Vote for my MIX11 session

One of my favorite Microsoft conferences takes place every spring in Las Vegas, and this year I may have an opportunity to speak at MIX11. If you've never been to MIX and you are a web developer (particularly, a "Microsoft web developer"), then you're missing-out on a great conference experience. Personally, if I had to choose between Microsoft-run events, I'd pick MIX over TechEd and PDC almost every time. It's not as big as some events, but it's high-energy, focused, and a great place to talk about all things web and design.

This year, I have the distinct honor of getting a session in to the MIX11 Open Call. As MIX goes, this is your chance as attendees (both physical and online, alike) to vote for the sessions you want to see at this year's event. So, if you're interested (or even if you're not), I'd love to have your vote for my session:

Doing More with LESS for CSS

It's a cool CSS3 talk with lots of practical tips for managing the ballooning CSS rules modern browsers offer. Picked or not, I appreciate your support and can't wait to see some of you in Vegas this April!

[By the way, voting ends February 4th, so cast those votes today!]

Telerik @ MIX10

I know this week has been a flood of Q1 2010 news and bits, but there is no rest for the crazy. Next week in Las Vegas, Telerik will be there in full force at Microsoft’s MIX10! MIX is Microsoft’s premier conference for web developers (and designers), and this year promises to be full of excitement. Everyone expects lots of news around Silverlight 4, Windows Phone 7 Series, Silverlight on Windows Phone, Internet Explorer 9, and surprises that will be icing on the cake.

Telerik is a Silver Sponsor of MIX10 and we’ll be hanging-out in the new “Showcase” area in our Microsoft-supplied micro-booth. I’ll be there with a few people from the Telerik Silverlight product team, so if you have questions, want to see a demo, or just want to say hello, we’d love to meet you.

Finally, if you want a shot at some “spot prizes,” make sure you bring and wear your cool Telerik t-shirts. I’ll be keeping my eyes open, and if I spot you in a Telerik .NET Ninja or Geekette or other equally awesome Telerik cotton, I may present you with a valuable prize. It’ll be the easiest way to win in Vegas!

Oh! And, of course, I’ll do my best to “live-blog” from the MIX keynotes. It may be more of a “summary blog” now that MIX broadcasts everything to the web, but it’ll be your direct connection to all of the big news at MIX. See you in Vegas on Monday!

MIX09 Wrap-up

Well, folks, another MIX has come and gone, and in it's wake is a lot of new (public) info that will take weeks (if not longer) to digest. If you've been following Telerik Watch, then much of the news shouldn't been a surprise for you. I was 3-for-3 on my "MIX Predictions":

1. Silverlight 3.0 Beta (with H.264 and LOB support)
2. IE8 RTW
3. Azure updates

Clearly, there was a lot more news at MIX, and I encourage you to check-out my Day 1 Recap for all the details. There were some things conspicuously missing-in-action at MIX09, though. For instance, there were no updates on the Silverlight Mobile road map, the long delayed mobile version of Silverlight with .NET support (though I did get some updates from the MSFT PM that I'll share later). There was no pricing news for Azure. There was little talk or focus on the changes coming in .NET 4 (which puts its timetable in question). And there were no new VS2010 or Windows 7 news or public builds. Now, clearly, some of these items aren't exactly MIX "appropriate," but I think many people were hoping for new details on these topics. Guess we'll have to wait for TechEd in May for Microsoft's next chance to make some big public announcements. And when they do, I'll be there to bring you the news LIVE! View some pictures from MIX09

MIX09 Day 1 Recap

Day one at MIX09 is almost in the bag- "just" the open bar TAO Party to go- and in its wake is a flurry of new information (some of which wasn't even presented at MIX). So while you could spend the next several hours trying to comb the interwebs to get a complete picture, I, your humble .NET commentator, will try to bring you the highlights and save you some time. MIX09 Day 1 Highlights & Announcements

• Expression Web 3 (no release links)
  • New "SuperPreview" tool - compare a page rendering in multiple browsers (including IE6,7,8 and browsers that run on other OSs via "cloud services")
  • Stand-alone SuperPreview tool for IE testing only
• Expression Blend 3
  • Preview available today (required for SL3 work)
  • New SketchFlow tools (for rapid prototyping)
  • Stand-alone SketchFlow Viewer (for easy prototype sharing and annotation feedback)
  • Native support for importing (and editing) Photoshop/Illustrator illustrations
  • XAML, C#, VB IntelliSense
  • Support for Behaviors and live-data at design-time
• Silverlight 3
• Beta 1 available today
• TONS of news - too much for a quick recap, but some highlights:
• RIA Services, Fit Client ("out of browser") support, Offline APIs, GPU acceleration, H.264 support, multi-touch support, deep linking framework, ClearType support (not in beta- but coming), and much more
• Plugin size smaller than SL2 (despite all new stuff)
• Azure
• CTP updated
• Full Trust .NET support, support for PHP/FastCGI, Support for relational data storage (via SQL Data Services), support for Geo-Location services
• Commercial release on track for later this year
• ASP.NET MVC
• Official v1 released today
• ASP.NET AJAX 4 Preview 4
• New preview of ASP.NET AJAX futures available today
• Details on Betrand's blog
• More control over ViewState, distributed cache support coming (Velocity)
• Misc Microsoft Announcements
• Commerce Server 2009 release
• Web Platform Installer now available
• Windows Web App Gallery now live (app store for Windows Server)
• New plug-ins and services for IIS Media Streaming

There you go! Day one in re-cap. Clearly there are a ton more details not listed here, but hopefully this is enough to get you started. If I missed something major, let me know and I’ll update the post with more details. Stay tuned for Day Two coverage.

