Microsoft Communities

MIX07

Schematic Talks about Silverlight

Posted By: Joshua Allen | Jun 20th, 2007 @ 11:00 PM
Schematic is the interactive design agency behind Xbox Live Arcade, MTV Overdrive on Media Center, ABCNews.com (including the much-acclaimed player design backed by Move Networks), and some of the biggest media networks. They're one of the best in the industry for video scenarios.  Scott Hanselman interviewed Matthew Rechs of Schematic to get his thoughts about Silverlight.

 
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Spidynamics and AJAX Security

Posted By: Joshua Allen | Jun 5th, 2007 @ 8:56 PM
Back when the first web browsers were becoming publicly available, I used to find network security vulnerabilities for organizations connected to the Internet.  When someone released a tool that could automatically find vulnerabilities in your network, the whole industry was in uproar for awhile.  Now people realize that the hackers already make their own tools, and you might as well put tools like this in the hands of the good guys.

While we did sometimes find holes in HTML's predecessors, the web has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for attackers.  Especially with the rise of AJAX, many developers write code without being completely aware of the potential for injection, cross-site scripting, and other exploits.  One of my favorite sessions from Web 2.0 Expo this year was the talk on "Vulnerabilities 2.0" by Alex Stamos, where he showed off effortless exploits.  People shouldn't take AJAX security lightly.

At MIX07, we had a number of industry experts talk about AJAX exploits and security.  One of the panelists was Dennis Hurst of SPIDynamics.  SPIDynamics makes software that can scan your site for AJAX vulnerabilities, regardless of which toolkit you use.  We interviewed him to find out more about the tool, and about AJAX security in general.
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Avenue A | Razorfish on Netflix, Disney, and more

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 31st, 2007 @ 2:16 PM
Prior to the aQuantive acquisition, Avenue A was already delivering a number of high-profile WPF and Silverlight applications on several continents.  Scott Hanselman talked with Kamran Hameed and Steve Gray from Avenue A to hear about some of the projects they've done and the lessons learned.  They built the Netflix and Disney demos shown at MIX, and some code that is getting massive distribution.

The first couple of minutes discuss the Microsoft relationship, and then they dive into details about lessons learned.

Kamran discusses the way that project timelines are being compressed due to the effectiveness of the technology and design tools -- for example, their Shanghai office was able to get the first Silverlight prototypes work in a matter of days.  They also discuss their experiences integrating the Expression tools suite with the practices they've developed using other vendors' tools.
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Josh and Eric of Yahoo! on the Yahoo! Instant Messenger

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 29th, 2007 @ 8:28 AM
Back when Vista launched, Yahoo! announced an incredible instant messenging client that runs on Vista.  The Yahoo! IM client for Vista uses WPF to give a beautiful user interface.  It's the perfect example of what's possible with RIAs (that stands for Rich Internet Application or Rich Interactive Application or something like that).  Josh Jacobson and Eric Burke are two of the guys at Yahoo! who made this happen; check out the interview!
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Aaron Marcus on Cross-Cultural Design

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 23rd, 2007 @ 2:46 PM
Aaron Marcus has been in the business of "Design Intelligence" for 25 years.  For any large consumer-facing media company that wants to do business multinationally, it's critical to have good sources of intelligence about the designs that work and don't work in your target markets.  I spoke with Aaron for a few minutes about his company, and some examples of how cross-culture design intelligence works.  You can also check out the panel discussion on cross-cultural design between Aaron, Kelly Goto, Ryan Freitas, Surya Vanka and Royce Lee.
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aQuantive and the Ad Industry

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 18th, 2007 @ 6:46 PM
With all of the news about Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive, you might be looking for some background information about the ad industry in general.  Avenue A | Razorfish was at MIX07 in force, and we'll be running some more about them on this feed in the near future.  But in the meantime, you should check out this discussion from MIX06, "Beyond the Banner: Advertising on the Web and Where it's Going".  We had top people from aQuantive, Yahoo!, Microsoft and more giving a crash course in the ad industry.  Although a lot has happened since then, the topics they discussed are still surprisingly timely (it was forward-looking, after all).  If you're an RIA designer or developer, you'll find it illuminating.
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What is Popfly?

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 18th, 2007 @ 4:10 PM
The big news today is about Popfly, our new mashup-creation tool.  Nik at TechCrunch thinks it's cool, and says "Seeing applications like Popfly coming out of Microsoft is something that I couldn’t have imagined all too long ago".  It is pretty awesome, check out the interview Rory did with the Popfly team, and also watch the demos.

I saw the first builds of Popfly a month or so before MIX07, and we really wanted to show it at the event.  Popfly is the canonical example of what we were showing at MIX: built in Silverlight and runs in the browser, and enables people to "mix" together inclusive web experiences from all of the big web sites.  However, the Visual Studio team isn't known for rushing things out prematurely, and we were sworn to secrecy.

