Kudos to Adobe for working with Google and Yahoo! to make Flash more searchable (Ryan Stewart’s original post on the topic). I really believe it has been a barrier to entry for creating RIA in that users miss out on a lot of Googlejuice etc. I’m disappointed the Live Search wasn’t included in the announcement. Ever since Microsoft bought aQuantive I have had a skewed view of everything Search. This is all about better advertising data.
I’m completely fascinated by the arms race that is currently going on between Google and Microsoft in the Advertising business. Anything Toolbar, Search, Web related ALL has an advertising play in it. With this announcement Google’s advertising tools now have an extra feature which allows advertisers to better target pages with Flash RIA’s embedded in them.
Microsoft has done a good job of integrating DoubleClick functionality in Silverlight and it makes me wonder if this could have happened AFTER Google bought DoubleClick. Personally I am glad to see this happening as I would love to see better targeted ads. I’m also glad to see a large player like Microsoft invest so heavily in this space as I think it will ensure Google is constantly working to better their technology and advance the industry as a whole.
In the June 2008 Expression Newsletter Microsoft announced the availability of the Expression Professional Subscription. At $999 it’s basically a turn key solution for turning any hardware box into an Expression ready machine, including a MAC. What caught my eye was the inclusion of Parallels Desktop for Mac. I feel that Expression continues to do things correctly as far as being open to the designer community. Everything from product packaging to their web design is a departure from Microsoft’s developer oriented feel. At just version 2 I think both Expression and Silverlight is coming on strong. I just hope the Expression team continues to do what’s right and fight the good fight internally. The full list of what is included in Expression Professional Subscription is:
Expression Professional Subscription Includes
- Expression® Studio
- Visual Studio® Standard
- Office Standard
- Office Visio® Professional
- Windows® XP
- Windows Vista® Business Edition
- Virtual PC
- Parallels Desktop for Mac
- Pre-configured virtualized server environments
Had a super busy last few weeks in that I was on a vacation for a week and then did a quick weekend trip up to Seattle for Thingamajiggr and BarCampSeattle. Now that I’m back in the groove I will start posting regularly again soon. Thanks all!
Last weekend I was able to hit up the Union St. Festival with my brother and sister in SF. While cruising the stands we ran across Ork Posters. I’ve seen these before somewhere but was reminded how cool they are. It’s a perfect balance of clean lines and great looking art with a local feel and flavor. Right now they have Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, Manhattan and San Francisco.
Even though I would never buy the Pontiac G8 advertised I LOVED the advertisement utilizing Spy Hunter as a theme. Spy Hunter was a staple of my life and I actually wondered a few times when seeing the original commercial “How’d they do that”. Now there is a behind-the-scenes movie available which shows quite a bit of how it was made.
Head on over to Autoblog to check it out (link)
As part of the upcoming SilverlightDevCampSeattle get together we asked for participants to submit logos. We received four entries and the poll is currently up over on www.silverlightdevcampseattle.com.
Voting ends June 11, 2008 at 11:59PM PST.
When Expression Studio 2 shipped back on May 1 the first thing I did was run over the MSDN to grab the new Blend and Web builds. Unfortunately they didn’t immediately post to MSDN. It looks like the builds were posted on 5/27. In the meantime we got by using the 30 day trial until these were posted.
Loic Le Meur posted a few weeks back about Seesmic working together with Microsoft to deliver a Silverlight Mobile client. This has a few positive impacts for our community.
1) Seesmic and Loic are doing great, innovative things. I haven’t had much of a chance to play with Seesmic so I can’t talk as an expert on what they’re doing but they are generating a ton of buzz and seem to have the eyes and ears of the Silicon Valley community. One of the most interesting things is their recent ability to cross from just a Web 2.0 bleeding edge user base to that of the mass media with their interviews surrounding the new Indiana Jones movie.
2) Seesmic and Silverlight. Having a web 2.0 company dip their toes in Silverlight technology and community is absolutely critical to Silverlight’s success. Without the innovator’s adopting you’ll always be playing catchup with the bleeding edge.
3) Silverlight Mobile. While there was some content at MIX08 about Silverlight Mobile I’m still waiting on the follow on hype before counting on it as a viable mobile platform. Having Seesmic on board and pushing/questioning the technology decisions is a good thing.
Hopefully 6 months from now I will be writing an extended post on how Seesmic leveraged Silverlight to expand and enhance their service.
Back when I kicked this off in April I was focused on setting our date then working on venues and volunteers. After a few days I had been contacted by a few folks and we started looking into location and sponsors. By that time we had a few attendees and looking to have a strong event.
Soon after the word spread I was contacted by Tara Brown who was in the process of planning barcamp seattle ON THE SAME WEEKEND! After speaking to hear and mulling over options we decided to fold in our efforts and help promote barcamp seattle as an event where Silverlighters could gather to share knowledge.
To keep a standalone event alive I was going to host “Silvernight” Friday night as a kick off to the events. I was then contacted through Tara by the folks over at thingamajiggr. The group from Waggle Labs teamed up with O’Reilly Radar to host a benefit for 911 Media Arts Center that same Friday night.
When all was said and done I felt the best thing to do would be to host SilverlightDevCamp as a supporting promoter of the two events already in the works. I was able to secure sponsorship for both events from IdentityMine (my current employer) and will continue to help promote and coordinate where needed with both events.
Thanks all for your support of the community and can’t wait to see everyone on starting Friday Night, June 13th.
(Photo from FastCompany.com)
I’m excited for July for two reasons this year. The first is that it’s my birthday month. That’s nothing new. The other is that Microsoft is set to launch a $300 million ad campaign created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky. In this month’s Fast Company magazine there is an article detailing some of Bogusky’s past work and building up some anticipation for the upcoming campaign. The reason I’m excited is that the Apple ads are absolutely killing Microsoft as a brand. I know they refer to just "PC" most of the time but more often than not they slip a "Vista" jab in there as well.
The Xbox360 and the Zune are two products that work well from a brand perspective and HP has done well for PC with the "Hands" ads but aside from that Microsoft is really hurting from a brand perception point of view. Windows Live is off to an OK start and with just a little bit more hard work they could have a great third brand to build on. I’m hoping Bogusky doesn’t go to abstract as that could just confuse everyone just that much more. Bogusky has had a roster of good work and with Microsoft starting with "The Wow Starts Now" as a baseline there’s not much downhill from there.
Plus this gives me a reason to embed one of my favorite commercials (see below), I think it’s part of Burger King’s campaign worked on by CPK but don’t quote me on that. Be sure to check out all the behind the scenes and other content for this commercial at: http://www.chickflix.com/. "Maybe you do!"
