There are other official announcements on this floating around elsewhere, but in case you missed it, I have incluced the some "official" verbage below.  Good stuff and worth keeping an eye on...

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Application Request Routing for IIS7 is a proxy based routing module that forwards HTTP requests to content servers based on HTTP headers and server variables, and load balance algorithms.  Application Request Routing can be used to:

• Increase application availability and scalability.
• Better utilize content server resources.
• Facilitate application deployment including pilot management and A/B testing.
• Lower management costs and create opportunities for shared hosters.

Application Request Routing relies on URL rewrite module to inspect the incoming HTTP requests to make the routing decisions, and therefore, the URL rewrite module is required to enable Application Request Routing features.

Download the modules:

·         Microsoft URL Rewrite Module for IIS 7 (x64)

·         Microsoft Application Request Routing for IIS 7 (x86)

·         Microsoft Application Request Routing for IIS 7 (x64)

Features:

Using the module

These articles explain how to configure and achieve the core scenarios using Application Request Routing.  It is recommended that the articles are read in the following order as the scenarios get richer with each article:

• Install Application Request Routing
• Define and Configure an Application Request Routing Server Group
• HTTP Load Balancing using Application Request Routing
•  Configure 3-tier deployment architecture using Application Request Routing
• Pilot Program Management using Application Request Routing
• Shared Hosting using Application Request Routing
• Using Failed Request Tracing Rules to Troubleshoot Application Request Routing

A week from today (and while I am in MI on vacation unfortunately!) the Twin Cities Developer Guild will have its first meeting ever.  Kicking it off with a cookout followed by two time Spaghetti Code Podcast guest Jason Bock talking about "Writing Better Code".  Not only am I bummed that I will not be there due to vacation, but the extended forecast shows it as a beautiful day and I could have used some good tips on cleaning up my coding for my side project. ;-)

Check out the Developer Guild website to register for the event (gotta know how much food to get) and to see what else is on tap for future events!

While getting a podcast scheduled with Kris Nyreen to talk about some of the cool stuff he has been doing with Silverlight, he called this to my attention - Podcasting Kit for Sharepoint.  I will steal his feature list and repost it here, and an impressive list it is:

Very cool - check it out at http://www.codeplex.com/pks

The Aspiring Architect Series 2008 builds on last year’s content and covers a number of topics that are important for architects to understand. Please make sure that you have gone through the 2007 series which can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/mohammadakif/archive/tags/Aspiring+Architects/default.aspx . Hopefully you will find the upcoming series to be a very useful investment of your time.

June 16^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Introduction to the aspiring architect Web Cast series

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380836&Culture=en-CA

June 17^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Services Oriented Architecture and Enterprise Service Bus – Beyond the hype

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380838&Culture=en-CA

June 18^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – TOGAF and Zachman, a real-world perspective

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380840&Culture=en-CA

June 19^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Services Oriented Architecture (Web Cast in French)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380842&Culture=en-CA

June 20^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Interoperability (Web Cast in French)

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380844&Culture=fr-CA

June 23^rd , 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Realizing dynamic systems

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380846&Culture=en-CA

June 24^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Web 2.0, beyond the hype

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380848&Culture=en-CA

June 25^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Architecting for the user experience

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380850&Culture=en-CA

June 26^th, 2008 – 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. – Conclusion and next steps

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032380852&Culture=en-CA

Let me say, as a developer I really love WCF.  It's straight-forward to write you code, it's flexible, and it provides built-in support for lots of different scenario.  The thing I hate, yes I said hate, about WCF is the configuration.  It seems like I bang my head against it every time I build an app.  Even doing simple things can result in confusing errors if you mis-configure one little piece and its hard to track those errors down.

The Patterns & Practices folks have release a Beta of guidance titled Improving Web Services Security: Scenarios and Implementation Guidance for WCF.  When you look at the table of contents, you see a beautiful laundry list of all the common scenarios.  Very nice and a bit overdue IMHO.  Combined with WCF Security Guidance, there is finally all of the info you need to be able to set up WCF correctly for your particular scenario. 

Good stuff!

I'll let the description from the web site do the talking...

“Velocity” is a distributed in-memory application cache platform for developing scalable, available, and high-performance applications. Using “Velocity,” applications can store any serializable CLR object without concern for where the object gets stored because data is cached across multiple computers. “Velocity” allows copies of data to be stored across the cache cluster, protecting data against failures. It can be configured to run as a service accessed over the network or can be run embedded with the distributed application. “Velocity” includes an ASP.NET session provider object enabling storage of ASP.NET session objects in the distributed cache without having to write to databases, which increases the performance and scalability of ASP.NET applications.

You can check out CTP 1 here.

Jason Bock, Microsoft MVP, visits Spaghetti Code and talks about dynamic programming with Microsoft .NET.  We cover the two primary "types" of dynamic programming and discuss when and where each may be applicable.  We also spend time talking about Jason's community involvement with the launching of the Twin Cities Languages User Group and the upcoming Twin Cities Code Camp.  And remember, if you enjoy Spaghetti Code podcasts, please tell others about them. 

• Direct Download - click here
• Subscribe - click here
• iTunes - click here

I was catching up on Dave Bost's blog and found that some developers in his neck of the woods have been putting on a series of SharePoint for Developer webcasts.  SharePoint is one of the great, untapped dev platforms for Microsoft web developers so certainly worth checking out.

As reported in more than one place, Silverlight Beta 2 is due out by end of the week.

· UI Framework: Beta 2 includes improvements in animation support, error handling and reporting, automation and accessibility support, keyboard input support, and general performance.  This release also provides more compatibility between Silverlight and WPF.

· Rich Controls: Beta 2 includes a new templating model called Visual State Manager that allows for easier templating for controls. Other features include the introduction of TabControl, text wrapping and scrollbars for TextBox, and for DataGrid additions include Autosize, Reorder, Sort, performance increases and more.  Most controls are now in the runtime instead of packaged with the application.

· Networking Support: Beta 2 includes improved Cross Domain support and security enhancements, upload support for WebClient, and duplex communications (“push” from server to Silverlight client).

· Rich Base Class Library: Beta 2 includes improved threading abilities, LINQ-to-JSON, ADO.NET Data Services support, better support for SOAP, and various other improvements to make networking and data handling easier.

· Deep Zoom: Beta 2 introduces a new XML-based file format for Deep Zoom image tiles, as well as a new MultiScaleTileSource that enables existing tile databases to utilize Deep Zoom. Better, event driven notification for zoom/pan state is another improvement in Silverlight 2 Beta 2. 

On Thursday, June 26^th, from 1:30pm to 3:30pm, Microsoft MVP, Plurasight guru, and book author Matt Milner will be presenting on how to build connected systems using the .NET platform.

Matt brings a ton of real-world experience helping customers build connected systems on the Microsoft platform.  After Matt and I completed our podcast a while back, it seemed like a natural extension for Matt to dive deeper into his area of expertise and do a sessions open to developers and architects interested in connected systems.  Here is the abstract for the event:

Applications today are invariably connected across process and network boundaries.  Building connected systems comes with challenges from the classic: scalability, reliability, state management, and security; to new challenges of supporting the latest technologies such as ATOM, RSS, REST, JSON, and always being able to provide business value.  Developers need a platform that is robust enough to build systems today, and flexible enough to handle the challenges and changes to come.  In this seminar we will focus on two technologies in the .NET framework that provide the foundation for building connected systems: Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation.  We will examine the design of each of these frameworks and discuss how you can use them to more easily build complex applications. 

Register Today!