Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing

Microsoft conference week

The first week of March is a big week for Microsoft. Thanks to Todd Bishop at Seattle P-I for summarizing the events on his blog;

• Bill Gates speaks Monday morning at Microsoft's SharePoint conference in Seattle. As part of the event, the company announced plans to expand its online offerings with subscription-based versions of Exchange Server and SharePoint Server for corporations.
• Chris Liddell, Microsoft's chief financial officer, speaks Monday morning at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in California. Microsoft's pending Yahoo acquisition bid will no doubt be among the subjects on the minds of the attending investors, whether or not Liddell has any news to share. Webcast available here.
• Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, gives one of the keynote addresses Monday evening at the big CeBIT technology conference in Hannover, Germany.
• Microsoft Research holds its TechFest event in Redmond on Tuesday. This is the annual science fair where Microsoft's researchers show some of their latest projects to the company's product groups and managers. Watch for coverage here.
• Microsoft's Mix08 online-technology conference begins Wednesday in Las Vegas. Among other things, the conference is expected to bring news about Internet Explorer 8, the next version of the company's Web browser. Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, headlines the Wednesday morning agenda. Ballmer speaks Thursday. I'll be attending Mix and posting from the event.

MIX08 in Las Vegas

Many members of the Emerging Business Team, including me, will be at MIX08 in Las Vegas. Tough duty :-)   I am moderating a panel at MIX on Thursday with Robert Scoble, Ryan McIntyre, Kimbal Musk, and Dave McClure.

There will be some interesting product announcements at MIX. Watch this blog and TechMeme for the news on Wednesday.

TechFest

I have attended TechFest in the past and always enjoy seeing all the new technology coming out of the Microsoft Research Labs. TechFest is MSR's science fair, showing many of the most advanced research projects at Microsoft. Of course it is mostly all secret so I can't write about it. Unfortunately, I will be at MIX08 this year and unable to attend TechFest.

Last year Microsoft invited several press people to the event and showed them some of the projects that were OK to write about. I will watch the news feeds to see what comes out...and summarize it here.

SharePoint Conference

There is a lot of speculation around where Microsoft is going with online services. Some things will be announced at the SharePoint conference and other things will be announced at MIX. There is a lot going on...much more than will be announced this week. Here is a quote from Bill Gates about where Microsoft is headed;

“The combination of software plus services gives customers advanced choice and flexibility in how they access and manage software,” Gates said. “With Microsoft Online Services, businesses can deploy software as a subscription service, from servers they manage on-site, or a combination of the two, depending on their specific needs. In the future, customers and partners should expect to see this kind of choice and flexibility for all of Microsoft’s software and server products.”

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MIX08 Microsoft's web developer conference

MIX08 is happening March 5 - 7 at The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas. MIX, now in its third year, is a conference focused on web developers and designers. Lots of technical content, new product releases, panel discussions, and keynote presentations by Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, Scott Guthrie and Guy Kawasaki. Dean Hachamovitch will also demo IE8. Try this link to se the agenda and list of sessions.

I am doing a panel discussion on Web 2.0 Business Models. We have some great panelists. Robert Scoble, Dave McClure (500 Hats blog), Kimbal Musk (CEO of Me.dium), and Ryan McIntyre (co-founder of Excite, VC at Foundry Group) will share their experience and insight.

Please come by and see me at MIX. There will be a party every night...in fact several parties. I hope to see you there!

More information -  to register, download MIX bling, subscribe to the The Signal, and view video from previous MIX events, see visitmix.com.

Microsoft Silverlight

Microsoft has announced Silverlight 1.0, a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering Rich Internet Apps (RIA) on the Web. Silverlight works with all the major browsers including IE, Firefox, and Safari.

Microsoft unveiled new Silverlight customer experiences on Entertainment Tonight, HSN and World Wrestling Entertainment. Major League Baseball and Disney Interactive also have amazing demos of Silverlight.

Miguel de Icaza and the Mono team at Novell will implement open source versions of Silverlight 1.0 and Silverlight 1.1 that will run on Linux. Novell has a clever name for their version called Moonlight.

Silverlight delivers very high quality video with no jerky motion and buffering issues. Silverlight can progressively download and play media content from any web-server.  You can point Silverlight at any URL and it will download/play in any browser.  No special server software is required, and Silverlight can work with any web-server, including Apache on Linux.

Microsoft is very serious about delivering great tools for designers and developers on both the PC and Mac, and for Explorer, Firefox, and Safari browsers. Microsoft is working closely with Novell to make it available on Linux as well. Here are my high level take aways on this announcement;

Designers and Developers can work together and use the same tools. Microsoft Expression tools for web designers, Visual Studio for web developers, and Silverlight for cross web browser and cross platform support. The combination of great tools for building applications and Silverlight for cross platform distribution creates real synergy for developers, web site owners, and users.