LIVE from MIX09 kick-off keynote

It's that time again. Time for another fun MIX live blog! Like last year, the music is already blaring- not Johnny Cash, though...this year we're going all hip with a DJ mixing-up the tracks- the lights are spinning, and people are streaming-in and taking their seats. I'm already locked and loaded, ready to bring you as much coverage as I can. So grab some coffee, get comfortable in your cube, and then get ready to give your F5 key a workout. We'll get things started soon! 8:41 AM: DJ tunes still going. DJ welcomed the audience and forgot what time and day it is today- clearly not a morning person. All tweets with #mix09 are streaming across one of the huge screens, too. Here's your chance to be part of the fun...8:54 AM: Music, music, music...people are still pouring-in, but room is definitely getting full. Things should get started in about 5 minutes. In the meantime, bookmark http://visitmix.com/2009 to find all videos from MIX. 9:01 AM: No action yet. Looks like things will be starting a little late this morning.

9:03 AM: Here we go! Lights down. Bill Buxton, MSFT Research, taking the stage.

Continue reading LIVE coverage of MIX keynote

9:04 AM: Talking about how now is a good time to be focused on “experience [design].” Trying to make the case that it’s still a good time to invest in design in a down economy. I think you don’t have to do much to convince this audience, dude…

9:07 AM: Bill is giving us a history lesson now. Showing us great designers through history (such as Walter Teague from Kodak in 1926). Showing us guys that started companies around the time of the Great Depression. His key “one liner” is: Return on Experience.

9:09 AM: Interesting way to start MIX. All talk is about industrial design. Definitely showing more love to designers this year than last year. Looks like developers will need to wait a bit for the interesting news…

9:12 AM: Bill just claimed that at least half of this MIX audience is from the design background and that less than half are developers. Guess that’s why we’re still talking industrial design…

9:15 AM: “Our job is not to answer questions. Our job is to ask the right question to get to the right question to ask the questions that deliver the answer.” I see…

9:19 AM: “What do Canada and transitions have in common? They’re both dominated by the states!” If you didn’t guess from Bill’s joke, we’re talking about diagramming state transitions now.

9:22 AM: Ah! Finally some Microsoft news. Bill is finally going to share some details about how MSFT is addressing this idea of supporting UX design.

9:24 AM: Bill just threw in the towel for the Zune. “It’s not about the device. It’s about the software.” Clearly MSFT is shifting back to the idea of the “platform” vs. the device. No “official” news, though, just a clear directional statement from Bill.

9:28 AM: Bill has really spent 30 minutes talking nothing about MSFT. Leaving the stage now. A quick video and then ScottGu takes the stage. Very funny video! Hopefully this will be online soon.

9:31 AM: Scott is on stage and it’s finally time to talk tools! He’s going to cover three categories: Standards-based web, RIA, and something else. First-up, talk about standards-based web tools and tech.

9:32 AM: Expression Web 3. Exciting new feature is called “SuperPreview.” Supposed to help you design CSS that works cross-browser. Erik Saltwell, GPM from MSFT, on stage to demo the new feature.

9:33 AM: Erik is using Expression Web. SuperPreview makes it possible to basically use any browser rendering engine in Web (even side-by-side and overlay modes). Enables you to quickly compare a page in different browsers to look for visual discrepancies. SuperPreview can use cloud services to provide browser renderings even if you don’t have the browser installed on your PC! That includes previews from Safari on a Mac on your PC.

9:37 AM: Very cool demo. You can now actually test IE6/7/8 on the same machine without VMs. They’re going to make a standalone version of SuperPreview available for FREE today. Download the beta and check it out!

9:38 AM: Back to Scott. Now talking ASP.NET MVC.

9:39 AM: As expected, just announced ASP.NET MVC is shipping in v1 today. Now on to talking ASPNET v4 and VS2010.

9:40 AM: First ASPNET. Talking about what’s coming new in ASPNET 4 timeline. More control over ViewState, an update release for MVC, new AJAX features (client-side templates), and distributed caching (a.k.a. Velocity).

9:41 AM: Now VS2010. Code improvements, improved JavaScript support, SharePoint editing support, support for multiple web.config files (Test, Staging, Prod, etc.). No news here. Now on to talking IIS7.

9:43 AM: Shipping 8 new extensions for IIS7 this week, including tools for publishing to IIS from VS, new secure FTP tool, new WebDAV tools, etc. No details, though. Scott’s already moving on to talk about the MSFT Web Platform Installer (the unified installer for MSFT products). Version 2 ships today. Available at Microsoft.com/Web.

9:44 AM: Launching Web App Gallery. Will feature free .NET and PHP apps that you can run on Windows Server. Demo time…

9:46 AM: Somebody (sorry no name on screen) is on stage demoing the Web PI (Platform Installer). Yeah…demoing an installer…

9:48 AM: Cool thing is that the installer does allow you to directly install apps- “An App Store for the Web Server.” Install things like DNN or WordPress. Web PI will handle installing all dependencies- including PHP if necessary.

9:50 AM: Anybody can get their app listed in the App Gallery (and thus the Web PI). Criteria online. You host the code- Gallery just points to it. You tell Gallery the dependencies, though, and it handles providing those.

9:51 AM: Announcing Commerce Server 2009. And that’s it. One slide. Now on to Azure.

9:52 AM: Azure Announcements:Supporting PHP/FastCGI, Support .NET Full Trust, Supporting relational databases (via SQL Data Services), New .NET services you can use in Azure apps. Commercial release later this year.

9:53 AM: Scott’s now moved-on to talk about BizSpark (the free software program for start-ups launched last year). I think his time is running-out ‘cuz he’s moving quickly. Wrapping-up by brining on-stage Jeff Attword and Joel Spolsky to talk about Stackoverflow.com.

