Microsoft

Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2

colinizer Microsoft, Silverlight

This week, during the Keynote for the Microsoft TechEd 2008 Developer conference (with TechEd now being in two parts – developer and it pro), it was announced (with little detail) that Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 is due for release by the end of this week – nothing as of Friday at 19:00ET.  There will (as with Beta 1) be a go-live license available.

One of the big Silverlight projects mentioned at Mix08 was the MSNBC Olympics site which will present ‘gazillions’ of hours of event video.  It was thought that this would be a Silverlight 1.0 solution, but the TechEd keynote also included the news that it would be running on Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2.

I believe we’ll be seeing the dual release of Silverlight 2.0 RTW and WPF SP1 RTW at the same time, towards the end of the summer, along with various developer tools.

I’d suggest staying tuned to Scott Guthrie’s and Tim Sneath’s blogs.

Update:

Scott’s blog was updated as predicted and here are the links…

Download links:

Download of individual pieces

Other info:

Windows Live Mesh Gives Legs or Wheels to Microsoft Sync and Auto PC

colinizer Desktop Application, Gadgets, Internet-based Service, Live Mesh, Live PC, Microsoft, Mobile Application, Server Application, Software As A Service, Web Application, Web Service, Windows Live, Xbox, Zune

Microsoft Sync has appeared in some Ford vehicles and is apparently coming to at least two other manufacturers soon.

It amazes me how utterly appalling the uptake is of Windows in the car industry.

Microsoft Sync with a Microsoft’s Live Mesh client opens up the ability to take contacts, music, continuous user experiences (such as phone calls, paused music and podcast bookmarks), to your car.

Combine that with a ‘Windows Live PC’ running on an ‘Xbox portable’ or Zune in the mesh as I’ve mentioned in this series of posts on Live Mesh, and you can really see the magic of software plus services coming together for a seamless user experience.

A ‘Windows Live PC’ gives the UMPC, ‘Microsoft PC’ or Xbox Portable a Future

colinizer Desktop Application, Internet-based Service, Live Mesh, Live PC, Microsoft, Mobile Application, Server Application, Sheep, Silverlight, Software As A Service, Software Development, Web Application, Web Service, Windows Live, Xbox, Zune

In this series of posts I’ve talked about my concept of the ‘Windows Live PC’ as the trojan strategy in Microsoft’s Live Mesh.

I’ve talked about how such a virtual PC could be available on an Xbox 360, a Mac or other platforms.

One of problems with the Microsoft UMPC initiate has been that cost of PC capabilities in a small form-factor, and the need to up the component cost to provide Vista in that form factor.  This has made many UMPCs (so far built not by Microsoft, but by IHVs) more expensive than many notebook computers and with less power at the same price.

With my concept of the ‘Windows Live PC’ and minimal SSD storage, the UMPC could stop growing in power (and energy consumption, resulting in longer battery life) and just turn into a ‘Windows Live PC’ client.

In previous posts I suggested that such a client doesn’t have to be very powerful.  I also said that the xbox 360 is good enough.  In fact the original xbox is likely good enough too in many ways – even perhaps a PS2 or PS3!!

How about a PC the size of a Mac Mini or the size of a Zune?

What if Microsoft sold its own UMPC with SSD storage, the form-factor of something like a Samsung Q1 Ultra but not much processing power – how about an Xbox portable?

An Xbox portable would be the ultimate convergent future of Live Mesh, Xbox, Xbox Live, ‘Windows Live PC’, Xbox portable, WPF, Remote App, Windows Server 2008, Windows licensing, ISV solution channel, etc. 

