Peter O'Kelly has two new articles (drafts, PDF): Smarter Documents, and Projecting InfoPath. Coverage in depth; well worth a read.

I've done a little SmartDocuments development, and don't find it easy to share his enthusiasm completely: the developer documentation is difficult to parse, and the experience wasn't a whole lot of fun. I do think the concept is powerful and important, and opens some fascinating possibilities - just a note of caution if you're thinking of diving in with both feet.

The potential of SmartDocuments is quite interesting, really. It appears to be part of a very broad "reclaim the desktop" strategy, where integration traditionally seen as "enterprise-scale" -- workflow, content management, legacy systems context -- becomes part of the Office experience, instead of stovepiped into separate desktop- or browser-based application interfaces. Which is a smart strategy, both in terms of an Office hegemony and enhanced user experience.