9:56 AM: Jeff and Joel are just giving an overview of SO, the process for building it, the current traffic they’re serving (it’s all running on 2 servers), etc. Sorta a plug for MVC, too. Just a site overview. Annnd, now the plug for BizSpark.

10:01 AM: Jeff and Joel are wrapping-up the infomercial and Gu is back on stage to talk Silverlight.

10:02 AM: Silverlight 3. Today MSFT is releasing new versions of World Wide Telescope and a new Virtual Earth SDK. Highlighting the “10,000s” of apps world wide built using Silverlight. Inviting Kevin McEntee, VP Web Engineering, from Netflix on stage to talk about Netflix’s success with Silverlight.

10:05 AM: Talking about why Netflix picked Silverlight. Wanted to support Macs. Wanted to support FireFox. Wanted to remove installer experience. Wanted a single player for all users. Highlighting SL features Netflix uses: adaptive streaming support, built-in DRM, etc.

10:09 AM: Kevin says Netflix is “shipping” a new version of their Silverlight video player every 2 weeks since no installer is required. Interesting…

10:10 AM: Netflix is eager to use new GPU support for scaling and stretching video in Silverlight 3. “Netflix loves Silverlight.” Quick demo of the player and now Scott is back.

10:13 AM: Silverlight 3 media Announcements: GPU hardware acceleration, Codec support for H.264, AAC, and MPEG-4, Raw bitstream Audio/Video API (build your own codecs), and improved logging support for media analytics. New product: IIS Media Services. Free. Designed to help you deliver the highest possible quality video at lowest TCO.

10:16 AM: Scott is now demoing the new IIS Media Services and Expression Encoder. Very cool production workflow for video. Smooth streaming and adaptive bit-rates are very impressive. Support for live video now also includes “Tivo-like” abilities to pause, seek back, etc.

10:21 AM: Scott is now inviting Perkins Miller, Sr. VP Digital Media at NBC Sports, on stage to talk about the NBC experience using Silverlight to broadcast the Olympics. Announcing renewal of Silverlight platform for 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics- will be broadcast in full HD (720p) with Tivo-like features.

10:27 AM: Scott’s back. Done with media. Now time to talk RIAs.

10:28 AM: Silverlight 3 RIA Announcements; GPU acceleration, perspective 3D, bitmap & pixel API, Pixel shader effects, Deep Zoom improvements. Time for demos. Scott is showing “gratuitous” effects demo with Silverlight.

10:30 AM: App Dev with SL3: Deep linking, navigation, SEO will be addressed (support all major search engines), Improved text quality (ClearType), multi-touch support, 100+ controls available, library caching support (supposedly for any DLL).

10:33 AM: Demo time. David Anthony, Co-Founder Bondi, and Scott Stanfield, CEO Vertigo, on stage to demo some Silverlight 3 features in a new app built for Bondi (who is in the business of making back issues of magazines available).

10:37 AM: This demo is the new “Hard Rock” demo for Silverlight. It’s a more functional Deep Zoom powered Silverlight demo. Not sure if it will be publically available. Definitely cool for showing-off more media/SL3 capabilities. Looks like covertocover.com will be the spot to find this.

10:40 AM: Oh man- playboyarchive.com launches tonight with 40 free back issues of the magazine running (I assume) on a platform similar to what was demoed today. Have fun with that…

10:41 AM: Blend 3 Announcements: SketchFlow, Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator import, Behaviors, Designing with data, Source code control, XAML,C#, and VB code intellisense (finally!).

10:43 AM: Jon Harris from MSFT is on stage to demo new features in Blend 3. Starting with SketchFlow. Enables you to build “flow of an application” in Blend. Enables you to add “Wiggly Controls” to page (very prototype looking).

10:47 AM: A SketchFlow player enables you to share your prototypes with clients. Free player- doesn’t require Blend. Makes it easy to build a prototype in Blend and then share (with animated transitions). Easy feedback, too. Users can directly annotate on screens and then send feedback to Blend user who can load and view feedback.

10:50 AM: People LOVE the new ability in Blend to export a SketchFlow to Word Document (for quick documentation of application design). Loudest applause so far.

10:51 AM: Showing Behaviors in Blend 3. Enables you to add action to controls without writing any code. Next, showing direct support for importing Photoshop and Illustrator files. Enables you to import specific layers, merge layers, etc. Layers remain editable in Blend. Showing live data binding abilities in Blend 3 designer.

10:58 AM: Wrapping-up the SketchFlow/Expression Blend 3 demo. His one-liner: “Expression Blend 3: From concept to completion.” Scott is back on stage.

10:59 AM: Data Improvements in SL3: Data-binding improvements, validation error templates, server data push improvements, binary XML networking support, Multi-Tier REST data support (aka RIA Services aka Alexandria). Demo time.

11:01 AM: Scott is demoing data features in SL3. Using Entity Framework for DAL. Creating DomainServices class in server project (auto-syncs with SL project). Running demo- BUILD ERROR! :) Quick recovery though and everybody a good laugh. Showing grouping in new default SL DataGrid, Binding via proxy object, etc. See older Alexandria demos to understand what’s being demoed today.

11:06 AM: Demo’s done. New announcement: SAP NetWeaver Silverlight support coming this year.

11:07 AM: Silverlight running outside the browser! SL3 includes native Fit Client support. Can run SL3 apps out of browser on Windows and Mac. Safe, secure, sandboxed environment. Built-in auto update support. Build offline-aware apps (detect if network is available). Integrate with underlying OS (hardware acceleration, multi-touch, etc.).

