Lab49 Blog » Lab49 @ Mix09

Mix09 Podcast Roundup

Daniel Chait — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:04:05 +0000

Lab49’s Marc Jacobs and I were out at Microsoft’s Mix09 conference last week and, in conjunction with Zoom-In Online, we produced a number of blog postings & podcasts.

We produced a bunch of stuff, so here are all the podcasts in one place for your easy consumption. As you will see & hear there’s a lot to keep up on. But there was so much great information and exciting new developments that I’m sure we didn’t cover it all!

Christian Schormann, Group Program Manager for Expression Blend - http://edgecastcdn.net/0005A0/blog/mix09_ChristianSchormann.mp3
James Pratt, Senior Product Manager for Internet Explorer – http://edgecastcdn.net/0005A0/blog/mix09_JamesPratt.mp3
John Lam, Program Manager, Dynamic Language Runtime – http://edgecastcdn.net/0005A0/blog/mix09_JohnLam.mp3
Johnny Lee, Researcher, Microsoft Applied Sciences – http://edgecastcdn.net/0005A0/blog/mix09_JohnnyLee.mp3
Kevin Gjerstadt, Principal Group Program Manager, WPF – http://edgecastcdn.net/0005A0/blog/mix09_KevinGjerstad.mp3
Lou Carbone, Founder & CEO of Experience Engineering – http://edgecastcdn.net/0005A0/blog/mix09_LouCarbone.mp3

Enjoy listening to these.

Also you should check out Marc’s blog postings here.

MIX 2009: Audio Podcasts (Part 02)

Administrator — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:38:13 +0000

In association with Lab49, Zoom In Online is pleased to announce 2 more podcasts from the show floor of MIX 2009.

John Lam — IronRuby and DLR

Marc Jacobs speaks with John Lam about IronRuby and DLR 

MIX 2009: Audio Podcasts (Part 01)

Administrator — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:46:03 +0000

In association with Lab49, Zoom In Online is pleased to announce 4 podcasts from the show floor of MIX 2009.

James Pratt — Internet Explorer 8

Daniel Chait speaks with James Pratt about the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 8 

We need a “Rock Band” bailout

Daniel Chait — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:17:39 +0000

Here are Mix09, for some reason they thought it was a good idea to set up a stage and invite attendees to play Rock Band in public. Right outside the press work room, where I spend most of my time here. And, they turn it up loud!

All of us in the press work room have agreed, no civilian should be legally allowed to sing anything by Alice in Chains, Queen, or the Chili Peppers in public. Surely the Obama administration can do something about this.

Microsoft Arc Mouse

Daniel Chait — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:01:37 +0000

At Mix I had the opportunity to test out the Microsoft Arc Mouse:

It’s a geniunely nice product – comfortable, solid feeling (it feels weighty for its size) and clever (folds up nicely and has a magnetic dock for its USB dongle).

Expression Blend 3: You Had Me At ‘Hello’

Marc Jacobs — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:10:32 +0000

From my perspective, there is no more important product release previewed at MIX09 than Expression Blend 3.

Obviously, not a DLR user

Daniel Chait — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:27:28 +0000

As you can see below, I saw someone wearing a t-shirt here at Mix09 that reads, "I’m Not Slacking Off. My Code’s Compiling":

Clearly this guy is not using PowerShell or the DLR!

MIX09 Keynote: Silverlight 3 Escapes the Browser

Marc Jacobs — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:33:22 +0000

Christian Schorman demos SketchFlow in Expression Blend

Daniel Chait — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:16:56 +0000

One of the most talked-about developments at the Microsoft Mix09 conference has been SketchFlow.

Mix09 Sponsorship Bubble?

Daniel Chait — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:52:20 +0000

Seems like there’s a bit of an insider slant regarding the sponsors of this year’s Microsoft Mix conference:

MIX09 Keynote: What’s New in Silverlight 3

Marc Jacobs — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:38:17 +0000

Microsoft Silverlight 3 is shaping up to be a very impressive release. While Silverlight 1.0 was a relatively narrow-purpose release, relevant mostly to streaming content delivery on the web, Silverlight 2.0 delivered a workable general purpose, cross-platform programming environment that leveraged the growing skills of .NET/WPF developers. But Silverlight 2.0 lacked many features and controls that WPF developers depended on, and it violated the WPF subset principle that Microsoft had set for itself to ensure that Silverlight applications could cross-compile with WPF.

MIX09 Keynote: Silverlight by the Numbers

Marc Jacobs — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:25:06 +0000

Scott Guthrie put up a few slides at today’s MIX09 keynote showing some interesting adoption data for Microsoft Silverlight.

