How do you stay on top of Microsoft's public information?

Question

Microsoft is tearing down walls and barriers. Their product and project development process is becoming increasingly transparent. They are blogging all over the place and they are releasing open source code projects by the minute. While all this is great, it can be overwhelming!

People like Scott Hanselman are doing their best to keep up with all the information and clarifying stuff. Still it is virtually impossible to get any kind of complete picture of where Microsoft is heading and which projects that will last in the longer run. Projects lingers in beta stage (courtesy of the "Google Approach"), and information is spread in blogs, on Codeplex and elsewhere. And in the midst of everything new, we poor developers need to produce stuff and pick which projects to use.

I want to know how you handle all this? My own sources for good info is:

• Trusty 'ol MSDN
• Scott Hanselman (blog and podcast)
• Various other bloggers like Glenn Block

Answer 1

I always look at each new thing and try to figure out if this is something that is truly new and useful or is it something old in a new, shiny package.

For me personally I like to pick one thing and work on it for a while to learn it in a way that allows me to be effective at my job. If you try to "drink from the fire hose" you will retain little and only end up feeling overwhelmed.

Out of everything that Microsoft has released lately there are only two of things that I found to be pertinent and truly groundbreaking: WCF and LINQ. I have spent a lot of my time learning these technologies as I believe that they are the most relevant and useful.

Now none of this may be true for you - the trick is to figure out what is relevant to you and your goals and focus on those things.

Answer 2

Personally, I handle it by not caring. If one of my friends thinks something is important or cool, they'll link me. Beyond that, I don't have the time to worry about what Microsoft is doing this month/week/day.

Answer 3

I use Microsoft Communities. They are all listed on http://www.microsoftcommunities.com/. The orbs and ticker are cool, but I have never had them open for very long.

Answer 4

Channel 9 is usually buzzing about nearly everything they're up to. They're starting to do more podcasts, screencasts and interviews.

Channel 10 is more blurbs and videos but I find it suppliments Channel 9 nicely.

Answer 5

I have had a lot of luck with the weblogs.asp.net main feed. It's an aggregation of all blogs on the site, including Scott Guthrie's and other Microsoft insiders, as well as a lot of non-Microsoft folks who are fairly serious technical bloggers.

The topics are definitely not just limited to ASP.NET, there is healthy coverage of .NET development and Microsoft technologies in general.

You can scan the headers of the blog posts, and themes jump out to you that point to what is "hot" and new in the Microsoft space.

Answer 6

The DotNet Rocks podcast is good. Not necessarily purely MS oriented though.