11:10 AM: Demo of SL3 out of browser. Tom Mara from KEXP (90.3 FM Seattle) is on stage to talk about how KEXP used SL3 to build a KEXP player. The SL3 out of browser install has a single install prompt- allows user to tell installer to add Desktop and/or Start Menu short cuts.

11:15 AM: SL3 runs in a standard Windows window shell (or Mac window shell on OSX). Apps look the same on Win and Mac. Apps fire event when network connectivity lost so you can handle changes to connectivity. Runs completely out of browser process, but does operate in browser security sandbox.

11:18 AM: Demo is done. Scott’s back to wrap-up SL3 talk. Going to tell us how all of the new features in SL3 impact its download size. New SL3 download size: 40KB smaller than SL2!

11:20 AM: SL3 schedule. SL3 beta available today. Expression Blend 3, SL3 tools for VS 20008, IIS Media Services all available today, too.

11:21 AM: And that’s it! Scott has left the stage and it’s now on to the breakout sessions. Hope you enjoyed the live coverage. Watch for more as the week goes on.

Telerik @ MIX09

Do you know what's happening this week? MIX09! And Telerik is here in full-force to participate in the fun. If you haven't been following the rumors leading-up to MIX, let me quickly catch you up on what's expected to be the big focus of the week in Vegas:

1. First and foremost, everyone expects this to be the Silverlight 3.0 conference. Last year was the Silverlight 2.0 conference, so it only makes sense that MIX09 will be the follow-up performance. And when it comes to SL3, everyone seems to think H.264 support + improved LOB support will be the main focus.
2. There is also some chatter that MIX09 will bring the official release of IE8. It's been sitting in Beta 2 for quite some time now, so MIX seems as good a place as any to finally release it.
3. Finally, there is a bit of hope that MIX09 will bring more details about the plans for Azure. Microsoft introduced Azure in last year's OzzNote, so maybe he'll have an update this year.

As usual, I will try to bring you LIVE keynote coverage on Telerik Watch, so if you can't tune-in to the MIX video, keep your browsers locked here with finger over F5. I'll do my best bring you the hottest news from MIX in near real-time. Finally, if you're going to be at MIX09, too, we'd love to meet-up! Just drop me a line and we'll find a fun place in Vegas (are there any of those?) to meet and talk Telerik, Silverlight, and all things MIX. Stay tuned- much more MIX news to follow this week.

Wrapping-up MIX 08

It's really hard to believe it's already Friday and MIX 08 (for me, anyways) has come and gone. It has been a fun week- lots of fun people here to hang out with, lots of fun information being delivered from Microsoft- and it's been an exhausting week. Hopefully you enjoyed some of my live coverage of the keynotes and are taking advantage of the recorded MIX sessions to catch-up on everything else. Now that the week is wrapping-up, though, it's time to reflect on the news and the conversations and start trying to make sense of all the info. This process will probably take some time, so expect posts in the coming weeks to delve in to this topic in more detail as I start to connect the lines between MIX news and Telerik's plans (this is Telerik Watch after all).

Until then, I'll leave you with my general impression of MIX 08. Actually, it's very easy to sum-up MIX 08: Silverlight 2.0. The beta shipped. The big partners (AOL, Olympics, Astin Martin, Hard Rock) showed demos of sites soon to go live. Ballmer even mentioned his excitement for Silverlight in his keynote/interview. While other big news was announced- IE 8, WPF performance pack, a little MVC- Silverlight handily dominated most conversations and a lot of the sessions. There is no question that this is the year of Silverlight and I expect by the end of the year we'll start seeing many web apps running on this sophomore platform.

What does that mean for Telerik? We'll see. The better question is what does this Silverlight news mean to you? Telerik has always been in the business of building the tools you need and want, so make sure you start talking to us loud and clear so that we make the right plans. And with that, I'm off to the airport to catch my 1 AM flight back to Texas and I'll talk to you all next week!

LIVE from MIX 08 Ballmernote

After a hard night of MIX partying it's time to shake-off the hangovers and get ready for the MIX 08 Ballmernote (that's the Steve Ballmer Keynote for the uninitiated). Today's keynote is comparatively short to yesterday's two and a half hour thriller, but hopefully Steve Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki will bring something new and interesting during their hour "Q&A." Like yesterday's event, you can catch all the action live via the online stream, so this post is for those of you that can't watch the stream at work or those of you that prefer not to listen to Steve Ballmer talk for an hour. And with that, on to the live coverage...

12:52 PM: We're all settled in and enjoying the live Johnny Cash performer again (just learned it's Vince Mira). We're about 30 feet from the chairs where Steve and Guy will be talking, so we've got pretty good front row seats again. Things should get started in about 8 minutes.

1:00 PM: Not running early like yesterday, but we did get the 5 minute warning a few minutes ago. Vince is playing his lost song ("The Rock Island Line") now... MIX guys just told us Vince is only 15! That's incredible.

1:04 PM: MIX 09 dates announced: March 18 - 20 at The Venetian again.

1:06 PM: Steve and Guy taking the stage and their chairs. We're on our way. Things are starting weird. Guy (in jest) suggested that Steve didn't hire him back in the day becuase of race...err...

1:07 PM: Guy: "Steve, why do you want to buy Yahoo?" Really?! That's the first question. Answer: Advertising on the Internet is the big thing and the next super big thing. Search is the killer online app for advertising. Steve says Yahoo! can accelerate Microsoft's search/ad business.

1:10 PM: Guy told Steve not to throw any chairs at him or to go monkey on him. Priceless. Question 2: "What about Google?" These questions are really putting Ballmer on the spot. Ballmer reiterates that online advertising is key and the next super big thing and that's why MS wants a bigger piece of the pie.