Robbie Bach, J Allard, Ray Ozzie, Bob Muglia, Steve Ballmer & Bill Gates – take a look at this series of posts on Live Mesh – I know what you’re up to 🙂 and if you’re not then you should be – it’s a vision I want to be involved in one way or another from the outside or the inside…

Add a ‘Windows Live PC for Mac’ to your Live Mesh with Silverlight

colinizer Desktop Application, Internet-based Service, Live Mesh, Live PC, Microsoft, Mobile Application, Server Application, Sheep, Silverlight, Software As A Service, Software Development, UMPC, Web Application, Web Service, Windows Live, Xbox

In this series of posts I’ve introduced the idea of a virtual ‘Windows Live PC‘.  I’ve talked about how your Xbox could be the ubiquitous PC in your household without any software application installations, thanks to a potential expansion of the currently disclosed Web Desktop (storage service) in Microsoft Live Mesh, with the addition of RemoteApp from Windows Server 2008.

Silverlight 2.0+ is the SUPER TROJAN HORSE onto the Mac, Linux and I believe there could be more platforms to come (see next post…)

Some developers may already be wondering why they should bother with HTML, AJAX, DOMs, DHTML, Javascript, etc. now that they can provide a hugely rich WPF Windows application in a browser using their existing .NET skills (plus WPF), and when that browser can be IE and Firebox on Windows, Safari on Mac, and whatever it is on Linux, without any of the nightmare that cross-browser standards-compatibility creates.

In previous posts I said that my notional ‘Windows Live PC’ will run (via RemoteApp) on anything that can handle the necessary technology stack with the xbox 360 being more than enough.  It seems to me that Silverlight 2.0 (or perhaps a later interation) could easily talk the Remote Desktop protocol.  Once that happens Microsoft can be selling you a ‘Windows Live PC’ subscription on your Mac and all those Windows-targeting ISVs can now license their product onto a Mac or Linux!!!

Note that there is already a Remote Desktop Client for Mac, but with the potential for Microsoft to offer a virtual ‘Windows Live PC’ running full screen, the Mac could fade into just a remoteapp client to a ‘Windows Live PC’ albeit a great new channel for the Windows and ISV software licensing – now that’s what I call leveraging!

Add a ‘Windows Live PC for Xbox’ to Your Live Mesh

colinizer Desktop Application, Gadgets, Internet-based Service, Live Mesh, Live PC, Microsoft, Mobile Application, Server Application, Sheep, Silverlight, Software As A Service, Uncategorized, Web Service, Windows Live

In this series I’ve been talking about the possible strategy that Microsoft could be unleashing with Live Mesh and associated Microsoft technologies.  I’ve framed it as a trojan strategy because it is not the offering being talked about, but just like Silverlight (the trojan RIA platform onto other platforms), Live Mesh could quickly spring into something dramatic – the Microsoft ‘Live PC’ concept that I predict in the last post.

Live Mesh provides a Web-based Live Desktop which is currently just a 5GB file store with a Windows-Explorer styled web interface.  Add Windows Server 2008 Server RemoteApp into the mix, or should I say mesh, and you get the ability to run Windows anywhere you can run Remote Desktop.

Remote Desktop uses the Remote Desktop Protocol.  So for a client device to provide a virtual Windows experience it more or less just needs to support a graphic blitting display, keyboard & mouse (or similar), TCP/IP and some cryptography for security.

So how basic could such a device be?  Well that doesn’t matter because that xbox 360 is more than powerful enough and guess who sells that.  That’s right, you may already have a device in one or more rooms in your house that could be the PC of your future.  Remember that the RD protocol isn’t great for remoting intense A/V or graphics.  That’s OK, because you would play games locally using the full local power of the xbox, and Microsoft has already mastered the Xbox Live multi-player service.

So you could have a Microsoft ‘Live PC’ which you access from any Xbox without any software installation.  Xbox already does this kind of trick and even with HD video when it acts as an extender for a local Windows Media Center (running on XP Media Center or various Vista versions).

WPF makes it easier.  The RD protocol does things to optimise the transfer of the virtual desktop image on the remote physical machine.  When Xbox 360 is used as an extender it talks to the Media Center service on a local PC with a higher-than-pixel-level protocol to optimise the data.  WPF provides a high level of retained descriptive UI too.  I can see the RD protocol optimised (if it hasn’t been already) for remotely WPF applications.  Microsoft would then encourage ISV to create more WPF-based apps that would be inherently optimised for a ‘Live PC’ experience.

