Longhorn - certain definitions
Lornhorn - The new gen of Windows

Avalon - An even bigger leap forward for the Windows Graphics Subsystem than the introduction of DirectX. XAML will play a big role not only in WinForms, but look for a XAML to ASP.NET renderer as well.

Aero - The look and feel catches up to Mac OS X, and introduces some interesting twists, such as Common Dialogs for People.

Indigo - To protect your current investment, stick with ASMX and you won't go wrong. Don Box says Objects are baked. They're done, you use them, be happy. Use objects interally in your apps, but start getting your head around the differences between explicitly working with a remote object and sending a messsage. Messaging doesn't equal RPC. Boundaries between applications are explicit. Share schema, not type. Benjamin Mitchell has some great notes from Omri's talk.

ADO.NET 2.0 - more “database independant“ and a DBProviderFactory pattern makes it even more clear.

WinFS - NTFS still has many good years under it (although a better defragmenter couldn't hurt) but WinFS adds a new world of Metadata to Documents and Settings. WinFS's System.Storage will let us query metadata on our content with SQL, OLEDB, COM, or managed APIs. It is truly the base of the pyramid.


Thanks to marvin for providing me certain defns.