LIVE from MIX09 kick-off keynote

It's that time again. Time for another fun MIX live blog! Like last year, the music is already blaring- not Johnny Cash, though...this year we're going all hip with a DJ mixing-up the tracks- the lights are spinning, and people are streaming-in and taking their seats. I'm already locked and loaded, ready to bring you as much coverage as I can. So grab some coffee, get comfortable in your cube, and then get ready to give your F5 key a workout. We'll get things started soon! 8:41 AM: DJ tunes still going. DJ welcomed the audience and forgot what time and day it is today- clearly not a morning person. All tweets with #mix09 are streaming across one of the huge screens, too. Here's your chance to be part of the fun...8:54 AM: Music, music, music...people are still pouring-in, but room is definitely getting full. Things should get started in about 5 minutes. In the meantime, bookmark http://visitmix.com/2009 to find all videos from MIX. 9:01 AM: No action yet. Looks like things will be starting a little late this morning.

9:03 AM: Here we go! Lights down. Bill Buxton, MSFT Research, taking the stage.

Continue reading LIVE coverage of MIX keynote

9:04 AM: Talking about how now is a good time to be focused on “experience [design].” Trying to make the case that it’s still a good time to invest in design in a down economy. I think you don’t have to do much to convince this audience, dude…

9:07 AM: Bill is giving us a history lesson now. Showing us great designers through history (such as Walter Teague from Kodak in 1926). Showing us guys that started companies around the time of the Great Depression. His key “one liner” is: Return on Experience.

9:09 AM: Interesting way to start MIX. All talk is about industrial design. Definitely showing more love to designers this year than last year. Looks like developers will need to wait a bit for the interesting news…

9:12 AM: Bill just claimed that at least half of this MIX audience is from the design background and that less than half are developers. Guess that’s why we’re still talking industrial design…

9:15 AM: “Our job is not to answer questions. Our job is to ask the right question to get to the right question to ask the questions that deliver the answer.” I see…

9:19 AM: “What do Canada and transitions have in common? They’re both dominated by the states!” If you didn’t guess from Bill’s joke, we’re talking about diagramming state transitions now.

9:22 AM: Ah! Finally some Microsoft news. Bill is finally going to share some details about how MSFT is addressing this idea of supporting UX design.

9:24 AM: Bill just threw in the towel for the Zune. “It’s not about the device. It’s about the software.” Clearly MSFT is shifting back to the idea of the “platform” vs. the device. No “official” news, though, just a clear directional statement from Bill.

9:28 AM: Bill has really spent 30 minutes talking nothing about MSFT. Leaving the stage now. A quick video and then ScottGu takes the stage. Very funny video! Hopefully this will be online soon.

9:31 AM: Scott is on stage and it’s finally time to talk tools! He’s going to cover three categories: Standards-based web, RIA, and something else. First-up, talk about standards-based web tools and tech.

9:32 AM: Expression Web 3. Exciting new feature is called “SuperPreview.” Supposed to help you design CSS that works cross-browser. Erik Saltwell, GPM from MSFT, on stage to demo the new feature.

9:33 AM: Erik is using Expression Web. SuperPreview makes it possible to basically use any browser rendering engine in Web (even side-by-side and overlay modes). Enables you to quickly compare a page in different browsers to look for visual discrepancies. SuperPreview can use cloud services to provide browser renderings even if you don’t have the browser installed on your PC! That includes previews from Safari on a Mac on your PC.

9:37 AM: Very cool demo. You can now actually test IE6/7/8 on the same machine without VMs. They’re going to make a standalone version of SuperPreview available for FREE today. Download the beta and check it out!

9:38 AM: Back to Scott. Now talking ASP.NET MVC.

9:39 AM: As expected, just announced ASP.NET MVC is shipping in v1 today. Now on to talking ASPNET v4 and VS2010.

9:40 AM: First ASPNET. Talking about what’s coming new in ASPNET 4 timeline. More control over ViewState, an update release for MVC, new AJAX features (client-side templates), and distributed caching (a.k.a. Velocity).

9:41 AM: Now VS2010. Code improvements, improved JavaScript support, SharePoint editing support, support for multiple web.config files (Test, Staging, Prod, etc.). No news here. Now on to talking IIS7.

9:43 AM: Shipping 8 new extensions for IIS7 this week, including tools for publishing to IIS from VS, new secure FTP tool, new WebDAV tools, etc. No details, though. Scott’s already moving on to talk about the MSFT Web Platform Installer (the unified installer for MSFT products). Version 2 ships today. Available at Microsoft.com/Web.

9:44 AM: Launching Web App Gallery. Will feature free .NET and PHP apps that you can run on Windows Server. Demo time…

9:46 AM: Somebody (sorry no name on screen) is on stage demoing the Web PI (Platform Installer). Yeah…demoing an installer…

9:48 AM: Cool thing is that the installer does allow you to directly install apps- “An App Store for the Web Server.” Install things like DNN or WordPress. Web PI will handle installing all dependencies- including PHP if necessary.

9:50 AM: Anybody can get their app listed in the App Gallery (and thus the Web PI). Criteria online. You host the code- Gallery just points to it. You tell Gallery the dependencies, though, and it handles providing those.

9:51 AM: Announcing Commerce Server 2009. And that’s it. One slide. Now on to Azure.

9:52 AM: Azure Announcements:Supporting PHP/FastCGI, Support .NET Full Trust, Supporting relational databases (via SQL Data Services), New .NET services you can use in Azure apps. Commercial release later this year.

9:53 AM: Scott’s now moved-on to talk about BizSpark (the free software program for start-ups launched last year). I think his time is running-out ‘cuz he’s moving quickly. Wrapping-up by brining on-stage Jeff Attword and Joel Spolsky to talk about Stackoverflow.com.

9:56 AM: Jeff and Joel are just giving an overview of SO, the process for building it, the current traffic they’re serving (it’s all running on 2 servers), etc. Sorta a plug for MVC, too. Just a site overview. Annnd, now the plug for BizSpark.

10:01 AM: Jeff and Joel are wrapping-up the infomercial and Gu is back on stage to talk Silverlight.

10:02 AM: Silverlight 3. Today MSFT is releasing new versions of World Wide Telescope and a new Virtual Earth SDK. Highlighting the “10,000s” of apps world wide built using Silverlight. Inviting Kevin McEntee, VP Web Engineering, from Netflix on stage to talk about Netflix’s success with Silverlight.

10:05 AM: Talking about why Netflix picked Silverlight. Wanted to support Macs. Wanted to support FireFox. Wanted to remove installer experience. Wanted a single player for all users. Highlighting SL features Netflix uses: adaptive streaming support, built-in DRM, etc.

10:09 AM: Kevin says Netflix is “shipping” a new version of their Silverlight video player every 2 weeks since no installer is required. Interesting…

10:10 AM: Netflix is eager to use new GPU support for scaling and stretching video in Silverlight 3. “Netflix loves Silverlight.” Quick demo of the player and now Scott is back.

10:13 AM: Silverlight 3 media Announcements: GPU hardware acceleration, Codec support for H.264, AAC, and MPEG-4, Raw bitstream Audio/Video API (build your own codecs), and improved logging support for media analytics. New product: IIS Media Services. Free. Designed to help you deliver the highest possible quality video at lowest TCO.

10:16 AM: Scott is now demoing the new IIS Media Services and Expression Encoder. Very cool production workflow for video. Smooth streaming and adaptive bit-rates are very impressive. Support for live video now also includes “Tivo-like” abilities to pause, seek back, etc.

10:21 AM: Scott is now inviting Perkins Miller, Sr. VP Digital Media at NBC Sports, on stage to talk about the NBC experience using Silverlight to broadcast the Olympics. Announcing renewal of Silverlight platform for 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics- will be broadcast in full HD (720p) with Tivo-like features.

10:27 AM: Scott’s back. Done with media. Now time to talk RIAs.

10:28 AM: Silverlight 3 RIA Announcements; GPU acceleration, perspective 3D, bitmap & pixel API, Pixel shader effects, Deep Zoom improvements. Time for demos. Scott is showing “gratuitous” effects demo with Silverlight.