Let’s not forget that Windows Home Server that was quietly (relatively) released last year.  That server could start providing a LAN-based RemoteApp service for those things that can’t be run well over an Internet connection.  A virtual ‘Home Office 201x Service’ perhaps?

The Microsoft ‘Windows Live PC’ is coming to The Mesh – IMHO

colinizer Desktop Application, Internet-based Service, Live Mesh, Live PC, Microsoft, Server Application, Sheep, Silverlight, Software As A Service, UMPC, Web Service, Windows Live, Xbox

This is the 2nd in a series of posts about Microsoft Live Mesh – check out the Live Mesh tag for the others.

I’ve said that I think Microsoft Live Mesh is approximately FolderShare + FeedSync + Remote Desktop + Live Core Services.

Mesh provides a Web-based Live Desktop which currently looks like FolderShare/SkyDrive with 5GB on cloud-based storage with a new web interface that looks like Explorer.  Your can remote desktop to Vista/XP devices in your mesh, but the web-based desktop does not currently…  provide an application/process execution environment that you could remote desktop to…  see where this could be going?

For those not familiar with remote desktop, it’s the ability to have an XP/Vista or Windows Server computer running somewhere and have your login experience appear where you are – that means the keyboard, monitor, mouse & speakers  at the computer you are using (and even local hard drives and printers) can connect to your remote physical desktop (or login on a windows server) and it feels like you are physically sitting in front of your remote physical machine.  To do this, your local machine needs to be able to run the remote desktop client software.  You can run the client full screen or in a window.  Many people work form home by using a home PC to connect to their work PC.  There are performance limitations to this, but it works just fine for information workers and develops in many cases.  Intense A/V experience don’t remote so well.

So you can remote your physical XP/Vista desktop and use it on the machine you have.  This is a user using their computer remotely.  The experience can also be shared so that the regular user can be at the physical PC and a remote user can share the experience – this is Remote Assistance and allows IT support staff to help users through procedures. 

Windows Server 2003 (and a little earlier) provides Terminal Services – whereby multiple virtual (no physical keyboard, video & mouse) desktop sessions can be present on a server with each desktop session connected to by a user on a PC.

Windows Server 2008 introduced RemoteApp: “Terminal Services (TS) RemoteApp and TS Web Access allow programs that are accessed remotely to be opened with just one click and appear as if they are running seamlessly on the end user’s local computer.”  So rather than remoting the whole desktop, one or more single application windows appear on the local machine which are really running on a server somewhere… 

Back to my ‘Windows Live PC’ concept.  Live Mesh provides this Web-based Live Desktop which as I said currently is a folder storage services but it has a Windows Explorer-like UI.  What would happen if you could actually double-click on a file and the appropriate application would launch, and without having to install anything!  Yep, put Windows Server 2008 behind the Live Mesh web desktop and you have Live PC – a PC anywhere. 

Such a ‘Windows Live PC’ would open up a huge subscription model for Windows and applications.  Microsoft could provide a service-provider infrastructure so that instead of selling you software by download or on DVD, you could just license the service through Microsoft (or perhaps independent hosting).  Instant deployment.  This would make Windows Marketplace something worth looking through.

Microsoft may have had a struggle moving enterprise licensing to a subscription model with the horribly executed (at least initially) Software Assurance scheme, but the ‘Windows Live PC’ concept I’ve covered here could be the beginning of real subscription licensing of Windows… everywhere…  Ray Ozzie, I know what you’re up to – I may even be up for sharing the vision if you have a suitable offer 🙂

While such a named product has not been announced to my knowledge, in subsequent posts in this series I’ll examine how Microsoft could make ‘Live PC’ available on many devices and operating systems!