Developers can use their language of choice. With Silverlight you can code in C#, Javascript, Visual Basic, Python and Ruby. And because the the CLR (Common Language Runtime) the code can be deployed on the desktop or on the web across platforms.

Silverlight Streaming - hosting and streaming for FREE. Silverlight Streaming allows users to host their Silverlight content and apps on Microsoft servers, taking advantage of the global data centers and content delivery network. It supports up to 4GB of content, and allows streaming up to 1 million minutes of on-line video delivery at  DVD quality.

Get all the details at www.Silverlight.net

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Silverlight on Linux - Miguel de Icaza's moonlight project

Miguel de Icaza, Open Source developer of Mono, has turned his attention to working with Silverlight on Linux. Miguel and his team worked 21 straight days to build a demo of Silverlight on Linux for the Mix07 Paris  show going on now in the city of lights.

Miguel's team did an outstanding job. He has a day by day review of what they did and how they did it on his blog. This quote from Miguel, an Open Source and Linux developer, summed it up for me;

Needless to say, we believe that Silverlight is a fantastic development platform, and its .NET-based version is incredibly interesting and as Linux/Unix users we wanted to both get access to content produced with it and to use Linux as our developer platform for Silverlight-powered web sites.

Miguel and his team built a Silverlight Airlines demo that shows how you can make an airline reservation, put it in your calendar, and see the flight path on a world map. It lets you compare flights and make changes. You would have to see it to understand the power and flexibility of the application and how Silverlight makes it easy and beautiful.

The Mix show, first seen in Las Vegas, is traveling the world. Today there are Mix sessions in Paris and Silicon Valley, and more planned over the next several months.

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ReMIX07 - MIX Las Vegas moves to Silicon Valley

MIX07 in Las Vegas was sold out with rave reviews. Over 3,000 designers and developers attended MIX07 in Las Vegas, and many more wanted to attend. Now you have another chance to attend a condensed one day version of MIX in Silicon Valley on June 22nd. Here are the details and a link to register. It is FREE!

ReMIX07 Silicon Valley – Friday June 22, 2007                                                                  Brought to you by Microsoft® and Dealmaker Media®

Whoever said that what happens in Vegas has to stay in Vegas? Due to the SOLD OUT status of MIX07 last month, Microsoft has decided to ‘ReMIX’ with a twist right here in the Silicon Valley! This event will feature a keynote from Scott Guthrie who runs Microsoft’s Silverlight and ASP.Net development teams (among others).  Get a jump start on registration as this event promises to sell out too!  To register (it’s free!), click here.

What to expect at ReMix07 Silicon Valley…

If you’re in the web business, learn about:

• Building a better user experience to unlock new revenue opportunities
• Forging tighter, stickier customer connections
• Building innovative media experiences into your site

If you’re a web developer, build:

• Silverlight applications quickly and easily
• Sites and applications that consume Windows Live services
• Rich, interactive sites made for the next web

If you’re a web designer, learn about:

• Using Silverlight to design gorgeous and highly functional user interfaces
• How a real-world application is built and the best practices associated with it
• The suite of Expression tools that revolutionize the way designers work with developers

It’s Happening Here

Friday June 22, 2007

7:30am – 2:00pm

Microsoft’s Campus in Silicon Valley

1065 La Avenida Street

Mountain View, CA 94043

For directions click here.

Silverlight and Expression getting rave reviews

Richard MacManus at Read/Write Web reports "our poll suggests that most people are indeed impressed by Silverlight. 23% rated it "awesome" and 32% "promising". So over half give it the thumbs up. 25% of respondents rated it "meh", but only 9% said it's terrible."

Richard goes on to say "Microsoft's newly improved rich internet app plug-in that was launched to (unusually) rave blog reviews at MIX on Monday. Some people even said that Silverlight leaves Adobe's Flash technology in the dust, which is a big claim to make given that Flash is still extremely popular with designers - and for users it's a slick rich media browser plug-in."

It is very early in the game and Flash has a huge installed base. Microsoft has delivered a very powerful suite of tools for developers and designers. Microsoft is traditionally very strong in developer tools. Making the jump to designer tools should be an easy transition from a technical point of view, but perhaps more difficult from a marketing stand point. This is a logical move for Microsoft and over the long run should prove to be very successful.

It just makes sense. Microsoft Expression Studio for designers, Visual Studio for developers, and Silverlight for web runtime, and they all work together seamlessly. Developers and designers can finally use the same tools and environment instead of starting over again in different tools at each step. It just makes sense.

