or attending sessions.

One of the great things about conferences is that I get a chance to meet up with former colleagues and people I've chatted with via email and blogs. If you're going to be in Vegas the 29th - 2nd and want to chat about WCF, CardSpace, Mashups, or whatever - shoot me an email and we'll make some plans to sync up.

I was just on Amazon and it looks like the follow up to Windows Communication Foundation: Hands On! is now available for pre-order.

This book contains all of the content updated for RTM, plus 200+ more pages than the original. You'll also see that we've got a new co-author, Matt Winkler.

For those unfamiliar with Matt, he's the technical evangelist for Windows Workflow Foundation here in Redmond, and he's added some great WF content to the book.

If you want to get more details, you can find it here:

http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Communication-Foundation-Unleashed-WCF/dp/0672329484/sr=1-3/qid=1170008872/ref=sr_1_3/002-4228351-3336016?ie=UTF8&s=books

On the heels of writing that last article, I found a copy of Amazon.com Mashups in the post.  The book was written by a friend of mine, Francis Shanahan, and the book also has a great chapter that covers the S3 service mentioned in my previous post.  From defining objects and buckets to building out working prototypes that interact with the S3 service, this chapter helps you get up and running with S3 in an hour, well worth the price of the book for that chapter alone (<$20 on Amazon).

Beyond S3, the book provides a good introduction to the concept of mashups, as well as hands on introductions to mashing up services from Yahoo, Microsoft, YouTube, and others. It also showcases some of Francis' mashup creations, which are cool in their own right (i.e. Zollage, Zuggest, RoboCast, etc.). 

I'd recommend checking out the book and his mashups.

The book can be found here:

http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-com-Mashups-Francis-Shanahan/dp/0470097779/sr=8-1/qid=1167221205/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-4399996-7228729?ie=UTF8&s=books

His site (and related mashups) here:

http://www.francisshanahan.com