Will You Get Caught Up in the Microsoft Live Mesh?

colinizer Live Mesh, Live PC, Microsoft, Sheep, Silverlight, UMPC, Web Application, Windows Live, Xbox

Over the next few posts I’ll explorer the trojan horse that (I believe) Microsoft is building, including in your living room, your car and on other platforms.

I’m sure many posts have been written about Mesh but I hope to succinctly tell you what direction this could all be going in, as I see it.

I’ve framed this as a trojan horse because Mesh appears to be aimed at the consumer or at least the mobile/home workers.  What it could turn into is a great online strategy for Microsoft and a real move to subscription based Windows everywhere!

It has been touted as a great platform for developers but my current feeling is that there will only be a handful of killer apps that can be built on top of this platform as currently explained, and Microsoft could well build those itself.  Keep ready this series for the real ISV opportunity…

Mesh was mentioned briefly at the Mix conference, which was a mostly empty delivery of news and rehash of Silverlight news.  See the Silverlight tag on this blog for a recap.  Announcing Mesh after the Mix may have been a timeline slip, or it may not matter since access to Mesh previews has been heavily limited.  Perhaps Microsoft has learned to temper excitement to new ideas… or the timeline slipped…

As currently explained Microsoft Mesh seems to approximate to FolderShare + FeedSync + Remote Desktop + Live Core Services.

Conceptually it’s a set of cloud-based management for shared folders, device membership and a central activity news feed.  XP and Vista machines can join your mesh (by installing components on each desktop – with support for other devices coming later), but your mesh starts with one special device up front – a web-based Live Desktop that has 5GB of storage – I’ll come back to this in subsequent posts, but for now think of it as virtual storage only (like Microsoft SkyDrive) with a Explorer-like web interface.  The cloud maintains information about notional ‘meshed’ folders that are made real on one or more real device file system and/or the web desktop’s 5GB.  A share appears on each device (selected for share) as a folder positioned in the file system by the user.

So, once you have devices in a mesh and folders appearing on devices you can start to work on your files on one computer and then pick up that work on another computer.  If that’s not good enough or you didn’t put a file into a ‘meshed’ folder then you can remote desktop (with addition of some NAT traversal goodness) to a device to place a file into a ‘meshed’ folder.

This is all very well if you computer is not in power-save, the file is not exclusively locked syncing is up to date, and the internet connection is available for syncing,

Got the idea?  No? Check out mesh.com for an introduction at this time.

Read on to more posts in this series…

My Kingdom for a Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 Go-Live License

colinizer Microsoft, Silverlight, Web Application

So you’ve got your Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 download and have synaptic marvels firing off about how to make a cool application with it, and perhaps some money.

On the Silverlight website you see that there’s a Go-Live license for this release – oh but there’s no information on how to get this.

Being a good boy you remember that there’s a software license with the SDK so you check it out – here’s a non-comprehensive sample:

a. You may install and use any number of copies of the software on your premises to design, develop and test your programs for use with Microsoft Silverlight.

b. You may not use the software to develop or distribute programs that work with the final commercial release of the Microsoft Silverlight 2, you must acquire the final release version of the software to do that.

c. You may also use the software to design, develop and test sample code and programs that you (i) make available to other designers and developers in source code form as examples of how to use Microsoft Silverlight or (ii) deploy to end users for non-commercial purposes. These license terms will refer to such sample code and programs as “Silverlight applications”.

Bummer – no commercially exploitive opportunities there.

But wait – there’s more:

If you want to use or distribute your programs for commercial purposes, you must do so under another agreement or an amendment to this agreement. For more information about applying for commercial use rights, please contact golive@microsoft.com.

Yippee… the words “golive” sound promising – time to send an email…

Then this:

Final-Recipient: rfc822;golive@microsoft.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.1
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;550 5.1.1 User unknown

:(..

The next move will therefore to be to contact Mr Tim Sneath (evangelist for Silverlight, etc) or Mr Scott Guthrie (head silverlight man and circus performer wannabe – see mix08 keynote) directly…

For those that don’t know – you can’t just pick up the phone and call Microsoft and ask for the Silverlight team – you need to know someone’s name.

