Quick thoughts from the MIX keynote

I've got the main post coming in a few minutes (it's up now), but here are my "liveblogging thoughts from the keynote today at MIX.

Ray Ozzie is hyping up Win32 applications. He's describing it "as close to the metal" as you can get and praising the virtues of how rich the experiences can be. He tells us "then came this little thing called the web" and is talking about all the freedom it provides. He's telling us that as with other platform shifts, the best solution for this one will be one which blends the two worlds. This is exactly what Rich Internet Applications are and Microsoft is answering with Silverlight. He just used the word "Rich Internet Applications", so John Dowdell should be happy :). Ray is a pretty good pitch man for RIAs. He praises the virtues of rich client applications and the media-rich, complicated applications that RIAs make much easier. Microsoft wants to span "the rich web", "the rich pc", and "the rich device". If I didn't know better, I would think this was an Adobe keynote.

Now we're on to the news. .NET is going into Silverlight, so we DO get a cross-platform CLR (Common Language Runtime). He's using the term "Universal Web". Ray, you should call it the Universal Desktop ;). Quick slideshow of all the nifty WPF applications, Yahoo Messenger (Frog Design), Rosxio,some in house apps and the venerable New York Times Reader.

We've got the CLR in Silverlight and we're on to talking about the Live cloud. I get to sit next to John Musser as he's listing off the APIs. Ray says they're building a services platform. One that leverages the universal web as well as experience first deployments like the PC and mobile devices. The third part of the Silverlight service is "Silverlight Streaming" so you can upload and post Silverlight apps to the Live cloud.

Scott Guthrie's turn. The crowd loves him, big applause. He's going to give us some demos. Okay, Scott is telling us how we actually BUILD apps with Silverlight (also, you can go download it on the community site.). He's defining the "media and RIA" space as a blend of the web and the desktop. Now .NET runs across all of those so you get a common language and common tools across the whole spectrum. Quick info on the media stuff. Most of it's old hat, it is going to be good competition for Flash video though. Avenue A |Razorfish is giving us the down low on the Netflix app. Pretty cool demo, typical media stuff. Silverlight makes it easy with a very high quality codec.

Scott's back, talking about the designer/developer workflow.  Silverlight will focus on that. Expression Studio is shipping today to help with that. Wayne Smith up to tell us about the workflow. (Sadly, my battery is dying - Vista sucks the battery life out of the Mac Book Pro), so I'm going to have to shut down and take mental notes.