Alex Barnett blog : WPF/e

Silverlight and Windows Live Hosting

alexbarnett — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:20:00 GMT

I've just sat through Ray Ozzie keynote here at MIX07, his first public speaking engagement to a dev audeince since joining Microsoft, where he made a few interesting announcements relating to Silverlight.

I won't repeat all the details here since Ryan Stewart seems to be totally on the ball in having the scoop right away. To summarise:

"First, Microsoft is announcing that the CLR will be a part of Silverlight. Two, they are also announcing a Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) which is open source and will allow developers to write dynamic languages to be compiled into .NET bytecode. The DLR will be open sourced under the Microsoft Public License. Third, Windows Live will provide Silverlight developers a way to deploy applications on their service by implementing a hosted solution around Windows Live."

Hosting a solution on Windows Live? That's right...More on the Windows Live Hosting news:

"Finally, one of the interesting announcements is that Microsoft is going to provide a hosting service to budding Silverlight developers via the Windows Live property. The serivce gives 4 gb of space to anyone building and deploying Sliverlight applications. This means you can store Slverlight movies and applications on the Windows Live service and then deploy those on your blog or web page."

That's very interesting news but I can't find the link to Windows Live Hosting to check it out for myself.

In the meantime, Joshua Allen has also posted more details and links to the announcements themselves.

Microsoft has also just launched Silverlight.net and updated microsoft.com/silverlight.

Also announced: Expression Studio is now shipping.

Update: 11:15am:

Silverlight Streaming is the name of the Windows Live hosting service for Silverlight content and apps - silverlight.live.com
Dan Farber has a good summary of Ray Ozzie's talk this morning. In a nutshell: software + services model. Services being Windows Live APIs plus content + app hosting service for Silverlight apps, Silverlight Streaming.

Adobe on Apollo Compeitors

alexbarnett — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 18:08:00 GMT

Very interesting post by Andrew Shebanow (senior computer scientist at Adobe), reflecting on some of the reactions and comments he's heard since Apollo went alpha, including comparisons made with other offerings (Microsoft's WPF, Dekoh, Joyent Slingshot + magnetk, Yahoo! Widgets and Firefox 3.

Highlights for me are:

On WPF:

"Apollo competes with WPF - this meme is attractive to journalists because its easy to write a sexy story about a war between two large companies....Apollo’s can succeed even if WPF proves to be extremely popular, and vice versa.

On comments that Apollo is closed source and proprietary:

"Its true that a number of the pieces that make up Apollo are closed source, but how important this is will vary from developer to developer, and the story around Apollo alternatives is generally even worse."

On Dekoh:

"one thing that they have revealed is that the product relies on a centralized “Dekoh Network Service” for identity, sharing, and so on. The bottom line is that with Dekoh, you are making your application dependent on a closed source, propietary Dekoh service that will own and leverage information about your users and their data."

On Joyent Slingshot + magnetk:

"Downsides are a lot of potential security issues (no sandbox?)...More disturbing, though, is that it sounds like Joyent will be charging a royalty for distributing applications based on their runtime unless you are a customer for their hosting service...much less open than the Apollo model where the SDK and runtime are both free of charge."

On Yahoo! Widgets:

"I don’t really get the comparison, but even if you do think they serve similar needs, the fact is that Yahoo! Widgets is just as closed source and proprietary as Apollo, if not moreso"

And Firefox 3:

"its still fundamentally a web browser and it is nothing but vaporware at the moment."

The comments conversation to Andrew's post make enlightening reading too - I'd also be interested in hearing his thoughts on the Dojo Toolkit / dojo.storage.

2007 to be a big year for 'Rich Internet Applications'

alexbarnett — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 14:39:00 GMT

The following is a short description of Adobe's play for 2007 - Apollo - big news in my opinion:

"Apollo, the code name for “a cross-operating system runtime” is a platform that will allow developers to create to desktop applications using existing web development skills such as Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript and Ajax."

A big play indeed.

Things I heard in this TalkCrunch podcast interview by Michael Arrington and Steve Gillmor with Adobe's Chief Architect, Kevin Lynch: Cross-platform client runtime (Windows, Mac, Linux), supports Occasionally Connected Computing (OCC) scenarios and local data storage. No 'direct' revenue model - devs can use Eclipse IDE, but the strategy seems to be to have Apollo drive sales for designers ' developer tools Flex, Blaze ('better tooling support for Apollo') and media server sales and to drive end user adoption of other Adobe products (runtime is free for end user - Flash, PDF authoring tool Acrobat). Currently in beta, Adobe might be v1.0 by July / August timeframe.

Apollo was touched on during Adobe's latest earnings conf call, Larry Dignan reports:

"Chizen told analysts to think about Apollo the same way they would characterize Adobe Reader or Flash Player, its a client that can be used to help others build unique applications and allow Adobe to sell more tools."

With the development of Adob'es Apollo and Microsoft's WPF/E and the continuing rise of Ajax, 2007 is destined to be a very interesting year for Rich Internet Applications (RIA).

Update: Amyloo found this recorded presentation by Adobe's product managers introducing Apollo.

Microsoft to get tougher on its bloggers?

alexbarnett — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 22:33:00 GMT

Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley has published her 2007 predictions on Microsoft...

"This time around, I've decided to break my traditional Top 10 predictions list in two: One half being what I consider relatively safe and well-considered bets on what Microsoft is likely to do (and is likely to fail to do) in 2007, and the other my out-on-a-limb list of Microsoft predictions."

Of the out-on-a-limb list, I thought this one interesting:

"4. Adobe will sue Microsoft. Adobe almost sued Microsoft in June -- if you believe the press reports -- but didn't actually pull the trigger. But once Microsoft ships its Expression design tools (meant to compete with Dreamweaver et al) and Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/e) Flash-killer in 2007, watch Adobe's legal department kick into action."

hmmm...("WTF is WPF/e???" I hear you ask!...check this post by Ryan Stewart, the new MSDN WPF/e site and JD's (of Adobe) links on Adobe / Microsoft, plus some Channel 9 vids here and here)

And a relatively safe and well-considered bet?

"I foresee 2007 as the year that Microsoft gets tougher on its bloggers."

I don't know about this one...and I don't know why she believes this. She mentions that Mini-Microsoft has been 'wavering' in its criticism of Microsoft, but there's nothing that Microsoft could have done even if it wanted to in this case (after all, Mini-Microsoft was / is anonymous) and goes on from there to say a general clamp down will be forthcoming. I don't see the connection.

Arguably, Microsoft's support and encouragement of blogging has paid off to date in that it has provided a great deal of transparency into the company where it was lacking previously and helped demystify it in the customers eyes by providing direct access channels for dialogue with employees from hundreds of product teams. Why would Microsoft 'get tougher'? What would that mean? Yes, mistakes will happen (e.g. overly enthusiastic timing of product news ) and errors of judgement will be made (e.g. accidental disclosure of stuff under NDA, or bad-mouthing competition), but these are the risks involved when you trust your employees to blog.

As blogging become an increasingly powerful way of connecting with customers, the best an employer could and should do is educate its employees on how to 'Blog Smart', not to 'get tough'. If you need to 'get tougher' with your employees, the real problem you have is that you need smarter employees.