OK we have some names, but these are busy people, so best to try contacting them via their blog or possibly email first – these are busy guys after all. 

UPDATE:

Adam Kinney (formerly MS Channel9, now MS client platform evangelist with Tim) spots the post and forwards the issue to the appropriate people.

UPDATE 2:

Tim Sneath contacts me here and by email with a humble and helpful response – the golive@microsoft.com mailbox had an issue but should be working shortly.  A fantastic response experience.  Thank you Tim & Adam.

Mix08 Day 2 Keynote with The Steve Ballmer & Guy Kawasaki

colinizer Microsoft, mix08

Mix09 will be March 18-20 2009.

Guy Kawasaki and Steve Ballmer sitting on chairs chatting.  Guy jokes that Steve should have hired him in the past, and that it was racist that he didn’t.

Guy is asking Steve questions – some paraphrasing below.

Guy: ‘Why do you want to buy Yahoo?’

Steve: ‘… be a serious player in search and advertising…. could have got going quicker…. have a great time…. long way to go… Yahoo way to accelerate’

Guy: ‘What’s the current status of the deal?’

Steve: ‘We’ve made an offer…’

(Joke about throwing chairs and going monkey)

Guy: ‘Do you have to do Google in?’

Steve: ‘Search is a key application.  Have to have strong position in search for a strong position in online advertising.  It’s a zero sum game’

Buffering on my windows media player…. hmm.  Trying the 350kbps stream…

3 minutes missed…

Guy: ‘You’re an under dog?’ (to apple or google)?

Steve: ‘Yes… that’s a fair thing’

Guy: ‘Why don’t you sue them for anti-trust?’

Buffering… who knew Steve was so in demand.

Steve: ‘In phone we outsell Apple’ (note Microsoft doesn’t sell phone, only the OS)

Guy: ‘It will never leave this room but…. I use the Mobile Q with Windows Mobile 6.0 – I need Exchange server for my phone’

Guy: ‘Let’s talk about… bet with Facebook’

Steve: ‘Serious about online advertising.  Will get a few big platforms for ad serving… Happy to be a partner’

Guy: ‘Who negotiated it?’

Steve: Not him. ‘I’m well known not to be the world’s greatest negotiator’

…

Guy: ‘It was in the ashtray of your Lexus?’

Steve: ‘I’m a Ford guy…  not a huge amount of money’ (for facebook deal)

Guy: ‘What drives you?’

Steve: ‘3 things: 1  I love what we do…. jazzed about Silverlight 2… 2 Work with customers/Microsoft funnest, most energetic folks in the world… 3 I enjoy challenge… with the guys we have to compete with, can’t sit at home and work on golf game’

Guy: ‘.. huge organisation… can you describe your day?’

Steve: ‘3 types of day: 1 with customers from 7:30 to 8pm then get on plane to next city’

Guy: ‘South West airlines or a gulf stream?’

Steve: ‘Not South West’

…

Steve: ‘2nd type – doctor in office – every hour a meeting – exhausting…. 3rd type – think write and research – most of the time is his time to initiate things -get a view of what we should be doing’

Guy: ‘How many emails?’

Steve: ’60-70 pieces of email a day’

Guy doesn’t buy that – Steve gives out his email address – steveb@microsoft.com

Steve: ‘I’ll probably get 50 pieces because of this.  I’ve not found that human beings are not abusive’

Guy: ‘You have no secretary?’

Steve: ‘No – I wont be dealing with 60 tomorrow… I answer it or forward them….’

Guy: ‘Where’s Bill at? What is MS post-Bill’

Steve: ‘Bill transitions end of June to part-time.  Need to figure it out… Bill lucky about MS and Foundation… will do special projects after time off this summer.  Company has evolved in ways that aren’t generally appreciated.  Innovations come from people in the company.  Have such amazing people that continue to propel the place.  Notion of all-knowing…. through combined work of 5 or 6 key leaders in addition to me, Craig, Ray’

Guy: ‘Where can the stock go to get new employees?’