MIX09 Keynote: Scott Guthrie Reveals All (Mostly)

Marc Jacobs — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:11:55 +0000

Scott Guthrie delivered part two of this year’s MIX09 keynote speech, revealing just how Bill Buxton’s arguments for better design processes are affecting the developer tools shipping this year from Microsoft. He revealed a raft of product announcements and upcoming features.

First off, ASP.NET MVC 1.0 ships today.

Microsoft To Mainline Distributed Cache in ASP.NET 4

Marc Jacobs — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:16:23 +0000

Today, Scott Guthrie announced in his MIX09 keynote that Microsoft Velocity, a distributed cache solution currently in CTP, would ship as part of Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4. For application developers seeking to add scalability to web applications on a shoestring, this is interesting development.

MIX09 Keynote: Bill Buxton Talks Design Process

Marc Jacobs — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:15:17 +0000

Bill Buxton kicked off the MIX09 keynote with emphasis on design and the design process. His message: "It’s a good time for design!"

Mix09 Keynote – Media Support by Scott Guthrie

Daniel Chait — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:20:47 +0000

Microsoft’s really stepping up in terms of media support. Scott Guthrie ran through the highlights and showed some great demos, on both the client (Silverlight) and server (IIS) side.
Silverlight 3:

GPU Hardware Acceleration
New Codec Support – H.264, AAC, MPEG-4
Raw bitstream API for A/V (in C#)
Improved logging for media analytics

IIS Media Services (available as a free download):

Silverlight by the Numbers at Mix09

Daniel Chait — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:06:17 +0000

Scott Guthrie reviewed Silverlight’s numbers:

150MM installations of Silverlight
300,m000 Developers & designers
200+ Partners in 30 countries
200+ Microsoft products & websites

Quite impressive uptake in a very short time.

Joel on Software on StackOverflow on Microsoft Platform at Mix

Daniel Chait — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:59:49 +0000

Demo of StackOverflow.com as a showcase of a site built on the Microsoft platform.

Key stats:

600k daily pageviews
200k unique visitors daily

All run on a couple small commodity boxes and built in about 6 mos. Nice!

* Extra credit – people often ask them if it’s built in RoR which they take as a great compliment

Design in the 4th Dimension from Bill Buxton

Daniel Chait — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:56:37 +0000

Bill Buxton, at today’s Microsoft Mix09 keynote, made an excellent point regarding design; namely, that as software people we often spend way too much design time focused on the layout and visual aspects of design — what buttons are where, the set of input fields on a screen, etc — and not nearly enough on the transitions between states.

Mix09 Keynote – SuperPreview

Daniel Chait — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:50:13 +0000

The big demo during the Web section was around SuperPreview within Expression Web.
Key things SuperPreview does, brings up the page in a multi-browser comparison view, allowing you to see the same page in various browsers (Safari, Firefox, IE, etc) not only side by side, but in "onion skin" overlay mode, allowing you to see any differences between browsers.

Coming in ASP.NET 4.0

Daniel Chait — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:45:42 +0000

Scott Guthrie announced:

Roadmap for ASP.NET 4:
* Web Forms improvements
* ASP.NET MVC upgrade
* AJAX, Distributed Caching (Velocity)

Also, ASP.NET MVC 1.0 now shipping

ASP.NET 4 will include Velocity

Daniel Chait — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:42:15 +0000

Scott Guthrie announced formally during the Mix09 keynote that Velocity will be shipping with ASP.NET 4.0.

Big news for the distributed cache market!

Demoitis Strikes at Mix09

Daniel Chait — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:27:13 +0000

Oops. Bill Buxton’s “shortest demo ever” didn’t work.

It certainly builds the drama for when Scott does the same demo a bit later in the keynote. Stay tuned.

Mix09 Keynote – Bill Buxton, Microsoft Research

Daniel Chait — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:17:18 +0000

Bill Buxton, of Microsoft Research and author of "Sketching User Experience", opened with theme of "It’s A Good Time For Design!". He’s making the case that during this economy, design is not only still relevant, but even more important than ever.

Mix09 Next Week

Daniel Chait — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:28:11 +0000

Next week (Wed-Fri) I will be out in Las Vegas at Mix09 and just like last year, Lab49 has partnered with Zoom-In to provide news, audio and pictures live from Mix.
We've got an awesome lineup of interviews planned so watch this space.

MIX09: Las Vegas, NV, 18 – 20 Mar 2009

Marc Jacobs — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:55:30 +0000

I’ve just confirmed that I will be in Las Vegas for MIX09 this year. If any of you plan to be there as well, drop me a note.