I have seen ASP.NET Ajax Control Toolkit in its beta builds. After its release, I haven't checked it recently. Today in Mix '07 I got a chance to sit in a demo session on that. They have added pretty impressive list of reusable controls like the SlideShow, Animation, etc. They all work using JavaScript and on a wide range of browsers. Microsoft have also open-sourced it for community development in CodePlex.

In the Web Services Buy or build Panel - discussions where on how Smugmug.com uses Amazon's S3 Storage instead of building their data center for redundant storage. How Redfin.com uses Live Virtual Earth instead of their own map implementation.

There was a cool session on WPF by my fellow RD - Scott Stanfield demoing on Seeing Dead People, check it out. Scott was fantastic, don't miss the recordings. He demoed Charles Petzold's XAML Cruncher tool from Petzold's book which is the best reference book on WPF apart from Nathan's book. He showed how you can import an Adobe Illustrator vector into Expression Designer and do fancy stuffs with that. They spent like 2500 hours totally on this & 3 Designers full time. Lessons learned: In the initial version they stored all data in code then they moved it to all resource files, all the family tree data was in a binary serialization then they moved to XML Serialization so that hierarchies and nestings can be handled better, initally they did XAML by hand then moved to Expression Blend. Scott also demoed a cool Game build as a XAML Browser App (XBAP)

The session on Silverlight media integration by Mike Harsh covered the following:

• Everything about WIndows Media Tools continue to work
• Showed how easy it is to build a simple Media Player with Silverlight
• Demoed a fantastic player showing 6 to 8 live broadcast playing from Internet, switching, full-screen, etc.  
• Silverlight supports WMV 7,8, 9 / VC-1, WMA, MP3 and the runtime has everything that is needed to play including decoders, etc.
• Showed how Expression Media Encoder can convert media files and output cool media player experience without coding

In Day 2 of Mix '07 Brian Arbogast announced new Windows Live API which are now easy to use, simpler licensing and ready to go. Microsoft is certainly late to the game, but can they pull it off from behind this time, let us wait and see.

(My photo with Brian Arbogast here has nothing to do
with Mix '07 - it was taken on 22/Oct/2004 in Gurgaon)

• Videos Support - SilverLight Streaming
• Spaces Photos - Currently Read-only, soon to be Write-Read
• Windows Live Contacts - Access to Hotmail
• Virtual Earth Maps
• Add Live Search to your site

They are introducing a new concept - User Controlled Privacy Model. By this Users can limit access of their data to a particular domain. I think this is good from a business and long-term sustainability stand-point.

All the services are free up to a limit and then a predictable annual charge.

There were demos about a mashup by Microsoft on blog and Virtual Earth and by Match.com using Windows Live APIs. I was surprised to learn about the scale of Match.com is responsible for 10% of all marriages that happen in USA, 60K customers every day, 55 Million emails every month. It was interesting they are also an 100% Microsoft Shop (IIS/SQL Server/.NET) and push a giga-bit of traffic every second. Their mash-up with Live Search especially the anonymous Messenger Chat using Live Alerts was cool (see the second image below).

The keynote today in Mix '07 at Las Vegas was fantastic. Microsoft unravelled a ton of new technologies around their SilverLight runtime in the keynote by Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie. There are tons of information about these in Visitmix.com website, so I will just cover the bullet points and what impressed me personally.

1. SilverLight 1.0 Beta is released, this is around a 1MB download that renders XAML files, can be programmed with JavaScript and you have a "Go-Live" license for this. This plugin works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Apple Safari. I missed the Linux desktop support and so did few others who participated in a Panel Discussion on Open Source Interop session - but there is no word from Microsoft on whether Linux support is happening or not.
2. This is the most awesome announcement. SilverLight 1.1 (currently in Alpha) Plugin will include an almost full .NET Framework runtime including support for dynamic languages like Ruby and Python.
3. SilverLight Streaming - An oneline video sharing service from Microsoft. And the Expression Media Encoder to go with it.
4. Simpler licensing and opening up of API of Windows Live Services

My personal take on SilverLight is this. I am super excited on the .NET Framework support. And at Vishwak we have been playing with it in its previous name "WPF/E" and I think this is a very promising technology, but the success for it against competition like Adobe Flash/Apollo depends on how large can Microsoft get its installed base quickly. It is a chicken and egg problem, but unless there is sufficient installed base, it will be difficult to get customers on board quickly.

