got mad design and css skillz?  take a stab at redesigning the mix web site for a contest.  i saw through twitter that adam kinney noted only one person entered yet.  and there are three prizes!!! should make winning pretty simple right now ;-). of course i'm ineligible (that's my way of getting off, because i have no mad design skillz), but might i suggest a few themes to try out: halo 3 rockband/guitar hero - have you seen this and this...

the sessions at sessions.visitmix.com for mix07 have been updated a bit.  some have included the slide decks for download, but a lot have also been updated so that you can choose the play option and get the video of the presenter side-by-side with the powerpoint.  it is an updated silverlight player, which also has chapter indexes (rollover the video) to fast-forward to points. anyhow, if you haven't seen any of them yet, or want to review, the player now really makes you feel like you are there! tags: mix07, visitmix.com, silverlight

one really great feature about silverlight is the packaging aspect of it.  what do i mean by this?  well, you can essentially put a ton of assets into a compressed file and pull them out as needed.  this would provide you the ability to have a single asset package that is compressed, and thus saving on some download time.  of course there would be tradeoffs that you'd have to consider, but for sample sake, let's assume they are good. so how would you do that?  well let's say you have a bunch of images in a file name 'assets.zip' (here...

in a previous post i wrote about embedding the silverlight applications in your site using the silverlight streaming service.  i wrote about my troubles in getting output from more complex types working in the service.  here's the skinny.  i was using expression media encoder (eme for the cool kids) and the output templates for media players.  turns out the version of eme i was using was missing a few things.  the version on microsoft.com/expression is correct and is working fine. if you are using eme outputs and want to put them in silverlight streaming, do not use the <source> node...

so what happens when you want to embed silverlight in your page?  well if you have absolute control over your site, you may not need to worry as you'll post your silverlight applications as-is.  but what if you want to just output some smaller silverlight applications in specific areas in your site, blog, etc? enter silverlight streaming.  this was announced at mix07 where you get 4gb storage for free.  now, there are some caveats that you should read about -- the 4gb is total storage, but the per-app upload has some limits...so be sure to read...it may not meet...

sitting in a session watching john lam/jim hugunin: getting input from an html input element... write a ruby block... responding to a c# event... calling a visual basic function to get JSON serialized information... then doing some other stuff in python... executing animation with javascript... ...all in a single app, powered by the dynamic language runtime in Silverlight. i think i just peed my pants. tags: dlr, dynamic language runtime, john lam, jim huginin, silverlight, wpf/e, ruby, vbx, json, mix, mix07

scottgu just announced microsoft is providing a ruby implementation for .net...nice. before mix i had a chance to sit down with john lam, a program manager at microsoft working on the dynamic language runtime that was announced at mix07.  i went to seattle and carved off a moment to talk with him as they prepared for mix07.  i've put the recording up on my *cast site for you to view/listen to.  some interesting things he talks about and how happy he is to finally break his silence.  in the middle, the small edit you'll see is when his office-mate, tomas...

well, some pretty good news coming out of mix07 today...here's a quick recap... release of Silverlight 1.0 beta supporting ajax/javascript release of Silverlight 1.1 alpha supporting .net programming model announcing cross-platform (windows/mac) .net as a part of Silverlight 1.1 alpha announcing support for dynamic languages (ruby, python out of the gate) as a part of Silverlight 1.1 alpha rtm of expression studio preview of expression blend v2 (supporting richer Silverlight development) expression media encoder preview for Silverlight Silverlight streaming by Windows Live whew, that is a lot to swallow.  i'm most excited...

the first night of mix yielded a few pre-parties.  i first went to the regional director dinner event, where we were able to chat with a few microsoft regional directors who happen to be at mix this year.  of particular note is scott stanfield from vertigo.  they are demonstrating (and you can see it/download the source) a really slick wpf application called Family.Show which is essentially a visualization tool for family history information...very cool, check it out. after that (and actually a little bit before) i went to the mashup day area (which will be going on as well monday night...

hey all, quick update here.  i've been starting to record some media (audio/video interviews) and have set up some feeds for your podcasting delight.  next week especially i'll be uploading a few from MIX07 with some great updates that microsoft will be announcing. so, here's an explanation of them (they are on the left and as well as alternate links in the site meta data): All *casts: this is all WMV and MP3 files so you'll get video and audio MP3 Casts: um yeah, mp3 files only WMV Casts: um yeah, wmv files only right now...