MIX Day Three

Here we are on the final day of MIX.  Thanks to Microsoft for putting on a great party last night at LAX in the Luxor.  Also, thanks to Scott Hanselman and the guys at Bing for hosting Nerd Drinks at Wynn Encore earlier in the evening.

No keynote today, only sessions, and plenty of them.  I’m starting off with Building Platforms and Applications for the Real-Time Web then on to Building Large-Scale, Data-Centric Applications with Silverlight, Participating in the Web of Data with Open Standards, Peanut Butter and Jelly:  Putting ‘Content Management’ Back into CMS, and Building a Next-Generation Web Application with Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 2 and jQuery.  Needless to say, it’s going to be a long day with plenty of information to absorb.

All in all, I’ve had a great time.  I’ve learned a lot, got some swag, and met some good people.  Over the last few days I’ve shared conversations with developers across a wide array of technologies and from various parts of the world.  Sitting at my table last night at LAX there were developers from all over the United States as well as Iceland and Sweden.  The sessions are great but the networking opportunities add a great deal to MIX as well.

I’ve followed MIX every year since inception but this is the first time I’ve been able to check it out live.  If you haven’t been, it’s definitely worth the time and money to come out next year.  Now, I should probably get back to my sessions…

MIX Day Two Keynote Announcements

Update (11:10am):

Interesting talk from Bill Buxton about the concept of Natural User Interface to wrap up the keynote.  Looking forward to today’s sessions.

Update (10:30am):

Project codename “Houston” announced to manage SQL Azure databases directly in the browser.  Also, SQL Azure databases are now able to expose data automatically by simply clicking a checkbox to enable OData.

Update (10:25am):

Lots of news around OData…  Check out all of the details at http://www.odata.org/.

Update (10:10am):

Netflix has made an oData API available at http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/

Update (9:55am):

Microsoft is contributing to jQuery development.

Update (9:35am):

HTML5 Video!  HD, opacity, hardware acceleration.

Update (9:30am):

Dean Hachamovitch just announced the IE9 Platform Preview and went through some amazing demos that left other browsers in the dust.  HTML5, SVG, GPU leverage…

Update (8:50am):

Minutes away…

8:15am:

Day one for MIX is over and now everyone is gearing up for today’s keynote.  IE9 is sure to be a hot topic with the biggest question being, “When do we get a beta?”  I’ll be updating this post with the answer to that question, along with any other major announcements, throughout the keynote.

Lots of great sessions today…  personally I’m checking out What’s New in Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 2, Building Facebook Apps with Microsoft .NET and Deploying to Windows Azure, and either The Elephant in the Room or High-Performance Best Practices for Web Sites.  There are several others I’d like to see as well, but I guess I’ll have to check those out after the fact on the MIX site.

Don’t forget, even if you’re not here you can watch the MIX Day Two Keynote live.

MIX Day One Keynote Announcements

Update (11:10):

MIX Day One Keynote has just wrapped up.  Windows Phone Developer Tools are now available for download!  Great demos and lots of code made available today.  Looking forward to the sessions this afternoon.

Update (10:25am):

Scott Guthrie just announced that all of the Windows Phone 7 development tools will be free.

Update (10:10am):

Scott Guthrie just showed the Windows Phone 7 development experience within VS 2010 and the emulator is as smooth as can be.  Multi-touch support is also available if you’re using a multi-touch Windows 7 system.

Update (10:00am):

Joe Belfiore just got done showing some sweet demos with Silverlight and XNA.  Very intuitive, great design.

Update (9:35am):

Silverlight 4 RC is now available for download.

Update (9:20am):

Scott Guthrie just announced free upgrade to Expression Blend 4 for all Expression Blend 3 users.

Update (9:15am):

Scott Guthrie just announced that a ton of Silverlight code (editing, playback, etc.) will be open sourced.  Also, with Silverlight 4, users will be able to stream HD video full screen on one monitor while continuing to work on other monitors.

Update (9:10am):

MIX has begun!

Update (9:05am):

You can’t play with my yo-yo!

Update (8:45am):

MIX is about to begin

Good morning!  We’re 45 minutes away from the day 1 keynote and everyone is full of speculation regarding what announcements are forthcoming.  Follow MIX with a live stream available at http://live.visitmix.com/. 

Viva Las Vegas!

Well I made it to Vegas safe and sound.  I have a ton of sessions lined up over the next few days.  I’m particularly looking forward to Building Offline Web Apps Using Microsoft Sync Framework, What's New in Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 2, Building Facebook Apps with Microsoft .NET and Deploying to Windows Azure, and Modern Web Form Design.  Of course I’m also curious about the surprises that are in store for Windows Phone 7 Series.  Could there be some hardware looming?  Hmm…

First things first, though, time to go check out the MIX area, mingle for a bit, then find a good burger.  Stay tuned.

Heading to MIX 10

Getting ready to head to the airport so I can hop a plane to Las Vegas.  I’ll be updating this blog regularly throughout the week.  Looking forward to the new mobile stuff, I wonder what’s in store…