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

Microsoft Surface Test Drive

Today I got to test drive a Microsoft Surface machine while visiting their Issaquah campus. It is kinda like my iPhone, but you can't put it in your pocket. Believe me, I tried.

The sensitivity and immediate feedback was really amazing. The physics of moving virtual items around the table was fascinating...it really responded well. Ok. Who's gonna buy me one?

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.

Microsoft Silverlight Presentation by Brian Goldfarb part 1

(Install Silverlight to view this video.)

The video above is part one of a keynote speech given by Brian Goldfarb of Microsoft at the 2008 CRE8 Conference. I attended the conference in Orlando and you can review my earlier posts from the show.

A cultural change is afoot at Microsoft, where the oft-neglected designer is finally getting a long-craved-for hug from the Borg. This time it really seems like they are serious about respecting user experience and good human-computer interface design best practices. For instance, Microsoft is part of the OpenAjax Alliance and they have even launched a full-on designer community.

Check out his presentation to learn about Microsoft's new approach to the entire "ecosystem of developers" which involves "collaboration between teams of partners". Microsoft is not only trying to provide tools to do tasks, but they are also addressing the need for workflow solutions. How do teams work closely together, freely exchanging ideas, files and deliverables? With the new products, a designer can open up a project that has been coded by a developer and vice versa.

Goldfarb leads teams dedicated to building upon Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), their unified application framework. Among other things, it allows developers to apply basic windows functionality (like spell check) into multimedia applications.

He spoke broadly about general changes in Microsoft culture and practice. He mentioned that their server is now standards-based, and the "browser is getting better, I promise".

He shared a variety of example Silverlight sites from their Gallery, including Break.com, HSN,and the mind-bending "Deep Zoom" technology on the Hard Rock Cafe site.

At the time of this presentation, Microsoft was seeing over one million downloads a day of the Silverlight plug-in.

The new products support HD video, adaptive streaming solutions, XAML, and DRM-ready features. Read my post about a recent all-day Silverlight training event I attended at Microsoft to learn more about all this stuff.

Goldfarb stressed that they are building demand. Now they need creative people to develop the supply. To that end, they are offering 10 gigs of free hosting! The video above takes advantage of this. They are encouraging the developer network by providing a free place to get started.

Silverlight is driving plugin adoption by offering content developers a free hosting and streaming service: "Microsoft® Silverlight™ Streaming by Windows Live™ is a companion service for Silverlight that makes it easier for developers and designers to deliver and scale rich media as part of their Silverlight applications. The service offers web designers and developers a free and convenient solution for hosting and streaming cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences and rich interactive applications that run on Windows™ and Mac."

Microsoft Digital Advertising News

YuMe, a company dedicated to delivering ads across all platforms, has recently made a big deal with Microsoft to provide services and sales for digital video distribution. The video above is an interview with the Yume founder by Scobleizer.

In similar news, Microsoft just bought Navic Networks, a company that delivers advertising to digital television platforms. Read about the deal at The Seattle PI.

To learn more about the impending switch-over to digital television, read my earlier post T-Commerce, Digital TV and the Digitization of Content.

Cre8 Day 3: More People I've Met

As begun in yesterday's post, here are some more people I recently interviewed at the Cre8 Conference. Video and more faces to come. Meet the modern digital creatives.

Brian Goldfarb
Keynote Speaker, Microsoft Group Product Manager covering Silverlight, Expression Studio, WPF and more. High-adrenalin evangelist. Loves rain.



Christopher Smith
Cre8 Creator. AGI founder. Quark veteran. Author. Really loves hearing Disney tunes in the bathroom all week.



Alex Hamilton
Director of Business Development for Enfocus publishing software. Tools for digital designers.



Stay tuned for the interviews...