At Tech Ed Europe next week, Microsoft will roll out the first official beta of Visual Studio 2005 ("Whidbey"). And the Redmondians also will take the wraps off new "Express" SKUs of its development tools that are tailor-made for hobbyists, programming newbies and students. Sounds to us like Microsoft is applying some of its learnings from its ASP.Net Web Matrix tool to its core Visual Studio line. At the same time, Microsoft's got some new tools on tap for getting more customer feedback into its dev-team's hands.