1:12 PM: Ballmer says Google is nowhere in desktop competition. MS is nowhere (more or less) in online competition. Ballmer pledging to fight to his last breath to make MS successful online. Agrees that MS is the underdog online.

1:13 PM: Ballmer just barked. Literally. It was in response to being asked by Guy if Ballmer thought Apple was a little dog MS just ignores. Ballmer said Apple does a good job, wasn't too harsh on Apple.

1:14 PM: Facebook. More talk about how it plays in to MS' desire to have more online advertising.

1:18 PM: What drives Ballmer? He loves what Microsoft does. Loves Silverlight. Thinks they're at the forefront of changing the world. He love working with Microsoft's customers. Thinks there is a lot of energy in the software industry. Finally, he enjoys challenge and thinks software industry provides a lot of competitive challenges.

1:20 PM: What does Ballmer do during the day? Three kinds of days: 1) Out all day, flying around, meeting customers. He finds it energizing. 2) Doctor in office day. Meetings all day, back-to-back, exhausting. 3) Think and research days. Time to write, research, think. Only gets 60 to 70 pieces of email a day! Really. No assistants filtering. Guy is shocked, can't believe it.

1:23 PM: Time to talk about Bill and his exit. Ballmer says he's not sure what a "part-time" Bill looks like. Says most great innovations at MS don't come from Bill, come from people in Microsoft. Building case for the fact that Bill is not what keeps MS moving.

1:25 PM: Now talking recruiting. How do you recruit young people to Microsoft? Ballmer says recruiting hasn't changed much despite new companies like Google and Facebook. Says they go after people that are very talented and interested in changing the world. Ballmer reminded Guy that most startups do fail. Ouch.

1:27 PM: Guy tells Ballmer Microsoft needs to do a better job of informing young people that Microsoft makes cool products like Xbox and Halo. Steve says the goal is to just keep outputting outstanding products. Says he wants all Microsoft users (1 billion+) to be as passionate users in the Xbox Live community.

1:30 PM: Silverlight talk. Ballmer's turn to talk about the plans for Silverlight. Says that Silverlight is trying to eliminate the compromises developers have to make when choosing between desktop and web development. Quotes the 1.5 million downloads per day stat. Claims WPF is on a "high number" of desktops.

1:32 PM: What's the deal with Vista? Steve disagrees there is an issue. Calls it the second most popular operating system in history. Guys are sidetracked by Guy's MacBook Air. Steve is on the ground looking for the DVD drive in the Air. Funny. Finishes by saying is Tosh is lighter and more powerful than the Air.

1:35 PM: Talking about how Microsoft will stay relevant in future. And we're back to Vista. Guy's not letting this go. Ballmer talking more seriously now about how Vista is better than XP and conceding that they made some choices that hurt compatibility. Overall, thinks Vista complaints are just from a few vocal people.

1:38 PM: Now we're talking Firefox and IE. Ballmer mentions that IE still has lions share of browser market share. Says we should expect a lot of browser innovation from Microsoft. Says it is a core focus for Microsoft. Guy asks where IE for Mac is. Ballmer says it's not a high priority focus- in other words, they ain't goin' there again anytime soon.

1:40 PM: Social networking. What does Ballmer thing of it? Steve doesn't think social networking is a fad. Thinks it is a fundamental change in how people communicate. Doesn't think any one company or product can "perfect" social networking. Thinks continual investment in social networking is key to remain relevant. Views Xbox Live, MSN Communities, and other MS platforms as their push in social networking.

1:42 PM: Guy says Microsoft of today is a different Microsoft. Calls it the "new Microsoft." Giving Steve a rare moment of praise. Says MS has really improved image in Silicon Valley by opening offices there.

1:43 PM: Time for questions from the floor.

1:44 PM: What about Adobe? Ballmer says they're clearly competing on the Silverlight/Flash front, but generally they plan to continue to support and work with Adobe as a Windows ISV.

1:45 PM: Someone wants to know why IE wasn't developed with .NET. Ballmer basically saying IE got lost in the plans for Longhorn whereas .NET had its own development path that wasn't bogged down by the OS. Says they've learned from their past and plan to do better decoupling browser from OS and delivering faster updates.

1:47 PM: A Yahoo! question. What will happen to the PHP apps? Ballmer says clearly some apps will have to be killed. Doesn't make sense to have two of everything. Some will come from Yahoo!, some from Microsoft. Popular apps that are in PHP will probably stay that way for a while. Says he's fine with Microsoft being a PHP shop and a .NET shop. Wants Windows Server to be the best place for running PHP apps in the future.

1:49 PM: Another Yahoo! question. What are the synergies between MS and Yahoo? Ballmer says scale is key in online advertising and search. Gives lip service to the talent at Yahoo!, but clearly the main synergy is the scale factor that a combined Yahoo! and MS would have.

1:51 PM: A Fast Search question. How does the acquisition impact Microsoft's plans? Ballmer says he likes the tech a lot and the company. Can't say much because AQ isn't done, but it sounds like Fast will end-up mostly in Enterprise environments.

1:52 PM: Next is a question about severs and ability to use Windows to compute in the cloud. HUGE allusion to a forth coming announcement about some new Windows cloud support, but won't say anything today.

1:55 PM: Will there be Silverlight on the iPhone? Says there has been a lot of talk about it internally but Apple is not particularly welcome to the idea. Steve doesn't think Apple's approach of charging developers to run apps on the iPhone is a good business model and doubts it will be very popular.

1:57 PM: Another Silverlight question. When will Microsoft start using it more for there own apps? Ballmer says that we'll start seeing it used in coming months, years even. Says it only makes sense to move apps to Silverlight when new versions are introduced. All apps that "make sense" will eventually be running on Silverlight. Live Messenger, Hotmail, etc.

