
Microsoft Licensing is confusing at the best of times. If you've ever looked at their SharePoint 2007 licensing spreadsheet, then you'll understand what a headache really is. Fear not though, because Bamboo Solution's has come out with a tool that will help you figure out how much you will pay for SharePoint licensing before you have to talk to Microsoft themselves. And that may save you a bottle of aspirin.

Remember those guys who figured out how to hack Vista to allow you to run your SharePoint environment directly on the desktop and not within a vm? Well they are hanging out at Microsoft TECH-ED NORTH AMERICA 2008 this week and they have a product announcement that may interest many SharePoint developers.
It's called Bamboo MashPoint and it's a free data integration platform for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Note that important point -- it's for WSS3.0 which means you can start developing and integration enterprise applications into WSS without the need of MOSS and the Business Data Catalog.