I've seen some initial commentary about Popfly that compares it to Yahoo! Pipes.  This is probably because the UI does have some boxes that you can connect with lines to do some programming "visually".  But if you take the time to watch all the demos, you'll see that Popfly is really taking a different focus.  Popfly focuses more on producing the user interface, while Pipes is focused on the data.  I would not be surprised to see people using Popfly to consume data from Pipes in the near future.
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Identitymine!

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 17th, 2007 @ 7:04 PM
One of the really popular and highly-rated sessions at MIX07 was the session on "Building a Comic-Book Reader in WPF".  Identitymine is the company behind this cool app, and also behind the Forbes, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other online readers.

In this video, Rory interviews Kurt Brockett of Identitymine about their new product, blendables.  Blendables is a control pack for developers and designers to use in Expression Blend.  Kurt even demonstrates using the controls to find a bomb in a villain's ear!
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New York Times Reader in Silverlight

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 15th, 2007 @ 5:41 PM
You may have seen people on the subway or bus reading the New York Times on a tablet PC.  You might even use the reader yourself.  The reader has gotten some really impressive adoption since launching not long ago.  But you probably haven't seen anyone enjoying this amazing online/offline reading experience on a Macintosh.  Macintosh users aren't shy about pulling out their machines in public places, but the New York Times Reader hasn't been available for Mac.

Now that Silverlight is coming to the Mac, things are beginning to change.  Take a look at this demo of the New York Times Reader running in Safari on a Macintosh!
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Beijing Olympics Use Silverlight

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 8th, 2007 @ 3:05 PM
Of the many colorful attendees at MIX07, the two giant-sized cartoon mascots of the Beijing 2008 Olympics were the most fun.  Jingjing and Huanhuan had to fly back to China before the party at Pure, but they had plenty of time for photos with attendees, and their friends from Beijing 2008 talked with Rory about the use of Silverlight for the 2008 Olympics.  You can also see a full session on 2008 Olympics here.
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MIX07 - Inside our onsite editing room

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 3rd, 2007 @ 5:52 PM
Well, MIX07 is officially over.  We grabbed some tape from behind the scenes of VisitMIX so you can get an idea of how we produced this site during the event.  Jeff, Laura, Mahesh and Chris are eating health food in the spacious editing suite at the Venetian after 72-hours of feverish work.

We still have a ton of good interviews and demos from the event to share with you over the next couple of weeks, and the site will be updated continually with coverage from other events and new interviews, so stay subscribed to the rss feed!

Thank you all for a great event, we'll publish more content soon!  For now we're taking a little breather.
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MIX07 - The Final Day

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 3rd, 2007 @ 5:52 PM
You've seen the footage of oxygen bar, massage bar, and Elvis playing Guitar Hero. Here is some final footage from the last day of the event. Good thing we had beanbags and couches for the sleepy attendees. So sad it has to end... Make sure to let this one play all the way through. :-)

 
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Hanselman and Harsh -- What is Silverlight?

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 3rd, 2007 @ 5:21 PM
Elvis knew by day one that Silverlight was the hot topic.  Lori grabbed Mike Harsh from the Silverlight team and Scott Hanselman a Regional Director and asked them for the short, sweet, succinct, concise, snappy definition.  Here you go!  Feel free to share with your Mom or Elvis or anyone else who asks!
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Ryan Stewart Interviews Silverlight Guys

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 3rd, 2007 @ 5:17 PM
Ryan Stewart, the well-known RIA guy from ZDNet, interviewed Kevin Gallo and Mike Harsh from the Silverlight team. The interview covers a lot of in-depth back-and-forth about the tradeoffs we made in shipping Silverlight. He doesn't throw too many softballs.

 
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Matt Goyer of Redfin

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 3rd, 2007 @ 4:38 PM
Matt Goyer was at MIX07 to talk about Redfin's use of Virtual Earth.  He showed us a couple of demos and answered some questions while he was hanging out in the MIX Sandbox area.
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Gavin Gear Demonstrates Ink Support in Silverlight

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 3rd, 2007 @ 4:18 PM
Gavin Gear of Microsoft explains how Ink and pen input integrate with Microsoft Silverlight Beta 1.0. See demos of ink over photos, ink over videos, animation of ink, and more.
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Neil Hunt of Netflix on Silverlight

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 3rd, 2007 @ 3:57 PM
On day one of MIX07, Netflix demonstrated a truly sweet UI for video on-demand, using Silverlight.  You might have seen the video of that demo.  Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer for Netflix, sat down with Rory and went a bit more into detail about Netflix's use of Silverlight.
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More Action from Day 2!

