Apple Rendezvous SDK for Windows
Apple has released a tech preview of their new Rendezvous SDK for Windows. Rendezvous is Apple's implementation of the Zeroconf protocol which enables auto-discovery of local network services without requiring any manual configuration by the user.
This is an extremely useful feature for roaming users and allows them to, for example, start their laptop in a new or unknown office and instantly see any local web sites and printers that are availble to them. Zeroconf can also help to simplify, or even eliminate altogether, the need for the networking configuration interfaces currently required by collaborative and/or ad-hoc networking applications such as realtime document sharing software and multiplayer games.
I've been watching the Zeroconf space in the hope that more Windows support for the protocol would materialize. Porchdog Software has had a Zeroconf stack called Howl available for quite some time now. Hopefully, based on Apple's recent commitment, we'll be seeing more Zerconf enabled Windows apps in the future.