If the logo to the left didn’t give it away, I’m at Microsoft’s Mix Convention.  Which is actually pretty exciting, because I haven’t really been working with WPF lately nor following Silverlight closely.  This is a chance to get caught up on all the things I’ve missed.  And what better way to drag you, kicking and screaming, through the experience with me than with a live blog!?!?  (I got the idea while following the primaries via a NYTimes live blog.)

Why?  Because I need  something to do when my mind starts to wander.  It’s getting close to Keynote time so while I try to find a seat, here’s a picture to help you ponder the ramifications of a rock band stage set up in the foyer for anybody to play with.

9:20 AM

Found a seat.  There’s nothing like being squished shoulder to shoulder with two other guys while we all balance our laptops on our laps.  It reminds me of my plane ride in.  I wonder if Microsoft is going to show “Alvin and the Chipmunks” too. 

Wait…we all have laptops!?!?  I thought I’d be the only one getting precious Keynote news out to you “unattenders”!!  I’m so disillusioned. 

Uh oh…dude on my left (who we’ll now call “IBMVistaLaptopGuy”) just noticed the glowing apple on my laptop lid.  Things could get ugly.

9:35 AM

Ooops…missed the introduction and applause.  I was too busy opening and closing Visual Studio over and over so IBMVistaLaptopGuy would see I’m running BootCamp and Vista and stop giving me the stink eye.  I promise I’ll pay more attention from this point on.

9:45 AM

Oooooo…he keeps saying things like “Device Mesh”, “Social Mesh” and  “new service”.  Sounds like he’s setting us up for something big.

I’m a little distracted by the guy on my right (IronicUnfunnyTShirtGuy) who keeps leaning over to read what I’m typing while trying not to be obvious.  Yeah…I saw you dude.  Like what you see?

9:55 AM

He lost me.  He went into a tangent about “utility computing” and a bunch of

business related products. Started thinking about how awesome Halo 3 would be on those giant screens and completely zoned.

10:20 AM

Now Scott Guthrie’s on stage.  Brought out people to show us some demos.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the things they dragged on stage.

IE8 - Basically it sounds like the goal of IE8 was to try and create a better experience for developers more than anything.  Were people having issue with IE7?  (I have to admit…when he showed us a webpage that worked in FireFox and Safari working in IE8…wow.) 

You can download the beta later today if you want to play.  The built in debugging stuff is cool though…seems like a more advanced “Firebug”.  I also think the built in Activity and WebSlices features have potential.  Though I’m not a big fan of “indicators” popping up all over the page I’m viewing.

10:40 AM

Soooo…Silverlight 2.0.  They talked about a lot of stuff.  It was really cool too.  I’d tell

you about it but IronicUnfunnyTShirtGuy saw my Halo3 comment while reading over my shoulder.  Now he just wants to talk about how he powns noobs.  He lost it when they showed the Silverlight Halo Advertisement demo.  Some people are so sad.  I should challenge him to a Halo3 game.  Good thing I brought my Xbox with me to Vegas.

11:00 AM

Missed the last 20 minutes.  I went to the restroom and was distracted when I started a conversation with an Elvis impersonator.  He really likes his job but mostly does it to “pick up chicks”.   Love it.  Got back in time to

hear the phrase “…Silverlight controls, all released as open source.”  Damn…sounds awesome.  Stupid distracting Elvis and his glittering attractive clothes. 

11:10 AM

AOL built a nice Halo 3 silverlight version of their online mail client.  Very cool.  Makes me almost wish I still got AOL cd’s in the mail.

11:20 AM

Another very cool Silverlight 2.0 demo done by Hard Rock.  Instead of writing about it you can check it out right here.   It’s pretty impressive how far you can zoom in on the images.  Very responsive.

11:30 AM

Aston Marton came on with a Silverlight 2.0 demo that’s pretty typical of car

demos.  A 3d experience where you can paint it, change things like the rims of your wheels, brakes etc etc.  Only cool because of the level of detail you can see.  They also whipped out a UMPC and remotely painted a virtual car pink.  They ended by showing a wpf app inside an Aston Marton car.  It was a dashboard screen that…i’m not sure what it did.  But it had a nice glassy interface which pretty much means I’m going to bankrupt myself buying an Aston Martin.

11:40 AM

Holy Crap, right when I was about to fall asleep they

brought out Cirque Du Soleil!!!…who totally disappointed us by talking about their business and demoing a “casting” application.  Watching Scott Guthrie juggle was fun though.  I’m starting to get claustrophobic here between IronicUnfunnyTShirtGuy and IBMVistaLaptopGuy. 

11:50 AM

Silverlight for mobile.  Now that could be fun.  Demo shows a social app that allows friends to find out which bars other friends are hanging out at.  Has video, images.  etc etc.  Kind of a silly demo but the concept is very hip.  Dig the “shared information” the mobile silverlight demo is hinting at.

11:58 AM

During the WeatherBug demo (shown on a Nokia S60 device running silverlight to emphasis the partnership Microsoft and Nokia have that will put silverlight on future devices) IBMVistaLaptopGuy shot me one last dirty look as he and a lot of others start sneaking out early.

12:00 PM

After a quick summation.  We’re done. 

So there you go.  A deep and informative description of the Keynote here at Mix.

It was like you were totally here…right?  Well, I felt like you were here. 

Honestly, I don’t know how these live bloggers do it.  It’s pretty exhausting task.  Ok…enough typing. My hands and brain hurt.  Time for lunch.

UPDATE: If you want to play with any of the new technologies Tim has some good links for you.

Just installed the Yahoo! Shortcuts plugin for Wordpress. Thought I’d give it a test post.