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 2nd, 2007 @ 4:25 PM
Elvis grabbed the microphone and interviewed some of the other attendees about their experiences so far at MIX.  He even broke out into some spontaneous song, you can tell he's having a great time attending MIX07!
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Disney Keynote Demo

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 2nd, 2007 @ 2:57 PM
At yesterday afternoon's keynote, Disney Resorts showed off a cool Vista + Media gadget that they are shipping internationally to introduce people to the Disney experience.
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Nissan/National Geographic Keynote Demo

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 2nd, 2007 @ 2:38 PM
During Robbie Bach's Keynote, we got so see how Nissan and National Geographic are reaching an audience in XBOX 360 and Windows Media Center.  This is a whole new world for advertisers and consumers alike.
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MIX Chat-a-Lot

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 2nd, 2007 @ 2:27 PM
MIX Chat starts today, 12:45 – 2:45pm. Speakers, panelists, partners, Microsoft staff, conference attendees, and more will be talking it up during our “ask the experts” session on the last day of the conference. This is a fantastic opportunity to come and get all of your questions asked and answered. Not only that, but when you check-in at MIX this year you’ll be given a wrist band to help identify yourself as a designer, developer or business decision type (or maybe all three). Wear your wrist band to MIX chat and find those similar to you, or different, for your very own rap session.
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BBC Radio One Keynote Demo

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 2nd, 2007 @ 2:01 PM
Here is the footage of the BBC's demo at Robbie Bach's keynote.  Using Silverlight to bridge music festivals and the online world!
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Kelly Goto and Design Ethnography

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 2nd, 2007 @ 12:32 PM
Kelly Goto is a well-known expert on research-driven, people-friendly interface design.  Her clients love her work, and her presentations always get high marks.  She presented at MIX last year on mobile design, and is presenting this year on moving from Web 1.0 to 2.0.  Rory interviewed her in the hallways at MIX07.
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Elvis Sightings

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 2nd, 2007 @ 10:23 AM
Elvis (well, his attendee badge actually says "The King") was one of the many cool attendees at MIX07.  He's having a great time mixing it up with the other developers, designers, and BDMs.  Check out some of the footage.  Interesting Facts:  There are plenty of Macs here, but Elvis is a fan of Dell.  He told me privately.  And he actually registered late for MIX07, so he had to pay the full price.  Don't make that mistake next year.
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VisitMIX for iPod, PSP, Zune, and Firefox

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 2nd, 2007 @ 10:21 AM
You probably noticed iPod, PSP, and Zune links next to some videos on VisitMix.com but not others.  VisitMIX, like the MIX conference, welcomes people from all camps.  We have a full crew and a fleet of machines processing the video to get transcoded versions for all the popular systems.  But sometimes we need to jiggle or kick the machines (OK, not really) and it takes time.  Since we are blogging this event live, we like to bring you video as quickly as possible, so that means we will often post the streaming version of the media before we've finished transcoding for iPod and etc.  Be patient, and we'll get you the other versions as quickly as possible.
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MIX07 Session Recordings Available

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 1st, 2007 @ 8:07 PM
Many of the session recordings from yesterday are now posted!  Visit sessions.visitmix.com to browse the the list.  Sessions will continue to be posted as the become available from our production team.  We've provided an RSS feed to alert you when they are added and we'll also highlight here some of our favorites as well.
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Jason DaPonte of BBC Radio 1

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 1st, 2007 @ 7:32 PM
In the keynote, Jason DaPonte showed off a prototype that allows Radio 1 users to share media playlists with one another, using Silverlight and Live Messenger.  After the keynote, Rory sat down him and learned how BBC is using these technologies.
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Session Updates for Wednesday, May 2

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 1st, 2007 @ 6:41 PM
One session for tomorrow is cancelled, and a bunch have to be repeated due to overflow:

Cancelled:

  • PANEL DISCUSSION: Using Digital Marketing to Win the Oval Office (Was 10:00 to 11:15AM in Delfino 4003)

Repeated Sessions:

  • DEV22R: Building Silverlight Applications Using .NET (Part 1 of 2) - 10:00 to 11:15AM in Delfino 4001
  • DEV07R: Building Silverlight Applications Using .NET (Part 2 of 2) - 11:30 to 12:45PM in Delfino 4001
  • DEV14R: Using Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" to Design and Develop Rich AJAX Enabled Web Sites - 11:30AM to 12:45PM in Palazzo M
  • XD001R: Deep Dive on Silverlight Media Integration - 10:00 to 11:15AM in Delfino 4003

 
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Frog Design

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 1st, 2007 @ 6:29 PM
The guys from Frog Design are here giving a talk about how they implemented the Yahoo! instant messenger client in WPF.  Rory sat down with them to hear about their experiences being very early adopters of both WPF and Silverlight.
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Robbie Bach MIX07 Keynote begins at 4:00 PM (PST)

Posted By: Jeff Sandquist | May 1st, 2007 @ 6:05 PM
Watch the Robbie Bach Keynote live! The keynote starts at 4:00 PM PDT. You can play live in your browser here, or stream to windows media player.
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Looking for photos from MIX07?

Posted By: Jeff Sandquist | May 1st, 2007 @ 4:31 PM
I've just uploaded a number of photos taken during the day one keynotes to a set on Flickr.  You can be find more photos from the community on the public MIX07 tag on Flickr.  Thanks everyone for sharing your photos of the event.
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Some Action from MIX07 Day One

Posted By: Joshua Allen | May 1st, 2007 @ 4:24 PM
Robbie Bach's keynote starts in a few hours. While we wait in anticipation, we thought we'd share some action from the hallways on day one. 

Oxygen bar, slushies, guitar hero -- it's a lot of fun.
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