Microsoft has recently released the Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) Toolkit for SharePoint.  For those of you out there who are "knee deep" in SharePoint and are facing challenges around data integration with 3rd party portal platforms like BEA AquaLogic Portal, IBM WebSphere Portal, and SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal, then this toolkit is for you!

The toolkit provides sample code for producging WSRP conformant data from SharePoint lists and libraries.  In addition to the sample code, also included in the toolkit is a whitepaper that provides details on the different architectural approaches taken with the samples, as well as screencasts showing the samples in action.

Read the full announcement of the release over on the SharePoint Team Blog.

Click here to download the toolkit.

Quick Links

MSDN Site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd362339

Community Forum: http://codeplex.com/unity

Description:

The Patterns & Practices team has recently released a port of the Unity Application Block to Microsoft Silverlight 2.  This release includes the following capabilities and packaging:

• The single Microsoft.Practices.Unity.dll file in the Silverlight version contains all the classes from the three separate desktop DLLS: Microsoft.Practices.Unity.dll, Microsoft.Practices.ObjectBuilder2.dll, and Microsoft.Practices.Unity.StaticFactoryExtension.dll.  You only need to reference and deploy the one assembly in your Silverlight projects.
• Becase of the differences in the Silverlight security model, only public types can be created and injected by the container.  The desktop version allows you to also inject internal types.
• XML configuration is not supported.
• The Unity interception mechanism is not supported.

An updated quickstart is also included.

For those of you out in the blogsphere who is local to the Northern, VA area and has a startup business, or is contemplating building a new business around the delivery of business solutions, a co-worker of mine, Sanjay Jain, recently made an announcement of a great event, called the Dynamics CRM Incubation Week, that's being held at the Microsoft Technology Center in Reston VA (my old stomping grounds) from 12/15/2008 to 12/19/2008.  The event will cover the following:

• Learning how to build next generation business solutions on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform
• Getting entrepreneurs coaching from an industry panel of experts (to include VC and Angel Investors, Academic, Marketing)
• Generating marketing "buzz" and recognition for various Awards

This event is interesting in that its geared at empowering entrepreneurs to build successful businesses leveraging Microsoft as a key partner.

To get more details about this event, head on over to Sanjay's Blog or e-mail him directly to nominate your team.

To learn more about how Microsoft can help startups, head over to the Microsoft BizSpark website.