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Miguel de Icaza, Mike Schroepfer, Whurley, and other Open Source leaders at Mix 07

Some of the biggest names in Open Source were at Mix07 and participated in a panel discussion "Open Source, the Web, Interoperability and Microsoft".  

Pictured left to right: Sam Ramji - Microsoft, Rob Conery - SubSonic, Andi Gutmans - Zend Technologies, Mike Schroepfer - Mozilla,  Miguel de Icaza - Mono, Novell, (William) whurley - BMC Software.

Miguel de Icaza has an excellent post on his reactions to the Microsoft announcements and the Mix conference.

A very impressive set of demos at Mix 07, the 72 hour conversation that Microsoft is having in las Vegas.

The focus was mostly around Silverlight, Microsoft's new web plugin to author rich application and tools used to design this content.

The whole Expression suite was adorable, and Blend is fantastic.

The demos were pretty amazing, Scott built a nice animation for an airline reservation system on stage.

Later the Open Source guys joined a chorus line with Microsoft's Sam Ramji in a demonstration of unity and harmony. Even though we might have different approaches to the software business, we all have the same goal...deliver great software solutions that solve real problems.

Silverlight gets rave reviews from the A-List Tech Bloggers

Silverlight was announced yesterday at Mix 07. The reactions from press, analysts, and bloggers has been extremely positive. Scoble says "Microsoft rebooted the web". Dan Farber of ZDnet has a great collection of quotes from industry gurus and pundits...all positive. Steve Gillmor, a frequent Microsoft critic was positive as well. Steve said

The engineering behind this is stunning. This is no Hailstorm, no crash dive all-hands-on-deck save the cheerleader, save the company drive from the Gates playbook. This is a Microsoft 3.0 iteration, with Visual Studio and Firefox tied at the waist.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch was really impressed.

"For those of us watching the demos at the Mix conference the immediate importance of it was apparent - Silverlight will be the platform of choice for developers who build rich Internet applications. It makes Flash/Flex look like an absolute toy. After the keynote, the main topic of conversation in the hallways centered on just how effectively Microsoft carried out its execution of Adobe."

It is very unusual for all these A-List people to be so positive on a new product. These guys are tough critics so when they get excited...that is good news for developers and designers.

You really have to see Silverlight and Microsoft Expression in action to get a real sense of what it can do. the demos are mind blowing. There are very deep and powerful capabilities in both products...far more than could be shown in a few quick demos.

Silverlight and Expression play to Microsoft's strength...software tools. Developers have Visual Studio, designers have Expression, and they both work together. Silverlight is the deployment runtime environment that supports the major platforms and browsers. The performance and capabilities are amazing.

A great day for designers and developers. Visit Silverlight.Net to see what everyone is talking about.

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Silverlight and Microsoft Expression - Designers and Developers can now work together

Silverlight was unveiled at Mix07 yesterday. It is truly amazing. Words can't do it justice, but Nik Cubrilovic at TechCrunch does a great job. You have to see it in action to understand just how good it is. Dan Farber at ZDnet has a great post on the business strategy side of the Silverlight platform and tools. There are more stories at TechMeme. Silverlight is available for download at Silverlight.Net.

There is a LOT to digest, both technical features and business strategies. Microsoft is very serious about delivering great tools for designers and developers on both the PC and Mac, and for Explorer, Firefox, and Safari browsers. It is difficult to boil this down to a few paragraphs but here is what jumps out for me.

Designers and Developers can work together and use the same tools. Microsoft Expression tools for web designers, Visual Studio for web developers, and Silverlight for cross web browser and cross platform support. The combination of great tools for building applications and Silverlight for cross platform distribution creates real synergy for developers, web site owners, and users.

Developers can use their language of choice. With Silverlight you can code in C#, Javascript, Visual Basic, Python and Ruby. And because the the CLR (Common Language Runtime) the code can be deployed on the desktop or on the web across platforms.

Silverlight Streaming - hosting and streaming for FREE. Silverlight Streaming allows users to host their Silverlight content and apps on Microsoft servers, taking advantage of the global data centers and content delivery network. Currently in alpha, it supports up to 4GB of content, and allows streaming up to 1 million minutes of on-line video delivery at  DVD quality.

I talked to several Flash developers and asked them if they could do all the stuff we saw in the Silverlight demos. The short answer is no, not within one tool suite, and some things not at all. Microsoft Expression tools bring designers and developers together and provide everything they need in one tool suite. Silverlight provides the runtime environment across platforms to make it all happen with high quality and high performance. It is a great product and service that will get even better over time, but it will take time to win over the Flash developer community. Once they try it out and see it in action I think the benefits will be obvious. Let the fun begin!

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