1:58 PM: Healthcare question. Don't think this one will interest many people. Ballmer is excited to talk about how Microsoft will embrace and support the medical industry, but...whatever.

2:00 PM: Bluray question. Will it come to the Xbox? What are MS' plans for bluray? Ballmer says MS will support it in Windows (obviously) and says the world just moves on. Will support bluray in ways that make sense. Ballmer supports the MS conspiracy theory that MS wants download movies to win by saying in 5 years discs may not matter at all.

2:03 PM: We get a little audience requested monkey boy. Web developers, web developers, web developers! Video captured and will share it later.

2:04 PM: Calls social networking in young stage in Enterprise. Not much interesting on this question.

2:05 PM: How will MS move past Dream Spark to support students with infrastructure? More allusions to a Microsoft cloud service for hosting applications. No announcement today, but it's pretty clear some announcement is coming soon.

2:06 PM: iPhone again. How does Microsoft react to Apple's licensing of ActiveSync for the iPhone to deliver Exchange support? Ballmer dismisses it as just another licensing deal. Thinks it makes Exchange more valuable.

2:07 PM: Last question. How will Microsoft work with Ave8 Razor Fish (advertising firm)? Ballmer says it's a hands-off ownership approach.

2:10 PM: That's it. They've left the stage and we're on to more sessions!

MIX 08 Keynote Recap

Day one of MIX 08 is almost in the can and in its wake are a number of announcements from Microsoft. Many of the announcements were simple formalities, confirming what everyone largely knew and expected to become "official" news at MIX. Others were a little more surprising, even for Microsoft insiders like Telerik. You can find many of the announcements in my complete live coverage of today's keynote, but if you're looking for the Reader's Digest version, here is a short summary of what was announced:

• SQL Server Data Services beta launched today (think Microsoft's version of Amazon S3 data service)
• IE 8 Beta 1 available today
• OpenService protocol going to be open sourced (used by IE Activities)
  
• IE 8 WebSlices protocol going to be open sourced
• Silverlight 2 beta 1 available today (non-commercial go-live license)
  
• Microsoft partnering with Move Networks to offer Adaptive Streaming in Silverlight
• Silverlight Advertising Templates shipping with beta (wizard for making ads with Silverlight)
• Microsoft partnering with DoubleClick to enable DC ads in Silverlight (due in Q2)
  
• All built-in Silverlight controls from MS will be released as open source tools with license allowing modification and resale!
• Silverlight 2 Testing Framework shipping with beta
• Deep Zoom (SeaDragon) being included in Silverlight 2 (called it)
• Deep Zoom Composer preview also available today
• WPF "service pack" announced - due this summer
• Silverlight for Nokia S60, S40, and Internet Tablet announced
• ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 available today
  

As you can tell by the length of this list, there were a lot of announcements packed-in to the two and a half hour keynote this morning. I think the Silverlight 2 and IE 8 betas were the most predictable (and very welcome) announcements, while the Nokia and DoubleClick partnerships were the most surprising. What did you think of Microsoft's announcements? Did they leave anything out that you were hoping to see or have they made you even more excited about Silverlight 2?

There's still one more keynote to go- the Ballmernote tomorrow at 1:00 PM. I'll try to provide some "live" blog coverage again for those that don't have access to the video feeds, and hopefully MS has saved some juicy secret for Ballmer to reveal at tomorrow's event. Surely Microsoft wouldn't send their CEO out on stage without anything exciting to announce at MIX! Would they?

LIVE from the MIX 08 Keynote

The time has arrived. MIX 08 is officially about to get underway with the big Scott Guthrie keynote starting in 20 minutes. I'm all settled-in with front row seats to the action and prepared to bring you "live" updates from the keynote as the big nws is unveiled. Now, of course, I realize that a "live" update blog is not really necessary when a live streaming feed is also available, so think of this as more of my live notes from the keynote. When the dust settles, this post will be among the first outlining the news Microsoft delivers this morning.

So with that, open this page in a browser window on the back of your desktop (you are working this morning, aren't you?) and stay tuned for updates once the speakers take the stage.

9:20 AM: People are still filing in while we're being entertained by a Vegas-style Johnny Cash performer. Definitely a unique way to do pre-keynote music. It's actually nice to hear something different from the "traditional" high-energy keynote warm-up music.

9:22 AM: Official 5-minute warning just sounded. Guess things are going to start a little early...

9:28 AM: And we're on our way. Ray Ozzie is taking the stage...

9:29 AM: Ray is running down all of the things that MS has shipped in the last year (an impressively long list). Confirmed that IE8 and Silverlight 2 are big focuses today. Calling MIX a major "launch milestone." Is going to spend time giving us the "big picture" that guides Microsoft's plans.

9:33 AM: Saying advertising will be primary way to make money on web for Microsoft and all web developers in the future. Basically said that the reason MS wants Yahoo! is to buy their users to drive their ad business.

9:40 AM: Ray says "transparency, standards, and interoperability are key" for all future MS development. Talking about building interactive UIs that work on multiple platforms. Going to start talking specifics about Microsoft's 5 key "connected" platforms, starting with "Connected Devices."

9:46 AM: Introducing something soon that will make it easy to manage all devices in a "connected device mesh". Ray's alluding to some announcement about a new connected platform for devices that may get revealed later today or maybe at tomorrow's keynote. Covered "Connected Entertainment" and now talking "Connected Productivity."

9:50 AM: Talking about "Connected Business." Mentioned Exchange Online and SharePoint Online, both available in open beta this week. Just announced "SQL Data Services Online" that will provide developers SQL Data support in "the cloud."

9:52 AM: Ray's finishing-up. Is going to let ScottGu talk about "Connected Development" next. Nothing too surprising from Ray. Let's see what Scott brings...

