MIX09 Conference: We Are Leaving the Desktop

We just got back from Las Vegas where we attended the Microsoft MIX conference, an event focusing on the intersection of technology and design. In place of actually writing insightful comment, we'll just post a bunch of our observations. John Lim was my cohort on this journey and we explored it all and lived to tell about it.

This is the new web. We are leaving the desktop behind. We are saying goodbye to the broadcast paradigm. We are getting free steak from Steve Ballmer. The cloud awaits.

• Silverlight 3 Beta released to much hoopla at MIX09. Many naysayers are warming up to Silverlight and we got to see tons of neat multimedia demos. Netflix demonstrated their video player which, now that it's been converted to Silverlight, works on both Mac and PC platforms.
• Convert Flash files to Silverlight with SWF2XAML
• There were multiple demonstrations of how Silverlight is time-based (like After Effects) and not frame-based like Flash.
• Silverlight 3.0 allows for something called the Out-of-Browser experience (OOB) which allows you to detach a Silverlight application from a browser instance so the app can rest on your desktop.
• See this cool video: "Seattle radio station KEXP discusses their use of Silverlight to engender listener loyalty and support. The KEXP application allows you to interact with live media, as well as store media for playing on the bus or plane when disconnected." DJ Riz was in Vegas mixing beats each morning as conference attendees filed into the keynote speeches.


• Conference attendees were lucky enough to see the new film by Gary Hustwit called Objectified. (See the trailer below.) "Objectified is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them."

• Microsoft's Expression Suite had some announcements at the show. Expression Blend 3 Preview is available with some cool new features. Also check out the Expression Web SuperPreview for IE available now. It allows developers to test websites on multiple browser versions while on same box, with no virtual machines needed. Sketch Flow is a great new rapid prototyping tool for Blend 3. A really cool way to turn a mind map into a storyboard into a prototype. The work flow promise of Expression seems to hold true according to Blitz, an agency that presented. They talked about a best practice of making a “Shadow HTML version” of your site so that all plug-in content (flash and silverlight) can be crawled.


• In direct competition with open source tool sets, Microsoft has started the BizSpark program where they give away tons of software for free to qualifying start-up companies for the first three years of their new company.


• "BlogEngine.NET is an open source .NET blogging project that was born out of desire for a better blog platform. A blog platform with less complexity, easy customization, and one that takes advantage of the latest .NET features."


• Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 officially released at MIX and I've downloaded it for my PC (but of course not my Mac cuz they don't make a Mac version). It's definitely worth the download. They kicked off the talk with a pretty funny movie starring some famous comedians talking about the Internet. (see below)
• The Add-Ons gallery at Microsoft allows you to extend the functionality of IE8. One add on that was released at MIX09 was the OneRiot Video Search.
• Some features received applause like the fact that when one tab is displaying a crashed website, the whole browser doesn’t crash.
• IE8 Accelerators are an easy way to right-click info on a page and act on that info via a new pop-up floater.
• Instant Search is a visual search that lets you compare, side-by-side, results from Google, Live.com, Wikipedia and other sources without leaving the current browser window.
• Web Slices allow IE8 users to keep track of a “slice” of the web that you visit frequently.
• IE8 seems to adhere to W3C standards much more than previous versions.

• Stack Overflow is a programming Q & A site that's free. They gave an overview presentation about how they used Microsoft tools when creating their site.


• The ZAAZ presentation was well done. It was called Measuring Social Media Marketing (Measuring Meaning, Creating Value: From data to action in social media). See the video and slides. Jason Burby is the Chief Analytics & Optimization Officer for ZAAZ and Ryan Turner leads ZAAZ social media efforts. They talked about quality vs. quantity in analytics. Human-centric, not tool-centric. Participatory. People are not going to the web to meet people. Really they are looking for value. Social objects and portability are super important. Entrepreneurs should ask what service they can offer that will take advantage of what is already online today. The year of the API. Remix, reuse.


• Bill Buxton spoke about experience design, creating products that people connect with and have positive experiences with. He joined Microsoft three years ago and has brought much street cred to the UX design team there. I liked when he was discussing prototyping and storyboards. He stressed that representing the transitions is as important as representing the states...what happens between the elements. He explained that successful experience designers must understand working on all platforms. His book Sketching User Experiences is great and conference attendees got free copies. See his keynote video below.

• I saw Lemmy from Motorhead in the Venetian casino. My shoulder rubbed against his leather jacket. He looked healthy and purposeful. Ace of Spades! Lemmy the movie coming soon.


• SharePoint was omnipresent.
• Visual Studio 2010 will allow you to open and edit SharePoint sites from within VS.
• Tony Jones presented "How Razorfish Lights Up Brand with Microsoft SharePoint" where he showed their creations for clients such as Kroger and Dell Financial. See the video.


• Microsoft Live Labs: Scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs doing research and experimentation and displaying the results online including Photosynth, Web Sandbox, Seadragon, Thumbtack and more.


• "Microsoft PlayReady is a new content access technology that enables business models for a wide range of digital entertainment content.”


