Craig seems to have some really interesting insights into the Visual Studio Shell architecture ... what we'll be able to do with it, and how we'll have to do it.
This is the main blog for following the development of the new Visual Studio Shell extensibility kit that lets you create apps within visual studio or as standalone apps with a visual studio ... shell ;-)
The kit includes drag 'n drop Controls and Components, SmartTags, VB.Net and C# source code for all tools and samples as well as complete QuickStarts, APIs, and documentation.