9:53 AM: Scott is introduced and said to be bringing some "great surprises." Slide deck indicates the agenda will be Web, Meida, RIA, and Mobile. Mobile Silverlight?

9:56 AM: Dean Hachamovitch, IE Team Lead, just took stage to introduce IE 8. Going to show-off IE 8 for first time and talk about IE8 road map.

9:59 AM: Eight topics Dean's going to cover: CSS 2.1, CSS Certification, Performance, HTML 5 support start, Developer Tools, Activities (integrate with the web), WebSlices, and one blank serect.

10:01 AM: IE 8 demo time. Showed IE 8 rendering a page that renders correct in FireFox and Safari that didn't render in IE 7. Yay...IE 8 renders correctly. Interesting observation: IE 8 seems to be "graying out" the "http://www" prefix for URLs in the address bar. In fact, it's graying out everything but the primary domain name. Interesting end user feature.

10:06 AM: IE 8 supporting HTML 5 hash functionality. Fixes Ajax back button problems at the browser level. Very cool! No more Ajax back button hacks (I wish...). Supporting HTML 5 connection events, DOM storage. Going to enable very interesting offline scenarios.

10:10 AM: New developer tools built-in to IE 8. Script debugging added. Looks just like VS debugger tools (Add Watch, Immediate Window, etc.). CSS tools to analyze how rules are applied to elements on page. Cool new "Trace Styles" tab helps you figure out what rule is being applied to element by examining CSS properties. It's FireBug+ for IE.

10:12 AM: Interesting new "Activity" context menu shows-up when text is highlighted in browser (similar to Office 2007 formatting). Developers can use by simply writing some XML. The OpenService Specification that powers feature being made Open Source by MS today.

10:14 AM: WebSlices are like Apple's web snippets (forget the name): select some part of a web page and bookmark the part. Going to be based on a standard Microsoft is making Open Source.

10:17 AM: IE 8 Beta 1 available today after the keynote! That's the "big secret." As if we didn't know...Now Scott's back on the stage to talk about Silverlight.

10:22 AM: Silverlight plug-in deployment at 1.5+ million installations per day. Seems to be good adoption speed. Announcing right off the bat, too, that Silverlight 2 beta 1 is available today for download.

10:28 AM: Silverlight 2 Media first topic. Silverlight going to provide "Adaptive Streaming" to make video experience better. Will automatically adjust bitrate of video based on CPU usage and changing network bandwidth. Can dynamically change as video is playing to deliver best bitrate possible based on resources. Move Networks partnering with Microsoft to provide Move's adaptive streaming tech in Silverlight.

Talking TCO for hosting media with Windows Media Services. Not particularly interesting to me, but looks to have some cool features to help save money if you're hosting video directly.

10:30 AM: Jon Harris is now on stage to demo how Silverlight supports rich advertising. New Silverlight Advertising Templates being provided to make it easy to create Silverlight-based ads. Think a wizard for creating Silverlight versions of all the Flash ads you've seen and been annoyed by on the web. Does provide cool boilerplate code for animating ad and tracking click-throughs.

Showing new Atlas AdManager (not sure where this came from, he's moving fast) that helps automatically track the performance of the Silverlight ad. Silverlight ads have the ability to track how much of a video has been watch for more detailed reporting. Cool.

Playlists in IIS 7 make it easy to insert ads in-front of Silverlight video. For overlay advertising on Silverlight video, Encoder 2 provides visual tools that enable you to add timed overlays. Cool factor is that overlays can be pure XAML with animations.

10:40 AM: Scott's back on stage to next...introduce Ari Paparo, VP Advertiser Products at DoubleClick. Going to talk about how you can integrate DoubleClick ads in Silverlight. Announcing official support for DoubleClick InStream ad platform in Silverlight 2. Very comprehensive API that enables developers to take a lot of control over how ads are displayed and how to handle user interactions with ads. DoubleClick integration will be available in Q2- not right now.

10:46 AM: And Scott's back on stage to...introduce yet another guest, Perkins Miller, Sr. VP Digital Media at NBC Sports & Olympics. Going to show-off for the first time the 2008 Olympics site and how Silverlight is being used.

Very cool level of interactive data being pumped over the 2,200 hours of live Olympic coverage using Silverlight. Even though the stream is live, you'll still be able to rewind! PIP support demoed! You'll be able to watch one live feed and then pick another feed for PIP display. I don't think I've seen anything like this done with Flash video...

10:55 AM: And Scott's back again, this time to stay to talk about Silverlight 2 RIA. Silverlight 2 has full WPF UI Framework, data binding support, rich styling/skinning system, robust networking stack (w/ cross-domain networking), integrated data support (LINQ, local storage, high performance, and all in small 4.3 MB download.

10:58 AM: Built-in controls like Slider, Calendar, DataPicker, DataGrid being provided in Silverlight 2 beta 1. BIG NEWS: All controls being shipped are being shipped Open Source! Can be used, adapated, resold, all for free. Also shipping a new Silverlight 2 test framework today to make it easier to do TDD with Silverlight.

Shipping VS and Expression designer support, but clearly Blend is the recommended tool for styling/designing Silverlight applications/controls.

DEMO TIME: Showing off a couple of Silverlight 2 apps, starting with new Silverlight-based mail client from AOL.

11:05 AM: AOL takes the stage. Saying they picked Silverlight for performance over their current Ajax/DHTML version. Using local storage for intelligent caching- 2x - 3x faster than current Ajax version. Taking advantage of template control system to provide customization- basically entire app can be easily re-skinned in Silverlight 2.0.

11:10 AM: Next up, a new user experience called Deep Zoom (based on Sea Dragon). HardRock is the demo client for this feature.