There has been also announcements about IIS 7.0 Beta Go-Live recently.

References

Tim Sneath in his blog has listed great Silverlight webcasts that are great to quick start learning. He has also listed a great WPF Demo.

Scott Hanselman (my fellow RD) has posted this great entry on today's annoucement on Silverlight and .NET Support.

Silverlight FAQ | Quickstarts | Learning Video | Scott Guthrie talking on Silverlight | Videos running parallel in a puzzle

Update 21/June/2007: Came across thisgood posting from Scott Guthrie on various demos with SilverLightt

I am excited to be here. Just now completed my registration for Mix '07 in Venetian Convention Center, here in Las Vegas. Collected my free copies of Vista Ultimate and Expression Studio. The atmosphere here seems to be more fun and informative than last year. If you at home you can watch the keynotes live from Visitmix.com. I will keep you posted on things I found interesting. Stay tuned. And if you are attending Mix, remember to say "hello" to me.

Sometime back I had posted about President ABJ Abdul Kalam's recommending to give Bandwidth free just like how Governments today provide basic Road Infrastructure free. I didn't expect Government and Politicians to take note of this. Surprise!

The suggestion seems to be noticed and government of india is planning to give broadband free by 2009. This is certainly a very welcome move and when it happens will certainly give a big boost to economy.

On my flight from London to Seattle, I watched the recent James Bond 007 movie - Casino Royale. Daniel Craig has acted well and is looking good as the new bond. But the movie was unlike any previous Bond movie I have seen - pretty boring for a Bond movie. No new gadgets, car chases - it was more physical fights and chases like an Indian Movie.     

Today I started from Chennai to USA, enroute London (that's where I am doing this post after paying GBP 10 for 24 Hrs T-Mobile Wi-Fi) by British Airways. Like I have said in my past posts, almost all my Non-Tamil Movie watching happens while in long distance flights like these. Today I got a Upgrade to Business Class and could enjoy to a private selection of movies in the BA flight. While the first 7 hours of flight I slept, the last two hours I caught up with some movie watching.

The movie was about the Late Uganda Military Ruler Idi Amin and the friendship with a young Scotland doctor who comes to Uganda to help in a NGO. The doctor initially reluctant to take the President's Physician job, then get lured by the benefits and status it provides and soon becomes Amin's trusted advisor - little did he know that closeness to power centre's are always a double-edged sword. The movie depicts the doctor's emotional dilemma between his Western Principals and friendship with the President. It doesn't attempt to be an historic record of all events of Idi Amin's rule. Nice to watch.

While in the terminal I came to an Italian Coffee Shop "Costa" for a cup of tea. But look below at their monstorous cup given for GBP 1.5. The cup was much bigger than a regular soup bowl, so I had to definitely take a snap of it!

(I have kept my Nokia 9500 next to the cup for size comparison)

Internet has fundamantely changed the way people get free (as in freedom) access information and news. Before Internet, governments around the world could stop control access to their individual benefits. But with Internet it all changed, even in countries with protective regimes you can access Internet freely to a large extend. Many governments around the world tried to block sites and failed to a large extend. I personally believe other than Terrorist and Illegal sites, there should be no ban on any other sites. In the long run it is good for people in power too, to allow free flow of information.  

I wanted to do this post on seeing a news article today in MSN India that "Indian IT ministry refuses to ban websites". Sensible move. What ever is the reasoning behind this, I think this validates the power of Indian Democracy and freedom of speech here.

Microsoft today announced through Soma's blog - the official name of the technology that they have been previewing as "WPF/E". It is now going to be called Microsoft Silverlight. "Silverlight" is probably the most fanciest name that has come from the company (MS) that is known to keep its product names long and uninspiring like "Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Office System".

What I found interesting in WPF/E betas was its ability to use XAML and JavaScript for interesting solutions. Now with the official announcement that Silverlight will be cross browser, cross-platform and will work as a rich media serving platform, it sounds more convincing to succeed. I am dying to see this closer in person at Mix '07 in next few weeks at Las Vegas.

If you have been using Vista, Outlook 2007 combination and using POP3 (Non Exchange Server) for downloading emails - you may be experiencing slow email download. This might be due to the auto tuning of TCP/IP in Vista. Here is a Microsoft Support KB that helps to resolve this.

Update (20 April 2007): Similarly if you feel that search is slow with Outlook 2007 (I liked Lookout, unfortunately it doesn't work with Outlook 2007) then download this fix from Microsoft.