Hi

Hi everyone! My name is Michael Affronti and I'm a program manager on the Outlook team here at Microsoft. I've been an avid blogger for a few years already, and am now very excited to start a technically-focused blog on my work here in Outlook. I work on some very cool features in Outlook 12 and will use this blog to describe the what, why, and how we've implemented them the way they are. 

Here's a preview of what I work on and what I'll be blogging about...

Instant Search
Outlook 12 will see the advent of 'Instant Search', a totally new and wicked fast in-line searching system that let's you find your data in Outlook - wherever it is, instantly. 

RSS Aggregation
Being a blogger and RSS syndicator for several years, I welcomed the opportunity to build RSS aggregation in Outlook 12. Our "Just Like Mail" implementation is an exciting and innovative way of reading and managing your RSS information, and will allow deep integration into your daily information workflow.

Sharing Infrastructure
Outlook 12 will sport an entirely new way of bringing external data into Outlook: a piece of infrastructure known as the Outlook Sharing Engine. Our RSS, SharePoint, and WebCalendaring support are all built on top of this new engine and it allows us to implement these components easily and deeply into Outlook.

Looking Forward
I'll leave out what I want to eat for breakfast tomorrow. :) You can, however, expect some musings about the direction of the core technologies mentioned above in relation to the trends and influentials that are driving their adoption and use throughout the software industry.

Again, thanks for taking the time to read my blog. Subscribe to it (using Outlook 12 - you lucky Beta 1 users!) and provide feedback on what I post. Your comments are important and I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks!