The keynotes were great, the Hard Rock Cafe demo was uber cool, and very well put together.  I’m totally on an island on this (everyone loves the demo), but the curmudgeon in me says that we’ve seen this technology before, in javascript, and in production, at Google maps, etc.  What is a map of the world, other than a finite set of images at varying levels of detail that allow zooming in.  After I saw the HRC (hard rock cafe, not Hillary Rodham Clinton) session this morning, though, the Vertigo team did a really awesome job with pretty crude tooling support.

The AOL silverlight email client was well done, but I would have been interested in more talk about why the client is so fast — what techniques they used to download and cache the data from the server.  To get that performance they must cache the heck out the data (They said you get 1MG for free, but after that it gets tricky.  1mg seems awfully small in today’s world)

During the keynote, they showed another mobile application for social networks (“I’m going to this bar tonight, is any of my friends around? Let me type into my mobile, and see…”)  I must be old, because I totally don’t get that.  If I am going out I’ll either Call/SMS my friends and tell them where I am, or I’ll simply “look around the bar” and see if I recognize anyone.   My friend Jason went to the show with me, and he said “Mobile applications are completely dead.  What we should be working on is making the mobile devices that have a real browser on them.”  I totally agree with him.  I’d rather just use a quick web page that works well on my mobile, then install and mind another application on the client.  I have (and love) my Blackberry, and I used to have a windows mobile.  The browsers on both leave a lot to be desired.

I didn’t do well at the conference in networking with other developers.  I totally didn’t use my twitter correctly, and missed the opportunity to meet some of the people I have always wanted to chat with.  Perhaps the show is just to short!

They just posted a page where you can download all the MIX08 tools here.  I tried to install SilverLight into my VisualStudio 2008 tonight and didn’t do so well — Whatever you do don’t hit ‘cancel.’  In fact, they should have just change the ‘cancel’ button to a ‘Press this button and totally mess up your machine” button — I probably would not have hit it then.  If you do hit the ‘cancel’ button, this link helped me get the beta installed.

We’ve been working a bunch with Silverlight so far, and I can’t wait to dig into the new beta.  Dax and I will have much more to say about the new tools in the weeks and months to come!

Official MIX08 water bottle (This is for you Liam, airport security took the bottle I grabbed for you — the best I could do was grab the label…)

I only took 1 picture in Vegas, how dumb was that??

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We’ve been doing a bunch of Silverlight work lately, so I decided to go to MIX08 in Las Vegas.  I’ve been traveling so much that I really didn’t want to getting on a plan again, but after today’s snow storm, I’m looking forward to a few days in the ‘lost wages’!

If anyone else out there is going to be at MIX, drop me a email, we’ll meet-up!

Home (Detroit, Michigan):

Mix08 (Las Vegas, Nevada):

To further illustrate the point — here are pictures taken from my home office today…

Vegas here I come!

• The reuxables library consists of 6 fully customizable themes, each with their own unique variations that result in a total of 48 different styles.
• The themes are designed by some of the top artists in the UX design industry.
• Reuxables themes provide a consistent look regardless of the operating system, and therefore provide the same look on both Windows Vista™ and Windows® XP.
• Reuxables are completely compatible with both .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5.
• All reuxables themes are provided in both Static and Animated versions, both made from native XAML vector objects.
• Implementing reuxables is effortless as they automatically theme the entire application as soon as the theme file is added to the project.
• Reuxables themes are fully compatible with both Microsoft Expression Blend™ 1.0/1.1 and Visual Studio® 2008.

System requirements include Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 or 3.5 for runtime, and Microsoft Expression Blend 1.0/1.1 or Visual Studio 2008 for development. Individual reuxables themes are available between $19 to $99, with an additional complete collection pack for $299.
A complete demonstration of all themes is available at: http://www.reuxables.com

Dax also made some screencasts demonstrating how easy it is to drop reuxables into either VS2008 or Expressions Blend….

My buddy and podcast-partner Dax has released reuxables, a theme framework for WPF applications.  Dax has been working with WPF and Silverlight since pre-alpha, and has had a passion for UX development forever.   Something that I’ve always struggled with as a developer is the fact that my UI’s are either boxy (tr’s and td’s) or gun-metal-grey win-form’s.  While Dax kept telling me how easy it was to add a little style to interfaces, the best I could ever do was to send him my HTML, and he’d send back something that looked awesome.   With reuxables, through the magic of inheritance and injection, you code up your WPF application, and then select the theme.  Every control on the page is auto-magically themes— professional UX’s at a fraction of the cost — wow.  I wish I would have learned earlier in my career how important the UX is — when you are briefing the boss, they need to see a good looking UI, or you won’t get your next funding cycle.

Check them out, and download a trial — you’ll be glad you did!