Windows Vista Team Blog : Windows Vista, MIX07

Me.dium add-in for IE7 connects kindred spirits

Nick White — Tue, 01 May 2007 18:45:00 GMT

At MIX07 this week I came across a cool new plug-in for IE7 called Me.dium that I thought you should know about. It's currently a Beta release but works just fine for me on IE7. While at first blush it might look like an instant messaging competitor, Me.dium's aim is different: it's designed to create connections between people viewing the same web site and uses collaborative filtering to suggest similar sites that might be of interest to its users. Their database collects URLs you've visited and chosen to share, your most recently visited web pages, your friends list and any other profile information you choose to share in order to run this data through their algorithm and generate a list of other sites relevant to one you're currently visiting, and consequently of potential interest to you.

The Me.dium folks, led by founder and inventor Robert Reich, had a session yesterday at this year's MIX where he introduced their creation to the audience and demonstrated its value to the developers, designers and press in attendance. He also announced Beta support for IE7 at the session; the product already supported FF 1.5 and 2.0 prior to this week.

In short, Me.dium demonstrates the fact that our actions and even thoughts are implicitly affected by those around us and in the meantime create a rich data set for predicting end-user behavior. It'll be interesting to see where it and other innovations of its ilk head in the future.

Today's MIX07 Announcements Round-Up

Nick White — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:33:00 GMT

Today MIX07 kicks off at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas with the keynote by Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie and General Manager Scott Guthrie. You can continue to catch live, on-going coverage at the Visit MIX website.

Let me take a moment to quickly outline the many announcements that occurred today.

An updated Windows Live Dev website (dev.live.com) has launched and includes brand new controls for developers to tap into Windows Live Services when building mash-ups. Those new controls include a Spaces Photo Control and updated Windows Live Contacts control. The Windows Live Spaces control released allows third-party developers to integrate Windows Live Spaces functionality into their websites. CNET has covered the Windows Live platform news coming out of MIX this week.

The Silverlight Team has several major and exciting announcements that have occurred this morning:

An updated www.microsoft.com/silverlight website
Silverlight 1.0 Beta plug-in for browsers is now available here
A CTP (Community Technology Preview) for Silverlight 1.1 was released, adding the .NET runtime
The Silverlight community website, Silverlight.net, has launched. This website showcases a number of places where you can have the full Silverlight experience, such as at 20th Century Fox's Trailer Library (you'll need the plug-in, of course).

Silverlight Streaming with Windows Live has launched in as an Alpha (i.e., pre-Beta) service. You can upload your Silverlight projects to this hosted service to take advantage of 4GB of project storage "in the cloud." The idea is to give developers and web designers a convenient place for them to host and stream their content, which they can then integrate into their browser services using Silverlight Streaming.

The Microsoft Expression Studio has been released as a suite consisting of Expression Design, Expression Web, Expression Blend and Expression Media. Attendees of MIX07 were given a special commemorative edition of the Expression Studio suite. You can dip your toes into incorporating Silverlight into your web creations using the preview version of Expression Blend 2.0 and the trial version of Expression Media Encoder.

This is just a brief overview of the announcements made today at MIX07, with more to come.

Expectations set for IE Team at MIX07

Nick White — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 22:30:00 GMT

In a recent post, Internet Explorer Program Manager Chris Wilson talks about his team's presence at the upcoming MIX07 event and sets expectations for what his team will cover there. [SPOILER ALERT] The long and short of it is that his team isn't yet prepared to discuss future plans. "We've gathered input from customers for the next version of IE through formal research like user studies and surveys, and also at conferences, comments on the IE blog, and direct emails from you; we will continue to listen at MIX07," Chris writes. Chris says the IE Team "will have more information to share about the next release in the future, but MIX07 is too early yet to discuss specifics."

Just as IE7 was a huge focus for MIX last year, the recent announcement of Silverlight will receive the lion's share of attention at this year's event (there are 16 sessions covering the topic to some degree). Some of the other sessions planned are:

Making Money With RSS with Walter VonKoch
Thinking In CSS: How To Build Great Looking Websites with Molly Holzschlag
How To Make AJAX Applications Scream On The Client with Cyra Richardson
IE7: Past, Present and Future with Chris Wilson

If you're planning to be at MIX07, the IE Team's sessions are a great way for you to understand what they were thinking with IE7 and the challenges they looked to resolve. Be sure to give them feedback and suggestions for their future work. And of course, keep an eye on the IE blog for updates and news.

Microsoft Announces Silverlight

Nick White — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 15:29:00 GMT

Yesterday we officially unveiled the name for what was previously known as the extremely catchy "WPF/e" (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere) at the 2007 National Association of Broadcasters Conference. WPF/e is now Microsoft Silverlight.

OK, so what? Just what is Microsoft Silverlight? It's a new cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in that allows users a new and richer multimedia experience when using a Web browser (for example, it supports 720p HD media playback). Web developers targeting IE, Firefox and even Apple's Safari browser can all make use of Silverlight for a consistently amazing experience. It's also a client- and server-agnostic platform; this means that the runtimes are the same on any platform, allowing you to deliver the Silverlight experience from an Apache web server, if you like -- without requiring any MS software on the server. How's that for interoperability?

Plus, existing Windows Media-encoded content can be streamed or downloaded without the need for re-encoding.

You'll notice that the MS Silverlight Website includes demo videos and FAQ and evaluation downloads. On 30 April, just in time for MIX07, the site re-launches with a full-on Silverlight experience.

Check out Sean Alexander's demo of Silverlight over on Channel 10.

Tim Sneath has a top 10 list of reasons why you want to use Silverlight.

And saving the best for last, my former colleague from the Mobile and Embedded Devices Division, Loke Uei, shares some excellent information on Silverlight, including a comparison chart between Silverlight and .NET 3.0.

This is just the beginning -- like I said, expect to hear more at MIX07 in just a few weeks.

See you at MIX07

Nick White — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 18:44:00 GMT

This year's MIX07 promises to be an exciting 72-hour conversation amongst Web devs, designers, advertisers, decision-makers and MS (I'll be there), with Ray Ozzie and General Manager Scott Gunthrie slated to start it all off with their keynote. Just like last year at MIX06, MS is continuing to "mix" it up (the audience, that is) to get various perspectives on bringing next-generation experiences to the Web.

MIX07 at Las Vegas' Venetian Hotel offers a variety of sessions, such as "Blending Up User Experiences" (focusing on WPF integration and implementation) to "IE7 Past, Present, and Future" (browser features and futures). And of course Windows Vista is right in the middle of it all, being the OS underpinning many of the advances in the Web experience.

Even better? All MIX07 attendees receive a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate.

Last year's MIX saw the Beta 2 Refresh of IE7, giving developers and web designers a peek at Microsoft’s brand new Web browser now shipping with Windows Vista.

This year’s MIX should be quite interesting. If you're not already signed up, do so before 15 March so as to take advantage of the early-bird discount of 15% off the full conference registration price.

And if you want to share your excitement for the event, you can even put some MIX bling on your website or blog.

See you there ...