There is plenty of info out about Office 12 if you know where to look. You can subscribe to the beta program here. Arpan Shah's WebLog mentions the fact that SharePoint search will be able to search Business data, even in third party databases. He also mentions a few other features he likes. I would talk more about my own opinions, but I can`t, I am under an NDA!

The SharePoint Team Blog is definitely the place to look for intriguing hints. Jonathan Kauffman, Group Program Manager for SharePoint Portal Server mentions that item-level security and workflow will be included.

Look down the right hand side of that page to see who else in MS is blogging about SharePoint, they are all sharing good stuff.

He also mentions the first approaches to migration and upgrading I have seen out there. He also mentions support for other browsers, which is good news.

Another piece of good news, Mark Harrison has linked to a free promotion of Sybari Antivirus software for SharePoint available untill June 2006.

More cool free stuff, some really nice wree WSS themes from Infotech Canada.

The Admin Guide for SharePoint has been updated to include
using Windows SharePoint Services with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft Windows Server R2.

I will be speaking at SharePoint Connections April 2-5. This will be the first major SharePoint convention this year and will have lots of good SPS2003 and even some vNext information at it. Other SharePoint MVP speakers include Daniel Larson, Bil Simser, Brad Smith, Patrick Tisseghem and Scot Hillier.

I will be talking about best practices for configuring Search, how to create a good Taxonomy and how to Administer SharePoint effectively.

Oh, and the hotel is 15 minutes from Walt Disney World as well as having voted one of the best swimming pools in the USA on Tripadvisor :-) In case you needed further convincing...

Some more hints on the Project Server like features in SharePoint vNext here and here.

And another good tip from Mart Muller`s weblog is around restoring Documents.

The Quick Launch Web Part is also a great improvement on the default navigation in WSS.

Another big update! Version 3 of SharePoint will make 2006 a very busy year for us SharePointers. I hope I can keep on top of it all!