Steve: ‘Pitch is same as 25 years ago.  We’re recruiting the best and brightest – people that want to change the world.  People made money but they thought they wouldn’t.  No get-rich-quick notion as primary recruitment.  Google doesn’t have any new factor, nor does MS – need to go to private company – most start-ups fails’

Guy: ‘I have 4 kids – 12/14 oldest.  Went to Halo 3 roll-out.  His sons wont tournament and launch event’

Steve: ‘Way to go’

Guy: ‘My kids… they don’t know OS wars, anti-trust.  They think MS is cool company making xbox and halo – different perspective.  Seems not enough people know Microsoft does cool stuff – marketing opportunity’

Steve: ‘Opportunity it to keep making great products.  Your kids use our productivity products.  Kids grow up using PCs, communications, games.  Have to continue driving forward.  10-15 years ago was good then.  For 13/14/15 year old – what have you don’t for me lately’ … ‘Xbox users generate excitement. 20-25 million xbox users. 1 billion windows users.  Have to make sure all people fired-up’

Guy: ‘I love xbox… interface’

Steve: explains xbox live free/paid subscriptions

Guy: ‘Tell audience about silverlight – long term goal, from head of MS’

Steve: ‘As PC/Internet have grown, found we force developers/designers into fork – either easy to deploy through browser or it is rich – trying to bring things together – trying to avoid compromises – best of internet and rich PC for developer/designer – heart of .net’

Guy: ‘Some numbers?’

Steve: ‘Silverlight launched last mix.  In last year – 1.5 million downloads daily’…. ‘Have WPF on high number of desktops through Windows update’

Guy: ‘Deal with Vista? Seriously. That you get no choice of getting… wouldn’t you want one of these – Mac Book Air’

Steve: ‘Missing half the features of the PC’  Grabs Book Air to pretend smash on floor.

Guy: ‘DVDs are passe’

Steve: ‘Tell that to your kids on a long flight’

Guy: ‘You don’t sell any movies’

Joking…

Guy: ‘MS has lost focus… have xbox, live, phones.  How can you do this well?’

Steve: ‘Great company moves forward or becomes less relevant.  No option of doing the same thing.  Software never wears out.  Have to constantly move forward.  Things MS has done – we have already built two skill sets – desktop and enterprise.  Going to built consumer devices and online skill set.  Apple skill set in only in consumer devices – not in enterprise, perhaps in online.

Guy: ‘Apple may say you punted on OSs’

Steve: ‘You’d be wrong…’  Jokes about EU… ‘Strength that we built two capabilities.  We will build the 3rd and 4th?  Become less relevant if you don’t move forward’

Guy: ‘Skipped Vista’

Steve: ‘Popular in consumer world.  #1 issues are on app/drive compatibility.  Made choices to enhance security.  Very little issues on that.  Made choice to hurt compatibility.  Customers let us know that was painful.  Stuff upgraded and shipped service pack 1.  Vista continues to sell strongly in consumer market’

More jokes about getting rid of Mac Book Air

Guy: ‘Firefox and IE’

Steve: ‘Firefox has presence.  We are now really investing – still have lion’s share.  Talked about ie8 – more story to be told with end-user features – will see browser innovation from us – is core for us – measure will be how well we do against other browsers’

Guy: ‘IE Mac development?’

Steve: ‘Not top on our list.  Lots of people use Mac.  Smart for us to put innovation energy on other things’

Guy: ‘MS perception on social networking?’

Steve: ‘Notion of using internet to stay in touch with friends, is not a fad.  The fundamental nature has changed forever…’ … examples…. ‘no question social networking is not a fad… any one entity has it right?… have to keep pushing’

Guy: ‘Is there thought of opening APIs like facebook app phenomem?’

