Slide Show: Building DevConnections

Playing to its audience, Microsoft showed off the power of its Visual Studio Shell to create a custom IDE for World of Warcraft development. "Not only does Visual Studio give you the ultimate in business productivity, you can triple kill your opponents," Microsoft Developer Division General Manager Scott Guthrie quipped.

Of course, no demo-laden keynote would be complete without one Blue Screen of Death. The curse hit DevConnections when a demonstrator tried to show off Microsoft's Popfly software for codeless mash-up application creation. The first time the presenter tried to load the site, it died.

"It's the Murphy's Law of Demos," she sighed, adding, "Did I mention Popfly is in beta?"

On the second try, Popfly flew, and Microsoft got to show off the creation of a Warcraft photo widget.

To demonstrate Microsoft's under-development Silverlight 1.1 multimedia runtime, keynote presenter Guthrie spotlighted a chess application that allows players to compete against a .Net player algorithm. Opponents can also take on a JavaScript-based algorithm -- or pit the two competing frameworks against each other. Unsurprisingly, given the application's creator, .Net usually whomps JavaScript.

"Sometimes there's a lucky move early on and .Net loses but, so far, I've done this about 100 times and it's never failed to win," Guthrie said, sparking a round of applause from appreciative audience attendees.

How to spot the hot technologies: A noon session offering an overview of SharePoint Server 2007 drew an overflow crowd ...

... while a nearby session on reporting features in Visual Studio Team System 2008 sat empty.

One brave vendor on the show floor tried to lure passers-by with a Zune giveaway. Microsoft loyalty only ran so deep, though: An informal tally on the floor showed iPod raffles outnumbering Zune prizes by about 5-to-1.

/n software was among the vendors opting for the reliable iPod lure. A booth representative said Microsoft hadn't given them any stick about it.