Let’s see…

I first read about Yahoo! Shortcuts while reading a co-workers del.icio.us feed in my Google Reader on my Cingular 3125 smartphone while sitting in my cheap Ikea chair in my apartment in Brooklyn, NY.

While the plugin downloaded I started watching/listening to a Google engEDU Tech Talk on YouTube. After downloading I uploaded the plugin to my site server while enjoying the cool refreshing taste of my 23.5 fluid oz can of Arizona Iced Tea (with lemon flavor) that I picked up from my local bodega for a smashing low price of 99 cents.

I decided to write this test post while letting Geoffrey Hinton’s tech talk continue running in a separate FireFox browser window on my Dell Latitude D410 laptop. Technically it’s not my laptop as The New York Times provided it for me so I probably shouldn’t use it for non-work related things like Facebook, YouTube, Google Reader, Live Messenger, Twitter, etc etc.

So what do you think? Has this post, which started as just text written by myself, Nick Thuesen, been enhanced by Yahoo! Shortcuts?

What! No shortcut magic for my name! The nerve!

Updated: This looks totally different in Google Reader, so make sure you click through to the site for the full experience. And lastly…is that map above showing Brooklyn, NY closer to Buffalo than Manhattan? My morning commute is going to be a killer.

iPhone - I Will wait on line for you - $250

Will Wait in line for iPhone

$200 or Best Offer!! It’s sad but I know they’ll get a better offer.

There’s even people willing to take it farther.

I will be yours IPHONE bodyguard!!! - $1000 (East Village)

I’d only pay someone 1000 bucks if they were willing to take a bullet for my iphone. And they’d have to be willing to sing that Whitney Houston song from the Bodyguard movie whenever I asked.

And to wrap this up. Here’s a nice news video of apple lawyers bringing the smack down on a 3rd grader.

Feel the Corporate Pain Small Child!

Microsoft to Alter Windows Vista

My immediate response was slight disgust. You know a ton of money is being spent on this issue. And reading all of the quotes of legal officers, attorney generals, janitors, etc each throwing in their comments…it’s a bit baffling. Then I read, “Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, said that as a result of pressure from the states, the Bush administration had taken a position closer to that of the states that found merit in Google’s complaint.” I have to admit, I really liked the idea of Cheney and Bush in a heated debate over Desktop Search.

In the end I asked, “Who cares”. And since I was alone I had to answer myself. “Microsoft and Google cares dummy.” And then it all made sense.

Usually I’m not one to use my blog to rant about real world situations, (just stupid things that make no sense), but immediately after reading this article I clicked the “open my email” button in Windows Live Messenger. Of course IE opened…despite FIREFOX BEING MY SYSTEM’S DEFAULT BROWSER! The caps were used to indicate how annoyed I am by this. Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Mail (I’m testing out the app), and Foldershare are all apps that I frequently use that ignore my system default browser setting. So maybe there is something to this desktop search nonsense.

I can still see where playing a sweet game of Doom might be problematic but how fun would it be to take this sucker to work? 

P.S.  This blog post was written with the Beta version of Windows Live Writer.  I was amazed at how easy it was to set up with my Wordpress blog.

The Physics of SuperHeroes

If you are an ultra geek, (or a closet ultra geek like myself), this book is probably right up your alley. The author does an amazing job of applying basic physics to common comic book heroes. For example: In the first Superman comic book the author takes the fact that Superman can jump tall buildings and using basic principle of physics determines the mass and size of Krypton and then shows why the planet exploded! Seriously…ultra geek reading material here. But don’t worry, the author has a great sense of humor and rarely bogs the reader down with over the top equations and calculations.

If you consider yourself a serious WPF developer and/or designer and you haven’t purchased this book yet…for shame. This book is easy to read, very well structured, and I love the glossy colored pages. Yes, even I, with my seemingly limitless caverns of knowledge, learned a lot of “tips” and “tricks” from this book.

So I admit it, I’m not the biggest fan of IE7. I’m not looking to get into a browser debate, to each his own is my view, but suffice it to say I use Firefox. Of course this does make it a pain when dealing with xbaps or xaml files…or it was until I found this Firefox add-on. All I had to do was tell it if the url being navigated too ends in “.xbap” or “.xaml” open the page in a IE tab. It works beautifully!

That’s it! The titles and images are hyperlinks if any of these peeked your interest.

I recently redesigned my site and decided I’d rather manage one blog instead of having to manage multiple blogs on sub-domains. Of course this means that those of you interested in wpf content are finding dull boring pictures and comments aimed at my friends and family. If you’re only interested in specific content you can change the source of your rss feed to one of the following.

Main (All Posts) - http://wpf.nickthuesen.com/wp-rss2.php

WPF Posts - http://wpf.nickthuesen.com/wp-rss2.php?cat=2

Friend/Family Posts - http://wpf.nickthuesen.com/wp-rss2.php?cat=3

Rants - http://wpf.nickthuesen.com/wp-rss2.php?cat=4

But I needed a better look. So I spent a couple nights trying to remember how to use photoshop, php and css. And let me tell you what…if this site doesn’t scream professionalism…well…I don’t want to know what does.

Instead of a having a bunch of sub-domains I’ve divided this one blog into 3 topics.

WPF - Where I’ll blog on WPF and other boring code related things.
Friends & Family - This will allow me to post pictures and information for people who’d rather not talk to me on the phone but can’t handle the guilt associated with avoiding me.
Rants - This is because whenever I get a good rant going nobody will listen. Well…now you don’t have a choice. (As long as I believe it…it’s true.)

But I have to be honest. I won’t blog much and when I do my grammer will make you shudder and my spelling will make you cringe. It’s a gift…I know.

You can still find my old blogs at the following links. I might even bring some of the content over to this one.

http://wpf.nickthuesen.com (Old WPF Blog)
http://newyork.nickthuesen.com (Old Friends & Fams)