Steve: ‘Sharepoint and AD have open platform.  Evaluating where we are.  Have some extensibility.  People have written apps on MSN messenger’

Guy: ‘Been working with MS a lot unbeknown to you.  It’s a different MS.  No arrogance/bullying.  Smart people.  Bit of praise.  New MS employees very different.  No reason to bullshit’…. ‘Was evil empire… nice facilities in mountain view… need more facilities like that…. see MS employees touching them’ (laughs from audience)

Guy: ‘Would like to open up to audience questions’

Audience guy: ‘Talk about Adobe’

Steve: ‘Adobe is big competitor… Silverlight vs Flex/Flash… try to give you exciting choices.  Try to get you to pick the MS alternative.  Adobe will remain important company for a long time – will support Adobe as ISV and other regards.  Appreciate Adobe pioneers for PDF.  Have Office support.  Will continue to drive interoperability’

Guy: ‘PR answer’

Audience guy: ‘How did IE get left out?’

Steve: ‘We made a set of decisions for reason I wont go back through.  Try to accomplish version of windows now known as vista, then known as longhorn.  Had everything tied to next OS after XP.  We have learned from in design process.  Important to incubate.  Had long gap.  Painfully long gap between releases of innovation.  Understand how to decouple to incubate seperately.  Some mistakes and good learning.  Now have to hussle to drive browser innovation’

Audience guy: ‘Microsoft takes over Yahoo what happens to PHP applications?  Convert to asp.net’?

Steve: ‘Would have to make final integration plans.  Shouldn’t have two of everything, search, ad, etc.  Technology from both sides.  Tech comes with infrastructure that runs it.  Some PHP apps will be in production for a long time to go.  There will be innovations.  Most of big apps on IE (anywhere) will end up being re-done.  For foreseeable wouldn’t be a PHP-shop too.  Love in new Windows Server – lots of attention to make sure PHP works well.’

Audience guy: ‘Major synergies between MS and Yahoo?  How to get through anti-trust issue?’

Steve: ‘Pass on 2nd part.  Synergy – scale (form of synergy) is advantage in search – more search is more ads is more revenue.  More ads.  They have talented engineers.  Have at least 1+1=2.5’

Audience guy: ‘Focus on Yahoo.  Congrats.  Queryless search.  Fast search – how does that shape?’

Steve: ‘Fast is company had internet and website/corporate products.  Sold off web search.  They have great for high end search on enterprise and engines that can search web sites.  Tech fantastic and team is great.  Anxious to build both ways.  Love company/people.  Great integration plan – more to say’

Audience guy: ‘About upcoming virtualisation.  Licensing scheme to compete against amazon scheme?’

Steve: ‘With hyper-v, anyone can set up web farm virtualised.  Will offer computer/storage in cloud?  Ray said we would.  Will say more later.’

Audience guy: ‘What would like to see happen with Seattle Sonics?’

Steve: ‘Will not answer’

Audience guy: ‘Silverlight gone mobile [barely].  Is there one for iphone? Plans with Danger acquisition’

Steve: ‘Want Silverlight everywhere.  Apple announced new runtime.  Want 30% of revenue.  Apple not welcoming royalty-free runtimes.  Danger – about opportunity for unique application with service components on top of Windows Mobile – service application experience – want to get in market on great set of phones’

Guy: ‘What phone do you use’

Steve: ‘Q, Black Jack, Dash, getting old’

Audience guy: ‘When going to see default for MS properties?’

Steve: ‘Will introduce it into variety of application experience – months to years.  Have same issues as other people.  Need new release of products…  No reason to move live messenger to silverlight.  All relevant ones will move to Silverlight’

Guy: ‘Want a woman’

Audience guy: ‘Love that there’s no bathroom guy.  Working with Amalgar – vision?

Steve: ‘Health only vertical that we’ve chosen to dig into deeply.  Healthcare is least well services by IT.  Made big investment with healthcare provider.  Know what we’re doing really well.  Hard road to follow.  For consumers, experimentation – have to figure out what it will take to bootstrap consumer health – management of consumer health record – complicated…. important to be on edge.  Will encourage 3rd parites’

Audience guy: ‘Bluray won – thoughts on that?  with xbox?’

