Microsoft has some interesting stuff circulating lately. Here are two I wanted to mention.

SILVERLIGHT

This one peeked my interest because of the Common Language Runtime, which would let me use Python. It also makes me wonder where Flash will be in the year or so. It's called Silverlight. If you haven't seen it you may want to go take a look. I thought about writing a big article on it, but I am lazy + busy so this will tell all the details.

Personally, I don't care how friendly Microsoft gets with the open source big guys, it is nothing but a marketing ploy. They will kill Flash with the help of Ajax and take their internet market share after they screw the open source community that helped them to do so. You may notice that there isn't a plugin for Linux btw... I could be wrong, but money talks. I was discusing this with a friend at work. He thinks Adobe should open source Flash, I think he is right. Hell, everyone wants the internet, Microsoft has tried for years, so only time will tell who will win.

POWERSHELL

If you work in Windows and really hate the command prompt for all it's weakness this is actually nice. A command prompt that is object based. I'll give it try when I get a fee moment at work. You could use IronPython, Cygwin, etc. for more power, but if your not into that, Powershell might be for you.