Microsoft Corp. has announced .NET Micro Framework Version 2.5 to provide developers and device-makers with support for Web Services on Devices compatible with the implementation built into Windows Vista and supported by the other Windows Embedded platforms. Devices can discover and communicate with Windows-based PCs or other devices on the network with no user configuration. Another enhancement is native Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) stack, plus options for network discovery and connectivity to smaller resource-constrained devices. .NET Micro Framework has more than 40 companies leveraging its porting kit license to build custom hardware designs. It is part of a Microsoft product incubation group to expand embedded offerings into smaller, more resourced-constrained devices based on low-cost 32-bit processors. http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/netmf Microsoft Corp.