Showing how Deep Zoom can be used to expose Hard Rock's media collection online (http://memorabilia.hardrock.com). 2 billion pixels of data being "displayed" and then zoomed and panned smooth as butter.

Scott says shipping today is a tools package that will allow you to select images and build the necessary image tiles required to support Deep Zoom. Deep Zoom browsing support built-in to Silverlight 2.

11:18 AM: And yet another guest, Mark Reichman, Design Director for Aston Martin. He's taking the stage to show-off a new Aston Martin site based on Silverlight. Showing a browsable 3D model of an Aston Martin on the homepage. Using Deep Zoom to provide detailed look of car. Seems to be a full site based on Silverlight 2 and it's supposed to go live this week.

11:25 AM: Scott's back. Announcing SharePoint extensions that enable Silverlight to be embedded in Web Parts. That should be helpful. Transitioning now from showing-off B2C apps to LOB apps. Another guest...Krista Monson from Cirque du Soleil, Head of Casting.

11:30 AM: Krista talking about Cirque du Soleil's need to maintain a huge database of potential performers. Showing-off a WPF based app that helps collect performer data in the field. Now Krista has walked to a Mac and she is showing an application that looks a lot like the WPF version is Silverlight (in Safari).

11:36 AM: Talking about improvements coming to WPF later this year. Showing graphics improvements that are impressive and well tuned for performance. Stressing the hardware acceleration WPF provides that helps you keep CPU time low for very complex media effects. Updates to WPF will come in a service pack later this summer.

11:40 AM: Time to talk mobile!

11:42 AM: Darren David, CEO of Stimulant, on stage to show off MIXr, a mobile social networking application. Going to show how Silverlight can be used on his Windows Mobile phone (demoing on a HTC Touch, for the record). Very iPhone-esque user experience. Cool application, though the real power of this demo would be to see how it was built, debugged, and deployed.

11:47 AM: Scott back. Announced a partnership with Noika to deliver Silverlight on select Nokia platforms (S60, S40, and Nokia Internet tablets). He also mentioned that they want to "support Mac." Silverlight on the iPhone? That would be cool!

11:50 AM: New guest. Tamir Melamed, VP of Engineering WeatherBug, on stage to show Silverlight application running on Nokia S60. Showing same app running on Windows Mobile, Nokia S60, and the web (http://silverlight.weatherbug.com). UI is pretty basic (not as impressive visually as MIXr demo), but it is nice to see the same code running on all of this platforms. Showing animcations working on Nokia, but they are terribly slow. Not sure if that's the animation or the performance....

Tamir left the stage by dissing Flash Lite, saying it was much too hard to use for developing cross platform mobile apps.

11:55 AM: Scott's back for a re-cap. IE8, Silverlight 2 beta, new MVC refresh, all available today. New Expression designer website online this week, too.

11:57 AM: That's it! Time for the break-out sessions.

MIX getting started, New Silverlight 2.0 book announced

I'm here in sunny Las Vegas (at least, it was sunny earlier today) with a small contingent from Telerik Bulgaria "preparing" to kick-off the MIX 08 conference tomorrow. And in MIX terms, of course, "preparing" means attending a few parties with Microsoft and .NET community big wigs to talk about the fun that lies ahead for the rest of the week.

One such party I had the pleasure of attending tonight was the O'Reilly authors party at the Venetian. You may recall that I (with a lot of help for the Telerik Silverlight Team) wrote a Silverlight Short Cut for O'Reilly several months ago, so that's how I got my invite. At tonight's event, O'Reilly officially introduced their new "Stay Up-to-date" Silverlight 2.0 book. This new "book" is more like a binder that enables you to replace the pages with more current versions as the Silverlight platform matures. The upgradable book is a brand new concept from O'Reilly, so time will tell if this is an idea people like. In fact, given this description, sound-off in the comments in let me know what you think of an upgradable book and I'll pass your feedback right on to O'Reilly.

One thing that is particularly cool about the new Silverlight 2.0 book is that the first chapter was written by yours truly. The chapter was borrowed from the Short Cut we wrote last year, but it is still a good general introduction to the Silverlight platform. I am happy that our work is finding new purpose this many of months later and I hope it continues to help people learn the Silverlight platform.

And that's all for Day 0 at MIX. Check back tomorrow for more updates as the real fun begins with the keynotes and break-out sessions.

Telerik at MIX this week

In a few hours, I'll jump on a plane headed to Sin City for this year's highly anticipated MIX 08 conference. I'll be in town through Thursday and I'll be joined by a crew of about 7 from Telerik's home office in Sofia, Bulgaria. The representatives from Bulgaria will cover a lot of Telerik's new product lines, including devs from the Silverlight and WPF teams. Needless to say, if you're going to be at MIX too, definitely drop me a line and let me know so we can try to meet at one of the many MIX parties. We love meeting fans customers at these events and putting faces with names!

Otherwise, stay tuned this week for some "live" MIX updates. I'll try to post some extra info after we start getting the big news at the keynotes on Wednesday and Thursday as I expect there will be plenty of interesting things to talk about. Last year's MIX brought us the first alpha of Silverlight 1.1 (and the Silverlight name), news of the cross-platform CLR, the infamous ".NET Wins" Silverlight chess demo, and the introduction of the DLR. I expect this year to again focus largely on Silverlight, though all indications are that we should also be hearing more about IE8 and ASP.NET MVC. By the end of the week, I predict we'll have betas (or announced beta dates) for Silverlight 2.0, IE8, and Expression Blend 2. An ASP.NET MVC beta is probably further off.

So if you're not going to join me in the desert, keep your RSS readers locked-in and I'll help add to the flood of news sure to begin this Wednesday.