Steve: ‘We don’t make drives [conveniently].  Thought HD-DVD had advantages.  We’re going to support blu-ray in important ways.  Device driver support in Windows.  Toshiba moved on.  We’ve moved on.  Will HD go over disc or internet?  It’s important to have drive now – maybe not in 5 years’

Audience guy: ‘Can you show love for web developers?’

Steve: ‘You want me to stand up?’

Cheers.

Steve: ‘Web developers!  Web developers.  Web developers!  If you’re buddy just gave you a buck, I want 50c for it’

Audience guy: ‘Adoption in enterprise for social networking’

Steve: ‘As with consumer, interaction in enterprise changing.  See more use of IM.  Work on Sharepoint and AD.  We know how people relate.  Let infrastructure help you find colleagues with similar interests.  Have done a little bit – will see more.  It’s an early stage today still’

Audience guy: ‘Thanks for Dream spark, Channel 8 student partner program.  Have tools – what services can you give students? Continuing plans for helping academia’

Steve: ‘Providers that would be happy to host.  Will we have some service based facility for deploying?  See answer I gave earlier.  Will it have student discount?  We’ll see’

Same guy: ‘How support students?’

Steve: ‘This is recorded.  Many ways to find this event for students that can’t afford to be here.  Not world of conferences from 15 years ago – when only way was to be there – point friends to web’

Audience guy: ‘Apple said would license ActiveSync.  Comment?’

Steve: ‘ActiveSync has been available to license for a while.  Recently announced we have licensable protocols.  Glad to see iphone participate…’

Audience guy: ‘What plans for Avenue A Razorship?’

Steve: ‘Bought aquantive (?).  Sophisticated for managing advertising.  Set of advertising networks.  Doesn’t fit per-se with rest of MS.  We run it hands of.  Avenue A is free to use whatever technology.  Owned by MS, but pretty independent so long as making financial progress.’

Guy: ‘Deep down you want to use a Mac Air.  I have friends if you want a discount.  It’s been fun.  We’ll do this again sometime’

Steve: ‘Thanks for coming to Mix’.

NOTHING NEW THERE THEN !#$!@#$#%$

Silverlight on Mobile Devices – The disappointing Reality

colinizer Microsoft, mix08, Mobile Application, Silverlight

Having covered the news yesterday that Silverlight will (sometime this century) be available on Windows Mobile and select Nokia Symbian devices, I’m extremely disappointed to discover a few realities.

I’ve now watched yesterday’s Mix08 T12 Session (not a great session with projector issues, drawn out introduction, boring demos and of course disappointing news).

With regard to their current (pre-CTP) implementation:

  • It’s Silverlight 1.0
  • It runs in Pocket/Mobile IE
  • It uses JScript for scripting – no .NET!!!! – so much for the closed loop now.
  • It doesn’t have a common codec; it uses the devices available codec, going against one of the selling points of Silverlight being cross-platform.
  • It runs on Mobile 6.0 – PDA and phone devices
  • It uses Windows Mobile Player on the device to play movies – you can’t have alpha blending of video – this one is fair enough I suppose.

The presentation included comments about taking out the .NET code and putting in JScript, like this was a trivial thing.

The big selling point of Silverlight 2.0 is .NET development on the desktop, browser and server, plus WPF on the desktop/browser.  This is a step back and it hasn’t even got to CTP yet.

They demo’d WPF/E (the former name for Silverlight) over two years ago at a PDC on a mobile device.  What has Microsoft been doing for 2 years with this???

Their roadmap:

  • Silverlight 1.0 for mobile CTP Q2 2008
  • Silverlight 1.0 for mobile RTW Q4 2008
  • Silverlight 2.0 for mobile CTP Q4 2008
  • Silverlight 2.0 for mobile RTW Q2 2009

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