To get things started, this year’s keynote “warm-up act” is a 16-year old Seattle-native Yo-Yo Champion (Sterling Quinn). If you thought (like me) that being able to “walk the dog” with a Yo-Yo was skill, you don’t want to watch this kid.
More big news as it happens…
9:11 AM: Things are getting started with some Killers playing after a quick Bing Maps show-off video. Room is pretty much packed now. Not sure how many people…I’d guess somewhere between 2,000 to 3,000. ScottGu taking the stage…
Scott is jumping right-in to content. Very different from last year’s long “abstract” design talk by Bill Buxton. Scott said he is going to focus on Silverlight today- on the RIA, media, and phone.
Highlights:
- Silverlight now on 60% of PCs worldwide (according to ScottGu)
- Microsoft is “open sourcing” the Vancouver Olympics media player + rough cut editor
- SL4 will support full-screen in a single monitor (“first web technology to enable that”)
- Adding new “Pivot” feature to Silverlight (very tepid response from audience – light clapping)
9:20 AM: ScottGu seems a bit off of his game. Lots of “uhs.” Almost as if he’s a little uncomfortable or unprepared.
- Blend 4 will be a free upgrade for Blend 3 (audience much happier about this than Pivot)
9:26 AM: eBay demoing their new Quick Listing tool that is built on SL4. Cool app. Takes advantage of SL4 custom out-of-browser chrome. App built by Cynergy. Audience energy is low right now. Very quiet. I think people must be waiting for a big “surprise” to wake up…
- Silverlight 4 RC now available (with VS 2010 tools, Blend 4, etc)
- Silverlight 4 RTW available next month
9:35 AM: Scott came out and just shut-down the SL4 talk. Casually announced the SL4 news and pushed us in to the Windows Phone 7 part of the keynote. Audience picked-up. This is clearly what everyone is here to see. Demos now by Joe B.
10:00 AM: Joe is done with demos. Rest of keynote will be dedicated to talking about how you build apps for Windows Phone 7. ScottGu is back on.
- Silverlight on Windows Phone 7 is same Silverlight as PC (“One Silverlight”)
- VS2010 has integrated WinPho7 templates + WYSIWYG designer + built-in emulator
- Phone emulator is full VM with full integration with VS debugger
10:10 AM: ScottGu built and deployed a simple Twitter app for WinPhone. Biggest applause of the day. Not “thunderous,” but definitely best of the day so far. Scott is back in his element.
- VS2010 & Blend will be FREE for phone development
10:26 AM: Scott Stanfield showing-off Netflix Instant Watch on WinPhone. For me, my battery is near dead (forgot to charge last night). More details and highlights soon…
…And I’m back online with battery. Fortunately, there wasn’t much (any?) news after my battery death in the Day One keynote. Just a lot of demos showing apps running on WinPhone 7. Most important news in the keynote (highlighted in red above) came early. And sadly, no surprise dev unit Win7 phones for the MIX crowd…which I guess makes sense since the current unit has yet to pass through the FCC.
One to Day Two.
I know this week has been a flood of 
