Just when I'm asked to start thinking about Technology Roadmaps, I find this great dissection of the Microsoft Technology Roadmap.  Some highlights:

Disappearing Code Names (Gone, But Not Forgotten)

Product Name/ "Code Name"	Additional Info.	Projected Ship Date
"Shorthorn" (33)	Stopgap release of Windows client	2003
.Net My Services/ "Hailstorm"	MS thought to be building many of these into future Windows editions	2004
"BizOffice"	combo BizTalk-Office application for B2B	2003 (?)

Finally got around to installing my new shiny version of SoapScope, the little sniffer that could.  I showed an early beta at TechEd 2003 in Dallas, but now it's released!  It's wicked cheap, and when you're doing Web Services development in a workgroup situation, especially when the interface is in flux and the folks on the other side are in another time zone, it's slick. 

It stores all the traffic in a built-in database and others can view and debug the service as it moves through time using a web interface served by it's internal (Apache) web server.  It sniffs traffic via a packet capture OR as a proxy.

Two new features that I'm really digging are the WSDL Analyzer that checks for validity and compilance, and the Diff-er, that gives a sweet view of what's been changing from call to call, version to version.

My buddy Jonas Blunck, hero of the people and maker of ComTrace and IEHttpHeaders has done it again (along with Kim Gräsman) with DeveloperPlayground.  At first it looks like Process Explorer from SysInternals, but it includes such cleverness as:

DeveloperPlayground now lives happily in the hallowed halls of my C:/UTILS folder with the best of them.  Great job guys, keep it up!  I think be using and suggesting this util in my C# Class this fall.

A nice clean way to describe the ramifications of the decisions we have to make every day.  Also, a way to describe to our bosses (in term$ they understand) why doing something quick-and-dirty may bite us in the ass.

"Technical Debt is a wonderful metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham to help us think about this problem. In this metaphor, doing things the quick and dirty way sets us up with a technical debt, which is similar to a financial debt. Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. We can choose to continue paying the interest, or we can pay down the principal by refactoring the quick and dirty design into the better design. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future" [Martin's Bliki]