Lab49 @ Mix10

Although the software announcements made today were somewhat disappointing (no releases, just more betas, CTPs, and RCs) the cross-platform functionality offered by XNA 4.0, Silverlight 4.0, Visual Studio 2010, and Windows Phone 7 were compelling. A number of partners gave demos today that showcased some of the really interesting new features of Blend 4 Beta [download here] that I will be discussing more later tonight:

• eBay demos Desktop Simple Lister (with help from Cynergy)
• Netflix demos Smooth Streaming on WP7
• Foursquare demos location aware services WP7
• Other great demos: Seesmic, Major League Soccer, and Shazaam

Microsoft made a flurry of announcements this morning via press release (link to come). As I watch Sterling Quinn, the 16-year-old Yo-Yo champ (20 minutes is too long for a warm-up FYI) I’ve read that Microsoft has:

“Announced the availability of comprehensive tools”

• Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
• Windows Phone 7 add-in to use with Visual Studio 2010 RC
• XNA Game Studio 4.0
• Windows Phone 7 Series Emulator for application testing
• Expression Blend for Windows Phone CTP

“Available for download today”:

• Silverlight 4 RC

MIX10 gets started this Sunday. Looking forward to seeing what Microsoft et al. have up their sleeves for Windows Phone, Silverlight 4 and WPF 4. There also seems to be a stronger focus on web standards and Javascript this year:

• HTML5 Now: The Future of Web Markup Today (Part 1 of 2)
• HTML5 Now: The Future of Web Markup Today (Part 2 of 2)
• Building Great Standards-Based Websites for the Big Wide World with Microsoft ASP.NET 4
• SVG: The Past, Present and Future of Vector Graphics for the Web
• How jQuery Makes Hard Things Simple