The project codenamed "Orcas" is now available for download. The developer tools release is Microsoft's September customer technology preview (CTP) for the .net framework 3.0. You must have the .net framework and September CTP software development kit (SDK), not to mention a non-express version of Visual Studio 2005 already installed to run the tools in this release. At under 4MB (not quite a whale), the development tools include XAML intellisense support, project templates for Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Communcation Foundation. The dev tools also features the Visual Designer (codename: Cider) for Windows Presentation Foundation, but is sadly not supported by the express editions of Visual Studio 2005. If you understood anything I just said, and it interests you you will be happy to know that it is now ready to be downloaded and I suppose anything else you want to do to it.

Supercalifragilistic...oh, hi! Welcome to our blog today. What a mouthful, did you read the title of this post? That is incredible. Anyway, Virtual Server 2005 (VS2005 for short) has been released by Microsoft for download. This is the latest in Microsoft's Virtual Server line (the fall collection), and the download requires that you register for the beta program to obtain it from Microsoft. It comes in either a 32-bit or 64-bit edition, and has new support for AMD-V, IVT (Intel), a white paper on host clustering, and integration with Active Directory. Microsoft has typically had pretty good virtual computing clients, and 2005 is the best so far.

deviantART co-founder Scott Jarkoff dropped us a line to pimp his Essential Software of 2005 list. It's a tad brief for a list covering both Windows and Mac OS X, but includes a couple I haven't seen on other lists including HimmelBar, NewsFire, PuTTY, and, as an honorable mention, Xyle Scope. Hop over to Jarkoff's blog for the whole list plus links.

No, not predictions for the coming year; predictions for the past year: Wired News' Joanna Glasner has written a piece in which she collects the tech predictions pundits made about 2005 and determines whether their crystal balls were, to mix metaphors, loaded or shooting duds. The winners are Robert Cringely and Rob Enderle, and the losers Michael Robertson and IDC. It's a short article, but a fun read for those who like to see a pundit deflated now and then.

In December 1990 there was a single web site on the Internet, and by the end of 1991 that figured had jumped to ten. Today there are millions of sites and billions of pages, and the web is a universe unto itself. It's impossible for any one person to keep track of even one percent of the interesting stuff happening on the web, but still we try until our favorites folders are overflowing, our social bookmark sites crash, and our inboxes choke on forwarded links. Occasionally, though, all of that collective interest organizes itself into something more orderly and, for a moment, it seems like everyone on the web is thinking about the same thing. Below are ten moments from the past year that the people who make the web found coolest, most interesting, funniest, and most throught-provoking.

10. Numa Numa Dance

What do you get when you combine a Romanian chart-topper, an American teenager, and a webcam? The Numa Numa Dance. New Jersey 19-year-old Gary Brolsma found Internet fame when he not only lip-synched, but did a slick choreographed routine—albeit without leaving his chair—to "Dragostea Din Tei," a dance track by Romanian pop trio O-Zone.

Though Brolsma ultimately shunned his fame, his performance is among the most-linked, forwarded, and immitated videos of the the year, even earning him a profile in the New York Times.

Given that it's 2005, I'm surprised we're not seeing more Top 5 lists, but here's one: Five Best Freeware Games of 2005, from gHacks. I won't spoil #1 for you, but I will spoil the rest: Advanced Strategic Command is at #5, retro-style adventure Zak McKracken 2 is #4, Battlefield-alike Warrock is at #3, and intriguing Korean MMO shooter GunZ The Duel takes #2. To see their favorite freeware game of the year you'll have to click through to gHacks.

I wish I'd been reading Read/WriteWeb all year, now that I see their A Year of Weekly Web 2.0 Wrap-Ups. If you're just getting on the Web 2.0 bandwagon and want to get caught up, Richard MacManus has rounded up all of his weekly Web 2.0 coverage, from Six Apart acquiring LiveJournal in January to Yahoo! buying del.icio.us earlier this month. Great for those who can't remember what happened yesterday, much less 11 months ago.

