Great tips for Microsoft Developers - on a side note, those who said .Net would never take off... dropped to 64% of people targeting Windows (of course, more people are targeting the Web):

.NET Survival Guide
Eight essential skills and technologies for Windows developers.
by Chris Kanaracus with RDN Staff

If you're a .NET developer today, the landscape has to be looking pretty murky. On the one hand, Microsoft's dominance has clearly eroded, thanks to key rivals whose market penetration has come at Redmond's expense, open source alternatives and the remarkable growth in the power and reach of Web-based programming.

A recent Evans Data Corp. survey validates the challenges facing the .NET community, revealing that the portion of developers targeting Windows continued to decline, to 64.8 percent this year from 74 percent in 2006.

Despite these shifts, .NET- and Windows-based development remains the dominant programming platform for user-facing clients, Web applications and business-critical systems. Microsoft Visual Studio (VS) is unrivaled among integrated development environments (IDEs), and is on track to grow even stronger when VS 2008 ships early next year.

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Rich Internet Applications | SOA and Web Services | Data-Driven Development
Dynamic Languages in Managed Code | Office Development Platform
Mad About Multi-Core | Development Testing | Web Development

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Technology	Urgency	Risk	Maturity	Recommendations
Rich Internet Applications (RIA)	High	Low	Moderate	Deploy
SOA and Web Services	High	High	Moderate	Study
Data-Driven Development	High	Moderate	Low	Study
Dynamic Languages	High	Low	Low	Study
Office Development	Moderate	Low	Moderate	Deploy
Multi-Core	Moderate	Moderate	Low	Study
Development Testing	Moderate	Low	Moderate	Deploy
Web Development	High	Low	Moderate	Study

Each of sections has a full explanation at Redmond Developer News | .NET Survival Guide

ttfn

David