10:30 AM: App Dev with SL3: Deep linking, navigation, SEO will be addressed (support all major search engines), Improved text quality (ClearType), multi-touch support, 100+ controls available, library caching support (supposedly for any DLL).

10:33 AM: Demo time. David Anthony, Co-Founder Bondi, and Scott Stanfield, CEO Vertigo, on stage to demo some Silverlight 3 features in a new app built for Bondi (who is in the business of making back issues of magazines available).

10:37 AM: This demo is the new “Hard Rock” demo for Silverlight. It’s a more functional Deep Zoom powered Silverlight demo. Not sure if it will be publically available. Definitely cool for showing-off more media/SL3 capabilities. Looks like covertocover.com will be the spot to find this.

10:40 AM: Oh man- playboyarchive.com launches tonight with 40 free back issues of the magazine running (I assume) on a platform similar to what was demoed today. Have fun with that…

10:41 AM: Blend 3 Announcements: SketchFlow, Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator import, Behaviors, Designing with data, Source code control, XAML,C#, and VB code intellisense (finally!).

10:43 AM: Jon Harris from MSFT is on stage to demo new features in Blend 3. Starting with SketchFlow. Enables you to build “flow of an application” in Blend. Enables you to add “Wiggly Controls” to page (very prototype looking).

10:47 AM: A SketchFlow player enables you to share your prototypes with clients. Free player- doesn’t require Blend. Makes it easy to build a prototype in Blend and then share (with animated transitions). Easy feedback, too. Users can directly annotate on screens and then send feedback to Blend user who can load and view feedback.

10:50 AM: People LOVE the new ability in Blend to export a SketchFlow to Word Document (for quick documentation of application design). Loudest applause so far.

10:51 AM: Showing Behaviors in Blend 3. Enables you to add action to controls without writing any code. Next, showing direct support for importing Photoshop and Illustrator files. Enables you to import specific layers, merge layers, etc. Layers remain editable in Blend. Showing live data binding abilities in Blend 3 designer.

10:58 AM: Wrapping-up the SketchFlow/Expression Blend 3 demo. His one-liner: “Expression Blend 3: From concept to completion.” Scott is back on stage.

10:59 AM: Data Improvements in SL3: Data-binding improvements, validation error templates, server data push improvements, binary XML networking support, Multi-Tier REST data support (aka RIA Services aka Alexandria). Demo time.

11:01 AM: Scott is demoing data features in SL3. Using Entity Framework for DAL. Creating DomainServices class in server project (auto-syncs with SL project). Running demo- BUILD ERROR! :) Quick recovery though and everybody a good laugh. Showing grouping in new default SL DataGrid, Binding via proxy object, etc. See older Alexandria demos to understand what’s being demoed today.

11:06 AM: Demo’s done. New announcement: SAP NetWeaver Silverlight support coming this year.

11:07 AM: Silverlight running outside the browser! SL3 includes native Fit Client support. Can run SL3 apps out of browser on Windows and Mac. Safe, secure, sandboxed environment. Built-in auto update support. Build offline-aware apps (detect if network is available). Integrate with underlying OS (hardware acceleration, multi-touch, etc.).

11:10 AM: Demo of SL3 out of browser. Tom Mara from KEXP (90.3 FM Seattle) is on stage to talk about how KEXP used SL3 to build a KEXP player. The SL3 out of browser install has a single install prompt- allows user to tell installer to add Desktop and/or Start Menu short cuts.

11:15 AM: SL3 runs in a standard Windows window shell (or Mac window shell on OSX). Apps look the same on Win and Mac. Apps fire event when network connectivity lost so you can handle changes to connectivity. Runs completely out of browser process, but does operate in browser security sandbox.

11:18 AM: Demo is done. Scott’s back to wrap-up SL3 talk. Going to tell us how all of the new features in SL3 impact its download size. New SL3 download size: 40KB smaller than SL2!

11:20 AM: SL3 schedule. SL3 beta available today. Expression Blend 3, SL3 tools for VS 20008, IIS Media Services all available today, too.

11:21 AM: And that’s it! Scott has left the stage and it’s now on to the breakout sessions. Hope you enjoyed the live coverage. Watch for more as the week goes on.