Welcome to the Kitchen

I haven't really had a chance to blog to much while I've been here at Mix 08.  There's just to much to see.  From Surface to Elvis there is just to many cool things here and even more great people to meet.  I've been twittering most everything because I can do it from the session.  You can follow those at ...

  I thought I'd put together a list of predictions for MIX 08.  Some could happen, some will happen and some could not happen, you decide! Steve Ballmer gives Keynote in black turtleneck and jeans. IE 8 demo IE 8 uses the ''Office Ribbon'' toolbar. Popfly version 2.0, now with DLR SilverLight 2.0 Expression Design running on a ...

Over at the ISV Developer Evangelism blog, jpelak posted about a couple of preview SilverLight control toolsets, that are now available.  They're from ComponentOne (the Sapphire toolkit) and InterSoft (the WebAqua toolkit).  Both are beautiful and usable, (remember that UX is not just about looks) and would be at home ...

I think that surface and gesture computing is going to explode over the next five years.  We're going to see it in many areas of our life.  We already are with devices like the iPhone and the HTC Touch, however Surface will bring more opportunities with it. Surface brings a larger space to interact with, and more options.  ...

And win... The good people over at Lab49 (New York's finest WPF consultancy) have a contest focused on using WPF in finance.  I've long felt that WPF is a perfect match for the financial market, due to the rich visualization needs and the shear amount of data.  So here's your chance to take their data and build something ...

In the new MIX08 podcast found at ''The Signal'', during episode 2 or 3, it's stated that MIX is all about the Web (not the exact quote).  I disagree.  MIX is about UX.  It's about the tools and technologies from Microsoft to build those experiences. Its about getting designers, developers, architects and ...

Found via UX magazine... Flare, ''ActionScript 3 (Flash) libraries for interactive visualizations on the web''.  Here's a cool toolset for interactive visualizations using Flash, check out the demo reel for some cool stuff.  I like the ''Star Burst'' view, I have a similar WPF control called ''Sunburst'' in the works for ...

I found the Surface team blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/surface/default.aspx   Hopefully there be lots of cool bits coming from them.  I'd love to hear and see what apps they are creating (from a UX side) and the challenges (from a technical side).    Sean

Over at Long Zheng's site, he's got a video of the good people over at Microsoft Research Cambridge demoing a tablet version of Microsoft Surface.  In the video you'll see Steve Hodges demo the functionality and how they did it.  With Jeff Han's work, the good people at Fingerworks (oh, I mean Apple's iPhone) work, and the work ...

I see the day (soon) when all of these applications that we see on TV and in movies are going to be made with WPF.  Until then, check out the guy that creates all of these.  His name is Mark Coleran, and man does he have talent.  Found by way of Information Aesthetics, one of the blogs I read.