Like Google's Year-End Zeitgeist but for blogs, BlogPulse has published a Year in Review that lists 2005's biggest blogs, news stories, images, videos, and more. Boing Boing, unsurprisingly, crowns the Top Blogs list, followed by our sister blog Engadget. The Top Blog Posts category is an interesting potpourri with an odd LiveJournal bent, and the Top Wikipedia References category (Podcasting, Hurricane Katrina, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster) is pretty eclectic, too.  And if you like charts, be sure to check out the Featured Trends of 2005.
 

Microsoft Watch has posted a list of The 10 Biggest Microsoft Surprises of 2005. Though they weren't all especially surprising, in my opinion, it's a good round-up of some of Microsoft's more uncharacteristic moves this year. Among the highlights: The Office team opens up (a little), Redmond still can't find a way to shake its shoddy security image, MS 'gets' RSS, and IE rises from the dead. As usual, click on through for the full list and details.

Who listens to enough podcasts to name the top ten episodes of the year? The folks at LearnOutLoud, apparently. To be fair, they only chose among podcasts that are listed in their hand-picked directory, but it makes for a pretty good sample. Topping the list of LearnOutLoud's Top 10 Podcast Episodes of 2005 is the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast featuring the CEO of Trilogy Software, Diggnation's "Clip Show" episode, and Malcolm Gladwell's appearance on IT Conversations. Also on the list, at #8, is our own Jason Calacanis on the Web 2.0 Show. Head over to LearnOutLoud to see the full list, with links.

The parade of best-of-'05 lists continues: As a companion to her Best apps of 2005 list, Lifehacker's Gina Trepani has posted her Top underrated apps of 2005 list, and it's a good one. A couple of my favorites, notably Picasa and MyBlogLog make the list, and she's included a couple dark horse picks like Yahoo! Calendar and ShoZu. Head over to Lifehacker to check out the rest.

There's a little design geek inside me and inside him is an even littler typography geek, and that geek loves Typographica's Favorite Fonts of 2005. With fanciful names like Lisboa, Deréon, and Zingha, these are some truly beautiful fonts, but I think my favorite of the bunch may be Robert Slimbach's Garamond Premier Pro, and gorgeous update to the old serifed standby. There's also several dozen runners-up for your perusal, and this is only Part 1, comprising the first six months of the year. The article's writer, Stephen Coles, also notes the expanding role of the OpenType format and the fact that many type designers have completely abandoned PostScript and TrueType fonts in favor of OpenType.

Slyck News has put together a list of their picks for the biggest winners and losers in file-sharing for 2005. File sharing's winners? BitTorrent, Apple, LimeWire, The Pirate Bay, and open source. The losers? Sony-BMG, Kazaa owners Sharman Networks, Grokster, pay P2P, and, of course, perennial loser the RIAA. I'd personally add to the winners list Fiona Apple, whose new album, which is being acclaimed as one of the year's best, would never have seen a release this year without the attention its P2P leak garnered.

Google's Zeitgeist, which shows what people have been searching for lately, is always a fun distraction, and I look forward to their year-end Zeitgeists more and more every year. This year's 2005 Year-End Google Zeitgeist, just released, is no exception. Too much data for me to sum up here, so head on over to Google and check out all the pretty graphs.

[Via Waxy.org]

Over at ZDNet's Web 2.0 Explorer blog Richard MacManus has posted his Top Ten Web 2.0 Moments of 2005. This is a really great list if you want a hint of where the web is headed. The big names of '05 are all covered: Bloglines, Amazon/Alexa, Digg, Google Base, Yahoo! and its new hires Flickr and del.icio.us, eBay and Skype, Windows Live, and of course the big AJAX. At the top of the list is the Web 2.0 Conference which MacManus calls "a nexus of Web 2.0 energy," and Weblogs, Inc. and our acquisition by AOL even gets a much-appreciated mention.

Related posts:

• Top 10 innovative Web 2.0 apps of '05
• Another best Web 2.0 apps of '05 list
• Betas of the Year