• Bondi Digital Publishing is a company bringing print media online in a smart way and utilizing Deep Zoom to allow exploration. They've created Cover to Cover, 40 years of Rolling Stone Magazine plus a free online gallery of 50 issues of Playboy Magazine at PlayboyArchive.com. Also presenting was Vertigo who worked with Bondi on the Playboy site. Vertigo also built the MIX09 site, the Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia site and the CBS Obama Inauguration site. Vertigo has the BigPicture tool for making DeepZoom experiences. See the fun 3D cloud example. Get the code for BigPicture.


• There was a Rock Band video game competition during the conference. Everyone wants to be a rock star, but no one wants to learn the chords.


• The Windows Web App Gallery: Tons of free apps to install on your server including IIS versions of popular open source tools. The Microsoft Web Platform is "more than just a powerful set of tools, servers and technologies, the Microsoft Web Platform offers a complete ecosystem for building and hosting web sites, services, and applications."



• Azure is Microsoft's platform for the cloud. The cloud consists of SAAS, PAAS and IAAS (software, platform and infrastructure as a service). The Cloud Pyramid, as described by GoGrid, represents apps on the top of the pyramid (like Gmail), platform in the middle (Azure is a platform) and infrastructure on the bottom (server farms in the sky like Amazon Web Services or GoGrid).


• Forrester says that every dollar spent on UX research will return $100 over the life of the product.


• Links about MIX09
• Official MIX Site
• Flickr Photos of Mix09
• MIX09 Twitter feed
• Microsoft tweaks Windows Mobile 6.5 UI for the haters
• Microsoft Rocks the Web at MIX09

My Deep Zoom Comic and a Busted Narrative Structure

How is Narrative Structure Influenced by Presentation Format?

I just drew a comic about something that happened to me in the dot com days. I've posted it online in three different formats, partially because I wanted to see how different forms of presentation might change the overall feel of the story. I like the Silverlight Deep Zoom version the best by far. It allows the reader to scroll left and right and up and down. Plus it allows the reader to zoom deep into the image, seeing all the detail and even finding images within images. This "resolution independence" has allowed authors and creators to create unique new modes of storytelling.

Does it destroy the integrity of the story line and plot? You tell me. Perhaps our scattered, divergent, web-era minds crave stories where multiple plot paths intersect and overlap. It's often how we read the web, leaping from story to link to picture and back. Are these narrative asides just bad habits of an internet-infected mind? I actually think that, done well, these techniques can free creators to tell a multi-dimensional story like never before.

Above is the Microsoft Silverlight Deep Zoom version. This allowed me to tell the story the way I really wanted to. It allows for the best resolution and easiest user controls. Hover over the image and you'll see the controls to zoom in and out. You should also be able to use your scroll wheel. Go Full Screen!

Don't miss the hidden images. Some are easy to find, but some are much harder. The whole "resolution independence" of Deep Zoom allowed me to overlay images. If the reader zooms into a tiny spec on a photo, that spec may reveal a full-resolution photo that itself can be zoomed into. Theoretically infinite.

Find the following hidden images:

1. A Thai food menu.
2. Three pictures of Hawaii.
3. Another entire comic.
4. A pixel farmer farming pixels.
5. A spreadsheet.
6. Tripod.com home page.
7. A picture of me during the dot com days yelling at a phone.

You'll need the Silverlight plug-in which is a very quick install.

Sorry, I can't get it to work on the Mac yet. Silverlight is totally cross-browser and cross-platform, but the Deep Zoom composer tool is still a young product and the output is not fully optimized (which means a lot of tweaking of the XAML which I'm not an expert with.)

This is the Flash version. I bet with a little extra work I could simulate the Deep Zoom effect, but I'm just not a Flash guru. I want to spend time making stories and not doing multimedia development. This version works pretty good, but it forces the reader into one linear path.



This is the HTML version. This is so old school! Just some big-ass JPEGs stuck in a table (about 4.5 meg). I like this because it is simple and it works cross-browser, but ultimately it's kind of a pain in the butt to scroll around using the browser controls...too much effort.


All this makes me think about traditional narrative structure and the "The Freytag Pyramid." Gustav Freytag was the German writer who described a system for dramatic structure back in 1863. It's a mighty nice structure and I use it often. But, I also strive to bust that sucker up.



Check out the recent Wired magazine article by Scott Brown called "Why Hollywood Needs a New Model for Storytelling" to learn about Freytag deviants.

If you like this stuff, then check this out:

Video Below: Scott McCloud, graphic novel guru, talks about infinite canvases and digital comics at the TED conference.


This is an ancient interactive story I made back in the mid-90s. I was experimenting with the choose-your-own-ending storybook concept.



Download Microsoft Deep Zoom composer and make your own infinite canvases.

Learn how Deep Zoom works here and here.

View more of my dot com comics.

My Interview with Brian Goldfarb

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Brian Goldfarb, Group Product Manager of the UX Platform and Tools Strategy group at Microsoft. We spoke in Orlando after his keynote speech.

We chatted about multimedia, creative teams, designers, developers, Silverlight, desk clutter and endless email sessions.

See my recent coverage of his presentation, including Silverlight video of the whole talk.