It sounds like Microsoft's Consulting Services has extended  Mr.Walker's OR-LOS for Commercial Lending.  If you have the time (28 minutes) its worth a look but my overall impression is this could only be useful for a supper huge bank/lender that has the IT staff to pull it off otherwise its just overly complicated.  The question still remains how scalable and dependable this framework would be.

Video: Loan Origination Commercial Extension

Also according to Mr. Walker Microsoft will increase its participation with industry standards ( ie MISMO)

I found this query on Google Groups,

select sum(length) from syscolumns where id = object_id('Table Name')

Microsoft has announced that Expression Web is now available for all MSDN Premium subscribers.  Further more Expression Blend will be available shortly after the Expression Studio release.  Its been a long time coming but it's fantastic to see Microsoft change there mind based on our feed back.

You can find out more at

Scott Gu's blog or Somasegar's weblog ( who broke the news.)

I wanted to take a moment to point out my new favorite DotNet Function.  At VSLive in San Francisco I was introduced to System.IO.Path.Combine( path1, path2) as string.  I no longer have to deal with the logic of adding a trailing or leading slash when combing  file and directory locations.

I was taking a look at Scott Guthrie's Developing Data-Driven Web Applications using LINQ.  This is going to make life a little less dreary.

I like the second to the  last line results.Skip(startRow).Take(10);

If your in to "notepad" replacements TextPad is pretty good and as of March 6th 2007 they now have version 5.0 better yet is a free update for all 4.x users.

Download

Release Notes

BrokerUnivers reports

IBM Offering Origination Services

IBM has formed a new business unit that will specialize in mortgage origination services. IBM Lender Business Process Services Inc. "will enable mortgage lenders to replace the fixed costs associated with typical loan fulfillment operations with a variable cost framework," the company said. Services it will offer include loan application, underwriting, processing, vendor management, document preparation and loan closing, according to IBM.

This was just to funny.

Thanks Steve

BBC has a second article(Call for blogging code of conduct)regarding what has happened to Kate Sierra

Its premise is that some how the blogosphere can form a rules of conduct to prevent this type of behavior.  While I feel what has happened to Kate is horrible, it is a stark reminder that in the shadow of our civility lies a boiling cesspool of hatred and bigotry.  We may want to to solve a horrendous problem like this with community rules but at best we could prevent some blog service sites from displaying hate, or our rss feed reader from retrieving hate.  In the end all we would have done is hide the fact that hate exists.  Its only a solution as sweeping dust under your rug is a cleaning solution.  I don't have any magic bullet solutions.  All I can offer is that we live in a free society and we have to except hate speech and actively speak out against it.  We need to adopt a no tolerance attitude.  If some one crosses the line call the authorities (ie police).    If you get physical treats on your blog its not protected speech take action.  Otherwise the problem will stay in a corner and fester until some thing tragic happens.

If your interested Microsoft released " Office Business Applications" OBAs Their first target is a Reference Application Pack for Loan Origination Systems.

Thanks Mike now every one and their mother will think they can build an LOS and Wholesale system.

Video: Microsoft Loan Origination Reference Architecture

Building Distributed Applications

Architecting Regulatory-Compliant Architectures

Building Distributed Applications

Architecting Enterprise Loan Workflows and Orchestrations

Building Distributed Applications

Office Business Applications: Building Composite Applications Using the Microsoft Platform

MSDN Financial Services Industry Center